Old Habits die hard

An interesting discussion came up the other day in my guild, over faction interaction.
There was a bit of outrage and unrest over a suggestion about working with Sith based guilds to create a better experience. I was informed that our guild had already been "black listed" by some TOR guilds and labelled un trust worthy because they know i talk and interact with guilds of the Sith faction.
IN an attempt to explain it was not about lying, cheating, leaking or selling out our faction but making something better there was still much concern over the possibility of seeing the guild excluded due to wanting to work with all guilds regardless of the faction.

It was interesting to see and no matter how you went about explaining the intention there was still a great fear that working with those out side your faction was evil... It was a bit annoying, but a good eye opener in that attitudes die hard.

Wow... Hard to believe that the line between character and player is so blurred. I understand that when you're in game, especially on a RP server, that talking to the other side would be discouraged, but to be against talking to another person outside of the game regardless of which side they will play on is taking the factions to extremes... At least that's what I think. I guess I like to experience both sides of the coin, every mmo I have played I've had characters on both factions. Did it in WoW, SWG, FFXI (3 factions there). Sure there was the potential for abuse, but I didn't look at it that way and I knew many who did the same thing. I like experiencing ALL of the content that the game offers. Maybe I'm in the minority here.

What was interesting was that apparently in doing so in whatever nature certain guilds have made a note of it to potentially not work with us because of seeing me do this

Darka wrote:

What was interesting was that apparently in doing so in whatever nature certain guilds have made a note of it to potentially not work with us because of seeing me do this

If their ability to seperate game from real life is that tentative when the game is not even out yet perhaps they werent people you wanted to interact with anyways?

I had not heard of the guilds mentioned, regardless it was still strange to be black listed for doing little to nothing with said guilds, it was never about selling out the faction or having a tea party

You will tend to find Darka the guilds that do that usually have a very immature leadership. I have seen it in MMO's in the past and these type of black lists never last, lol.

I find it kind of sad in all honesty that people can take a game so seriously that they would be willing to play a game and NEVER speak to someone of the opposing faction based on some stupid notion that there is a remote chance you might want to sell out your faction.....

Honestly even on PVP servers where this kind of train of thought might make even the smallest semblance of sense is still stupid in my book. I have been around in games where people give away your position to the opposing faction, and you know what? Who cares? So they come to where you are and attack you.....ummm, forgive me if I am wrong, but we are on a PVP server for PVP right? So let them come, lol. It was and still is my standpoint on that. Still, if I were you Darka, I would gladly accept their blacklisting, as others have mentioned, you may find out not having them around is in fact the best thing you could have hoped for, if they are that insane about cross faction communication especially in a game which is not even out yet, server choices have not even been confirmed and with absolutely zero proof of any wrong doing, can you imagine how childish their reactions might be to something which might be worth getting a little rustled over?

Your better off without them mate.

The blurring of the line between player and toon is something that I feel very strongly about. One of the reasons I left my previous guild in WoW was because the leadership insisted that grief play was OK against the Horde because "They rolled Horde, they deserve it." I thought they were joking at first but then they started giving examples of stuff they'd done.

To be honest, I love to joke about "my faction is better than your faction" with my friends. I recently RP'd in a thread about factional allegiance. But it is important to remember that it is a joke.

I can see cross-faction communication making a big change in this attitude. In the MMOs I've seen the only interaction players have with the opposing faction is either direct competition or griefing. Let's be honest here. Both of those activities in combination with isolation (from the other faction) serve to break down any sense of community. They both tend to create frustration for the many losers and a superiority complex for the winners. Cross faction communication means that at least out-of-character people can have civil conversations. It remains to be seen whether there will be any non-combat neutral areas in which to actually meet & greet the opposing faction.

So Darka, while I (like others here) are certainly biased on the issue, I do believe that this is one of the attitudes that The RiG would like to change. Those who can't get over the idea that a person who chooses a different faction is a lesser being worthy of ridicule and/or griefing are probably not the sort we want to associate with anyway.

Well, SWG had cross faction communication, and yeah, it helped break down a lot of those barriers.

I am hopeful we will see the same in this one? There really does not need to be any form of grief handed out to anyone simply because they were of a different faction. In fact if you do get to know the opposing faction it can help out immnsely especially if your into your RP, most of our RP events were cross faction back in SWG, and were ace!

And lets be fair, I suspect nearly everyone at some point will end up playing on both sides of the fence, if for nothing more than to experience all the classes story etc? So he likelihood is, that people will know one another from both factions pretty well, certainly better than they did in WoW etc anyways!!

