So by now you have probably read the news that Faction transfers are on the way in the forseeable future.
At first glance this is great news, I know I have muttered quietly to myself that I wish my Hunter and Druid could change faction and come and join Gnomeaggedon.
At second glance it is going to raise some issues. I will go through the good, the bad and the ugly of faction transfers in a minute, but 1st up a transcript of a discussion already happening on my mate’s forums…
Re: Faction-Change Service in the Works
MainTankadin says:
This is f’n awesome, finally we can all go back to Horde!!!!
since alliance is so ghey….
Gnomeaggedon responds:
Only when the Horde gets Gnomes….
MainTankadin responds:
F@#$!
The only Horde race which has Paladins is f@#king Blood Elf and they look the “gheyist” of all races.
Sh$t, Bugger Bum….!!!! (crosses fingers they make another Horde race Paladin)
Mr. Z! Responds:
Yer I knew this was coming. It was only a matter of time. lol, this is going to set MainTankadin off in a spin, trying to get us all back to horde.
Zupa Reponds:
You can get a sex change dun worry mate. Belf chickies are hot like fire.
The Good
Consolidation
There will be many players like myself with toons that were created to play on a specific server in a specific faction that have been abandoned. This is a great opportunity to consolidate them all with your current main in your current guild.
Better than leveling
The one thing better than leveling a 55 DK, and way better than starting from level 1, is to faction transfer your high level toon. Both of my Horde toons are mid-50’s, still that’s 100-odd less levels that I have to grind if I want Druid and Hunter alts.
Many folks will be in a position to faction transfer 70s or even 80s.
Raid Roster Depth
Once again, a quick fix to increasing raid roster depth. If people faction transfer their toons, guild toon numbers may increase by 2x or 3x. Likewise, gaps in classes may be filled.
PvP Realm players
Players on PvP servers could only roll one faction. Which means if they have other toons of the opposite faction, they couldn’t realm transfer them to be together. Now (soon) the opportunity exists to Faction transfer then realm transfer.
The Bad
Gno Gnomes
If you love your race as much as you love your class, then you are out of luck. MainTankadin wants us to transfer to Horde, but until the Gnomes go to the “Dark Side”, that isn’t going to happen for me. Likewise, he doesn’t seem all that happy about being a Belf.
Funny isn’t it that he has the dilemma of switching from an entire ghey faction to a single ghey race…
Speaking of which.. I tend to be pretty touchy when someone is called out as being Gay.. more so when it is purely intended as an insult… but Ghey… I just don’t know about it… it just doesn’t rub me up the same way… just like nub makes me angry, yet noob makes me chuckle…
Identity Lost
I doubt many roleplayers will make the switch, but even for non(bad)-roleplayers like myself, the concept of my Tauren Hunter as a Dwarf, or my Tauren Druid as a Night Elf just doesn’t ring true… As for Gnome being anything other than Gnome…
- Forsakenaggedon… No…
- Trollaggedon… Maybe appropriate for the forums, but I couldn’t play it.
- Belfaggedon… Makes me want to Belf… I mean Barf!
The Ugly
Mates gone Gnhome
People often join servers to be with mates, pick their factions and away they go. Often they will leave toons of different factions behind, more often than not on different servers.
Will people be in a position where the mates they joined a server for, depart/return to their origins now that they can so a faction-change operation?
I know that if my mates were adamant that they were changing back to Horde, whether it was one or all of them, I would be the last Gnome standing… The Gnome is as much, if not more of my character now that the fact it’s a Mage.
Marriages transferred
What of those more physical relationships are are played out online in a specific faction?
If you partner asked you to do a faction chnage tomorrow, to follow them across enemy lines… would you?
Rhii wrote the other day of the dilemmas of level gaps and play preferences between partners…. How would she feel if her boyfriend wanted to change factions, and she found him sitting in wait next to a bonfire to gank her? Knowing how much she hates being ganked!
Guild Faction Splits
What of the guilds, both the mighty progression guilds and the struggling casual guilds?
Will players transfer out of the guilds effectively halting progression until new raiders can be found and trained up?
Will guilds split down the middle… Will the guild “We Slaughter Alliance” be mirrored by “We Slaughter Horde”, each containing the faction confused members of the original guild?
Factionally confused.
I never really wanted to roll Alliance. I used to relentlessly stir anyone that I met with an Alliance toon. However, now that I am a Gnome, I can’t imagine playing WoW any other way.
I don’t know what the future will hold, whether my mates will bring their Horde toons over to the light, or whether their Alliance toons will disappear, dimming my WoW time considerably, but I know that a Gnome in any Horde form will not smell as sweet, so I guess I will just have to wait until the dust has settled, the factions are all formed, and see whether I am pugging 1 more, or 9 more.
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/06/faction-transfer-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
I’ve become accustom to my human mage…her smiling face, the way her robe fits her so perfectly. I feel as if I would be killing her in a strange sense. Justamom as a horde…just doesn’t feel right.
I know how you feel… although, I think I could get into a bit of the turncoat Gnome concept as presented at TypoonAndrew…
You wrong my poor boyfriend! 😛 While he might sneakily wish he were still horde sometimes, he’d never gank me! He knows I’d punish him… >_>
My very first toon was a troll rogue, and much as I hate to admit it, there’s no place that feels like home in WoW as much as Sen’jin Village does for me. But troll mage Rhii?! God forbid! For one thing, she’d have TERRIBLE hair!
Ohh never meant to wrong your boyfriend… but I detect a tinge of deterant rather than personal choice 😉
I would of course love to hear how you gank him in the kitchen after he ganked you at the bonfire…
I like Sen’jin Village too, even if it is a bit far from anywhere… I did have a Troll Mage for a little (very little) bit… but Gnome is where my heart is now…
I just can’t play the goody-two shoes alliance for mains. Stuck up belfs for me! ~_^
Even without belfs in the Horde, I still think eventually I would have gone to the dark side (mwa ha ha!) what with lore and whatnot.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about faction changes though. I mean, I rolled Horde because all my rl friends and the boyfriend plays Horde. I think it’s good for those people that find other people they want to play with but can’t because of faction, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work with PvP servers. I don’t think it’s a good idea to allow PvP servers to have the same options as RP servers, where you can have both factions. Too much room for stupidity, what with the ability to /who and find out where that guy was who ganked you yesterday and track him down to make his day miserable. I think I’m just going to reserve judgment on this whole thing until we know more. ^_^
The Horde are a great faction no question there… I have just unbelievably fallin in love with my Gnome, and I just can’t imagine it in any other skin…. maybe if it could turn to the dark side like TypoonAndrew suggests, I would follow my mates if they left… but only if I could be a Dark Gnome (maybe Leper Gnome…)
I don’t think pvp will allow having horde and alliance on same server like rp or Normal servers have. The faction change is simply to change from alliance to horde or horde to alliance not create two sets of toons. So the /who ability would be none existant even with the faction changes.
I think they have already enabled having both factions on a PvP server… I am pretty sure I have read this somewhere recently
[…] an awesome backstory for this alternate history, providing a creative exception to the opinion that faction transfer provides little opportunity for roleplaying. Hopefully it will be up by tuesday or wednesday, so see ya […]
Trust you to find a way to change factions while keeping the whole RP thing happening… though I would have thught Elves -> Trolls would have been more appropriate…
at this point in my WoW career, i just couldn’t roll horde. they are too trendy – and forget about transferring! SW will always feel like home to me.
lol, 1st time I have heard the Horde called trendy… maybe it’s all the 70’s fashion they are into…
As far as I am concerned, the Horde can have Stormwind… I think IF is really the only city I like…