Daltert Moropi
Legend
just curious what the community's say with the change in the future patch.
question: what do all ya'll think about cross-faction option?
- Thread starter Daltert Moropi
- Start date
Dj3nka
Veteran
Considering they fucked up big time letting it get this bad with 80% of end game players going horde and making the alliance side unplayable they had no other solution but to shit on the principles that made the game what it is originally.
That being said arena might be fun and more fair considering people can min max racials depending on specs and comps from both factions and still play together.
That being said arena might be fun and more fair considering people can min max racials depending on specs and comps from both factions and still play together.
Goesid
Twink Info Legend
No because he didnt mention Douglas macarthur, Douglas macarthur would never miss out on mentioning Douglas macarthur.
OP
OP
Daltert Moropi
Legend
this'll probably in the future if this turns out to be popular within the game, fingers crossed.Says it wont apply to random BGs so it doesnt mean much to me, easier to run my toons for dungeon gear if I can do both factions at one time.
na, i'm not my grandfather. more of a man of science than a man of war.
Hallowqi
New Member
Its pretty huge and will get a few friends back so I am looking forward to it. I was working on a horde alt currently so i can have some better access to LFG groups but something like this will really help me not be gridlocked and not be under faction restrictions vs content.
Kirise
OG
TL;DR in the final sentence of this post. My keyboard was overdue for a good workout!
Allowing cross-faction play by itself doesn't feel like that big of a deal. But the back-end coding impact and cultural implications feel huge. Let's unpack this by first looking at what this feature is not, adding some historical context, then looking at the implications hiding in the context.
This is not some sort of band-aid answer to faction imbalance. Blizzard doesn't address a faction imbalance issue (allegedly caused by OP racials, which is misdirected hogwash, but beyond the scope of this discussion) by digging into the archaic layers of code to create something like this. Blizzard fixes faction imbalance by doing what Blizz always did -- nerfs and buffs. Yes, cross-faction play can help address this imbalance, but I think Blizzard considers that a bonus.
This is not a way to bolster WoW during a long period of player decline. Blizzard doesn't address an aging game by suddenly deciding cross-faction interaction is okay. There are far greater ways to capture and promote player interest. Yes, cross-faction play will certainly return interest for some players who left WoW, but I think Blizzard considers near-term increased player interest a bonus.
Instead, to borrow a page from @Chops ' excellent discussion about the stages of WoW, this is the culmination of launching WoW III. There's more to come in future WoW, but cross-faction play cements the sea change in how Blizzard shifted WoW from a PvE and PvP game (WoW I) to commoditizing the playerbase (WoW II) to an activity collaboration hub (WoW III). To be clear, those are my interpretations of Chops' three phases of WoW.
I love the faction vs. faction feel of the game baked into World of Warcraft, but let's be real -- much of that left the game long ago. LFG (patch 3.3), merged battlegroups (4.03), and LFR (4.3) stand out among many other changes Blizzard made to connect players with each other, for better or for worse. Factions mattered in WoW I because an opposing faction brought an additional tension into the game that Blizzard couldn't do by itself. Azeroth and Kalimdor brought many wonderful and terrible experiences, but way more importantly, the environment of WoW created (both on purpose and by accident) tremendous collaborative opportunities between players. Nothing brings players together like a challenging world, and WoW I brought many in-game and technical challenges.
WoW II saw Blizzard commodify players. Blizzard removed some serious technical barriers of WoW, making the game more accessible and helping more players than ever to join WoW. But some of Blizzard's choices brought the consequences of devaluing players' investment in the game and in each other. Combine that with a new focus on getting all players into endgame content, and the "World" part of World of Warcraft mattered less and less.
ShadowLands brought WoW III, turning most preexisting WoW into a Caverns of Time experience, and making new WoW a modular, (somewhat) interconnected activity center. No longer does a larger context drive player interest and interaction. WoW is a bunch of interconnected minigames, and quite frankly, does a halfway decent job at that. Shadowlands got off to a clumsy start in this new paradigm, but first starts often do. For all the complaining we do, WoW succeeds better than most.
Given WoW's history, the implications of cross-faction play get clearer. This is not WoW I, or even II. Cross-faction play signals Blizzard's intention of optimizing WoW players' collaborative opportunities, and if the comments section of the announcement is any indicator, WoW's playerbase is overall pretty stoked. Horde vs. Alliance gets relegated to the same low tier of importance as choosing which side of the Gulch we spawn, which (if we're honest), is more a recognition of where WoW already reached, rather than making WoW reach it. And like LFG, LFR, flying mounts, and merged battlegroups, this genie cannot go back in the bottle. Players may love one faction more than another, but in this newest phase of World of Warcraft, faction will complete its descent to the level of transmog.
For a lot of WoW retail old-timers, the completion of WoW's metamorphosis leaves behind part of what we treasured about this game. I'm seeing talk that ShadowLands made for a nice reunion gig/final farewell. We hear quitting stories all the time (an old colleague of mine even wrote a Master's thesis on it), but this one feels different. This isn't the typical drop-everything-and-F-U-Blizzard brand of quitting. This is the rumbling of grateful people who were happy to experience everything ShadowLands gave them, both in terms of the game itself and the people they played with. This is the rumbling of people who made a value-based prediction that the end of Shadowlands will make for the right time to depart from a great experience in our lives.
If that does happen, then I am indeed grateful for the final hurrah that Shadowlands offered. I'll look fondly on the extra, unexpected chance to drive my old gas-powered twinks, and while electric-powered twinks may bring tremendous fun, us old-timers will always feel a certain attachment to the memories we made. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's consider some hopeful possibilities.
1) Server population levels make a big impact, and if cross-faction play is part of a multi-prong move toward greater accessibility to WoW (looking at you, as-of-yet unused game console code hooks), then engineering a strategy to attract more players to retail can have an upward spiral effect on WoW's success. If it is worth dev time to take on a project like empowering cross-faction play, you can bet Blizzard invested time in more than just that new feature.
2) We complained for years about wasted opportunities for WoW devs to help players help each other, rather than layering (and deprecating) system after system in the game. We know part of this came from WoW's code complexity, and part came from dev laziness. Here in 2022, Blizzard is on the tail end of a workforce purge. While I'm deeply sorry for the circumstances that created the purge and the damage that the toxic culture of Blizzard did to people, we can hope Blizzard cut out some of that cancer. Combine that with a few years of devs reacquainting themselves with the antiquities of the WoW codebase through the launch of Classic Vanilla, Classic TBC, and (surely) the eventual launch of Classic Wrath, and we see an increasing willingness of devs to take on fundamental technical changes to how WoW works. From the great ShadowLands level squish to the numerous patches and bug fixes to squished content, devs are reaching deeper into WoW's code than they have in a long time.
3) Shadowlands pushed more advanced content from a coding development standpoint. Clunky as it was in places, and not to be confused with (sometimes questionable) design choices, experiences as large as Torghast and as small as the cart-racing quest in Revendreth show that the devs are still pushing what's possible in WoW.
Perhaps my absence from WoW for a few years made ShadowLands and the meta-conversation around WoW that much more engaging for me, while simultaneously reminding me of everything WoW no longer is. Regardless, WoW still brings potential. It may turn into a game far different than the World of Warcraft that gave me the memories and friends I made, but a next-generation WoW deserves a look. WoW may yet survive its teenage years, surprising us with a direction we never would have asked for, but nevertheless may enjoy.
Allowing cross-faction play by itself doesn't feel like that big of a deal. But the back-end coding impact and cultural implications feel huge. Let's unpack this by first looking at what this feature is not, adding some historical context, then looking at the implications hiding in the context.
This is not some sort of band-aid answer to faction imbalance. Blizzard doesn't address a faction imbalance issue (allegedly caused by OP racials, which is misdirected hogwash, but beyond the scope of this discussion) by digging into the archaic layers of code to create something like this. Blizzard fixes faction imbalance by doing what Blizz always did -- nerfs and buffs. Yes, cross-faction play can help address this imbalance, but I think Blizzard considers that a bonus.
This is not a way to bolster WoW during a long period of player decline. Blizzard doesn't address an aging game by suddenly deciding cross-faction interaction is okay. There are far greater ways to capture and promote player interest. Yes, cross-faction play will certainly return interest for some players who left WoW, but I think Blizzard considers near-term increased player interest a bonus.
Instead, to borrow a page from @Chops ' excellent discussion about the stages of WoW, this is the culmination of launching WoW III. There's more to come in future WoW, but cross-faction play cements the sea change in how Blizzard shifted WoW from a PvE and PvP game (WoW I) to commoditizing the playerbase (WoW II) to an activity collaboration hub (WoW III). To be clear, those are my interpretations of Chops' three phases of WoW.
