Why do many MMOs have a faction system?

[Terminate421]

The alliance comes off as racist pricks a lot of the time .

So does the horde, a lot of the hatred stems from Warcraft 1 and 2 when the orcs came out of nowhere and started murdering everyone and then were defeated and locked up in wc2. It's not exactly right to say the Alliance's wrong and that's it.

In WC 1 & 2 The orcs were under the control of demons. If the humans fell under the same influence they too would be rampaging lunatics. Once they got free of the demonic powers, they left the FREAKING continent in an attempt to demonstrate a desire for non-aggression. So, yeah, the orcs have done a whole lot to try and separate themselves from the demonic influence that once ruled them.... The closest we could come in the real world, would be still hating Germany for letting Hitler take over... But most people are pretty cool with Germany nowadays....Good beer. So yeah, Alliance do come off as racist pricks a lot of the time... Keep in mind, the Horde didn't create Goldshire.... That was Alliance.
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I guess I'm late to the Warcraft party because I'm on the Alliance side, while both seem to be just trying to get by and constantly end up in conflict, it's up to events like the Lichking and Gilneas to make me realize that the Horde are merely a giant axe that hits whatever the fuck it wants, sometimes it lands on what it wants, other times it just makes a lot of noise and looks stupid.

Though to be fair, I have at least 2 level 90's on each side.

 

[Isshiresshi]

The short answer is PvP.

It also creates the mentality of us against "them". So whatever you do, it always have a reason: "We cannot allow them to...", "We must get there first..." etc. There is a dynamic competitive going on. The PvE world is already planned out for you, but how far "the others" have come or how strong they've become (which is often messaured in PvP as gear) helps building up tension as you progress in the World..... of Warcraft.

 

[Benny Blanco]

As some have said, it helps build up a viable PVP experience that can be put into play in the open game world or in battlegrounds.

Otherwise you get weird attempts to rationalize the PVP content like in Champions online where it was all explained away as the Superhero olympics.

Outside of PVP it also allows for a certain degree of similarity in the people you play with. Which might sound a bit elitist...but it is what it is and in the end a tried and true Horde player isn't going to enjoy the Alliance experience quite as much.
(As evidenced by my small army of forgotten lvl 20 alliance toons.)

Lastly it gives people a team to root for. Which does add an element of playability outside the core mechanics.
I may not need the bonus supplied by owning the open world pvp objectives...but I don't want any Alliance players to get it.

Basically this. Especially the last bit. Having factions means you have "teams", "tribes", "nations", whatever. You create an other in opposition to yourself and it gives total strangers a shared identity, a common foe and therefore a reason to work together outside of guilds etc.

Nice User Name, BTW.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Because WoW did it, and the MMO industry is all headlong in trying to not become an expensive failure.

 

[synobal]

They should just realize that players will find a reason to fight regardless. Just give them something they can fight over. Eve online I think it does it right. The four nations, have reasons to fight each other and are allied or at war with the other nations but it is utterly up to the player if they want to engage in this or not. Then the player can pick what ever side they want regardless of their starting nation. Oh and of course a ton of pvp happens completely outside of the factional warfare system as well.

All the factional warfare, or actually the warfare system does at all is just formalize the pvp. Pvp can happen outside of formalized and declared wars in fact a majority of the pvp in the game does. Devs don't have to give people a reason to fight they will do it regardless.

 

[Eddie the head]

The closest thing I could find to an actual timeline said that WC2 Ended in year 8 WC3 Started in year 25 Modern WoW is existing in year 39, So yeah, at that point it is sour grapes...

http://www.wowwiki.com/Timeline_%28unofficial%29

Sour grapes? What? That doesn't make sense. I think you just used the wrong expression. Sour grapes is when you pretend to not care about something you want. Anyway 39 years and plenty of ways to confirm your biases seams pretty human to me. Athens and Sparta had a thing for a few hundred years.

