Blizzard Teases at Faction-Change Service
Posted by 
Amatera on Monday, June 29, 2009 - 53 Comments Tags: Alliance, Horde, blizzard, change, faction, nethaera, ptr, service
Amatera on Monday, June 29, 2009 - 53 Comments Tags: Alliance, Horde, blizzard, change, faction, nethaera, ptr, service
Azeroth is quickly becoming the plastic surgery capital of the virtual universe! You can modify your character's name, face, hairstyle, even gender. And soon, you can even completely change which race you play, too! According to a post from Blue Nethaera, Blizzard has finally heeded the call of players who wish to carouse with friends of the opposite faction:
This represents the company's boldest step yet in allowing character customization. Blizzard's not kidding when they say that there are a lot of variables to consider when switching one's race, and it goes beyond simple cosmetics. You have to take into account such things as potential shifts in server population. Alliance races, on the whole, are played far more than their Horde equivalents, and on my server it's more than 2-to-1 in their favor. There are already too few people worth playing with, without having to worry about more turning coat and joining the other side.
FOR THE... Alliance?
And then there are issues such as race-specific abilities and stat changes that will no doubt occur if you go through with the procedure. While the overall impact might be small (a several-point decrease in Stamina, for instance), it's still something worth thinking about before you make the jump. And what about quests, reputation, or faction-based achievements? Will you have to start from scratch, aside from the gear and items you've already accumulated?
According to Nethaera's post, we may or may not see parts of the new service appear on the PTR, but it seems highly unlikely that it will be implemented in the forthcoming content patch. Nonetheless, if you've ever wanted to hide from people in-game, it won't be very long before someone could potentially erase their footprint from any given server, changing virtually every notable aspect of their character in the process. Interesting prospect for a fictional world, huh?
What do you think, readers? Are you up for this change? Itching to level up with some of your cross-faction friends or simply looking for a different experience altogether? What lasting impact might this have on the underdog Horde? How much would you pay for the ability to wholly modify your race or faction?
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.
This represents the company's boldest step yet in allowing character customization. Blizzard's not kidding when they say that there are a lot of variables to consider when switching one's race, and it goes beyond simple cosmetics. You have to take into account such things as potential shifts in server population. Alliance races, on the whole, are played far more than their Horde equivalents, and on my server it's more than 2-to-1 in their favor. There are already too few people worth playing with, without having to worry about more turning coat and joining the other side.
FOR THE... Alliance?And then there are issues such as race-specific abilities and stat changes that will no doubt occur if you go through with the procedure. While the overall impact might be small (a several-point decrease in Stamina, for instance), it's still something worth thinking about before you make the jump. And what about quests, reputation, or faction-based achievements? Will you have to start from scratch, aside from the gear and items you've already accumulated?
According to Nethaera's post, we may or may not see parts of the new service appear on the PTR, but it seems highly unlikely that it will be implemented in the forthcoming content patch. Nonetheless, if you've ever wanted to hide from people in-game, it won't be very long before someone could potentially erase their footprint from any given server, changing virtually every notable aspect of their character in the process. Interesting prospect for a fictional world, huh?
What do you think, readers? Are you up for this change? Itching to level up with some of your cross-faction friends or simply looking for a different experience altogether? What lasting impact might this have on the underdog Horde? How much would you pay for the ability to wholly modify your race or faction?
Reader Comments (53)
First of all, I wouldn't do it. I love Alliance.
I think Blizzard is kinda screwing it up with this one. Changing your appearance is one thing... but your Faction?
I don´t know, probably the price will be $15. I would like to hear other opinions though.
FOR THE HORD- uhh ALLIANCE
*sigh* next you'll be able to chang your race
FOR THE HORDE.
Experienced it on P-server. no big deal realy it wont change much, and imagen what it gona be like when ur on a pvp server and changing faction, when u gona be in a horde guild as an ex-alliance= not NEVER. its realy not a big deal.
Wait a minute.
