Suggestion: Remove Cross Faction Features

[Albusturt]

Turtle WoW has gained more than sufficient population for each faction to sustain itself.
The original feeling of two big factions fighting each other has to be restored.
Collaboration between horde and alliance players has been only superficial and unnatural.
It is best to restore these factions to their original state as enemies and competitors instead of friends and collaborators. This will help restore the feeling of faction pride while encouraging making long-term friends in one's own faction by making same faction players less dispensable for dungeons and raids. It is only absurd when I write in general chat where a ganker is to ask for help from my own faction only to find out the same ganker is reading this chat and responding to it. It is mind boggling to find out you are in the same guild with the player who ganks you every chance. Utterly disappointing.
Also for roleplay which is prominent in Turtle-WoW, cross-faction is just an absurdity.

CAN BE DONE IN A FEW STEPS
1- Making an announcement of seperation.
2- Removing shared chat. Horde and Ally may not message each other or see other's messages.
3- Removing cross faction dungeons and raids.
4- (Optional) Removing cross faction Mail and AH. This can be kept as it is because I don't see many problems with it.

Edit: To the contrary of replies below, this post is decently based and serious.

[Ugoboom]

pretty decent troll post :)

[Fizzles]

this is clickbait lol

[Geojak]

#nochanges

[Jolikmc]

Hm! A very interesting read. Here's my two copper.

Personally, I feel that the Alliance-vs-Horde situation of the original World of Warcraft was largely there either for tradition or to encourage players to do player-vs-player activity. If you play through the quests of the game, the two are largely in a "cold war" state with a few minor ongoing incursions, here-or-there. There's no real Alliance-vs-Horde activity that drives one side to completely dominate the other. It's largely just land disputes or ongoing incursions. (Ashenvale comes to mind. Thanks, Grommash.) By no means does one side welcome the other fully into their territory. Lore-wise, this would be limited to diplomats who would be under very strict scrutiny due to the mistakes of certain individuals who refuse to let go of the past. (Daelin Proudmoore.) But of course, game-wise, it's kill-on-sight, so…

In any case, in World of Warcraft, it's generally up to the player if they want to participate in player-vs-player activity, be it with duels against fellow faction mates or all-out deathmatches / land wars against the opposing faction. There will always be some people who prefer "the old ways" or "earlier times" where the Alliance of Stormwind and the Orcish Horde were at each other throats. But, this server takes place in the time where Thrall's New Horde were still giving peace a chance. From a lore perspective, it just doesn't make sense to have the two factions in all-out war without there being a very good reason.
(Ie, Garrosh Hellscream going nuts or Dark Lady Sylvanas overstepping her boundaries.)

Now, I'd like to address some of the specific things said in the original post.

• Turtle WoW has gained more than sufficient population for each faction to sustain itself.
  Are you sure? Certainly, you would think 9,810* players with a rough ratio of two Horde players to every three Alliance players "would be enough", but how many of those players still play on a daily basis? I normally see anywhere from 500 to 1,000 players on at any given time. How many players is "enough" for each faction to "sustain itself"?
  (* According to a single census source from Turtle WoW Census as of February 5th, 2022.)
   
• Collaboration between horde and alliance players has been only superficial and unnatural.
  Clearly, you've never heard of the Cenarion Circle or the Argent Dawn. Or, you know, "The Battle of Mount Hyjal"? The Burning Legion is still out there, somewhere, and even "lesser" threats like The Undead Scourge still pose a threat. Both sides should be ready, should something happen.
   
• It is only absurd when I write in general chat where a ganker is to ask for help from my own faction only to find out the same ganker is reading this chat and responding to it.
  Oddly, I kind of agree with this point, in a way. This hasn't happened yet, but I imagine that some of the… "less mature" players might take exception to being "called out" in LocalDefense and begin slinging insults or spamming LocalDefense or World chat. Personally, I don't want a situation like that happening. It just causes unnecessary turmoil for some players. This is exactly why Blizzard limited tangible communication to the player's given faction.
  