I love the faction vs. faction feel of the game baked into World of Warcraft, but let's be real -- much of that left the game long ago. LFG (patch 3.3), merged battlegroups (4.03), and LFR (4.3) stand out among many other changes Blizzard made to connect players with each other, for better or for worse. Factions mattered in WoW I because an opposing faction brought an additional tension into the game that Blizzard couldn't do by itself. Azeroth and Kalimdor brought many wonderful and terrible experiences, but way more importantly, the environment of WoW created (both on purpose and by accident) tremendous collaborative opportunities between players. Nothing brings players together like a challenging world, and WoW I brought many in-game and technical challenges.
WoW II saw Blizzard commodify players. Blizzard removed some serious technical barriers of WoW, making the game more accessible and helping more players than ever to join WoW. But some of Blizzard's choices brought the consequences of devaluing players' investment in the game and in each other. Combine that with a new focus on getting all players into endgame content, and the "World" part of World of Warcraft mattered less and less.
ShadowLands brought WoW III, turning most preexisting WoW into a Caverns of Time experience, and making new WoW a modular, (somewhat) interconnected activity center. No longer does a larger context drive player interest and interaction. WoW is a bunch of interconnected minigames, and quite frankly, does a halfway decent job at that. Shadowlands got off to a clumsy start in this new paradigm, but first starts often do. For all the complaining we do, WoW succeeds better than most.
Given WoW's history, the implications of cross-faction play get clearer. This is not WoW I, or even II. Cross-faction play signals Blizzard's intention of optimizing WoW players' collaborative opportunities, and if the comments section of the announcement is any indicator, WoW's playerbase is overall pretty stoked. Horde vs. Alliance gets relegated to the same low tier of importance as choosing which side of the Gulch we spawn, which (if we're honest), is more a recognition of where WoW already reached, rather than making WoW reach it. And like LFG, LFR, flying mounts, and merged battlegroups, this genie cannot go back in the bottle. Players may love one faction more than another, but in this newest phase of World of Warcraft, faction will complete its descent to the level of transmog.
For a lot of WoW retail old-timers, the completion of WoW's metamorphosis leaves behind part of what we treasured about this game. I'm seeing talk that ShadowLands made for a nice reunion gig/final farewell. We hear quitting stories all the time (an old colleague of mine even wrote a Master's thesis on it), but this one feels different. This isn't the typical drop-everything-and-F-U-Blizzard brand of quitting. This is the rumbling of grateful people who were happy to experience everything ShadowLands gave them, both in terms of the game itself and the people they played with. This is the rumbling of people who made a value-based prediction that the end of Shadowlands will make for the right time to depart from a great experience in our lives.
If that does happen, then I am indeed grateful for the final hurrah that Shadowlands offered. I'll look fondly on the extra, unexpected chance to drive my old gas-powered twinks, and while electric-powered twinks may bring tremendous fun, us old-timers will always feel a certain attachment to the memories we made. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's consider some hopeful possibilities.
1) Server population levels make a big impact, and if cross-faction play is part of a multi-prong move toward greater accessibility to WoW (looking at you, as-of-yet unused game console code hooks), then engineering a strategy to attract more players to retail can have an upward spiral effect on WoW's success. If it is worth dev time to take on a project like empowering cross-faction play, you can bet Blizzard invested time in more than just that new feature.
2) We complained for years about wasted opportunities for WoW devs to help players help each other, rather than layering (and deprecating) system after system in the game. We know part of this came from WoW's code complexity, and part came from dev laziness. Here in 2022, Blizzard is on the tail end of a workforce purge. While I'm deeply sorry for the circumstances that created the purge and the damage that the toxic culture of Blizzard did to people, we can hope Blizzard cut out some of that cancer. Combine that with a few years of devs reacquainting themselves with the antiquities of the WoW codebase through the launch of Classic Vanilla, Classic TBC, and (surely) the eventual launch of Classic Wrath, and we see an increasing willingness of devs to take on fundamental technical changes to how WoW works. From the great ShadowLands level squish to the numerous patches and bug fixes to squished content, devs are reaching deeper into WoW's code than they have in a long time.
3) Shadowlands pushed more advanced content from a coding development standpoint. Clunky as it was in places, and not to be confused with (sometimes questionable) design choices, experiences as large as Torghast and as small as the cart-racing quest in Revendreth show that the devs are still pushing what's possible in WoW.
