Roleplay Modes

[Kazgrim]

The possibility to join ‘evil’ factions such as the scarlet crusade, scourge, and burning legion has been a frequent suggestion and desire of a subset of players, specifically those interested in the roleplay opportunities that arise from such a feature. Being that we are a RP-PvE realm, and have implemented a number of alternative modes such as hardcore and mortal, the concept I suggest is a new ‘roleplay’ mode.

The pitfalls of joining evil factions from a lore and game mechanical pov limit us as developers to make them functional factions that players can gain reputation with, since they simply were designed by blizzard to be the bad guys you fight. Going against this grain is problematic since the game revolves around this concept of you vs. them. Therefore, a solution to this is a new alternative mode, a roleplay mode, where the player can become friendly with a specific faction while costing several tradeoffs.

Note, this mode is purely for roleplay purposes, for characters / alts that do not intend to raid or experience the majority of PvE or PvP content. It’s designed for a specific subset of players who are interested in the roleplaying opportunities that arise from being treated as a friendly protagonist of an otherwise evil and hostile faction.

The way this mode would work is:
-The player becomes friendly to the specific faction of the mode
--Ex: Scourge mode  Friendly to Scourge
-The player cannot group with players outside his mode
--This prevents the player from running dungeons and helping players outside their mode from cheesing dungeons
---Disable them from entering dungeons may also work
-The player cannot trade or send mail with players outside their mode
-The player cannot use the auction house
--This is meant to discourage chest farming,

[Starkobjekt]

Can't you just make them unable to loot chests? Like making the chest disappear just by trying to open them.

Edit: Maybe you could put dungeons to RP mode and all the mobs are friendly in the dungeon but nothing can be gained from the dungeon. Quests, buffs, chests and all that is out of the question and the roleplayers could have an event in there!

[Kazgrim]

Can't you just make them unable to loot chests? Like making the chest disappear just by trying to open them.

Edit: Maybe you could put dungeons to RP mode and all the mobs are friendly in the dungeon but nothing can be gained from the dungeon. Quests, buffs, chests and all that is out of the question and the roleplayers could have an event in there!

That would be one solution.


Also, these modes could be enabled via talking to a specific NPC. For example a human player could go to the scarlet emissary in Stormwind and request to join, or a player could travel to the plaguelands to join the scourge.

[Sandtusk]

So if I understand correctly:
1) I make a troll character (horde)

2) I head over to Tanaris and through either custom quest/item I gain the ability to be come a sand troll.

3) I complete the quest/ use the item and then become a member of the sand trolls (Sandfury), possibly changing my skin to the sand troll skin.

4) I can now enter Zul Farak and join the voodoo Woodstock rave party, but cannot loot any chests or kill any npc. Also I won’t appear in the same instance of any normal adventurers looking to do the dungeon (as in I cannot help kill the players or heal spam the bosses)

5) Also since I’m now a Sandfury troll, I’m hated by all factions and can no longer use any facilities, towns, trainers, flight masters, etc until I deactivate the “Evil RP” buff/glyph on my toon.

Sounds like a great idea for instanced evil player housing and chillin like villains with the worst of them (if I’m understanding). I

[Kazgrim]

yea, pretty much. not sure if wed make the player hostile to all other factions though. but if we can that would be interesting.

[Sandtusk]

Ah ok, then I wonder if the guards could be made to /glares and /rude evil players when entering major faction cities. There’s already that “NPC doesn’t like you” notice that pops up time to time, certainly it be an interesting time trying to make trade with good players when the townsfolk won’t even look at you (might have to exclude trainers, or throw some neutral ones in the neutral towns)

[Kazgrim]

That would be a great addition to the mode, very immersive.

[Laurent]

Throwing this idea in -

Maybe you could add trainers into dungeons. For players not playing with the roleplay mode, they would just be normal, random trash mobs, or neutral mobs tucked away somewhere so they wouldn't be so glaringly obvious. For players with the roleplay mode, say, you joined the Sandfury Trolls - you could go to Zul Farak to train abilities etc.

This comes with a few problems like humans who join the Scarlet Crusade would have to go all the way over to Tirisfal to train sadly though.
Maybe there could be custom encampments for certain factions though? A hub for RP mode characters?
All in all I love this idea, there's just a lot to consider haha.

[Kazgrim]

Those are great ideas. Vendors and trainers would easily blend in with other hostile mobs to players not in the roleplay mode. Lets just remember that this mode is more about roleplaying than actually alternative methods of leveling, which is why if it were implemented you should consider enabling it at level 60 or on a character you do not intend to progress.

[Mayson]

Well, the scourge clearly has their own faction page on this server, so something might be possible here.

[Augustfenix85]

I like these ideas, sounds like fun

[Romanov131]

Any progress or/ comment by the Devs on this?
I think Kazgrim's idea is great and all of us would love to see it implemented.

[Sinrek]

There's literally only one problem left to make this go live; abuse.

[Jekka]

From the original post by Kazgrim, he seems to just want this mode to be a purely cosmetic feature.

At most there could be quests made for players only after joining evil factions to obtain certain faction armors/weapons.

So long as “evil” players can’t intrude on normal adventurers in dungeons, the risk of abuse seems small.