 

[MorganL4]

The closest thing I could find to an actual timeline said that WC2 Ended in year 8 WC3 Started in year 25 Modern WoW is existing in year 39, So yeah, at that point it is sour grapes...

http://www.wowwiki.com/Timeline_%28unofficial%29

Sour grapes? What? That doesn't make sense. I think you just used the wrong expression. Sour grapes is when you pretend to not care about something you want. Anyway 39 years and plenty of ways to confirm your biases seams pretty human to me. Athens and Sparta had a thing for a few hundred years.

Wow, I didn't realize this thread was still going... Maybe I did use the wrong expression, but my original point still stands..... If you are still angry with a nation over something they did 30 years prior, you need to get counseling. I don't think that many people in 1975 really hated Germans all that much...... Especially when other threats became much more real ( The US had the USSR and WoW had the Lich King) The difference with WoW is both Alliance AND Horde had just as much to fear from Arthas as the other did..... The enemy of my enemy thing? Also, Id doubt that most of the people playing Alliance today even played WC1 or 2....

 

[Eddie the head]

[
Wow, I didn't realize this thread was still going... Maybe I did use the wrong expression, but my original point still stands..... If you are still angry with a nation over something they did 30 years prior, you need to get counseling. I don't think that many people in 1975 really hated Germans all that much...... Especially when other threats became much more real ( The US had the USSR and WoW had the Lich King) The difference with WoW is both Alliance AND Horde had just as much to fear from Arthas as the other did..... The enemy of my enemy thing? Also, Id doubt that most of the people playing Alliance today even played WC1 or 2....

Fun historical fact WW2 didn't end until a few years ago. Yeah, Japan was in a state of "War" with Russia for close to 70 years. Also a lot of people hold a grudge against Israel, and the U.S, for reasons I will not get into. What's that 65 years? The fact that they shouldn't hold grudge is completely irreverent. They do. If you want to right off one side as "raciest pricks" fine but people and nations are much more complex then that.

Besides are you telling me that The Horde, or just groups the common man would associate with them, has done nothing in those 37 years to provoke any hostile feelings? Now I didn't pay much mind to the story when I played WoW, but I find that extremely hard to believe.

 

[MorganL4]

[
Wow, I didn't realize this thread was still going... Maybe I did use the wrong expression, but my original point still stands..... If you are still angry with a nation over something they did 30 years prior, you need to get counseling. I don't think that many people in 1975 really hated Germans all that much...... Especially when other threats became much more real ( The US had the USSR and WoW had the Lich King) The difference with WoW is both Alliance AND Horde had just as much to fear from Arthas as the other did..... The enemy of my enemy thing? Also, Id doubt that most of the people playing Alliance today even played WC1 or 2....

Fun historical fact WW2 didn't end until a few years ago. Yeah, Japan was in a state of "War" with Russia for close to 70 years. Also a lot of people hold a grudge against Israel, and the U.S, for reasons I will not get into. What's that 65 years? The fact that they shouldn't hold grudge is completely irreverent. They do. If you want to right off one side as "raciest pricks" fine but people and nations are much more complex then that.

Besides are you telling me that The Horde, or just groups the common man would associate with them, has done nothing in those 37 years to provoke any hostile feelings? Now I didn't pay much mind to the story when I played WoW, but I find that extremely hard to believe.

Last I checked, Thrall made about three separate overtures towards the humans to attempt a peace treaty, every time his attempts at peace were thwarted, either by racist humans in the Azerothian government ( See General Proudmore) Or some third party that would stand to benefit from a continued conflict..... At least The Horde is TRYING....

Anywho, we seem to have gotten WAY off topic, this is supposed to be a thread about the pros and cons of having a faction system in an MMO.

 

[Eddie the head]

Last I checked, Thrall made about three separate overtures towards the humans to attempt a peace treaty, every time his attempts at peace were thwarted, either by racist humans in the Azerothian government ( See General Proudmore) Or some third party that would stand to benefit from a continued conflict..... At least The Horde is TRYING....

Anywho, we seem to have gotten WAY off topic, this is supposed to be a thread about the pros and cons of having a faction system in an MMO.

