World of Warcraft

Faction-Change Service in the Works

Faction-Change Service in the Works

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

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.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

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  • Thu, Jul 9 2009 10:36 PM ()

    Very well said, Otaka.

  • Otaka said 
    Wed, Jul 8 2009 7:21 PM ()

    this is out of game service....the quest-line you are trying to ask for is ingame and how would people irl do a quest-chain aka job's and then earn a way to change their race? no no....out of ingame services are just these migration, faction-change, name change etc...because they are NOT practically realistic nor a good idea to be able to do ingame with just some lousy quest.

  • Mon, Jul 6 2009 1:39 PM ()

    As i said before alyvar, you made the decision to be alliance/horde. You simply cannot theoretically go to the opposite allegience after killer 236546543 of thier members. Blizzard is giving you the chance of switching and making peace with the opposite leader.... At a price of course.

  • alyvar said 
    Mon, Jul 6 2009 5:01 AM ()

    I dunno, this kind of bothers me.  Why can't they just make it an in-game mechanic where a player of one faction can earn rep or do some (very challenging or time-consuming, but doable/soloable) quest-line that enables them to switch factions?  Doing it this way just feels a little wrong somehow.

  • Sun, Jul 5 2009 1:41 PM ()

    Soon (tm.)

    In other words, no we do not. Chances are it will be about 4-5 months.

  • Fri, Jul 3 2009 6:32 PM ()

    Umm can someone tell me about what month or year this is coming out in{and dont say soon}

  • Manjiku said 
    Fri, Jul 3 2009 2:36 PM ()

    I agree with angel4life93x. I've talked about this with some friends and the way I see it and the way I believe it will just go down is that whatever class/race you currently are with the Horde or Alliance, you can convert said character to the other faction.

    For example, if you have a level 80 Tauren Druid, you will only be able to turn them into a level 80 Night Elf Druid as the Night Elves are the only race in the Alliance that can be a Druid.

    Humans can be just about everything under the sun where as a Blood Elf cannot be a warrior. So the swap from faction to faction will carry the limitations by class and race.  If one race cannot be a warrior, that class will not be available to switch to.

    I'm also sure that reputation will play a flip factor as well. If you go from Horde to Alliance and you're exalted with Orgrimmar, you will lose your Org rep and become Exalted with Stormwind and so on, and so forth.

  • Thu, Jul 2 2009 10:24 AM ()

    i doubt you'll be able to switch from human pally to tauren druid it'll probably be like human pally to blood elf pally, im just sayin.

  • Mundrope said 
    Thu, Jul 2 2009 6:55 AM ()

    WoW!!!! ... this is fantastic news ... i have two ally characters that i no longer play one a level 70 the other an 80, i made a DK on the realease of WoTLK and really enjoy playing on horde.  The fact i will be able to change my chars to horde is mind blowing =P ... Hmmm i wonder what the equivalent of a gnome will be =\ ... im guessing a troll maybe. Happy Days xD

  • Thu, Jul 2 2009 2:39 AM ()

    Hmm, air.. would you rather not have this option at all?

    You made a decision to roll what you did. Blizzard is giving you the chance (Paying of course) to remake that decision without the cost of leveling another character to 80 and getting all that gear again.

    Complain all you want, but more options is exactly what some people need. I know i have personally used the name/gender chang to change my male draenei to a female draenei. She is a paladin, and her name is Holyrack. :p

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 11:18 PM ()

    Bah... 2 years to late on the ability Blizzard.  Go tell Activision to stop trying to come up with ways to nickel and dime an already pay per month MMO.

  • Audie said 
    Tue, Jun 30 2009 5:32 PM ()

    I would just like to see race change added. I could care less about faction change, but if they allow this then I'm hoping they keep race in mind.

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 5:06 PM ()

    Well, I think the change is a good idea but the wrong way to go about it... My thoughts: If you leveled a character to a specific level, lets say 30 you can switch factions, not Races. So to be an evil Human who works with the horde would be cool. The number of times you can switch per character is once a year, or maybe once in the life of that character. Reputation wise, you will lose all rep with any alliance and at level 30 you wouldnt be high enough to gain rep with any outland/northrend factions.

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 2:21 PM ()

    I wonder how will this affect realm Alliance-to-Horde ratios.  I'm hoping that they'll limit the changes to balance out close to 1:1 instead of the silly ratios we have now.

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 1:25 PM ()

    In my opinion, this should just be a one time only thing, or maybe once a year. You can already change enough stuff about yourself, seriously, if this was a one time only, people could change with their friends with having nice characters. I don't know how they would work on the reps either, obviously, people want to keep their exalted reps and such. They would probably have to reset them to 0, boy, wouldn't that be horrible?

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 12:36 PM ()

    Waste of time?? No. A waste of time is spending 900g for the ground epic mount back in the time when getting 900g was harder than getting 5000g.

    This was not a waste of time, you enjoyed leveling your second character. If you didn't, you have no one to blame but yourself.

  • Have91 said 
    Tue, Jun 30 2009 11:59 AM ()

    "what if I have more than one character on the same realm?

    they'll be all converted to the opposite faction or I'll have to pay for everyone?"

    You'll have to pay for each one is my guess.

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 11:42 AM ()

    Im thinking they should only allow faction change to the faction with less active players.  This would allow blizzard to control PvP to make balanced teams in the battlegrounds

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 10:35 AM ()

    Wow... I level a toon for both factions just because i was told they would never put in faction changes...

    talk about a waste of time

  • Tue, Jun 30 2009 6:14 AM ()

    "Ummm dude... the Name/Race/Gender change is already in place UNLESS you're meaning that you can do this along with changing your faction as well."

    You can't change race, only name and gender as of now. I meant that the ability to change race will be added to the ability to change gender and name.

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