Yea, the bandwagon faction, that will fix EVERYTHING.

[Azazel]

Yea, the bandwagon faction, that will fix EVERYTHING. 

2, 3, 14, 72. It doesn't matter, it's a population/participation issue, not a number of sides issue.

If we want to really discuss this again, toss up a new thread for it and I'll rant about it for a few days if you want. 

Discuss.

[K9]

What is there to discuss? There's no real space in lore for this, nor a logical position within the framework of the existing game. This would take an inordinate amount of effort to implement and balance and would do fuck all to even out PvP.

[01101010]

How about a zone of Free-for-all PvP? 

...with ladders.

[Malakili]

I like the idea of more than 2 factions in a game, but I don't particularly think its worth implementing in WoW of all games.  If there is a game that has made 2 factions work the best, its WoW.

[Lantyssa]

It's WoW.  Why does existing lore matter?

It's be easy enough to have the "Play Whatever You Want With Your Friends Since We Love Shitting On Continuity Anyways" faction.  The PWYWWYFSWLSOCA is something I'd play, since I find both sides are incredibly annoying, and then I could have my Trolls and Draenei in the same guild.

Does that sound Welsh to anyone else?

[Typhon]

What is there to discuss? There's no real space in lore for this, nor a logical position within the framework of the existing game. This would take an inordinate amount of effort to implement and balance and would do fuck all to even out PvP.

There is a TON of space in the lore for multiple factions - the original concept for WC3 was five factions: Human (Ally), Night Elf, Orc, Scourge, Legion.  They ended up having to scrap Legion.  Alliances formed, alliances can break again.

To make Lantyssa's PWYWWYFSWLSOCA a reality simply have undead be their own faction and unite Scourge and Forsaken.  The undead faction becomes the faction that can be any race.  Current undead in the horde stay with the horde cause they are special - but no new horde undead (I enjoy the salty tears of people no longer having the option to pick a race.  It just makes me happy).  Undead capital is in Northrend.  Pretend the "always need to be a Lich King to keep undead plague from overrunning the world" never happened or Bolvar changed his mind after being undead a bit.

It would take an inordinate amount of effort for what would probably be tepidly received (except, of course, by Lantyssa).

The real argument here is - does three sides inherently blunt population imbalance issues.  I don't think Blizzard is convinced that DAOCs three sides mitigated PvP imbalance enough to justify having to create 3x the content (versus the current 2x the content) for each release (which is why there are only two sides... well, that and WoW isn't a PvP-first kind of game).

In a game where you aren't having to create N times the content for more factions I think that N > 2 is better because it allows player-base some degree of self-adjustment for population imbalance.

[Dren]

I said it in the original thread but I'll say it again.  No matter how many factions you have, if there isn't a active balancing mechanism in the programming, it won't matter.  Sure some servers will be ok, but most won't be.  Now if players could change faction with no major investment (sorry not paying $40 for that,) maybe the population would self-adjust, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Everything needs to be instanced so the software can adjust automatically.  It can be done and done well with enough creative coding.  I'm sure we could list out hundreds of ideas and designs necessary.

If you want world differences to be made from the results of the battles, then put that in too.  Just because the battle is instanced doesn't mean the outcome can't alter a zone or two accordingly.  People can actively join as the event is going just like world pvp, but you might have to wait for a corresponding enemy to join to keep the numbers even (within some amount, maybe a sliding scale depending on total population.) 

If server population is a problem, then open it up to cross server implementation.  Maybe after the event has been running for 10 minutes and your still at 10v10, the queues open up to cross server.  All of a sudden you have a 40v40 or 100v100 insta-party.  If you manage to maintain at least 20v20 past 10 minutes, it stays that way. 

[Chimpy]

You could have 1 faction and free for all PvP and it still would come down to "which side has more people" with regards to open world shit.

It just is not possible to really balance PvP in these games other than forcing them into instanced battlegrounds with set parameters. Because, contrary to the belief of everyone who wants the next big MMO to have "epic RvR and open world PvP that MEANS something", you cannot balance that because like in a real war, attrition hurts the side with fewer people more. And every death/disconnect due to "this lag is shitty, fuck this" is a form of attrition.

[DraconianOne]

It's WoW.  Why does existing lore matter?

It's be easy enough to have the "Play Whatever You Want With Your Friends Since We Love Shitting On Continuity Anyways" faction.  The PWYWWYFSWLSOCA is something I'd play, since I find both sides are incredibly annoying, and then I could have my Trolls and Draenei in the same guild.

Does that sound Welsh to anyone else?

