Breakfast Topic: Further discussion of cross-faction raiding
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 3rd 2012 at 8:00AM
With Real ID, the impending BattleTag system, and the increasing prevalence of social media usage in the World of Warcraft community, it's highly unlikely that all of your friends are on the same faction. In both the real world and the virtual, it has become easier and easier to meet people on the other side of faction lines. Even if all of your friends are on the same faction right now, who knows if that will remain true? You meet new people every day. It doesn't feel good to meet a new coworker, find out they play WoW, only to learn they're on the opposite faction. You'll never be able to play together. Well, you can, but you sure need to jump through a lot of hoops to do it ... like ditching your main character.
The social landscape of the game has evolved, but the binary faction lines remain static. Why not allow cross-faction raiding? I'm not calling for the abolition of a two-faction system entirely. Two independent stories for each faction still makes sense. The conflict between the Alliance and the Horde is still a part of the world we play in. However, if players are on our Real ID or BattleTag friends list, we must know them well enough that those faction lines don't matter. Why continue to use those faction lines in content where they are unnecessary?
Some raids do have unique content based on faction, that's true. It would be weird to fight for the Alliance as a Horde player in a raid such as the Argent Tournament, wouldn't it? I'm sure some creative Orb of Deception kludge could overcome that obstacle.
What say you, WoW Insider?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
TheSloth Mar 3rd 2012 8:13AM
Its the natural progression. Found an old friend through Real ID this week. We are psyched to play together but you guessed it, different factions. It actually made me upset, now I find myself leveling a toon I didn't really want to and cursing the whole way through.
Anyway I think they will do it, it's just a matter of when.
jfofla Mar 3rd 2012 3:53PM
What do you bet your buddy is doing the same thing.
exogenesis. Mar 3rd 2012 8:12AM
I have a few friends on my RealID list who play Alliance, and there are some who would rather play Alliance but stay on Horde because it means they get to do things with us. I personally have no one on my RealID who isn't someone that I have a pretty decent friendship with, so as far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't be a bad thing removing faction lines for RealID friends only. Keeping them there only prevents friends from playing with each other - or keeps people playing a side they don't enjoy just so they can play with those friends. Which I don't think is fair.
MikeLive Mar 3rd 2012 8:26AM
The way I see it, it makes perfect sense that a Dwarf can't walk into Thunder Bluff. But it doesn't make any sense that a Dwarf and a Tauren can't share a beer in Shattrath. By the same token, it doesn't make any sense that they can't kill some dragons together.
ravyncat Mar 3rd 2012 9:28AM
I agree with this idea exactly.
I can see not ever being allowed to stroll around in Orgrimmar, but why should I consider all Horde to be my enemy? Especially when I have fought with Horde as my allies to defeat the Lich King? Especially since I lived peacefully alongside those same Horde in Dalaran?
(I know in actual gameplay ICC was separated by Alliance and Horde raids...but the Ashen Verdict was made of both factions and it is the group that helped clear out ICC in the story. Plus there are many groups in game like the Ebon Blade, Argent Dawn, Argent Crusade, Cenarion Circle, Earthen Ring etc. that have no faction lines.)
I don't think it would break the game at all to allow cross-faction Real ID or Battletag raiding. Instead it would allow more people to play with their friends while also allowing them to be the Faction they like best. Win-win all around.
Chetti Mar 3rd 2012 10:07AM
I was thinking this as well, of the groups that currently exist in the game, that have members of races from both factions.
It makes me think of situations where say many generations of a family continue to pass down the same line of racism or prejudice to each new generation, but then there is one that doesn't fall in line and thinks that they no longer need to feel a certain way about a certain people because their great-grandparents and on down the line felt that way. Then they can teach the next generation a general acceptance of all people. Or at least give them to open opportunity to judge on a person to person basis and not judge the entire race on the actions of one or a select few.
RGSmith Mar 3rd 2012 11:20AM
Wouldn't all that go against the new tagline of putting the war back in Warcraft? That said I think it would be great for the game to be able to do that.
Eternauta Mar 3rd 2012 2:49PM
I think the whole concept of two factions forced to be separated by game mechanics and unable to interact with each other unless it's with mutual agression purposes is pretty stupid.
I'd like factions to be more of a personal character choice rather than "if you rolled a Tauren, you're automatically at war with the Alliance, forget about having any Night Elf buddies, even though their philosophy and values are much more similar to yours than those of the Goblins or the Forsaken"
That said, Blizzard has stated that they want to bring back the war and they seems to be pretty interested in getting everyone into PvP. So I think, if anything, they want the factions to be more separated than ever. So, no cross-faction raiding, or dungeons, or whatever.