Let's also throw this back into the Star Wars world, do you think that storm troopers, while on leave will shoot a rebel in the cantina he happens to be in just because he's a rebel? I don't think so, he might spill his jawa beer. Besides, that sounds like work which he's taking a day off from. They might avoid each other, or verbally joust a bit, maybe even buy each other a beer and talk about how crappy their boss is, etc, etc.

Interaction between combatants happen all the time that are not combat. A classic example of this was the truce between the British and the Germans during the Christmas week back in 1914 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce). And as for a game, keeping the players separated just sounds even more ridiculous.

Silly people not worth your time or effort.

On mmorpgs my best buddies were almost exclusively from the opposite faction, after a short friendly rivalry they would usually even join my faction and guild.

Its uncool when on this kind of game people's definition of fun means being an enemy to the opposing faction. Back in the days when you actually had to be next to the person you were playing a game with, it was not a good idea to antagonize him/her because soon you would find yourself playing the game alone, I believe the same principle applies here.

Their loss. Wish them well and move on.

Somehow we've reached the point where any idea must be explained in under 4 seconds or it's automatically a bad idea.

Now im a bit confused i wa sunder the impression they were allowing faction chat, yet a friend "informed" me that this was not the case, anyone have any "theories"

There will be x-faction communication from what i recall? I certainly have not heard anything to the contrary??

Where did you mate see this? If this is the case than...............

From current Testing apparently

Well this will be a major dissapointment for me if thats the case.......

I honestly don't know why the hell they do that in MMO's?? Why can't opposing factions speak to each other?......./sigh.

I'm pretty sure Bioware hasn't said anything official so whoever said that out of testing is breaking the NDA (and should, therefore, have his/her beta key surrendered to me). Anything in "testing" hardly means that it will be that way at release, so all hope is not lost.

It would seem really strange if cross faction communication wasn't possible. We all speak galactic basic, right?

Yeah, this entire subject is completely pointless, IMO.

WoW does not allow Xfaction communication, but almost every MMO which preceded it did.
Hell, imagine, for those of you who've never heard of it, NC had EIGHT factions at launch...
Imagine the cluster**** if you couldn't communicate with anyone...

The issue here arises from the fact that WoW actually introduced ~65% of Western gamers to the MMO genre at this time, which means 2/3 people have never played a game where your character's faction had nothing to do with who you could talk with. And, since it's been around so long, people are looking to bail to tOR, so...

In the meantime, can you imagine if nobody could Xfaction in the movies? LOL
Palpatine would have had a REALLY hard time hiding his origins/intent....

Godric_Barbarosa wrote:

I'm pretty sure Bioware hasn't said anything official so whoever said that out of testing is breaking the NDA (and should, therefore, have his/her beta key surrendered to me). Anything in "testing" hardly means that it will be that way at release, so all hope is not lost.

Regarding this, they *have* said that there are quests which may be best suited to complete with other players from the opposing faction --> indirect confirmation that Xfaction communication is not only possible, but possibly encouraged.

Back to the point though; there's going to be a *lot* of people - individuals and entire guilds - who don't want or support this. The only thing *we* need to consider is... the source.

Oooh that would be so awsome if it goes in. Although I already see my character having real issues with it

Personally I feel sad that the "WoW-generation" (as I like to call em) hasn't seen the beauty of MMO-gaming. WoW was an addictive game yes, successful as well but a good one? For me it always felt like an arcade game after EQ. But I would guess that about 80% of this "WoW-Generation" would never play EQ as it was in the early days

Oh gosh.. if I could get a pre-PoP server of EQ I'd deffinately subscribe again =)

Velaxi wrote:

In the meantime, can you imagine if nobody could Xfaction in the movies? LOL
Palpatine would have had a REALLY hard time hiding his origins/intent....

Ahahahaha! That's priceless. The problem we're getting with MMO gamers, though, is that many of them like to reduce conflicts to the simple us vs. them standards that most often defeat communication in general. WoW just artificially limited cross faction communication and, to be honest, I think it did their community a disservice. Keep in mind that people could still "emote" exactly what they thought of the other guys ... but maybe that just took special effort?

People will find ways to communicate even if there are artificial barriers. Imagine the hilarity of an official forum board segregated by poster faction. No MMO takes "no communication" that seriously, and I doubt TOR will do the ingame equivalent.

I have more experience in a PvE-centric MMO where you were more likely to be ostracized because of who your GM was rather than because you were a particular faction.