official World of Warcraft

[I am Redbeard]

Or similar to being able to change the sex of your toon, you can go from say, a blood elf to a troll.

Elves = Faction

Trolls = Faction

[the evn show]

I'm curious if it means I could convert my gnome mage (private pokes) to a say an undead mage -- what happens to the title?

Gone? Converted to grunt (lame)? retained (awesome).

[Minifig]

Or similar to being able to change the sex of your toon, you can go from say, a blood elf to a troll.

Elves = Faction

Trolls = Faction

Ok.. so what do gnomes become.. ?

Tauren? :laugh:

[I am Redbeard]

I'm saying you'd stay on your collective faction.. Horde or Alliance.. and be able to switch within the sub-factions.

[Slane]

I'm saying you'd stay on your collective faction.. Horde or Alliance.. and be able to switch within the sub-factions.

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.

Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18031079410...-the-works.html

I'm assuming everything you have as Alliance will be turned into the Horde equalivant. Probally be able to choose whatever race you want to be as there isn't a clear change between the two to line up. Though the only way they could implement it would be with some serious restrictions and heavily moderation as to not ruin the game with unbalance between the two factions.

And they've introduced raid extensions. You can extend raid numbers so they don't reset weekly. Which means a guild (Ensidia for example) who undoubtly is working hard to down Yogg-Saron with 0 Keepers (legitly) can extend there raid lockout so they don't have to clear all bosses previous and continue to fight only on Yogg. A nifty feature that probally wouldn't be utilize by too many guilds as gear from bosses can still be used for off-set. Still a nice change.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Slane

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18031079410...-the-works.html

I'm assuming everything you have as Alliance will be turned into the Horde equalivant. Probally be able to choose whatever race you want to be as there isn't a clear change between the two to line up. Though the only way they could implement it would be with some serious restrictions and heavily moderation as to not ruin the game with unbalance between the two factions.

If by "restrictions" you probably mean coining people for another $15-20 or something, yes :p

[_neutrino Veteran]

Honestly i like the idea of faction changes because it means they are working in the correct direction with rep translation and things however i hope that in the same tool they are going to make it possible for Race changes. I would love to be able to take my Orc Warlock and make him a blood elf. They just did not exist when i created him lol.

[Slane]

If by "restrictions" you probably mean coining people for another $15-20 or something, yes :p

You would have to pay for it (just like name changes and server changes) but I mean other restrictions other than monetary ( besides monetary restriction is artifical like restricting a boss to 1 hour a week on tries to make him seem "hard").

A few ideas I thought of:

• Can only do a faction change if your server is balanced in terms of population. If Horde dominate on a server (vice-versa with Alliance) and Alliance are underpopulated, only Horde should be allowed to faction change to help bring balance to the server.
  
• Once/if you do do a faction change you should be stuck on that realm for an extended amount of time (6 months a year). This is to prevent people from faction changing on there server and immediatly dipping out to a realm of there choosing and this toon won't be eligible for account transfer for the same time period.
  
• To expand further on point one, Blizzard needs to have protocols in place to suspend service of faction changing if to many people are trying to do it or if the server population will become out of wack.
  
• If you faction changed one toon and Blizzard has suspend faction changing to keep the population balance you should still be able to faction change alts on the same realm. Reason being if it's the same account it wouldn't affect active population, because you can only play one toon at a time per account.
  

I'm sure we could probally think of more restrictions that would need to be in place to control this feature.

I hate having Tuesdays off!

[CloudEngineer]

also it is most logical that all your toons will be changed over, simply because you can't create horde and alliance toons on the same server and i don't see this changing.

[Ash]

also it is most logical that all your toons will be changed over, simply because you can't create horde and alliance toons on the same server and i don't see this changing.

That only applies to PvP servers. You can have both on PvE servers.

[Spacce]

Argh

I went back for some reason... i guess the 3.2 was calling for me for some reason..

but I wanted to try horde though, I have been playing Alliance for so long I never really tried Horde before

Anyways I started a warrior and a DK (DK mainly to help moneywise with the warrior)

I have somewhat of newbie question, yeah after 4 years of playing....

like I am not 71 in outlands, and I am curious of instances, even with crappy gear (no defense gear at all), will i be able to tank an instance ? or should I just go in as dps?

[dead.cell]

Slane, I was considering that myself. Surely, they'll have population restrictions for jumping factions. At least, this will allow servers that are incredibly unbalanced like Illidan (we would pray for an Alliance to take a PvP objective just so we could cap it) to balance out by allowing free faction changes and such.

I am going to have to disagree with being on a 6 month transfer cooldown. If anything, it should be the same as the transfer cooldown right now which is only a month if I'm not mistaken. Anything longer is just a bit ridiculous. The idea behind all this is to allow players who have friends on another realm to be able to jump to them AND to their faction. Pain in the ass releveling toons just because you don't have an alliance side paladin and such... (as I'm doing now)

I do wonder how they'll do reputation changes. Some will need to be flipped while others can stay the same. Probably shouldn't be too hard I would imagine.

Overall, I just hope that I can choose the race that at least has my character's class. That is, a BE paladin shouldn't automatically become a human paladin. Should be at least a choice among the classes that you can choose. I'm also hoping you can change your characters looks and/or sex if anything...

[I am Redbeard]

Wow.

This is the most nu-metal **** ever.

The world of warcraft is now a complete joke.

imo.

[winrez]

do any of you play on private servers?

[Vice]

I know this Faction Change thing is going to make a lot of long time WoW players annoyed but for me this is really excellent. A friend of mine has an Alliance Rogue lvl 70 and I have a Druid Horde lvl 76. They are on different servers but we can't play them together even if they were on the same Realm. So instead we both created Hunter Hordes on my Server and Ally Mages on his Server. But really we just want to get to the end game and play together in Battle Grounds and stuff. So this faction transfer is really great I'll switch to Alliance as soon as this available to play with my friend.

[Slane]

I am going to have to disagree with being on a 6 month transfer cooldown. If anything, it should be the same as the transfer cooldown right now which is only a month if I'm not mistaken. Anything longer is just a bit ridiculous. The idea behind all this is to allow players who have friends on another realm to be able to jump to them AND to their faction. Pain in the ass releveling toons just because you don't have an alliance side paladin and such... (as I'm doing now)

While the 6 month cooldown may be harsh, what if a bunch of Alliance players switched factions and all joined Horde on Illidan. Would that help out at all? What if a large number of Horde on Illidan all switched to Alliance, in which case to balance the active population but the majority of them transfered off and you ended in the same situation just with less overall numbers all around? There has to be balance to do it. It would destroy realms if you could just switch and end up within or month or so xsfer off.

While it's problem way to early to speculate on it, I can see this a major way of ruining the game further if there isn't some strict restrictions all around the service.

do any of you play on private servers?

No and you want to leave this thread, asap if you want to discuss that.

[Prosidius]

Ok so on a different subject, my guild is planning on x-fering to mal'ganis since the current server is junk. :p

[Slane]

Ok so on a different subject, my guild is planning on x-fering to mal'ganis since the current server is junk. :p

Entire guild or just what's left of it?

[winrez]

My guild is on Shattered Halls the where prices are ridiculous and the Horde/Alliance ratio is 80/1 anything that would help people to switch sides is a plus in my book

(I have a lvl 76 Human Lock that I havent logged on in 2 months because of that specific reason)

[Prosidius]

Algalon the destroyer.

[Slane]

Way to go Adam!

[Prosidius]

Too bad I wont be the one that tanks him, thats another story.

I'm preparing my move to mal'ganis should I decide to go through with it.

[CloudEngineer]

That only applies to PvP servers. You can have both on PvE servers.

oh really

i didn't know that, only ever played pvp servers

my bad

[SMELTN]

With these new changes coming, it shows WOW is finally hurting. I told my guild awhile ago, if wow ever allows you to change from horde to alliance, it would be the start of the fall... and guess what.. Was a fun ride, but I am not riding it down :)

[I am Redbeard]

With these new changes coming, it shows WOW is finally hurting. I told my guild awhile ago, if wow ever allows you to change from horde to alliance, it would be the start of the fall... and guess what.. Was a fun ride, but I am not riding it down :)

+1.

Switching factions is so weak.

If you want an alliance toon, choose alliance.

If you want a horde toon, choose horde.

This is honestly the biggest let down in the years I've been playing.

Forget about all the nerfing and buffing of classes/specs.