Nathanyel Mar 3rd 2012 6:05PM
RGSmith: What your faction and its leaders do, and what you do, are two different things.
underground_slacker Mar 3rd 2012 8:39AM
from a lore standpoint we know certain races like the tauren and dwarves or the dreanei and blood elves to a certain extent dont share the orcs vs nelf and humans mentality as harshly
from a gameplay standpoint battle tags are meant to make playing together easier. in an enclosed isolated thing like a raid i see no problem with real id freinds raiding together regardless of the characters race.
Acoss the whole wow spectrum? i doubt it, but being able to raid with my freinds undead on my dreanei shaman through battletags? im sure thats coming.
Kaphik Mar 3rd 2012 9:12AM
Except that the Tauren have an intense dislike and anger for the Dwarves due to all that digging up of Tauren ancestral lands and such.
underground_slacker Mar 3rd 2012 9:18AM
@kaphik some, not all, go read the shattering for some mention on it. tauren show up to magnis 'funeral' and nobody bats an eye because the tauren have always held respect for the shamanic dwarfs who have a much more direct connection to the earth mother through their earthern origins.
Which just begs more description on where tauren come from really.
Tondef Mar 3rd 2012 9:00AM
If anyone remembers in the original EverQuest you could work your faction up with any group over time. It allowed you as a Lizardman to go to human cities after lots and lots of questing for them. I guess it would be something to do other than crafting dailies and the same raid instance over and over.
underground_slacker Mar 3rd 2012 9:16AM
Something i wanted since i saw the 'learn to speak furbolg' questline on azuremyst isle was some long epic questline to allow a horde character to learn an alliance players language and vice versa and maybe go into the cities with everything neutral to you.
When i was a beginner i just figured 'i dont pvp, what have i done to deserve being killed on sight if jainas cool to hang around with thrall?'
blazenor Mar 3rd 2012 9:13AM
Why have factions in the first place? What is the purpose of factions in a MMO?
Dea ex Machina Mar 3rd 2012 9:43AM
Easy way to organize and set up PvP conflict within the context of the game world. Any other ways I can think of (all players attackable by anyone? PvE only zones and PvP zones scattered around the world? Random selection at the start of BGs?) are much more complicated than simply "There are two teams. Team A fights Team B." Those other solutions also lack convenient hooks you can use to tie the PvP content into the plot.
You could have a game with no PvP content, or limit it to duels and gladiator fights, but lots of players LIKE PvP, and Blizzard wants to take EVERYBODY'S money. Plus, PvP has the advantage of being a renewable resource in the way PvE is not. Every time you fight Deathwing, it's the same fight. He's not going to do anything to surprise you. But Battlegrounds have different 'mechanics' and 'spawns' and 'phases' every single time you do them, and all blizzard has to do is create a place for that to happen and turn the players loose. It keeps a lot of folks busy during content lulls.
So yeah, lots of reasons why mmos set up the "you guys vs. them guys" scenario.
Zapwidget Mar 3rd 2012 9:52AM
It depends on the MMO, but in Warcraft, factions serve the purpose of allowing the players to chooses which side of a conflict they want to play on. At its most basic level, WoW is the classic fantasy trope of monsters vs demihumans, and amidst that backdrop, various events often interfere with and delay the conflict.
The relevance of factions depends heavily on the story writers, and over the last three expansions, that role has been set aside because of various "greater evils." There's no point in fighting to control the world if Kil'Jaeden/Arthas/Deathwing comes along and destroys it.
I would love to see cross-faction raiding, I really would, but something I would like to see more is for faction choices to actually have more impact and relevance, and for a lot less vilifying of the Horde and a lot less sugarcoating of the Alliance. Pushing the whole "Horde is savage and evil" bit is as tired and boring as the "Alliance is noble and true" crap that some plots have tried to peddle.
DarkWalker Mar 3rd 2012 11:05AM
I actually prefer when MMOs I play don't use permanent factions to segregate players. I see the downside of segregation as way bigger than any upside from faction identity or easy conflict setup.
Besides, if there are factions, I usually have a very simple way to choose them: get into the already most popular one. This same motivation apparently is true for a large enough portion of the player that, without a very careful balancing act by the developers, most likely involving bonuses for the underrepresented faction, faction-based games degenerate into multiple imbalanced servers and the conflict greatly downplayed due to lack of opponents. It's a big part of why Blizzard had to allow same faction match ups for Arenas and Rated BGs.
Games without fixed factions, on the other hand, can keep the balance way easier. When players can change who they fight for at the drop of a hat, the queue sizes for instanced fights alone are often enough to balance the factions reasonably well.
Khirsah Mar 3rd 2012 11:56AM
We're now downvoting people for asking legitimate questions? The Queue is gonna be brutal today.
Vasala Mar 3rd 2012 9:17AM
I personally think that it would be good for the game to allow cross faction raiding and dungeons. Having the entire population open for any particular queue would help queue times for everyone.
To preserve the feel each instance could get flagged as either Horde or Alliance based on which side was in the majority and the other players could be illusion cloaked to look like the other side just like happens in the various Caverns of Time instances.