This topic has been incubating in my head for awhile now. Basically I feel we have reached a point where we have strayed so far from how cool factions used to be, and arrived at something that feels very much like busywork to keep us all pacified. I thought I would take a bit today to go into where we are currently with faction systems in modern MMOs, preface where we came from and propose some thoughts on where we should be moving towards.
State of the Grind
I will be the first to admit that I like earning faction. There is something gratifying about seeing those little numbers after you have pulled your mace out of the skull of a monster telling you that you just got a little friendlier with a cool group of NPCs. The concept of faction has been in place since the early MMOs, and has expanded to levels I would have never imagined back then.
Right now it feels like as a player there is a faction hidden behind almost everything, even when it doesn’t necessarily make sense. There is an inherit need for some of us, to max out all those little bars and unlock everything we can get by doing so. Where we currently are in the way this system works has become extremely formulaic.
The Company Store
Basically as a player you complete quests and or kill baddies for a specific NPC faction in the world. As you do more, you gain more of their currency known as “faction”. The faction system is traditionally divided into multiple tiers that have fuzzy little names, denoting how much these characters adore you. The reward at the end of the tunnel is access to the company store of sorts.
Usually in an NPC faction area there will be a special NPC called generally a Quartermaster. They have a treasure trove of items that can be purchased for currency, but each requires a certain level of standing with the NPCs. As you go up in faction the rewards get more and more tasty until usually at the very end there are some spiffy pre-raid epics glistening there for you to take.
The problem is, currently this is about all faction is worth. We complete these grinds, in order to get some baubles that we will ultimately outgrow far more quickly than we would hope. As a result, once you have finally achieved the pinnacle of this crawl the rewards often seem rather lackluster. The number of these faction grinds has increased exponentially in games, but instead of giving us more interesting things to do, they seem to all be stalled out in this formulaic model.
The Curious Case of Kael Drakkel
Thing is, the faction system used to mean a good deal more to the players. Over time we have regressed from a very vibrant and world changing model to the very simplistic formula of the quartermaster system that exists today. Ironically the game that had this very imaginative system was the grandfather of the current MMO genre, Everquest. I can give you numerous examples of imaginative and compelling uses of faction in this game, but without a doubt the one that stands out most in my mind is that of Kael.
Kael Drakkel was a mythic city on the continent of Velious, the second expansion. The entire city was populated by frost and storm giants, and as a result was scaled massively to fit their proportions. It was located smack dab in the middle of the land, situated between the Wakening Lands and Eastern Wastes sitting as the gateway to the higher level content.
To most players, this was a great raid zone, and killing giants here gave you faction with frost dwarves of Thurgadin. Killing the various giants also gave you the ability to get rare quest drops, that could be turned in with other items to produce a full set of raid worthy armor. As a result we spent many an hour hunting here, but every now and then I would see other player characters walking around freely inside the city. The fact that players could walk freely among these same giants that wanted to grind me to bits was a great puzzle.
I found out later that if a player so chose, they could abandon the normal faction path and choose to hunt the Dwarves of Thurgadin and several factions of Dragons, instead raising their faction with Kael Drakkel itself As a reward for this epic task, they gained access to similar armor quests, but even more important a friendly foothold in the middle of this dangerous continent. This gave them quick access to all the highest end content in the expansion while providing a safe haven to bank and shop.
There were many such examples of this, while I never ventured down the Kael path, I did complete a similar faction grind. Through killing the Kobolds of the Warrens I managed to raise my faction with the evil Shadowknights and Necromancers of Paineel, giving me access to venture in and out of the city like a full fledged citizen. My friend completed a similar path, that allowed his evil Iksar Monk to trade freely with the halflings of Rivervale. In both cases our hard work gave us access to content our races never would have allowed.
Remembering the Past
While I love the influx of quartermasters, and the goodies they offer, faction grinding should have far reaching effects than just unlocking trinkets. In the Everquest system, the players gained game changing effects allowing them access to new cities, new quests, and new game experiences. The current faction grind system just seems so lifeless and meaningless in comparison.
One of my biggest frustrations has been that when you gain faction, it has no real effect on your gameplay. I can remember being supremely frustrated in WoW upon encountering Alexstraza in Twilight Highlands, that she seemed to have no recollection of all the work your character performed helping her and the red dragonflight in Dragonblight. Instead of getting a nice bit of lore and flavor recounting all the help you had provided, I was “rewarded” with another lifeless set of quests.
Another big issue is that factions get created for no real reason. I can remember being frustrated when Burning Crusade was released, and all the work we had done for the Cenarion Circle meant nothing, because instead of using the same faction and rewarding players for past work we were handed yet another meaningless grind by calling the Outland faction the Cenarion Expedition. The same goes for the frustration of having both the Argent Dawn and Argent Crusade, but no real reason for them.
A Better Future
I think we have lost too much of the nuance that we mmo players used to have in the switch to the quartermaster model. What I want to see is in the future, our decisions as players have actual compelling results. Earning a purple bauble that you will replace all too soon is a boring use of faction, giving players access to entirely new areas of the game is an extremely exciting one.
One of the most interesting things I have seen in years was with the release of Everquest II. Players chose a race, which often times forced them into a factional path. Iksar and Dark Elves for example, will never be seen as “good races”. However if a player so wished, they could go through an interesting series of quests and very epically “betray” their home faction, essentially switching sides in the battle.
While fun, and offering more flexibility than many games gave the players I still feel it was tied down to a very artificial black and white factional wall. I realize the us versus them system, is in place for the most part to facilitate clean player versus player lines. However I believe faction systems would be far more enjoyable for the players if the lines were allowed to grey a bit.
As a traditional “light side” race, you might have in your travels managed to broker a trade route with the trolls for needed supplies. If you were a particularly noble dark elf, you might abandon the path of hatred and take up the path of justice as such befriending the “good” races. The players that play these games are made up of complex goals and ideals, so why shouldn’t the faction boundaries and alliances be equally complex.
I feel that by switching to this formula model we have arrived at over the years, and that each new game adopts a copy of, we have abandoned a rich tradition. My hope is that even the current game set can start to adopt a little more flavor and spread out a bit further from the cookie cutter us or them model. I am not expecting to get freeform factions for awhile, but it would be nice to have my actions unlock new game play options rather than just more grind. Only time will tell, but I feel that the current model needs to change.