Almost. Can you get it to be PWYYWHYNNY?

[AcidCat]

I like the idea of more than 2 factions in a game, but I don't particularly think its worth implementing in WoW of all games.  If there is a game that has made 2 factions work the best, its WoW.

Agreed.

[Nebu]

How about a zone of Free-for-all PvP?  

...with ladders.

If everyone had identical gear, I'd resub just for this.  

Gear ruins the WoW pvp game even more than the class imbalances do. 

[Dren]

How about a zone of Free-for-all PvP?  

...with ladders.

If everyone had identical gear, I'd resub just for this.  

Gear ruins the WoW pvp game even more than the class imbalances do. 

To be fair, a lot of the class imbalances are purely driven by gear imbalances.  Class A doesn't do well until they have at least XX gear.  Class B can melt faces from the beginning, but gets more even with Class A at gear XX.  Once everyone has the top gear, I predict class imbalance wouldn't be near as much of a factor.

I would think this would be an interesting experiment to say the least.  How hard would it be to just implement a server that let you create an 80 character that was insta-born with full top tier pvp gear for the selected class/spec.  Everyone has every glyph to select from.  Maybe to let people have some control of tweaking, you let everyone choose their own gemming and enchanting, etc.  All of that is free, of course, and can be changed whenever you want (outside of combat.) 

I would love to see how popular that kind of server would be.  My guess is that it would keep a lot of people that leave between expansions for longer.  That's my guess for player housing too, but that's another thread.

[Threash]

Aion forced faction balance during launch and for a good while the sides were balanced.  Without the forced balance there is no way to even out sides, once they stopped forcing people into a faction the servers became unbalanced.  The only way i see a third faction helping is if they were forced to fight with the outnumbered side.

[Chimpy]

Aion forced faction balance during launch and for a good while the sides were balanced.  Without the forced balance there is no way to even out sides, once they stopped forcing people into a faction the servers became unbalanced.  The only way i see a third faction helping is if they were forced to fight with the outnumbered side.

The issue with Aion's balancing was that it was done by total characters created, not actual people playing. So all those thousands of lvl 10 alts to get a cheap guild bank for storing your extra crap counted. It also didn't take into account people who had cancelled.

[Azazel]

What is there to discuss? There's no real space in lore for this, nor a logical position within the framework of the existing game. This would take an inordinate amount of effort to implement and balance and would do fuck all to even out PvP.

I'll have to come back to this thread later, since I need to head into work, but almost every high-level third-party rep-grinding faction that springs out of nowhere in the game is made of Horde and Alliance-race NPCs that have set aside their personal differences to work together for the greater good blah blah blah. - Cenarion anything, Argent this and that, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, Shattered Sun, Shattari Skyguard, Ashen verdict.

This is without touching the "go do shit for us" third parties, like the Ogri'La, Netherwings, Sons of Hodir etc who are made of NPC races and therefore don't work for the argument.

[Fordel]

Yea, it isn't just about the raw numbers (though that is also very important obviously), but the participation as well. Having 500 max level people online doesn't mean shit if they are all cruising the AH or spamming trade.



More then two sides doesn't fix anything it of it self either, nothing about multiple sides promotes equality in population or participation. The mythical "the two weak sides will band together for freedom and justice!" is bullshit. It's far more likely that the two stronger sides will farm the smallest one to extinction until it's irrelevant and then we are back to the same 1v1 issues of population and participation.


WoW specifically is never having more then the current Horde/Alliance split, and having more factions would not fix their world pvp problems either way again. Especially now, that the game is so old an established, you just aren't going to have people split to a third evenly. You'll have a sudden influx due to the 'newness' of the faction, then people will filter back to their original spots once they new car smell wears off.

Or if you make the so called Merc (bandwagon) faction, everyone will just pile into that one and/or completely ignore it, depending how they interact with the world PvP rewards in WoW.


If you sign up for the Merc faction and help the Horde take WG, do you now get to do the VoA bosses with the Horde that round? Do you have to go back to your original faction once its over? What happens when Horde+Merc still isn't enough to beat the Alliance Zerg? How do you handle the Alliance players who have nothing at all to gain by hitting the merc faction to help their 'enemies'? Or the reverse, what do you do when the Horde+Merc faction is enough to win every time? Whats to stop everyone from just going merc all the time to always win?


This is all assuming the Merc faction has to team with the losing side to begin with. If the merc's are able to pick any side they want to team up with, then you are just going to end up with a even worse situation as all the Horde tired of never getting WG go defect to the Alliance via Merc.