  Inversely, I suppose it could add to the gameplay experience if the "ganker" knew they were being actively hunted? I dunno. I don't engage in world PvP, myself.
  (I'm just the victim of it, on occasion. (,: )
   
• Also for roleplay which is prominent in Turtle-WoW, cross-faction is just an absurdity.
  (This is the one I feel most strongly about.)
  I genuinely don't understand why you would say this. If anything, the ability to communicate across factions would be helpful to roleplayers. They no longer need interpreters, or to use some form of external communication to communicate across factions. Now, I will admit that it's a little disappointing that "Orcish", as a language, seems to have completely vanished. But on the other hand, the "Common" language of Azeroth is one that literally every sentient species on the planet should know how to speak. Gnolls and kobolds speak some form of it, as does the very rare murloc[citation needed], yet the members of the Horde can't – or more likely won't? That always struck me as odd. But, again… it was a precaution against abusive players.
  Then again, Blizzard did occasionally goof up and have some NPCs speak a "language 0", which resulted in everyone being able to understand them…

In any case… while I do understand some of your points, I also feel that there's no real benefit to your proposal. And I don't mean "right now". I mean that I don't see a benefit at any point. I'd love to hear more from you, though! If you can make a really good case for this and convince people like me that this is a good thing, there's a chance it might happen! This server is, by a large, a community project, after all. (:

[Redmagejoe]

Please quit feeding the troll.

[Jolikmc]

Okay, but…

Edit: To the contrary of replies below, this post is decently based and serious.

Albusturt says this post is serious, so I took it seriously. I also saw no "trolling" aside from the replies this suggestion received. I also took a second to check Albusturt's other posts. I saw no trolling there, either.

You've gotta give people the benefit of the doubt, sometimes. Otherwise, the community becomes one of exclusivity which leads to a lot of hostility. And no one wants hostility, now do they? (:

[Redmagejoe]

My mistake then. If he is earnest then...

Never implement this suggestion unless you want to kill the population. There are dozens of vanilla servers that offer an undiluted vanilla experience (most of which don't survive the year, for reasons I'll soon address) if people want to play there. The fact of the matter is that people who are playing here do so for a reason. Multiple reasons in fact. Part of that is an effectively doubled population and sense of community, among other reasons. I guarantee you that you will see a not-insignificant portion of the population jump ship if you were to arbitrarily segregate them yet again.

Thus, ultimately I don't care what your personal, subjective reasoning is for "why it should" happen. Objectively speaking, it is a bad idea for the server as a whole. We've started gaining traction with population growth because of the divergences from OG vanilla we offer. Let's not start tempting fate by removing things that draw players in.

[Vociferous]

The large population is what's keeping people here. Food for thought.

[Karpfend]

The large population is what's keeping people here. Food for thought.

Or maybe the years of development, slow growth and expansion of the game and unique features brought players in gradually and keeps them engaged.

OP seems to have a wrong picture of the community. We built friendships over the borders and over the years. There would be no reason for me to play, if not for those and I know I am not alone with this.

[Bellybutton]

Also for roleplay which is prominent in Turtle-WoW, cross-faction is just an absurdity.

Absolutely not. Part of the reason roleplaying on Turtle WoW is growing right now is because of cross-faction interactivity. It adds a completely different dimension to roleplay and expands the pool of people to potentially play with vastly. Horde-only RP, as it currently is, is very infrequent in the sense that it mainly only happens within guilds and small circles, thus a lot of random, walk-up RP that happens with Horde players is between Horde and Alliance players. This is not an absurd notion. Cross-faction communication doesn't necessarily imply that the two characters are friends or allies. It just means that two players can roleplay together when they previously couldn't have. Lots, and lots of roleplayers have written elaborate stories and interpersonal relationships between both factions that would be completely and pointlessly severed.

Take the RP guild I'm currently in; the Blacktooth Grin for example, an RP-PvP guild that usually kills Alliance players on sight, with most "ganks" being done in character and many of us roleplaying with the Alliance we kill; An entire dimension of our roleplay on Turtle would be lost, and from the Alliance perspective we'd just guys who gank people; a lot of the reason the guild's gained such a notorious name here is because the Alliance can understand us and know what we're about.