You can change your faction now, but you can't change your race? Guess my shaman is staying as an orc.
i cant wait till they allow u to race change among ur faction cause i lvled a troll rogue to 70 and dropped him at wotlk because i hate trolls and had wished he were undead if he were undead i would probably pick him up again and maybe play him at 80
@ Decado
They say faction, but I'm guessing that there is an implied race change, as well. If you switch factions, they'll probably allow you to choose which part of it you become.
Whether or not you'll be able to change race within the same faction, though, seems up in the air.
I would much rather see a race-change than a faction change.
I'd like my BE mage to be Undead.
I'll never go alliance though, FORT THE HORDE!
I might be opening myself up to flames with this one, but as an RP'er, I've always thought it'd be interesting to be able to have Alliance races do a quest line to join the Horde, or vice-versa.
I've actually put about the same ammount of thought into the idea as I did into the idea of a quest line for existing characters to become Death Knights.
I think they should try Race Change first and see how that goes, if not does that mean a player has to make his orc warrior to a human warrior and then back to a tauren warrior?? if they do it that way Blizzards makes more money and thats what is all about.
Wow, if my server was full of be paladins until now, what'll happen when this hits and all those alliance pallys change to horde?
Never gonna change my undead priest by the way, she's just too sexy :D
Seriously though, did I miss a year passing by? Cause I'd swear April's fool was like two months ago...
Im debating this one. I have both Horde and Alliance alts on many servers, but my main is a Forsaken death Knight.
Now, I like to Role Play, and as a Forsaken, I can make a much better story for myself than say, a human. Then again, I like Humans and the Alliance (Expecially Varian. He's my favorite leader)
Forsaken are cool, yet so are humans. I dont know.
Also: Could w ebegin to see Holy Cows?
Woot!!! That would be awsome if I could change my race not to mention my Faction. For those of us who have been playing the game since before Burning Crusade we might like to change our main to Blood Elf or to Drenei.
And if I could change my faction me and some of my RL friends could play together without having to make entirely new toons.
Blizzard will never take out lore, there are lots of Horde/Alliance sympathizers from both sides, (from a RP perspective) The main reason : Blizzard is losing subscribers and hopes to draw some back with this, and to even out the obviously varying balances on some servers
This sounds awesome! Even though it will likely end up as another "paid service", I'd definintely try it out. Maybe change one of my BE alts to something else. >.>
I think it is awesome. A good deal of my friends play alliance - as much as it pains me to watch them play alliance - and most of them say how they want to switch to Horde cause they just like it better. And the top 3 raiding guilds in the interworld is Horde, at least last time I checked. So they would switch over and I would love to raid with my friends but I could not bring myself to play Alliance - not cause of the stereotypes but I just hate the races no offense - and it would make it way more fun for me.
I do agree that it is going to make a lot of trouble and confusion. But I sense a lot of guilds dropping off the radar for awhile after it is released so people can switch then they'll regroup.
I would want to try this out becuase i want to see pvp horrde base and such and my server is full of horde lots of them not that many ally lol if this does happnd im gana think about it iwant to be horde but i would miss my friends :(
A lot of people will exploit it and switch to human for a while to grind rep...
I would like 2 c race and factoin change
only bc in BC i had a belf pally i would swich ally
btw im a space goat
g2l my name
Seriously...what the fuck is blizzard doing to this game?
@Ryan
same here bro i have a BE mage and i just cant stand the way they cast... but undead on the other hand:P
Im gonna get a kick out of this by changing my dreanie(sorry if thats not how its spelled) shammy to and orc or tauren. And my Nelf hunter to a Belf or orc hunter. These were my first to characters but then i started up horde on another relm and they became my fav:)
FOR THE HORDE!
Can I do it now? Please? Very excited for this to happen... I have characters I don't want to play anymore because I don't play on that server/faction anymore. Awesome.
I would love to change my troll rogue to undead, NEVER going alliance though, i might kill myself if Varian says "Oh hai we be friendz nao?'