factions

This was origionally posted as a response to Rohan's issue with Larisa's view of faction changes,

It is really a matter of two different ideals and purposes. Rohan, your purpose is to allow friends who meet (probably in RL) that play different factions to play together without having to level another toon on another faction. In this case, the faction change works, and should work out of game, (though for maybe a bit more than 10$) Your desire is to play together, and have fun, in this case factions are a simple hinderance to this, For anyone who doesn't care about lore and rp this is fine, new paint and shrubs... good to go.

Then there is the other side Larisa is right too, There should be an in-game mechanic for those who for RP, or achievement reasons want to become the other faction as their current character. They truly want to play the traitorous imp, or the disillusioned hero jaded by their own leadership, For them the faction change isn't about fixing an out of game issue (hey we are two people but cant play together because we started on diff factions) its about exploring the world from a new perspective




To expand on the idea, Think about what the next expansion is set to bring to the world a cataclysmic sundering of the land and open war between the horde and alliance, I forget the esteemed blogger who talked about it, but His point was that essentially there is no more just war when you are the first to move. War in the past was purely an extension of politics (again famous quote that I don't have time to look up) Now, In our culture it is hard to view a war as being justified when we look at the people who started it. This presents the problem of however the war starts between the horde and alliance there will be problems that people have with their side's justification for war. This gives a perfect in game reason to want to change factions for us Rabid RP fans (ie We RP in raid people... its how we role). This is problematic however, because it makes no sense to "change factions" and suddenly be a whole different species, not to mention blood elves are prissy little things, and my dwarf pally would never become one.

The penalties for the change should be huge, becoming hated with all your old factions, and having a cap on how trusted you can become with the new, for a time, You should have to earn the right to be exalted among your new friends, through hard work, and crazy long quest lines. Now it might be possible to switch, or maybe even some day act as a bridge across the divide as champion of both, but that is a lengthy and hard process, Possibly flagging you for pvp for both factions until you prove yourself once again.

Just a thought

Tomorrow, interesting oracle scripts for reverse engineering database structures