Details on WoW to Offer Controversial Paid Faction Transfer
June 30, 2009 by srfto
One of the fundamental elements of World of WarCraft, and really the entire WarCraft series, has been the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. It’s one of those strange things where people develop a sort of pride to belong to one faction or the other (hence the Alliance and Horde flavored Mountain Dews, for example).
Over the last several months, Blizzard has steadily been adding paid services that allow people to modify their characters in previously impossible ways: it started with being able to transfer across realms, then the ability to change your name, and most recently the ability to change your character’s gender and appearance. Just recently, Blizzard announced the next step: faction transfers. Blizzard community manager Nethaera posted this on the game’s official forums:
We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.
The change is proving to be controversial, to say the least. In just about an hour and a half, the thread exploded with over 30 pages worth of responses, quite a few of them negative. As of yet, there’s still a great deal of confusion over how the service will work. Some players are suggesting and hoping that it is only a faction switch, and that they will be able to keep their race intact – i.e. have their Human character join the Horde.
Others (myself included) believe that that’s a bad idea, and will ruin the sense of identity that comes with playing either faction. The more likely option is that you will have to choose (or have chosen for you) a corresponding race on the other faction – so your Human character might turn into an Orc, or whatever. It’s also unknown what will happen to faction-specific items, reputations, and titles. With this degree of response, Blizzard will probably need to respond quickly and clarify a few of these key points before the community unrest gets any worse.
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I’d be totally fine with this, no matter how they handle the race issues, if they permanently altered your nameplate to make it plainly visible that you’ve defected. This way, you are ALWAYS going to be marked for the opposition. Giant, flashing red letters would suffice
I believe that they should just let you transfer to the race that corresponds with your class. i.e., if you are a human mage, you are allowed to transfer to an Undead mage, Troll Mage, or a Blood Elf mage. This way you have somewhat of a choice. I believe this to be the really only reasonable solution to the faction transferring and this is what I initially thought when I first came across the post about faction transferring.
I understand why some people may think that this is going to be a bad update to World Of Warcraft but they have to realize that its not that big of a deal. Its the same as if someone went and stopped playing their ally character to create a horde, but it saves us the time and effort of pain-stakin leveling. As long as they don’t get too carried away with these updates the game will remain fine.
I think it is a good idea as well. Think about it, in any kind of war etc.. there are always defectors, and people that change sides for one reason or another. So whats wrong with that in the world of warcraft? I also like dans suggestion that you should be able to choose your race based on what type of toon you are. Which makes it a bit easy if you are a shammy. lol. None the less I like this idea an think it would work. Things like For The Horde then if they get something like For The Alliance, They should get a feat of strength type achv for having both. none the less. Horde specific weapons have their alliance counterparts. I dont see it being such a big deal IMO.
Just it should be a one time only thing. If you change your faction once, thats it, you can not do it again, or there is a 6month lock on it. I hope they do it. The people that complain about it, wont be using the service, so let them complain. They can just fight the defectors on the BG’s.
Agree with Azhealz, if you dont want to change sides, dont. But being on the opposite side of all your friends is most frustrating. I would like to see choices available as to what you change to, (and yes you should change, it would be too confusing otherwise). Would really like to see this happen
Oh please. “Ruins your identity”? If the entirety of your identity is defined as what faction you play on World of Warcraft your “identity” needs a lot of work. I play both Horde and Alliance and in neither field do I feel my identity as a Warcracker is threatened.
The people who rant and rave about the people on Horde or Alliance often haven’t looked in a mirror or on the other side. Surprisingly, the rivalry is often mostly between people who have way more in common than in differences.
The commonality is mostly that they have blanket antipathy for another side played based solely on the race/affiliation, regardless of the people sitting behind those titles, the color of their avatar’s skin, etc.
American politics, anyone?