And, in just general Rp altogether, you need to keep in mind that in Vanilla WoW, the Horde and Alliance are not strictly at war. These factions are competitors, akin to the Cold War. Your character is generally an individual with their own thoughts and beliefs. There is nothing preventing your character in RP to team up with an adventurer from the opposite faction in order to fight there way out of being encircled by hostile Yetis in the Alterac Mountains. There should be nothing preventing your character from getting smashed and having a bar brawl with the opposite faction in Booty Bay after an argument gone south.

Even from a lore perspective, separating communications between both factions DOES NOT make sense. The language, Common, isn't strictly a Human language or even an Alliance language. It's a commonly spoken language understood to some degree by the vast majority of intelligent races on Azeroth. You can interact with plenty of NPC quest-givers of the opposite faction's races even in Vanilla because they're speaking Common. Why shouldn't a Forest Troll, who's been at constant odds with the humans and elves for centuries, know common, when something as dumb as a Kobold, Gnoll or a Murloc can speak Common? Why shouldn't Orcs know Common, despite the vast majority of Orcs on Azeroth in Vanilla having been enslaved by humans for 20 years? Forsaken canonically speak and understand Common but it's not represented in Vanilla for gameplay purposes.

The only reason the Horde and Alliance can't understand eachother in actual Vanilla/Classic is purely for mechanical and gameplay reasons. Having the factions not understand each other goes against the lore and hurts roleplay possibilities.

[Komodor]

Also Vanilla Plus had 1k+ pop and removed cross faction cos of that. Once done they lost all pop. They reverted the change but it was too late. Now its like 100-200 ppl in there

[Velite]

Pvp isn't everything. Sometimes people raid you know.

[Rezgar]

I suggest for Turle devs to consider this suggestion again, as population has grown even further since. The original poster's rationale is still relevant.

[Jolikmc]

Cross-faction features weren't enabled purely for convenience of dungeons or group questing. It was also a part of the roleplay-oriented environment that the original server was founded on. There's hardly any reason to remove it as players don't have to have cross-faction interactions if they don't want to.

Inversely, cross-faction features are going to be competely disabled in the new EU PvP realm, so the original poster, and those who agreed with them, get their wish.

Everybody wins. 'Nuff said.

[Harkus]

If xfaction is removed, I quit, it is one of the foundational philosophies of Turtle... it is great for RP (love getting mugged when using Warmode), makes finding groups faster, lets you play with everybody, makes sense lore-wise... plus like Jolik said, it is gone on the PvP server anyway, no need to remove it on the RP server where nobody PvPs anyway

[Elisleris]

No. Keep cross faction

[Rezgar]

I for one don't want to move to a PvP server to get rid of x-faction, for me the x-faction conflict is RP. Having meaningful separation and healthy tension between groups, and comradery within the same group. Currently the faction concept is reduced to using different races and cities and faction identity (Paladins/Shamans) is washed out.

Since many people seem to enjoy xfaction, while others don't, I'd like to see it as a glyph. E.g "Glyph of the Diplomat" that lets you enter in partes, raids, guilds with the opposite faction as well as see their messages translated in chats.

[Foobs]

pretty decent troll post :)

+1

[Kefke]

LMAO

[Anadrol]

No xD

[Klyvarn]

I totally agree with this. It has always been alliance against the horde, they are not friends. Totally kills the vibe when you join a dungeon party with guys from the opposite faction. Especially when they kill your questgiver.

[Wilczan]

I agree. It's World of Warcraft, not Holding Each other Handscraft.

[Drubarrymooer]

lol. They just rolled a fresh pvp server for that. Go there. Don't disrupt the cross faction community that's been around for 5+ years.

[Reploidrocsa]

Nope.

[Harkus]

I agree. It's World of Warcraft, not Holding Each other Handscraft.

The Horde and Alliance make war on plenty of other things as well