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[Column] World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: Factions & Faction Rewards
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion, Blizzard will once again introduce new factions and faction rewards into the game. In The WoW Factor today, we talk about the whole idea of making factions and rewards worthwhile to the player. See what you think and then weigh in on the conversation in the comments.
World of Warcraft has put a number of factions in their game over time. There are so many I just cannot remember them all at this point. I am sure there is a list on WoWHead somewhere. Each of these pocket groups of NPCs has a reward system included. My point is to examine how they work. There are some factions that hook you immediately and you have to get the rewards. Yet there are others that pass you by and you move on without a thought. What separates these factions for people and how do players use them?
Read more of Garrett Fuller's The WoW Factor: Factions & Faction Rewards.
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Comments
"Top Tier items have always been gained from raids. So a decent raiding guild will all get the top gear quickly. How do you offer other players this chance to catch up? I think Faction rewards should be more in line with top tier items. This way if I put hours of solo time into getting a reward versus a bunch of runs with my guild, it should work out equally."
I don't totally agree with this balancing, but I do think that soloers should get some awesome items for their faction grinding (argent tournament comes to mind).
Also, Tillers.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
If "factions" were anything more than a quest hub location to repeat quests, I might have an interest in them. As it is, I'll do any interesting faction quests once and then move on.
Not much else to say about factions in WoW. I could never look past how much of a blatant grind they were.
Suprises me Blizzard haven't rolled faction rewards into cash shop yet.
cus then the game becomes Pay2Win.
All MMO's have grinds - hell I am not looking forward to having to grind 200+ skill points in GW2 so I can buy 1 peice of ledgendary gear, sure the first 200 might be fun what with the PvP and all but the other 1000+? Imaging needing to run Vanilia alteriac valley 100 times, you know when a match lasted a whole day.
I can see getting gear that's acceptable for starting to raid from factions but I don't see top tier gear from rep workiing in wow. WoW's endgame is a gear grind treadmill tied in with harder and harder raid bosses which drop better and better loot. If you go around that and offer similar loots from daily rep quests, you're messing with ALL YOU HAVE for a pve endgame.
It makes less sense to me when you want this gear and you don't even raid. The top pve gear is for raiding. The gear allows you to (with your raid group) kill harder bosses as you gear up. Why do you need the highest level of this gear if you don't kill raid bosses? If you're looking for a sense of accomplishment from getting gear, then take part in the endgame. If you don't have the time for that, find other goals in the game.
Banegrivm
Leader of the 1st Fist of Light
www.1stfistoflight.com
The main problem with faction rewards is they never get updated. This means that they are worthwhile only up until the first content patch. Once higher level raid gear starts becoming available the usefulness of rep gear declines as the relative strength of that gear dwindles in comparison to gear that can be picked up with far less work.
That basically leaves the only worthwhile rewards being pets, mounts, and vanity items. With pets and mounts on account, that means you will do each rep exactly once for those rewards.
If the want to keep factions interesting for the life of an expansion, rewards need to be updated every content patch. Items need to the same level as the most current LFR gear. If it is the same level as the latest 5 man dungeon gear, there is really no reason at all to bother with grinding out the rep... well at least not for the gear.
What seems workable to me is more of a faction currency system, than a standings system. Raids give ~10000 currency, dailies give 10. (numbers from my backside .. someone would have to actually balance the idea properly). heroic 5 mans could give 100 as well.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I would like it if factions gave vanity rewards, for example a whole set of vanity wear so you could "dress" like them, mounts, pets, and fun things like that. I'm not a raider so I don't care about top level gear, but I might spend some time at max level working for a cool outfit that fits my character or a new pet, mount or trinket/toy that has fun effects. I'd prefer it, though, if it weren't such a grind. I think it would be better if you could earn rep for the faction by doing either: dungeons, battlegrounds, gathering/crafting a certain number of items, killing a certaIn amount of mobs or doing daily quests while wearing their tabard. That way you don't have to do the same thing every day, but could still earn rep. I get way too tired of doing the same thing repeatedly and can never finish the grind.
So just have what they already have atm but tweek it a bit? I like the idea of that. It is a shame that there is no housing in WoW like there is in EQ2. They could offer faction-based housing instances. Wouldn't it be cool if a tauren Druid, let's say, lived in a Sporregar mushroom house? A bit tight sure, but it is a pity there is nothing like that.
I like the idea of faction appearance gear too. Once again, EQ2 does that and there are faction titles you can purchase on deeds.
I would grind out faction when bored with dungeon instances and the usual dailies if Blizz added more fluff items.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Maybe I'm just getting too old for this kind of thing.
I didn't much care for factions in Vanilla, because they were a massive grind - remember when you had to have your AD trinket equipped just to be able to loot Scourge Stones? And when everyone wanted them? Plus, they offered next to no useful things for me. The few items that would have been useful were much too time-consuming to actually get (for what little boost they offered).
I warmed to the idea of faction grinding a bit more in TBC when there were Talbuks, Tabards and Netherdragons to get - Vanity items. The problem for me with WoW's vanity items is that most nowadays have a look I don't like or just recoloured models of mounts/pets otherwise much easier obtainable.
In WotLK, the whole faction idea fell apart for me. Either grind them with boring dailies for weeks, or run dungeons dozens of times (for the factions with a tabard available). Rewards were meagre, and factions had no impact on anything in the world. They were just little handwaves for access to one vendor. One vendor who might have one interesting item in the "Exalted" section, but most didn't even have that.
Cataclysm turned me off completely from liking WoW's faction mechanic when they futhered the grind mechanic (Hello Firelands!), but left the obtainable goods stagnant patch after patch. Oh, and all vanity rewards sucked.
Because factions are exactly that: One-shots that may be cool for a mount or tabard, but mostly aren't. Any stat equip will be obsolete by the next patch at the latest. So - do you do the boring grind, or do you do (more) fun things while you wait for the next content patch?
Garrett expresses a wish that old factions might be revived for a little something-something. To that I say: Please wake up, Garrett. We had the Cenarion Circle in Vanilla. When it could have been revived for BC, they created a new faction - the Cenarion Expedition. We had the Argent Dawn. When it could have been used for WotLK, it was abandoned and a new faction formed: The Argent Crusade.
They're insular little clubs, specific to a location in Azeroth and a content patch version. Because if you just could use your previously gained Rep with a faction in a new expansion - where would the time-sink be?
I recently decided to take the seven-day offer. Heck, I didn't even manage to place my new 'talents' and I was already bored out of my skull. I haven't even logged in since. MoP offers nothing new, nothing exciting. All I could think when I heard those serpent riders was "D'sparil" first, and "just what I needed, a new faction grind". In case the sarcasm doesn't translate: The first thought was by far the more exciting.
I just cant agree with you there, Garreth.
Faction grinding have always been the most boring grind to me in any MMO. I done it myself in games during the years but I frankly never enjoyed it no matter how good rewards they offer.
It is just lazy game development, since they can keep people buzy grinding almost nothing.
Dailies and faction grind are 2 thing that I wish would just dissapear from the genre.
This statement is how I see it and the only reason Blizzard have not done this (because it's an obvious thing to do) is laziness / saving money.
Right now, any factions that I'm not high with, waste of time gong back.
hell, why not just scale the stats to your level when you go to buy items- you get lifetime of good gear from a faction vendor to reward you for your efforts. That would be simple to do.
That's why the darkmoon faire is so popular i think. Other than heirlooms there's no "real" items to gain from doing thier quests, except trinkets. I go to Darkmoone Island and see at least 100 people there no matter what time of day it is. People are suckers for vanity items...I'm one of them, I got the max achievement for both mounts and pets already