WoW Faction Change Service Live

03 Sep 2009 at 12:12:01 by Bill Vaughan

Blizzard has rolled out the latest paid service for its MMO, World of Warcraft, which allows players to change factions.

Plans for the controversial change were announced recently, and had a mixed reaction from fans. A player's faction, Horde or Alliance, is chosen at character creation and, until now, players were stuck with the choice forever. Many WoW fans are extremely loyal to their choice of faction, I'm sure the warcry “For the Horde” is known the world over, so this latest feature came as a bit of a shock to people who had remained tied to one side or another.

The service allows players to swap factions, which requires the character to change race too. Players must choose a race on their new faction which is compatible with the character's class. But anyone who thought this would be a sneaky way to simply change the race of your character within your own faction, by swapping faction then swapping back, was disappointed; Blizzard didn't want players changing race within their faction. This led to a collective “WHY?”. After some consideration, Blizzard changed its mind on the matter. At the recent BlizzCon event, the company announced that players will soon be able to change race within their own faction with another paid service that will be available some time after the faction change service.

This faction change service may spark off mass transfers from one faction to another on some WoW servers, or it might simply be used by some players and largely unused by others. Either way, Blizzard assures fans that the service is there to make the game more enjoyable, allowing people to play with friends who may have characters on the opposite faction.

Read more about the service on our WoW Channel.

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