I normally don’t post news but I think this one merits something. I’m a bit stunned by this. Blue’s have announced that a faction switching service is in the works. It allows players to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. In other words, I can switch from Alliance to Horde and back. I wonder what a Dwarf would transform into.
More ways to make money, I suppose. I’m almost certain this service is going to involve cash. Hands up anyone out there who would take advantage of this service. Why? Who wouldn’t? Why not? Personally not a bad idea as this would enable Wyn to raid with me if it ever came down to it.
Some more news is coming up on how tier loot and tier tokens will be handled in 3.2.
More on this later…
So much for leveling Renwein. Now I guess I don’t have to.
Wonder if this will open the door to changing class within faction sometime soon as well? I really wish I’d rolled my lvl 77 human priest as a Night Elf, but I’ve expended too much effort on her to reroll now.
.-= Anelf´s last blog ..Power Auras for Hunters =-.
I smell abuse already. My only decent Alliance toon is a Human Rogue. I picked Human for the looks and to avoid the rep grind. If I’d ever play her, I’d happily pay to transform to a Gnome, because I always regret to not have rolled a Gnome. But I still got the easy 10% rep discount. Mhm, not sure I’m happy here. Especially as my main rogue is 80…
.-= Armagon´s last blog ..Armagon: Level 68 @ 1d12h /played – Northrend here I come with 375 Herbalism and First Aid and 250 Inscription… =-.
I have no desire to faction-swap any of my characters; if I’d wanted them in the other faction, I’d have made them that way. 🙂
I still don’t believe that this will be implemented any earlier than the next expansion, whatever it happens to be; if it’s Undermine/Maelstrom, I wouldn’t be surprised if the faction swap were being implemented due to the introduction of a third faction. (Diary of a Raider – sorry, I don’t actually know your name! – disagrees strongly with me on this, but I still think it’s a reasonable speculation. 🙂
.-= Chris Anthony | Duct Tape and a Prayer´s last blog ..Blizzard: Faction switching “in the works†=-.
This change will have zero effect on how I play the game and for certain I have zero desire to ever faction switch. But for some others another change Blizzard to try to make the game more fun for them.
Knowing Blizzard they will probably charge for this service in some way and with some form of cooldown to make you consider the choice seriously.
Reason this won’t affect me is I’m die hard 100% Horde! Any character I make is Horde and have no desire to play as alliance. I guess I’m a true horde so thus really care less about faction swapping for any reason.
.-= Ardent Defender´s last blog ..WoW Update 06/29/09 =-.
I wish I could keep my gnome and play him as horde faction *dreaming* 😉
.-= Cala´s last blog ..Kochen mit Finesse =-.
The question I’m wondering… if you’re on a PvP realm, you can’t have people of both factions on the same account. So how will that work if say, I went crazy and wanted to turn my troll priest to human (or whatever they will become). Would I then be forced to server change? Separate account? Delete my alts if I want to change?
It does open up some interesting possibilities with recruitment though.
I have an alliance warlock that I wanted to swap over to the horde side. I wonder what the cost will be though will most likely switch unless something strange comes up. It will be interesting to see the details and also the timeframe.
I’m guessing:
Orcs = Humans (It’s the lore)
Tauren = Night Elf (for druids)
Dwarves = Trolls (Because Shaman = Paladin)
Blood Elf = Dranei (Expansion Races)
Therefore
Gnomes = Undead
Sorry Cala
.-= MomentEye´s last blog ..Prognostications =-.
I don’t think they will make races 1:1, but something more like your class is available on these races, choose one.
I really hope this includes intra-faction race changes. I rolled an Undead shadow priest because at that time Devouring Plague was Undead only, however that (and fear ward) is now class wide, and I’ve been considering re-rolling BE because of the awesome racial.
If they do implement this, I’m guessing they would let you pick your race. The races don’t really match up, and this is another fee based service. Some people view racials as make or break, but I think it really matters what you can stand to look at for multiple weeks of play time.
Great thing if you want to meet up with a friend instead of rerolling. I’m honestly not sure if I like it, I’m biased when it comes to the allience 🙂 But since it will cost money (everything does), I think we’ll keep the changes to a minimum and mostly used by the serious kind of player.
