There’s currently a 144-page thread on the official World of Warcraft message board discussing this latest earth-shattering news: you’ll soon be able to take your Horde character and transform him to the closet Alliance equivalent, and vice-versa. So, for example, taking your Orc Warrior and changing him into a Human Warrior. And then cats and dogs will break bread with each other.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Well, have you ever started a character, leveled him to, I don’t know, around level 30, but then your friends showed up on your server as the other faction? It’s incredibly annoying. Naturally you’d want to play with them, o Blizzard is giving you that option.
It’s funny, too, because Blizzard used to be anti-faction change:
• Critical Mass: People may decided that any given class/race combo is superior to other combination of that same class. Or people may decide that any given race is no longer worth sticking with due to some change we make to some racial abilities. This naturally leads to flavor of the month races. This is something we want to avoid.
• Race Restrictions: All races are given a certain set of restrictions for both lore and balance purposes. There would be some serious investment involved in making certain that this system didn’t allow any exploitation of that system.
• Future Content: Things change, some would say the only thing that stays the same is change and that is certainly true for World of Warcraft. If we allowed race changes it could negatively/adversely impact things we haven’t even thought of yet.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather holiday on Skull Island than ever roll Horde (even though I haven’t logged on in months).