Coming to private servers in about 700 years: Mercenary mode

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Originally Posted by actavios

The general idea is intuitive, if the faction queue is long, then allow player to transform into opposite faction to play battleground. On a more technical level, this, with considerations and limitations could become a complicated system.

Feasibility below:

1) if (AshenBattleground.getAshenBattlegroundTime() > maximumWaitTime()) then
Spawn Mercenary

2) Faction specific achievements are removed; this can cause a problem to develop.

3) Chat functionality reworked; you have to communicate with Alliance players, could cause issues.

4) Race functionality reworked: are there are functional constraints, namely, will the racial change, e.g. Orc changing into Human, will they have Every man for themselves racial, or an Orc racial that will give away they are mercenary.

5) item functionality; this could change since the system has to believe the character has a temporary faction change. What if you have a Horde specific trinket, then change to Alliance, will this trinket also change, or will it not be useable? This will cause problems to code.

6) the masks that Blizzard use to fool for the opposite faction example is a representitive way of conveying this idea quite simple. However, the functionality of the system will have to be changed, and constraints will have to be implemented based on the non-functionality intention.

7) Blizzards intention is to disguise the player to discreetly pass them off as their own faction. Thus, each of these will have to be considered. Perhaps an Alliance inspects a Horde who is disguised as Alliance, and sees a trinket that can only be equipped from the Horde, or using a racial or passive that is only found from the opposite faction. There is a lot to consider.

8) Achievements will also have to change completely. If you are Horde changing to Alliance who has done For the Horde, these achievements will also have to be changed to match the identity, in particular, change to For the Alliance if disguised as the Alliance faction,, this is a non-functional constraint, as part of Blizzards "discreet" ability to pass as the opposite faction.

9) Game Design; the look and feel of the character will change. What if the character owns Horde-specific arena gear that has faction specific colours and only owned by Horde players. If they faction transfer in a battleground, what will their character look like? Will the Horde-specific gear and colours have to be changed as a result? These are considerations to keep this discreet.

This is not an exhaustive list but only just a few considerations of implementing this system. This will entirely depend on How Blizzard intend to develop the system.

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I doubt it's going to be that hard to code since in a way it's already in game as a faction change

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Originally Posted by Agramon

For retail realms with so many people that's nice feature. For any private server it will be useless.

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Best answer ever. No need to argue

as someone already mentioned, battlegrounds with ppl from both factions in each team is already available on blackrock so its not a matter of "cant script", more of a "want to remain blizzlike" thing. I personally wouldn't mind the feature tho, its nice.

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Originally Posted by ahadeg

These days, Blizzard doesn't seem to wanna fix any real problems, they just wanna go about the worst way of pissing their dwendling population off. I've already opted out of buying the next expansion and my current account is completely canceled and I spend a 100% of the time here because of Blizzard's bad business model.

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I agree about Blizzards bad business model ruining the game. Ever since the suits came in to run the place (very early in wow), the game has been about making the game experience worse by creating a stupidly slow 1x. The normal 1x is meant to be a balance of "How much can we slow these monthly subscribers down just to the point where the almost quit, but do not." For me, that's the only reason for private servers to exist. Its not about the money, as I think all should contribute to private server when they can, its about the time waste. The optimal game speed equates to the most fun, and due to their business model they have to squeeze lots of that fun out to try to keep people playing longer. The problem is, that amounts to wasting your customers time. For this reason private server is superior.

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Originally Posted by Agramon

For retail realms with so many people that's nice feature. For any private server it will be useless.

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Please, that argument is obsolete. Anything that reduces time is enhancement.

I think AT had this feature back in 2013~~

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Originally Posted by actavios

Not all servers will implement it, correct. Just look at how available Wintergrasp is in most servers - nonexistent. If simple coded battleground has taken many years before being coded, imagine how long more advanced features will take.

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You do realize that problem about wintergrasp isnt in coding?Enabling wintergrasp would cause massive lags and server crashes.

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Originally Posted by P4p3rz

Please, that argument is obsolete. Anything that reduces time is enhancement.

I think AT had this feature back in 2013~~

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But nevermind the detrimental effects it will have on the community? You should go check out the general discussion sections of Blizz's forum.

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Originally Posted by Mercy

But nevermind the detrimental effects it will have on the community? You should go check out the general discussion sections of Blizz's forum.

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To quote superman's mom "People hate what they don't understand"

From what I've read, they understand the implications very well. That argument is just as narrow as the one in your previous post.

Something that reduces time is an enhancement? Please enlighten how its narrow.

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Originally Posted by P4p3rz

Please, that argument is obsolete. Anything that reduces time is enhancement.

I think AT had this feature back in 2013~~

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another feature that was stolen by blizz kek

For **** sakes!!!!! what's the point of horde vs alliance , what's the point of having different factions, what's the point of battlegrounds, what's the point of world pvp? What'st he point of even calling this game world of "warcraft" ? * infinite amount of questions later* You see the problem is we run into so many questions as into what the point of having a ****in a game like this if wow removed factions, if they did I would just disregard the game as a whole.

Private servers have been able to do this for many years. I played on a TBC Mangoes realm that enabled this for a team.

It's not really needed though. I like how factions are enemies, it adds to the roleplaying element of the game. I'm sure many (MANY) players agree with me on that too, so good luck getting even 30% of the server to agree with you to implement the change.

For the PvP Realms, it should be a no-brainer to allow an over-queued faction to fill into the other side. This is coming from a 3-year Warsong Vet.

On the contrary, Warmane "Has it's priorities" , and they're belligerently adamant that their priorities are never effected by outside influence.

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Originally Posted by Agramon

For retail realms with so many people that's nice feature. For any private server it will be useless.

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Quite on the contrary.
This has vast implications, because even something as vast as retail`s facing the issue of faction imbalances and, arguably more importantly, faction stacking*.
On a Private Server with a player pool only a several thousands players deep issues like these tend to be vastly more pronounced. Remember that retail has crossrealms which means that their player pools are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of players deep, and it`s still facing these issues.

And concerning the implications of this, .. well. It`s time to do away with this hard Cold War mentality at long last. It`s fun while it lasted, but with BNet friends and what not, it`s been pretty much undermined a long time ago already. Nothin` much to see there.
I`d say that you`ll probably have to do crossfaction Battlegrounds on any Private Server if you wish to have decent, balanced Battlegrounds simply because of the rather shalow player pool. No need to even go fancy with maintaining the 'feeling' like Retail tries, that`s a waste of time imho. Just do it the Blackrock way, and be done with it. It`ll quite obviously have some cascading implications which you`ll have to address (like some form of crossfaction communication), but it`s worth it imo.

*faction stacking: When one faction wins a majority of Battlegrounds, leading to the opposing faction to gradually stop queueing and a vicious cycle where the dominant faction becomes more dominant over time emerging. Usually pretty well observable on Private Servers with shallow player pools.