X Faction Ideas

Community General Discussion
1

So there are many comments towards x-faction play and how to go about it. To me, this would make sense to integrate with war mode.

I am sure that it would be a logistic nightmare to be able to work out all systems and old content. Also I am sure there is a divide in the community when it comes to such a change.

With current play, we currently have two options, War mode on, which from its name would show that you are at war with the opposing faction and will attack on-sight. The second option is War mode off, which means that you are ready to co-exist even if you might not like the other faction.

We should incorporate this to the x-faction play. You would need to work on the actual toggle by maybe adding some cool down to it as it is not a simple i want to be safe vs i want to pvp toggle anymore, it would be more akin to the old PVP/PVE servers of before but less fixed.

Story wise, there could still be animosity between factions even though you agree to co-exist and this could also be shown by adding in-game story flavor for mixed groups with dialog an banter.

Just an idea how to try and make it work.

1 Like
2

It is extremely simple to make it work for a lot of cases: just allow us to group up with members of the other faction for instanced content. As long as you’re in the same group, you’re friendly, can summon each other, trade each other (usual restrictions applying), and so on and so forth. War mode doesn’t matter in this case, either. There’s no cooldown, nor anything to discourage such play.

Leave the group, and we’re free to murder each other at our hearts content.

Now, this wouldn’t solve all issues, unless the restrictions on mythic raiding also get relaxed. If they don’t, then we need cross-faction guilds too, and that’s a whole lot more problematic. It would be far easier to just relax the mythic raid restrictions, and go with the trivial cross-faction play.

3

I agree that instance only would elevate the issue a lot already. But I think problems exist in recruiting especially for higher end guilds. Also it would be much easier for a less progress focused guilds to have numbers to organize even HC raiding or high end keys. My thought was more to tackle the issue as a whole with a system that could be brought forward from xpac to another while trying to keep the faction identity that many people love in the game.

4

I think how it will work is pretty easy to discern.

Anyone thinking that this change will involve the abolition of the Horde and Alliance is wrong. That is too drastic. Instead, I believe the following will take place.

1.) The Horde and Alliance are retained, they still hate each other and if you enter an enemy faction capital you will be attacked, just as now. The lore behind this change will be that the heroes of Azeroth, the players, are capable of putting their mutual hatred to one side for the greater good. Their factions will not be.

2.) You can now communicate with the other faction and everyone is free to join their preferred guild, regardless of faction.

3.) You can invite a player from the other faction if warmode is off. You can participate in dungeons and raids together without restriction. Some instances have Horde or Alliance themed content, such as the 3.3. dungeons where you’re accompanying NPC was determined based on your faction or BFA where the Battle of Dazar’alor had different faction versions. The version of the instance you enter in those cases will be determined by the faction of the party leader.

4.) If you invite a player from the other faction, the ability to turn warmode on will be disabled so long as that player is in your group. If you have warmode on, the ability to invite player from the other faction will be disabled.

5.) To preserve the faction vs faction nature of battlegrounds, you will be unable to queue for either random or rated battlegrounds with a member of the opposite faction unless the member of the opposite faction enables mercenary mode.

To me, this is the surgical intervention required to remove the current difficulties. It preserves warmode, preserves the Alliance and the Horde, restricts the faction rapprochément to players only rather than getting everyone in the story involved and offers everyone the choice to play what they want with whom they want. The only restrictions are on PVP battlegrounds, and that is to preserve the character of the battles which I feel is an important aspect of those fights AND it is merely a requirement to activate mercenary mode to play with your friends in PVP.

I think this would please the vast majority of people and not overly undermine the faction divide. As a fan of having two distinct factions I think it is important they are preserved as much as possible, but I recognise mismanagement of the factions means something now needs to be done for Alliance players.

2 Likes
5

Or add sub factions that serve a war mode purpose like the players that decided, for very obvious reasons, to side with daddy N’Zoth.

6

I think we will be seeing some form of merc mode for raids and hopefully M plus. As they’ve not released any details yet we will just have to wait and see what they do.

7

So for alliance guilds this will solve nothing and they will still have to consider going horde in the end.

8

Why? They can list in group finder and either faction can join them. Horde can join Ally listings and vice versa.

9

Because Guilds having to pug is utter poop. Better to go to a faction that isnt dead and actually get people into your guild.

1 Like
10

Here’s my Cross Faction idea. DON’T DO IT!

11

skrap factions it is time that Vulpera takes over SW :rofl:

12

Then might as well remove the “2 factions” core if only one of them is playable. Welcome to World of Hordecraft!

13

There’s no need for complicated ideas:

We are heroes. We are special. We are above ‘horde or alliance’ in those terms; we fight for good. We fight for Azeroth. So we, the players, can just join other heroes.

But as far as factions go; the Horde and Alliance would be the exact same. But we, the heroes of Azeroth, will be able to join groups with each other and your faction won’t matter.

Simple solution without any lore impact. You still wouldn’t be able to visit horde cities with an alliance character, but you can join a group with horde people and do content. Simple.

1 Like
14

I am curious to see if guilds will be split over Horde and Alliance in some cases, where they just invite some of their team via LFG.

15

This is realistically the best possible solution, and I hope they will do just that.

16

There are a number of problems with “pugging” a few people, even if you can pug from the horde:

  • Mythic restrictions still apply, so you’re limited to your own realm. As most EU realms are horde dominated as far as raiding goes, this essentially boils down to having noone to pug for the Alliance.
  • It’s still a pug, not a reliable member of your team.

Cross-faction play does help pugging too, but it helps coordinated teams and raids even more, and those coordinated teams and raids and guilds are the ones who have been transferring to the Horde in large numbers. Even if they’re just heroic raiders, with no restrictions like for Mythic, there’s simply more value in having a stable group, and that’s considerably easier if you’re not pugging.

17

Until the halls of fame are filled. An utterly dumb system given the speed the alliance halls fills up compared to Horde.

18

Indeed. It takes forever, so as long as that silly system is in place, cross-faction raiding with merc mode, rather than true cross-faction guilds, will have zero effect on raiding.

19

It’s also time to remove Mythic raiding stupid restrictions. Who in the F thinks it’s still a good ideas to keep those bleep sucking useless pointless restrictions that No player benefit from??

1 Like
20

imagon guilds haveing own faction wars and private wars on servers guidies fighting ea other with WM on :rofl: