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IGN Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on Cross Faction Grouping - Less Focus on Faction War Going Forward
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Опубликовано
31.01.2022 в 22:00
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In an interview with IGN, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas shared his thoughts on the newly announced plan to
enable cross-faction grouping
for dungeons, raids, and PvP in Shadowlands Patch 9.2.5. Amid the discussion include talking points on why the decision was made, what it means for the future of World of Warcraft, and how community feedback can shape further features moving forward.
Key Takeaways
:
Cross-faction guilds may be considered in the future, but they want to take it slow and listen to community feedback.
Applying cross-faction gameplay to outdoor content would be a mammoth undertaking due to the way quests are built.
These changes are being implemented one at a time, in order to avoid having to undo and take away any of them in the future.
Not ruling out the idea of applying it to Classic, but unlikely from both technical and ideological reasons. Open to hearing community feedback.
Cross-faction grouping is a gameplay change which probably won't be acknowledged in the story, but the factions are currently in an armistice anyway.
It's unlikely they'll do another "all-consuming faction conflict expansion again" like BFA; more likely they'll focus on a wider range of perspectives.
See the full interview on ign.com
Warcraft isn't Just About Alliance vs Horde Anymore
Faction War has previously been described as a foundational pillar of World of Warcraft, but Orcs versus Humans is no longer the world they want to build.
Ion Hazzikostas, via IGN
"Part of the blog that we put out that laid the foundation for this was about looking at assumptions we've made about how character progression should work, about player versus account and all these other things. And really revisiting things we've said 'no' to that people in the community have asked for…And one of them has been the desire for cross-faction play in some form…The answer had always been well, it's Warcraft, it's orcs versus humans. It's Horde versus Alliance. It's what defines our whole IP."
"That's not the world we want to build, but it's also not the world we really have been building or the story we've been telling for the last 20 years and going back to Warcraft 3. At the end of the day, it was about the factions coming together to defeat Archimonde to stop the major threats to our world."
There's always been an odd contradiction that despite being continually told the conflict between Alliance and Horde is central to World of Warcraft, nearly every expansion's story has eschewed that narrative. In fact, the focus almost always results in the factions setting aside their differences to defend against a common enemy, most recently in
Shadowlands
itself, in which players dedicated themselves to faction-agnostic Covenants and then spent a lot of time rescuing leaders of the opposite faction from the Maw. Even the two "faction war" focused expansions,
Mists of Pandaria
and
Battle for Azeroth
, eventually shifted to teaming up in order to take down Garrosh and N'Zoth respectively. This theme runs all the way back to Warcraft III, in which the factions initially fought one another, but eventually teamed up to defend the world against Archimonde.
Ion Hazzikostas, via IGN
"It's easy to assume as shorthand that the core idea is Horde versus Alliance. I think if you go back to like Warcraft 1 or Warcraft 2, well then yes, that literally was the case, because it was just a two-faction RTS game where the plot was created as a contrivance for why these factions are fighting each other.
"But really from Warcraft 3 onwards, I think the ideals of Warcraft have been adventure, exploration, but also the fact that we actually fundamentally have more in common than what separates us. That Alliance and Horde are both defending their homes, searching for homes, fighting for family, for honor, for justice."
Less Focus on Faction War Going Forward
It's unlikely they'll do another "all-consuming faction conflict expansion again" like BFA; more likely they'll focus on a wider range of perspectives.
This part is intriguing because while it doesn't mean that faction war is out of the picture entirely, it feels like they will most likely shift to subgroups. In many ways, this has already been well represented in previous narrative arcs: The Forsaken isn't the enemy, Grand Apothecary Putress is; the Horde isn't the enemy, Garrosh is; Horde players aren't working with the Alliance, they're helping Brann Bronzebeard unravel ancient mysteries. Likewise, it doesn't mean that PvP has to go away either, as it's easy to proclaim the factions are officially in a truce or cold war state, while unofficial conflict between small groups continues to happen sporadically without drawing in the bulk of the faction armies.