I'm not saying multiple factions is a bad thing, there are many reasons to have them, but they don't in of themselves fix any of the population and participation problems inherent with World PvP.

The only thing that would fix those, is a game focused on it from the ground up, in all respects. Each faction has to be equally desirable for all aspects of the game and for all types of players AND you need a lot of balancing mechanics that encourage participation and somehow enforce population... while also not making the game inaccessible to anyone.

[Threash]

Aion forced faction balance during launch and for a good while the sides were balanced.  Without the forced balance there is no way to even out sides, once they stopped forcing people into a faction the servers became unbalanced.  The only way i see a third faction helping is if they were forced to fight with the outnumbered side.

The issue with Aion's balancing was that it was done by total characters created, not actual people playing. So all those thousands of lvl 10 alts to get a cheap guild bank for storing your extra crap counted. It also didn't take into account people who had cancelled.

Right, but there is no reason to assume either of those things would affect one side more than the other.  I just know that for a few months after launch most of the servers were extremely well balanced, with a 51/49 split at worst.

[Fordel]

Right, but there is no reason to assume either of those things would affect one side more than the other.  I just know that for a few months after launch most of the servers were extremely well balanced, with a 51/49 split at worst.

That's a mistake, it is entirely likely that one side will attract more casual or hardcore types, or more pvp vs. pve types and so on. Players divide themselves across sides/servers like this constantly.

[DraconianOne]

I'll have to come back to this thread later, since I need to head into work, but almost every high-level third-party rep-grinding faction that springs out of nowhere in the game is made of Horde and Alliance-race NPCs that have set aside their personal differences to work together for the greater good blah blah blah. - Cenarion anything, Argent this and that, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, Shattered Sun, Shattari Skyguard, Ashen verdict.

This is without touching the "go do shit for us" third parties, like the Ogri'La, Netherwings, Sons of Hodir etc who are made of NPC races and therefore don't work for the argument.

Plus, after the pre-Wrath zombie hoe-down event when there was a third faction for a short while, there was quiet hope that a new faction might be introduced as a result of the Wrathgate shenanigans. (Yeah, it would have been Forsaken only and that would have sucked but still...)

[K9]

What is there to discuss? There's no real space in lore for this, nor a logical position within the framework of the existing game. This would take an inordinate amount of effort to implement and balance and would do fuck all to even out PvP.

I'll have to come back to this thread later, since I need to head into work, but almost every high-level third-party rep-grinding faction that springs out of nowhere in the game is made of Horde and Alliance-race NPCs that have set aside their personal differences to work together for the greater good blah blah blah. - Cenarion anything, Argent this and that, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, Shattered Sun, Shattari Skyguard, Ashen verdict.

This is without touching the "go do shit for us" third parties, like the Ogri'La, Netherwings, Sons of Hodir etc who are made of NPC races and therefore don't work for the argument.

I would accuse you of moving the goal posts on this argument, but I'll admit I could have been more specific. Lorewise perhaps you are right to an extent, but most of those factions are pretty tiny, that said wowlorelol. Structurally though the amount of work to fit a third faction into the game would be huge, and not worth the effort if the only goal is to balance out Wintergrasp. So much of the game is built on the notion of two factions, from the quest structure, to reputations, battlegrounds, cities and such; that a third faction would require some serious shoehorning. I realise some of these points are trivial, but equally none of them would be a trivial effort to adapt into the existing game. Maybe the next expansion will bring a third faction; I doubt it, but then they are running out of space for class roles and races, so who knows.

[Paelos]

Fuck lore, I want to be a merc and stab both sets of elves in the face equally.

[Lantyssa]

I want to use elves to stab other elves!

[Ratman_tf]

Fuck the third faction. I want a neutral faction!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ

[DLRiley]

WoW releases new faction. WoW charges $15 dollars for more character slots.

World of Warcraft figuring out new ways to make more money at the player expense 

[Azazel]

I'll have to come back to this thread later, since I need to head into work, but almost every high-level third-party rep-grinding faction that springs out of nowhere in the game is made of Horde and Alliance-race NPCs that have set aside their personal differences to work together for the greater good blah blah blah. - Cenarion anything, Argent this and that, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, Shattered Sun, Shattari Skyguard, Ashen verdict.

This is without touching the "go do shit for us" third parties, like the Ogri'La, Netherwings, Sons of Hodir etc who are made of NPC races and therefore don't work for the argument.