Perhaps my absence from WoW for a few years made ShadowLands and the meta-conversation around WoW that much more engaging for me, while simultaneously reminding me of everything WoW no longer is. Regardless, WoW still brings potential. It may turn into a game far different than the World of Warcraft that gave me the memories and friends I made, but a next-generation WoW deserves a look. WoW may yet survive its teenage years, surprising us with a direction we never would have asked for, but nevertheless may enjoy.
OP
OP
Daltert Moropi
Legend
still doesn't describe me.
... i don't know about ye, but according to my research into the signs. we're about a few years (maybe less than 2 now) to the failure that is the so-called, "new world order", comes to pass.
so, we'll see who's right/wrong til then.
Nurd
Grandfathered
Ah its that time of expansion cycle where we are building up goodwill and show how much we care and listen so the next xpac / 6month sub sells well.
Wish they cared this much in MoP when everyone above 1800mmr was human or nelf female. But i guess fac changes were a goldmine at that time.
My server was the main hub for world pvp , which slowly started dying during WoD when they started adding so many phased zones. Warmode was the absolute last nail in the coffin.
From storyline perspective it made no sense for a long time, so i suppose as a gameplay change its been long overdue.
The only thing i can see happening now is people not taking some specific weak races to the group, i've seen worse minmaxing in m+ before.
fungchewuchi
Master of the Flying Guillotine
>the history of failure of in war can almost be
>summed up in two words: too late
i expect that on release, it'll be as big a shitshow as slands prepatch.
>summed up in two words: too late
i expect that on release, it'll be as big a shitshow as slands prepatch.
Chops
Soccer Dad
Pardon me for cherry-picking from your *outstanding* breakdown. But I wanted to highlight my frustration with these two points.
I had hoped that in launching wow-classic in all its various forms, they would perhaps come to realize how excited the player base was to experience all the immersive qualities of the game that had made it such an exceptional MMO and we might begin to see a slow return to that kind of focus. I thought wow-classic would prove how hungry people were for that.
I was wrong. People are hungry for content. There are very, very few of us left who want to stop and smell the proverbial roses and really enjoy the "world" of warcraft and are let down when new zones are obviously nothing more than window dressing for a couple quest hubs and dungeons are nothing more than a dressed up loot slot machine. You just kill some mobs rather than pull a handle.
Much of the player base just wants to churn through new content patch after new content patch after new content patch. Like hogs to the trough. And they get antsy and irritable when that trough isnt replenished... though theres plenty to eat if they'd just look around.
Cross-faction play isn't in-itself a huge change. It's actually relatively small, all things considered. But it is a signal that the game will not be pulling back from its "bunch of interconnected minigames" design mindset. We will all still just stand around in a lobby (helpfully called "capital cities") waiting for an que to pop so we can be dropped into whatever pvp or pve experience we desire. We'll never venture into the world just to fart around because theres a treadmill to run on and if you step off that treadmill, the rest of the xpac is a panicked rush to catch back up.
That gear treadmill has always been there, obviously. But one of the things I loved about wow was how well concealed they tried to make it. But its drifting into Diablo 3 territory and the cross-faction play indicates a willingness to hit the gas pedal on that rather than pump the brakes and ask themselves whether or not thats really the game they want to build.
My knee jerk reaction of "i'm out" was probably me recognizing that I was far more down this path than I had realized. I think, in playing through all the old content, I've realized just how much the game has changed from something I very truly loved into a game I dont like that I've had to pretty significantly modify in order to enjoy.
I've really enjoyed SL twinking. Truly. I've always wanted to play through a lot of this later expansion content and getting to do that on my twink has been a real joy. The organized pvp and goofing around in arena wargames... its been the best twinking experience I've had since wrath 39s.
But this change does (i think) signal a deepening commitment to an over-arching game philosophy geared toward the Marvelization of blizzard content. Its going to continue being a meaningless churn of well-enough crafted but utterly forgettable games and mini-games, all to keep the little piggies happy and feeding at the trough.
Maybe this is just me talking myself into playing Classic. Maybe thats the solution. Maybe its me talking myself into quitting altogether. Who knows, maybe I'm guessing wrong and theyre gonna shock the shit out of me in the next expansion. But at the moment, I'm one of those who is looking at SL as a final victory lap. Lets get this F2P to my definition of "finished" and then probably, mercifully, hang up the axe at the peak of enjoyment rather than being forced out in another 7 years.
Kirise
OG
You and I both. ...You and I both.
When I romanticize twinking, I think of it as simultaneously a tribute to the experience of WoW, and an ongoing public protest against oppressive use of the gear treadmill. In reality, twinking is mostly two-bit thugs shaking down WoW citizens for jollies, but occasionally a good brawl breaks out.