Irrelevant conclusion, they tried to make peace doesn't mean they gave them a good reason to think it would work, or that it was sincere. But whatever I am assuming this is some part of your "personal identity" so yeah no argument can pierce that. I'm done, whatever it's just a game.

 

[Scarim Coral]

It's pretty much given a purpose on why people should fight against one another aka PVP.

I mean having people fighting against each other in a team seen rather pointless when it come to story/ lore side. I mean while you may find it fun kicking other people arse but it serve no purpose in the game story or lore.

Sure Guild Wars 2 doesn't have proper faction compared to Guild Wars Faction (no nation to under for) but you are fighting for your Sever when it come to the whole World vs world vs world aspect of that game.

Heh, the amount of time I seen people saying "Kurzuck" and "Suxon" (the factions Kurzick and Luxon) in Guild Wars 2 made my eye roll so many time. (Why get to worked up over a fricitional nations?)

 

[Altorin]

it's simpler.

Sure, Everquest's faction system is far more robust (and honestly the best evar imo - Eve's comes close in terms of design but I think everquest nailed it harder) but it's ridiculously convoluted and separates players based on their actions not by some design choice you can measure.

Plus, Warcraft did it, and whatever warcraft did is gold, right?

right?

...right?

 

[chuckdm]

cause WoW did it, that's why.

Basically 98% this. The entire MMO genre is about one of two things:

1) Being WoW+
2) Being un-WoW

The second type of MMO never makes it a year, and the first type has a 50% chance of making it 2 years, so basically everyone tries to be "WoW but with feature a, b, and c improved" and each chips away another 2%-3% of WoW's market.

That said, perhaps you're looking at this wrong. I play both Planetside 2 and The Secret World. TSW is heavily PvE, and allows you to PvE in groups with other players, even from different factions, so long as you don't do a faction-specific mission (and even then they can help, you just can't share the mission with them.) This, combined with the fact that there are no faction-specific abilities means that you should basically pick whichever faction you think looks the coolest because, in practice, they really, really don't matter. Even in PvP they're all pretty equally balanced, population-wise.

So the trick here, at least to me, seems to be not so much to find a game without factions, but rather to find a game where the factions are ignored for 90% of the gameplay. As long as it doesn't create barriers to teamwork during PvE, factions really aren't a bad idea. It's just the WoW version of factions that sucks. From what I've read, the Guild Wars model works like TSW and everyone seems to like it, too.

 

[Gatx]

The short answer is PvP.

Actually that's pretty much the long answer too.

It doesn't even need to be good vs evil, they just want a red vs blue setup to hang their large scale PvP, and world events on.

I'd like to see more games go down the route of not having that sort of setup, ideally a more PvE-oriented game. That's really why I've never been interested in Guild Wars, as it's almost entirely PvP focussed.

In my mind that only works with open world PVP, but it's pointless when most MMOs have instanced arenas that you queue up for. If they're going to arbitrarily put you in a combat scenario, there's no need for factions to explain it. Just literally have a gladitorial arena.

Also you realize the PvP and PvE in Guild Wars are almost literally two separate games right, especially 2. A lot of the touted "revolutionary" features were for the PvE sections.

 

[Xarathox]

The short answer is PvP.

Actually that's pretty much the long answer too.

It doesn't even need to be good vs evil, they just want a red vs blue setup to hang their large scale PvP, and world events on.

I'd like to see more games go down the route of not having that sort of setup, ideally a more PvE-oriented game. That's really why I've never been interested in Guild Wars, as it's almost entirely PvP focussed.

Pretty much this.

However, a lot of PvE only players use the system to ease the burden of trying to find parties to run a dungeon/do raids. There are quite a few MMOs I've played that didn't feature any solo-able instances unless you were well above the level range, which the loot is pretty much useless to you since low level gear/mats have practically no value due to being too common, or you're one of the few who obtained the godly gear that allows you to shrug off high end bosses. Even then, most of the games I've played required at least more than half of a party just to even open the instance, which was a way to make quick easy coin/gold since all you had to do was stand around charging a small fee to do it.