I would accuse you of moving the goal posts on this argument, but I'll admit I could have been more specific. Lorewise perhaps you are right to an extent, but most of those factions are pretty tiny, that said wowlorelol. Structurally though the amount of work to fit a third faction into the game would be huge, and not worth the effort if the only goal is to balance out Wintergrasp. So much of the game is built on the notion of two factions, from the quest structure, to reputations, battlegrounds, cities and such; that a third faction would require some serious shoehorning. I realise some of these points are trivial, but equally none of them would be a trivial effort to adapt into the existing game. Maybe the next expansion will bring a third faction; I doubt it, but then they are running out of space for class roles and races, so who knows.

I was pretty much replying to your first point. But it'd still be easy enough to do a 3rd faction if they really wanted to. Just have them shift allegiances every so often so you can do either horde or alliance-side quests, or drop down a few tent-camps here and there because they're mercenaries. Or have them start at 55 like DKs, or run them like the Skaven in WAR. Start them at 85 as part of the next expansion when they introduce another lost continent and 3rd-faction support designed in from the start. or.. whatever - if they wanted to, it wouldn't be that hard. (FWIW, I don't actually care, I'm just playing devil's advocate)

Yes, a lot of those facitons are tiny, but both the Cenarionoids and the Argentinians are pretty substantial, especially if you add in the ebon blade/Ashen verdict into the Argent camp. Having said that, Twilight's Hammer seem to be a slightly-relevant badguy version of the joined Alliance/Horde-race guys. As are the Scourge/cultists throughout Icecrown. For the Greater Bad, I guess. Yes, lorelol indeed.

[K9]

Yeah, I hear you.

Maybe they will do it for their next expansion, I suspect it would only create more problems than it solves though

edit: I just had a thought, one reason why you can't have a neutral faction is because it violates the most fundamental law of WoW: thou shalt not communicate with the other faction 

[Azazel]

Yes. The only orcs/tauren/etc that humans can speak with and understand are in the Argent Dawn/Cenarian/Shatari Skyguard/Twilight Hammer/Thrall and Cairne etc

Though, Blood Elves used to be High Elves. Shouldn't most or at least some Alliance be able to understand them? And surely the BEs can understand the Human tongue at the very least. 

[SurfD]

Yeah, I hear you.

Maybe they will do it for their next expansion, I suspect it would only create more problems than it solves though

edit: I just had a thought, one reason why you can't have a neutral faction is because it violates the most fundamental law of WoW: thou shalt not communicate with the other faction 

Ooooooo.  A thought just occured to me:

They Already Did a 3rd Faction!

Unfortunately, the 3rd faction was brain eating zombies, and all the Carebear AH farmers whined about zombies turning their Auction Masters so they couldnt make their gold quota fo the day.

Remember, Zombies could talk to each other, even TRADE with each other, across factions.

[Azazel]

I think I've shared my thoughts on why the Zombie invasion sucked hairy balls once before. I'll reiterate a key point, though.

In Shattrath, it's flagged as "sanctuary" so you can't attack other players in the couse of normal play. However, Zombies could of course be the exception to this, and so could attack anyone.
What was especially fucked, though was that normal players could not attack Zonbies until the zombies had initiated an attack on players.

I'f I could have enjoyed my zombie-bashing without needing to wait for them to hit me first, I wouldn't have hated it so.

[SurfD]

Odd.  Were you on a PvE realm by any chance?  I can not recall ever having to wait for a zombie to "flag" itself before i could blow it to smithereens on Tich when the event was going on.  They were always hostile on sight that I can remember.

[Sheepherder]

You weren't allowed to attack ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE players in Shattrath, which sucked, but was irrelevant, because if you really fucking needed to use the bank the portals were right there.

Hellfire Peninsula was far more fun as a zombie anyways.  Zombie sprint rotations were the coolest thing ever.

[Azazel]

Yes. PVE.

Sheephereder, are you retarded or just obtuse? Zombies were in the other cities as well. What the fuck do nearby portals have to do with banking, or not being able to fuck up zombies in Shatt without letting them tag you first?

[Selby]

Part of the issue with the zombie apocalypse was the high level players in Shatt just mounted up and flew out of reach of the zombie hordes and thus were immune if only slightly annoyed.  Those of us leveling plebes had to deal with trying to level and seeing this HORDE of zombies come flying at you.  It was fun, for a while.  But if I was trying to level up a character it got slightly annoying.

[Simond]

Complaints about the zombie event is why the Cata one is so incredibly underwhelming.

[WindupAtheist]

What he said. The pre-expansion events are like one week every two years. I'd have done something even more crazy and let people suck it up.