This is completely insane. I was just talking to my significant other yesterday about what would ever happen if Bliz threw in this possibility. The server that I’m on right now has a 3:1 horde to alliance ratio and at times it can get a bit tough being an alliance over there…we literally get ganked 3 on 1. And Wintergrasp is never that fun.
On another note…this makes me start to wonder when this will be available. I love my night elf druid, but I just started up a tauren druid on another server, both for my amusement as I’ve never had the opportunity to level through horde areas, and because my GM can be extremely trying and being able to play somewhere he can’t see or talk to me can be worth my sanity sometimes. But is it even worth leveling the new cow now, that I could just switch my night elf faction when this comes out and swap servers?
Gah – I don’t want to be a Belfadin. I’m fairly certain that most of my guild will go Horde the moment this comes out though.
I look forward to this a great deal. I’ve always wanted to have a Horde character, but not enough to avoid the not having my friends to chat with as I do it or my other characters’ wealth. This solves that, and it might mean I will actually get to win a few BGs come the revamp.
.-= Beej´s last blog ..Parallels in LOST and Stephen King’s "The Dark Tower" – Part 1 – Narrative =-.
I can’t wait. I rolled Horde to play with RL friends, and then rerolled Alliance when those friends stopped playing. I still miss my original Horde mains, with epic flyers, maxed trade skills, Amani Warbear, etc.
Personally, I am curious to what degree things will swap. Will my faction with SIlvermoon City become faction with the Exodar, or will I lose everything? Will I be able to take all my Horde mounts and mini-pets with me? Will I lose anything like my mount that has racial restrictions, or will it be replaced with an equivalent alliance mount? It would not surprise me if part of the terms of this is that you lose faction specific factions/items – with no equivalents being provided on the other faction, simply to ensure this is not abused.
I assume that the real life monetary cost of this will be high (it wouldn’t surprise me to see it upwards of $50-100 as there IS a large market that would pay those prices), and that the cooldown will be very long.
It interests me to see what this does to end game raiding, as you will now effectively have double the applicant pool as before.
I assume you be allowed to pick your race, as there is no even match up for which races can be which classes (ie: Gnomes are the only race in the game that can’t heal). This may open it up for Blizz to remove the racial restrictions to classes, but that’s a HUGE can of worms that I am not certain they want to be opening. The casting/gear animations already exist – but after 4 years of Gnomes being restricted to being creatures of destruction, will Blizz ignore the lore and allow them to be Paladins? Unlikely.
A truly intriguing possibility would be if your character didn’t actually change race – but instead followed a quest line to defect. That would certainly make BGs a mess “But…. that Paladin that killed me was a human, just like me!”
Regardless, this change can’t come soon enough.
Part of me loves this. That part of me is thinking of my BF. He has leveled up a horde Hunter before we met. It’s level 80 and has some epics on it from when he was raiding. Well I started on an alliance priest. I rerolled for him and am leveling a horde priest now. Well.. just think. He can server transfer over to my alliance server.. then switch to alliance! I miss my alliance guild terribly and I think he would fit in rather well with them.
The part of me that hates this is those that are sick of the ratio variance. They get on a server, invest in a toon, become attached to that toon, but are then upset if they are constantly outnumbered by the opposite faction. So they may find this a way to take care of that. However it will just add to the problem. These people are probably the minority. And honestly this change will more than likely not affect me what so ever. Except of course for the above.
Bring on the change!
.-= Kirei – Gamer of Sorts´s last blog ..Video Games and The Female Audience =-.
Probably character transformations will be the same as when using Orb of Deception.
Its’ a great announcement anyway. I have five toons I’d love to switch over to Horde 🙂
While this will have only a limited effect on me (I’m on a normal server, and I’m nowhere near level 80 yet) but it could cause more issues with Battlegrounds (I’m 1 – 22 in my last 23 attempts at Warsong gulch) though I guess THAT couldn’t get much worse.
But I have friends on PvP servers that are dreading this. As others mentioned, on the lopsided servers, there is likley to be a significant switching of sides, simply to avoid the over-prevalent ganking, and the near impossibility of raiding:
http://bang-n-blame.blogspot.com/2009/06/changes-and-why-im-not-so-keen-on-some.html