Faction change service whaaaaaattt?

[Taliesin]

Please let their be a mass move option!! $100 bucks!

Ditto. I hope there are cost-saving options for transferring an entire server on an account over to the other side.

[kadaan]

They never had a mass server transfer option, so I don't think a mass faction change will happen... but the whole you-can't-have-both-factions-on-a-pvp-server thing will be interesting.

Mounts and factions I'm sure will just transfer over 1:1. If you're exalted with 4/5 alliance cities you'll be exalted with 4/5 horde cities. They're adding the Ravasaur trainers mount as well, so winterspring will be able to translate over to horde.

They're either having to have to have a way to change your race on the same side (IE, $25 to go from gnome mage to human mage) or prevent you from doing a double faction transfer to switch races. Personally I think they'll just make you go back to your original race when switching back. If not, all my new alts will be human if possible for the 10% rep bonus, then switch to something else later ;).



The service is a great way to play with friends on other servers/factions instead of having to completely re-roll. It also effectively DOUBLES the pool of potential recruits for raid guilds, BIG WIN! :D

[Multibocks]

omg faction bonus, lol. What a great idea! Although their pvp bonus ain't nothing to sneer at either!

edit: now that I think about it, I bet every PvP arena group that is capable of being human will try this "feature." Who doesnt want a free trinket??

[Tonuss]

They're either having to have to have a way to change your race on the same side (IE, $25 to go from gnome mage to human mage) or prevent you from doing a double faction transfer to switch races.

They appeared to say that you will have a choice of which race to select when you do the switch (limited by your class, obviously), but that you will not have the option to change your race under other circumstances (ie, if you want to change from tauren to undead or gnome to human). I figure that they're saving that for later. If you switch factions and then switch back, you can only switch back to your original race.

Of course, they haven't finalized it, so this could all change. But they updated the initial post to answer the flood of questions people were posting.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Pessimist thought: Blizzard says "we realize the desire to join friends on the opposite faction of the same server," and also say re: faction balances per server, "We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share. "

In other words, congrats on being able to join all your friends on <server>, that is, unless their faction is overpopulated already, then you're SOL unless they all pay the fee and switch to YOUR faction.

Yeah, blah blah <better than nothing> blah blah <why poop on everything> blah blah. /whatever

Still, I think it would be some seriously funny stuff to watch one server's entire horde minority switch factions to alliance in protest. :P

[Sychosys]

I am just happy that it doesnt end up being SUCH a mistake to have started collecting all my vanity pets and neat TCG Loot items on an alliance character when I mostly play Horde... Heck there are alliance zones I have only ever walked through and Ive been playing WoW since it came out.. Duskwood? Oh thats the place I run through to get to the swamp hehe

[Silence]

[align=left]I'm surprised to mainly see positive responses to this change...

I myself balked at the mention of this. I'm in no way a roleplayer but Blizzard always said this would never happen, it would be against the spirit of the game blahblahblah. I really feel that the financial department is running the show these days and not the actual people who create content like when it just started.

Every day we play we look at models that are more then a year (sometimes even more) old, but yet they spend resources and time on stuff that doesn't improve actual gameplay or the experience in any way. The only recent achievement is Yogg, which turned out awesome, the rest is close to crap however. The new raid/instance we're getting is, again, filled with old shit models. It's getting a tad annoying ;p "Oh great! we can finally fight a boss we've been killing for years already, he just looks green now..."

This is just one more on the list of "how to make money without actually doing something".

[/align]

[Tonuss]

[align=left]I really feel that the financial department is running the show these days and not the actual people who create content like when it just started.[/align]

That could certainly be the case, that after the merge with Activison and the purchase by Vivendi, they're being pressed to generate cash. I believe that in Vivendi's 2008 annual report, they claimed that WoW was actually a cash drain on the company (but I am not 100% sure, I don't know if I'm reading the report correctly or not). So pretty much everything is on the table now, lore or continuity be damned.

[Bigfish]

Not particularly surprising. Don't really care, since you don't retain your race.

[Mosg2]

What they said would ruin the continuity and that they'd never do is allow Horde races to defect to the Alliance side and vice versa. That's a far cry from a paid service to change the actual race of your toon(s).

Personally, I'm on cloud nine. I love the look of Dranei and I've wanted to have Dranei Shaman for over 2 years... But I've never gotten an Alliance toon past level 2 and my boosting characters have always been and continue to be Horde. When I can do 1-60 in 6 hours played I have no motivation whatsoever to roll on Alliance, race be damned.