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[Classic] Race/Faction change service

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Mispeled
WoW Community Council
#1 - June 23, 2022, 5:55 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Following a discussion on race/faction change on the burning crusade forums, I’m making this thread here to potentially get an official response and to see what my fellow Community Council members have to say on the subject.

Many people seems to want Race and/or Faction change as a service for a few reasons. While I cannot speak for others, I will try my best to list the reasons many provided:

  1. Wanting to play Draenei or Blood Elf with the character they made back in Classic Vanilla.
  2. Not wanting to be held back by their original choice of race due to racial ability, especially with WotLK heavy changes done to most racial abilities.
  3. Not wanting to lose all their character’s progression (Titles, mounts, reputation, etc.) just to restart as the race they wish to play.
  4. Those services were available in original WotLK.
  5. It is preferable to buying a boost.
  6. (Faction change specific) To be able to play with friends.

As for the concerns regarding this:

  1. Commitment to a character should be meaningful.
  2. (Faction change specific) Faction balance.

This being said, the sentiment overall seems to be in favor of some form of service, with or without restrictions.

This leads to a few questions:

  1. What is Blizzard stance on Race/Faction change for WotLK Classic?
  2. How is Faction and Server balance going to be handled moving forward? Does it affect the decision to allow or not Faction change?

Thank you,
Mispeled.

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Kaivax
Community Manager
#9 - Aug. 9, 2022, 6 p.m.
Blizzard Post

As Pazorax said elsewhere:

While it won’t be ready for our launch in September, we have changed our minds on this, and we’re working on adding the Race and Faction change as a paid service in a future patch.

Originally, we planned not to offer Race and Faction change at all, because it felt like it removed some of that fantasy feeling of having dramatically different physical attributes that affect your gameplay. We were also a little worried about players chasing the “flavor of the month” in terms of racial abilities However, we’re convinced by the argument that being able to play with your friends is more important, and that you should be able to bring your accomplishments with you when you do. This turns out to be the same tradeoff provided by transferring between realms, which is already available as a paid service, so it makes sense to make the same decision with respect to Race and Faction change.

In short, this fits our aim to nurture and protect social experiences, so we’ll work on it for an upcoming patch.

Thank you all for your feedback and discussion. It largely mirrored our internal discussions that produced this decision.