Just a heads up for you faction transfers, though you've probably already realized this if you have made a transfer: many of your faction reputations will transfer over just fine, but not so for any
Argent Tournament progress you've made. Argent Tournament reputation and gains
will not transfer over if you change factions. Kisirani says that Blizzard couldn't think of a way to do it technically, and so (as we understand it), anyone who transfers factions will lose all of their current Argent Tournament standing, and have to make their way back up through the ranks to Champion. Many other reputations have changed just fine, and you can find a list of all the changes as you cross over from one faction to another on the
faction change FAQ. You will bring items over with you -- any seals earned on one side are still valid on the other. But if you want to grind out more, you'll have to go through the ranks again.
Seems like a bummer for faction changers (especially those who didn't know about the problem before they did the transfer), but on the other hand, I don't believe Blizzard would have let this go if they had any way to fix it. Short of just granting ranks to all players who transfer, assuming they have no way to track where players were at in terms of which cities they'd champion-ed for, I don't know what other solution there would be.
Update: A little more information: you also lose all of your Silver Covenant or Sunreavers rep as well, so you'll have to re-earn that from the beginning, too. As players have said in the thread below, it's not a huge loss, but it's an annoyance for sure.
Tags: argent-tournament, bug, champions-seals, faction-changes, items, jousting, kisirani, leveling, loss, reputation, seals, transfers
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Items, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Leveling, Factions
Sep 11th 2009 at 1:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Glorae Sep 11th 2009 1:04PM
Not so bad, consider all the major cities rep are transferred.
Superthrust Sep 11th 2009 3:15PM
Also, not to mention, all the gold you will be RE-getting for redoing those quests! Thats alot!
Riley Sep 11th 2009 4:21PM
yeah, but you could be doing the higher up dailies instead, and making just as much gold (actually more because of the ones that give you 10 extra)
Mikata Sep 11th 2009 1:04PM
If you've already switched.....Ouch !!!!!
Timmmo Sep 11th 2009 1:07PM
AWWW SHEEEET!!11!
Just this second paid for a transfer
SledgeHammer Sep 11th 2009 1:07PM
yeah and it is not on there FAQ either wish I new that Oh well to late
Boize Sep 11th 2009 1:44PM
However, it is there in the Reputations tab of the Faction Change page on the official site, and has been there since day 1:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faction-change/index.xml
"The achievements relating to the Argent Tournament, including becoming a champion for each home city, will not translate in a faction change."
AmazonLily Sep 11th 2009 1:08PM
I'll actually be switch factions today and to be honest, it doesn't really bother me. I didn't really get very far because I was a bit on the lazy side with doing the dailies being a healing spec without a dual spec. I'm still excited and happy to be going back to the Horde. :D
Lildot Sep 11th 2009 1:13PM
One possible solution would have been to mail aspirant and valiant seals to the player according to the ranks that they have earned. The full grind for the argent tourney is rather tedious...
Rotclaw Sep 11th 2009 1:21PM
That actually makes a lot of sense - I wonder why they didn't think of that. After all, there's a blue post stating that they really wanted to be able to transfer AT status.
Joyous_Oblivion Sep 11th 2009 1:19PM
You haven't done many grinds have you? The BC grinds were much much worse and they aren't even close to the incredibly annoying grinds from vanilla wow.
You get a lot of gold and city rep doing AT, it's a very simple, effective and fast grind.
Lildot Sep 11th 2009 1:36PM
I'm sure there are other grinds that are worse but that doesn't make the AT grind any better.
The part about AT that I find annoying is the fact that the AT's daily quest limit drags the process out to a bit under a month(correct me if I'm wrong) for becoming champions with all your factions.
mel Sep 11th 2009 2:07PM
28 days, I think?
15 Aspirant seals @ 5/day = 3 days.
25 Aspirant seals @ 5/day x 5 factions = 25 days.
I think that's right but I feel like I'm missing something.