There are also a lot of loose ends still left to tie up following
Battle for Azeroth
and the ramifications of the Fourth War, which have largely been ignored while we've been in the Shadowlands. For example, we have the leaderless and divided Forsaken who may now turn to Calia Menethil, the homeless Night Elves and Gilnean survivors of Teldrassil, and of course whatever might happen to Azeroth after
the Jailer's final encounter
.
IGN
But he does think it unlikely they'll ever do an "all-consuming faction conflict expansion again" like Battle for Azeroth. He thinks it more likely they'll focus on a wider range of perspectives on the divide through characters and quests such as the survivors of the burning of Teldrassil, Genn Greymane, members of the Forsaken, and all those in between — all while letting players decide for themselves where they stand in relation to the opposing faction."
Why Now?
Players have been asking for this for a long time, especially as faction imbalance has become increasingly disruptive to individual desires - someone who loves playing Night Elves has a considerably harder time finding groups and guilds when compared to than someone who is willing to play Horde, particularly as they move closer to the higher end of competitive gameplay. It's not all that different from previous server restrictions either - some players may bemoan the loss of server identity, but in a world where Battle.net friends, Communities, and Discord have eroded the traditional barriers of communication, being restricted to your server quickly is just a pointless hinderance.
Not too long ago, we were told that
cross faction play wasn't in the cards
, that the division between factions was a pillar of what makes World of Warcraft, but the important part of this change is that you don't need to dissolve factions or their individual stories in order to allow cross faction gameplay. Some stories may not work as cleanly, but most of the major Warcraft story beats, such as the Siege of Orgrimmar or the entirety of
Legion's
storyline would hardly miss a beat.
IGN
Another big reason the change is happening now is because of how communication outside of World of Warcraft has changed over the years. 17 years ago, Hazzikostas says, people met their online friends and communities through the game, and thus through their factions. But increasingly over the years, that's changed radically.
"It was just kind of one of those accepted rules back then if you meet a friend, and you discover that you play on different servers, oh well, you're never going to get to play with your friend. That's just how WoW is. Whereas those boundaries have increasingly been torn down and tons of communities have formed and there are Discords and WoW communities and people who are friends on Twitter and other places. The downside of maintaining that hard line grows with each passing year.
"We frankly probably reached the tipping point a little while ago. But in a game like this, we're stubborn and traditionalists and it's scary to say: let's uproot this foundational pillar of what the game has been for over a decade. But it's time."
Future Adjustments: Cross-faction Guilds
Cross-faction guilds are being considered, but the team wants to move slowly in order to avoid having to remove any of these changes later on.
This is an important consideration, as although cross-realm raiding will be enabled, the current implementation appears to have several drawbacks compared to more traditional groups which tend to keep all players in the same guild. Although there are third party tools which make managing communities of players across different guilds, there's still an increased burden when it comes to managing guild repairs, guild banks, crafting, and even simply lines of communication and having to invite individual players off a friends list rather than automatically sending a group invite to everyone with the "raider" rank in your guild. Perhaps most importantly, rewards become trickier as well, since things like Hall of Fame titles are actually guild achievements rather than individual ones.
IGN
Though Hazzikostas suspects they won't have either technical or ideological reason to implement the change in World of Warcraft: Classic, he's open to hearing community feedback and reconsidering if the desire is there. And he acknowledges it's possible they may down the line want to consider other elements for the Retail version, like cross-faction guilds. But they're being careful about how they move forward.
"At this point I know better than to close any doors," Hazzikostas says. "This is a one-way process only…We're not going to loosen rules, allow social bonds to form or communities to grow, and then suddenly turn them back and say, nevermind, that was a mistake…Technical considerations aside, something like outdoor gameplay would be a mammoth undertaking because of how all of our quests are built. Those considerations aside, we want to be conservative here, but we're going to be listening to our community, guided by the results of how this experiment plays out and still trying to preserve Alliance and Horde identity, but do so in a way that is harmonious with how the game is played and how our players feel in 2022 and beyond."
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