Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast 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 2 of 3)
Luotian Mar 3rd 2012 10:30AM
No. I think it should be done with RealID friends, I do NOT want to pair up with random Allies for dungeons/raids in the slightest.
AltairAntares Mar 3rd 2012 11:42AM
Well I do NOT want to be paired up with random hordies. Because they smell. And have weird accents. And I'm just not willing to spend my time around someone named "gnomepunter".
LynMars Mar 3rd 2012 11:42AM
Random queuing leads to the really nasty trolling and backlash that led Blizzard to close off communication between factions in the first place. Some people take the faction boundaries *way too seriously*.
It might taper off after awhile, but I know there are people who refuse to pug now due to the early attitudes they encountered from a few in LFD and LFR. It would probably be the same--or worse--in random cross-faction groups.
But playing with my RealID pals on their Hordies could be great; I really prefer my Alliance characters but all of my off-server pals play Horde, and several same-server friends do, too!
Luotian Mar 3rd 2012 12:21PM
@AltairAntares: Lol, no offense meant. My Dad plays Ally. I just...happen to have more bad experience with Trolls and jerks in Ally groups than I do Horde groups. Not that it's a trend, but it my luck, and I switched to Horde to avoid them as much as possible. I don't want the chance to run in to them again.
Furthermore, the idea of the orb I dislike. I have my characters look a very specific way and dislike the dungeons that change it.
Maymer Mar 3rd 2012 9:31AM
I truly believe that Blizzard is quickly heading down this path with MoP, if not going to downright introduce it with the launch of MoP.
To me, there are three hoops that Blizzard must go through to make this work: Different Faction/Server communication, Different Server Grouping, Lore/Faction Enthusiast.
As we can see from the first two, Blizzard has pretty much taken care of the first two problems, allowing us to speak to Real ID friends on different factions and realms, and not only can we run dungeons with friends of the same level and faction from different servers, but they made it possible to do old raids together! A huge success that I can't praise enough.
However, the final one is murky. I will not deny that I personally think the major two factions story shouldn't limit the ability to play with friends, but I can't very well deny other lore enthusiast who adore their specific faction feel like it's starting to lose meaning when they yell "FOR THE HORDE!" only to have their Worgen friend go "Dude, just keep DPSing Sarth man. Jeez".
I ultimately believe this won't be a problem to keep us from grouping cross faction with Real ID friends. But I don't think it would be right to TOTALLY disregard what makes each faction special, and personally think grouping cross faction should be kept to Real ID friends, and PvE content. Maybe PvP content in the future, once we see how well players react to having two sides have Pandaren, and if we see it feasible to have mix group of races fight another mixed faction group.
Raposa Mar 3rd 2012 9:54AM
On rated BGs and arenas we already see two teams that belong to the same faction killing each other, so a little bit of suspension of disbelief is fair game.
greengeekgirl Mar 3rd 2012 10:27AM
I personally don't think lore should get in the way of advancing the story. Because Blizz has chosen to pit the Alliance and Horde against common enemies, it's only natural that the faction relationships would evolve. I think leaving them stagnant is the greater crime.
Eternauta Mar 3rd 2012 3:00PM
I agree with you GGG, this whole "bring the faction war back" is particularly stupid and counterintuitive.
They had to remove Thrall from power, kill Cairne, turn Garrosh into a total douchebag (he was pretty much the opposite of his father in Nagrand), make Sylvanas go full Lich Queen, and give a retarded slavery-related backstory to Varian to make him an "anti-Thrall" (as if Thrall would ever allow slavery among his own people).
All of those are stupid counter-intuitive decisions (some of them borderline "Deus Ex Machina") to make the story progress in a totally different way than that of its natural course (By the end of TBC, it seemed like a strong possibility that the Horde-Alliance war was going to stop).
Raposa Mar 3rd 2012 10:03AM
I'd really rather not have the orb of deception effect.
A bunch of people already dislike being turned into a human of nelf for half an hour in Culling of stratholme and Well of eternity, and doing so for 3 hours in a raid would not be fun either.
Why not give the effect to our enemies? Switch the dialogues (even drop the voice acting if necessary) and give them a cultist robe or a scourge skin (in ICC), and a argent crusade tabard (in ToC) and let the fight carry on against the crusader's champions, as Tyrion intented in first place.
Greg Mar 3rd 2012 10:20AM
Interesting that during the time when faction war will heat up more significantly than in any other expansion, suddenly the possibility of greater cross-faction cooperation would appear.
Incongruity aside, I'm completely in favor of this idea- and development of an eventual third faction.
