Remember When: Factions!

Staring off with this screenshot. I like to see the Horde get it’s balls back. It’s time to raise your axe arm high and start kicking some ass.

This is a short gripe. Remember when there were only a few Neutral Factions that mattered? Remember when grinding rep had a purpose and there weren’t 50 million carebear prissy grinds?

Burning Crusade, yeah the undeniable world of rep. grinding. I think this is where a lot of the PVP unrest came from. Let’s go bit by bit shall we? Pre-BC the major factions you had to get reputation with were the Ardent Dawn for anti-scourge stuffs, Cenarion Hold for anti-bug stuffs, and Zandalar Tribe for anti-Hakkar stuffs. Ultimately each was indeed open to both Horde and Alliance because the threat was general and real, the scourge was all over the place, bad trolls were resurrecting the evil flying pretty bird snake Hakkar, and the Quiraji bug race in Silithus was threatening to take over all of Kalimdor (and then the world muahaha).

All my joking aside there really wasn’t much in the way of reputation grinds pre-BC, that was a good thing as (to me anyway) it gave weight and importance to those factions. The Ardent Dawn was actively fighting the bad guys, the Zandalar Tribe is as ancient as the Troll race itself and the Hand of Rastakhan has been fighting the Soulflayer Hakkar for eons. The druids of Cenarion Hold have also been keeping watch against the evil Aquir empire and with the gates of Ahn’Quiraj opened that ancient evil was set loose upon the world.

Fast forward to Burning Crusade. Horde and Alliance apparently have forgotten that they hate each other (with good reason) and now are holding hands and might as well be in the same raid group fighting against demons. I don’t get this, matter of fact it’s stupid. Here we go faction by faction, zone by zone, and I’m looking at things from a PVP Realm point of view here. This isn’t your typical MMO universe and there IS a war going on, PVE as a prime precedent (although awesome for some) makes no fucking sense to me in the Warcraft canon.

Hellfire Peninsula: Two factions. Honor Hold & Thrallmar. Both offer the same quests (almost) with pretty much the same rewards for building reputation. You both compete to fight the ultimate boss of the area, Magtheridon, but you never fight each other… ever.

Zangarmarsh: Joy. Another Cenarion faction. There are billions of druid players but I guess we need another camp and another druid faction grind. Guards kill you if you PVP anywhere near, and there is no flight path. I repeat, stupidest damn thing, no flight path in the (super original name) Cenarion Expedition. They (fucking hippies they are) are mad at the Naga (used to be Night Elves, hypocritical biggots I swear) because the Florida Everglades marsh is being drained. Both horde & alliance have to kill lady Vashj but must never fight each other. There’s a PVP objective in the middle of the zone that does jack shit. If you die and your faction controls the graveyard you still won’t fucking spawn there. The MOST you get out of this is a minor buff that’s usually gone in minutes because after some time the nodes reset to neutral and some asshat claims one but not the other and everything is screwed for a while.

Nagrand: POTENTIAL FOR GREATNESS. Two rival factions that pretty much SCREAM Horde vs Alliance. An FFA city in the middle of the zone! With bombing runs and guards and dangerous terrain and WAR! No. Nobody fights there, doing the daily quest that was supposed to get people to fight there is damn near impossible since MAYBE you’ll run into 2-3 enemy players hanging around Halaa per day. Here is the best part. Fighting in Halaa or capturing Halaa does NOT give reputation with Mag’har or Kurenai. WHAT THE BALLS!?

Blade’s Edge Mountains: No factions here at all. More carebear crap where alliance & horde hold hands and fight demons and dragons to save smart ogres that are high on crystal meth. We’re approaching tom-foolery.

Netherstorm: This is the ONLY factionned zone that makes sense. Neutral by nature goblins have a town. You can’t fight in there. Do quests to help the goblins make more MONEYS! Then you meet the space mummies. The Consortium makes sense to me. Intergalactic smugglers and privateers, space pirates. Traders and tinkerers always looking to make a quick buck and gain some power. The future of goblins if you will. Doing quests for them regardless of faction makes sense. Good job. Still not allowed to PVP though else guards go bat shit bonkers and kill you.

Terrokar Forest: We have just lost cabin pressure. SHATTRATH CITY. Dear lord, what have you done. I don’t mind a sanctuary city where you cannot fight. I do mind stupid ass Aldor vs. Scyer garbage. You cannot go back without undergoing PAINFUL and GRUELING repetitious quests and they’re open to both Horde & Alliance. More neutrality, less faction identity, we’re now one big grey blob. Blizzard was successful in adding the dynamics of horde vs alliance (aldor/scryer) WITHIN the already existing horde vs alliance. Try bring an Aldor and step foot on the Scryer part of town. Sha’tar, another reputation grind where you have to go up into the Tempest Keep deals and kill aliens, demons, and elves. Sha’tari Skyguard. ANOTHER neutral faction where you have to help the Skexis birdmen from the Dark Crystal kill the evil Skexis god in the Skettis area… but you know that’s minor compared to the 90% more quests you get for this faction back in ogretown Blade’s Edge helping the ogres more. Tom-follery has just been breached. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

Aside from all those reputations, now you have the Lower City. The slums trashy poor refuge “I got 5 kids to feed man!” part of town. The ghetto. Yeah get Ghetto rep for the ghetto NPCs fighting in the bombed out ghetto instances. Come on man are you serious? Yet another key I gotta buy, another faction I have to grind? That’s 5 factions in one central location and every single one is buddy buddy. Moving along…

Shadowmoon Valley: Nothing. Same factions we all know and love except now you can team up with the opposite faction (horde/alliance) to save the netherwing dragonflight. It was really cool when I was the 2nd person on Eredar to get one. It’s really crappy now that everybody and their mother has one and it’s not unique in the slightest, at the same time you can’t even get the COOL looking one unless you completely and utterly devote your gaming LIFE to perfecting your arena game or having the right composition and skill level (gear) to be part of the few Gladiator/Merciless Gladiator/Vengeful Gladiators that get the armored drake.

It’s not even that hard to grind this rep, it’s just pain staking. Hell my Alliance Draenei was almost exalted with every faction before I came to my senses and returned to the Horde. It’s like leveling fishing from 1-375 about 12 times over. I’m not even going to get into the Keepers of Time faction or the Violet Eye. One has all the reason in the world to have you not PVP and yet guards don’t aggro if you engage in all out fucking melee nearby; and the other has 5 NPCs TOTAL devoted to their cause.

Good news after all this excess bullshit, Blizzard learned their lesson. Heroics in WotLK won’t need a key to get into only max level. Wearing a tabard of X faction will give you rep for them if you wear it while you raid. Factions will rewards A LOT more stuff now making it worth while to actually grind rep with them. Most new factions seem to make a lot more sense or are funny enough to not be a pain in my ass.