Good and evil have been a hallmark of fantasy literature and games for quite some time now. Someone is always the hero and someone else is the villain. In more complex stories you’re not always sure who fits what mold and you often see it as an issue of perspective. Such is the case with the Horde vs Alliance. Is it really fair to say that the Horde is evil? What is the true evil here? I’ll tell you: the true evil is splitting players into two factions. This is a mechanic we simply do not need in a PvE focused MMORPG.
Creating divisions is a negative
MMORPG players are a divisive bunch as it is. They disagree on content type, play styles and classes all the time. Further separating them into side A vs side B just isn’t a smart move. This gives them more facets of the game to be upset about. Side A’s leveling areas are superior! Side B’s classes are over powered! A system of “us” vs “them” is created and I only see that as negative. By creating this forced separation developers also remove roughly half of a servers population as potential play partners. After all, no Alliance member can ever group with a Horde member. They can’t even speak the same language! All of these issues create less community and more animosity with little added value.
Developers also suffer when these type of divisions come into play. You will have to duplicate content. The Horde and Alliance each have to have their own quest lines and play areas to support them. For the most part these areas are unusable by the other side. I suspect this is why WoW expansions shifted to a single faction type system where either side can follow the same lines. From a players perspective, anything that isn’t on their side is just something they pay for that they could only potentially use. Considering how strained development time is it makes more sense to have all content shared and available without having to create a completely different character on another server.
EverQuest did it best
Yes, I said it. No, I don’t have rose colored glasses. EverQuest really did have the best “good vs evil” system that I have seen to date. Each race, class and deity contributed to a characters faction. That faction was not absolute, however. You could put in the effort to gain the acceptance of any city in Norrath over time. If you wanted to be a good dark elf shadow knight that was relatively possible! There were no artificial barriers either. Good and evil could group together, communicate and have a grand time! I miss factions! I miss not having artificial separation between myself and other players. In a PvP game like Warhammer Online sides make sense. In a game that focuses more on PvE it just doesn’t.
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The failure of a game like WoW having 2 sides is that the 2 sides were fairly meaningless. If, for example, the game had launched with a whole bunch of Battlegrounds-type PvP areas and not just open world PvP (ganking), the two sides wouldn’t feel so arbitrary. Sure, the original lore supported the idea of two sides, but at the game has progressed through the expansions, both sides are doing the same content and fighting for the same goals, only they can’t actually do it together. Lame.
Further, they both speak English fluently to each other in things like the Wrathgate cinematic, but there’s still an arbitrary division of chat channels and language for the players.
Lame.
I think there’s is a lot of potential in opposing factions that adds flavour to an MMO – but it really depends a lot on the implementation. I’d like to see games that let you chose a path of good or evil that influences your experiences in the game and adds an impact, but not in the way Blizzard has handled this in WoW.
horde vs alliance really never worked, not in outdoor PVP conflict and it also lacks any sort of impact and meaning for the world we play in. and I agree you’re killing the point when enemies cannot communicate: the language barrier creates more of a relationship you’d have with animals than one with an enemy you would hate and pursue with a passion.
I liked the way Ultima Online handled this by flagging people ‘red’ that chose to pursue the path of evil (player killers etc.), restricting some of their options (like entering towns) and enabling others to put up ‘bounties’ etc. when at the same time there was also clear benefits from going red. entire guilds would be create around such playstyles and ethos. I find this approach a lot more “authentic” and immersive for an MMO setting.
I’m not sure whether it’s worse to have two nominally warring factions unable to communicate/trade/group with each other (as in WoW) or to have said able to freely group, guild, and trade without a word as characters with obviously incompatible alignments /wave at each other in the guild hall (as in EQ2). EQ2 alignment is so cosmetic at this point that there’s no good reason NOT to just let everyone grind their way into every city they want to.
“Is it really fair to say that the Horde is evil?”
Yeah, I’m sure that the side aligning with undead intent on spreading their curse to others are simply “misunderstood”.
Anyway, I agree with the two factions being silly. The thing that disappointed me most about WoW when I started playing back in the day was the silly faction restrictions. I suspect that the original designers expected PvP to play a bigger role in the game than it did. It seemed that the factions were set aside for the large part in the last two expansions. From what I’ve read, there’s going to be more focus on the two sides fighting in Cataclysm, though. Personally, I don’t care. I don’t care for level-based PvP, so I don’t care about the silly rivalry.
I think EQ2 also did the differences fairly well. You could be either good or evil, and that influenced what classes you could pick. You could always defect to the other side if you wanted, and there were no grouping restrictions. Now, I think the way the “good” and “evil” sides were portrayed in EQ2 were a bit simplistic (really, who would choose to live in old Freeport?), but the setup was done well.
Hi Ferrel. I’ve taken the liberty to include your article in my current blogpost – http://raging-monkeys.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-wish-we-could-be-friends.html
regards, Syl =)
More of more PVP focused games are getting into like nation wars plus guild wars and all that goodies…Aika has 5 nations that constantly gank each other. I think…all your enemies are evil xd…
I personally like co-op PvE element of the MMORPG’s instead of killing all other players in PvP settings.