I think a lot of twinkers are looking at SL as the last great hurrah, unless Blizzard surprises everyone with some low-level class balancing. But I will say Blizzard came through with several surprises this expansion, so a worthwhile XPoff PvP landscape for next expansion is not off the table.
If history repeats itself and Shadowlands is the Cata of stage III WoW, then the next expansion of WoW could bring some interesting changes partway through the expansion. ...And if baseline resilience returns, I will laugh.
Ivo
Dedicated Guide Author
I read a lot of negative opinions all over the internet that seem to miss the point. First of all, they say this change is about to kill the fundamentals of the game as horde and alliance have always been at war, that this will be the end of world pvp and so on.
Well, world PvP has been slowly dying ever since battlegrounds were introduced back in vanilla wow.
With every new expansion basically "locking" max level players in the same few zones, world PvP as it was in vanilla was slowly dying.
When they scaled all zones to character level, world pvp went extinct. You could've level up in the same starting zones without being treathened by the opposing faction.
War mode was the final nail in the coffin or at least we thought so until the SL squish and chromie. Currently, world PvP doesn't exist. This change won't affect it at all.
The second point is faction imbalance. Over the course of the last ~10 years, all the competitive pve players moved to horde. Right now, even if racials are balanced and the race doesn't really matter, people still go horde as all of the guilds and competitive players are there. An alliance guild can't exist simply because of how bad recruitment on alliance is. The raid hall of fame and mythic plus rankings prove it. Pvp wise it's the same. On EU at least, there are a few R1 players on Ravencrest with the rest being horde. Max level on alliance is just a poor experience if you're after endgame content. Just look at the high pop realms on EU right now: For horde we have Draenor, Kazzak, Twisting Nether, Ragnaros, Stormscale, Tarren Mill and more while for Alliance there are only Silvermoon and Ravencrest.
From what I've read in the official announcement, the cross-faction play will be only good for competitive content like raids, M+ and rated PvP. Some might argue that it can't be justified from a lore pov but it can. In raids we fight a common enemy, M+ is pretty much a WTF mode with all the keys, scaling, affixes and time limit being completely irrelevant to the actual lore and rated PvP is all about being a "gladiator" fighting other players in the arena. Apart from random battlegrounds, the rest of the pvp modes have nothing to do with lore.
RDF, Random BGs, Open world, guilds will remain faction specific. Even when you're in party with a player of the opposing faction, they will still be unfriendly/hostile so don't expect it to feel like factions don't exist. It's all about the endgame content and to let people play whatever they want without being forced to roll horde.
Well, world PvP has been slowly dying ever since battlegrounds were introduced back in vanilla wow.
With every new expansion basically "locking" max level players in the same few zones, world PvP as it was in vanilla was slowly dying.
When they scaled all zones to character level, world pvp went extinct. You could've level up in the same starting zones without being treathened by the opposing faction.
War mode was the final nail in the coffin or at least we thought so until the SL squish and chromie. Currently, world PvP doesn't exist. This change won't affect it at all.
The second point is faction imbalance. Over the course of the last ~10 years, all the competitive pve players moved to horde. Right now, even if racials are balanced and the race doesn't really matter, people still go horde as all of the guilds and competitive players are there. An alliance guild can't exist simply because of how bad recruitment on alliance is. The raid hall of fame and mythic plus rankings prove it. Pvp wise it's the same. On EU at least, there are a few R1 players on Ravencrest with the rest being horde. Max level on alliance is just a poor experience if you're after endgame content. Just look at the high pop realms on EU right now: For horde we have Draenor, Kazzak, Twisting Nether, Ragnaros, Stormscale, Tarren Mill and more while for Alliance there are only Silvermoon and Ravencrest.
From what I've read in the official announcement, the cross-faction play will be only good for competitive content like raids, M+ and rated PvP. Some might argue that it can't be justified from a lore pov but it can. In raids we fight a common enemy, M+ is pretty much a WTF mode with all the keys, scaling, affixes and time limit being completely irrelevant to the actual lore and rated PvP is all about being a "gladiator" fighting other players in the arena. Apart from random battlegrounds, the rest of the pvp modes have nothing to do with lore.
RDF, Random BGs, Open world, guilds will remain faction specific. Even when you're in party with a player of the opposing faction, they will still be unfriendly/hostile so don't expect it to feel like factions don't exist. It's all about the endgame content and to let people play whatever they want without being forced to roll horde.