Luotian Mar 3rd 2012 10:24AM
You know, I really wouldn't mind cross-faction raiding. Fighting the big bad guys is almost always something they don't do exclussively, or it really hasn't been since Vanilla.
I never EVER want to see a nelf in Ogr or a Tauren in Stormwind, though. The Horde vs. Alliance thing is to engrained in WoW and changing it would shatter what fragments of conflict we have left.
Evil_Elf17 Mar 3rd 2012 10:53AM
Cross-Faction raiding would be a bad thing for the game. I honestly think it would end up killing off a good portion of the subscriber base. If it were implemented WoW would become like EverQuest 2 was back in the day. In EverQuest 2 faction made no difference as to what you did in the game. The only difference it made was that if you went into the other factions city, the guards would attack you. This is one of the main reasons that WoW beat EverQuest 2 when the two games came out at around the same time. EverQuest had a massive following, much like Warcraft. I believe that if EQ2 had done what WoW did with factions, it would have survived and become much stronger. Not necessarily beating WoW or anything, but at least holding its own. If cross-faction raiding went into the game, what point is choosing a faction anymore? There would be no faction loyalty anymore because of this, or at least a much less degree. I would have to say that I would much less inclined to play WoW if there were something like this in the game. Especially when Mists is coming out that is supposed to try and take the holding hands of the Horde and Alliance out of the equation. I honestly think it would be counter-productive.
DarkWalker Mar 3rd 2012 11:14AM
WoW soundly beat EQ2 due to being way more casual friendly. Almost everything that required extreme amounts of dedication in EQ2 was vastly simplified in WoW, so players could actually reach the pinnacle in WoW while spending less than half the game time needed to keep really competitive in EQ2.
This was reflected in most aspects of the game. WoW had faster travel, easier crafting, lighter death penalties, no chance to lose materials on gathering or crafting failure, instanced bosses do players didn't compete over them, etc.
For my part, at least, I've always seen the player segregation WoW does, with the realms and factions, as a big downside for WoW. Few things are most frustrating than finding some nice person who also plays WoW, only to discover that it will be impossible to play with him without one of you ditching your current in-game friends.
Revynn Mar 3rd 2012 12:04PM
Faction lines don't -need- to exist in order for a game to be successful. City of Heroes was quite successful for a few years before WoW came along and didn't have any factions at all until City of Villains came along like 3 years in.
Musicita Mar 3rd 2012 11:08AM
I would *love* cross faction raiding.
I'm part of the RP scene on Cenarion Circle, and a lot of the folks there are friends with people from the other faction, even if they're enemies in-character. We already regularly swap RealIDs to help communicate and facilitate RP (and once battletags are launched, the number of cross-faction friends is sure to skyrocket). I'm sure plenty of us would love to be able to raid together, whether IC or OOC, just because we are all friends.
My guild actually is actually a neutral cross-faction RP guild, and the ability to group up with our Horde side colleagues would be a great benefit to us. It would allow officers to help out new recruits without having to level TWO characters in the guild in opposite factions, build community, and help with our RP. For us, running a dungeon together would be perfectly IC.
Zani Mar 3rd 2012 1:52PM
Yeah I know what you mean. I don't actually play on an RP server, but I still have a story in my head for my blood elf dk. She's never really felt any particular loyalty towards the horde, and even less so after Sylvannas chucked Koltira under Undercity for going easy on Thassarian.
And cross faction dungeons at least would let me play WoW with my sisters, who absolutely refuse to come level as horde on my server. lol
RGSmith Mar 3rd 2012 11:13AM
I would LOOOOVE this however Blizzard keeps stating they want to bring the war back to Warcraft so this would be the opposite of that choice.
RedMosquito Mar 3rd 2012 11:23AM
This has to be done, but I think an Orb of Deception effect is kind of necessary. No matter what you say about heroes from both factions banding together against common enemies... I still think it would be VERY weird for my Worgen to fight alongside a Forsaken (when he wants to see every single Forsaken dead, no questions asked), or for my Night Elf or Draenei to be buddies with an Orc.
What Blizzard could perhaps do to avoid the issues of changing the appearance of your character is to, somehow, give the players more control over it. Perhaps, on the character select screen, there could be an option where you would pick which race from the opposite faction you want to look like, or at least customize how it looked, if you couldn't choose it.
Drayy Mar 3rd 2012 4:01PM
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So as long as the raids/dungeons are not faction specific I say go for it.
Boobah Mar 3rd 2012 3:08PM
Necessary Evil Overlord rebuttal:
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy; no more, no less.