Tumleren Sep 11th 2009 2:25PM
I was wondering.. If you buy any of the mounts, and learn them, won't they be transferred? Since you don't need Exalted this or that to use the mounts, only to learn and buy them, and Blizzard said that no items would be lost in a transfer.
If this is possible, I'm definitely going to buy the mount(s) and then just accept the loss of achievements and titles
MazokuRanma Sep 11th 2009 3:27PM
@mel
Your math is correct, the only thing you might be missing is that you can shorten it up slightly from that. First, you can do the first day of Valiant quests the same day you finish your Aspirant quests. Also, assuming they haven't changed it, each faction when I did it had a chance of giving out a different daily 'Retrieve X Weapon' quest, so you could possibly get an extra two seals when you switched factions, which over time could reduce it by one day.
In the end, this changes it from 28 to 26 days, so it's still not much under a month, but these may have been what you thought you were missing.
Aramis Sep 12th 2009 9:23AM
Lildot -
I like the idea of mailing the seals, but where the idea fails is when you hit the snag in the Silver Covenant to Sunreaver (and vice versa) rep translation. By resetting the the entire AT progress line for players, you then give them the opportunity to rebuild that reputation you've lost in the transfer (250rep points per quest at four valiant quests and when you're able 4 champion quests a day is 2000 rep points a day when you've earned champion status and are doing those quests on top of the valiant quests for another city).
The reason why the Silver Covenant and Sunreaver reps don't translate is because it gives a players access to daily quests that shouldn't be available if they are not a champion of their faction. And since it was determined that players should start over when they transfer factions, then the only way to close off those quests is to reset the rep points for the relative AT faction (SC to Sun or Sun to SC). In the end I get why Blizz decided on the changes.
I for one, transferred knowing what would happen because, well...MORE GOLD! LoL. Doing the quests again means getting a TON of gold which is awesome so I'll be back to where I was before I transferred but not after I make some monies.
devilsei Sep 11th 2009 1:16PM
Yeah... seriously how hard is it to do it?
And by the way, they do have a way to track the player's progression with the Argent Tournament. There is achievements, there is achievements to go with said titles, so how hard is it to do a simple glance at their achievements and check off a box for that?
Nopunin10did Sep 11th 2009 2:47PM
Yeah, but keeping achievements as they go across is probably a far more trivial database query than trying to convert a series of quests into other quests.
I'd imagine Blizz has very few types of faction structures for quests in total:
1) A quest that has a single table entry, potentially available to both factions from the same questors, with the same text.
2) A quest that has a single table entry, but has fields for different text/questors per each faction.
3) A quest that is only available to a particular faction.
Numbers 1 and 2 are trivial to transfer from one faction to the other, as they'd be under the same unique server ID. A quest that falls in the number 3 category may or may not have a close equivalent on the other faction, but that equivalent would not have the same entry ID. I believe the Argent Tournament quests in question were structured under this category.
Even if Blizzard were to keep a table of quests that qualify as #3 matched with near-equivalent quests from the other faction (as with the Argent Tournament), the potential for database errors in the conversion process are non-trivial.
Honestly, it's a large enough database risk to alter detailed character records like quests done... that I would have thought faction changes were never even going to happen. Too much technical risk.
But by leaving out these faction-specific quests in the transfer, they made their SQL queries far less risky.
TLDR version: Database changes are harder than they seem, and Blizzard didn't structure Argent Tournament quests originally with faction transfer in mind as a possibility.
Nopunin10did Sep 11th 2009 2:49PM
Edit:
meant "entry ID" not "server ID"
Haarits Sep 11th 2009 1:17PM
Strange... you'd think they could apply the same city/race reputation switch method to the AT levels. So if you're a human with Champion of Exodar, Stormwind, and Darnassus, if you become a troll you get Champion of Sen'jin, Silvermoon, and Undercity. And if you're a Valiant of Gnomeregan, you become Valiant of Thunder Bluff.