Play As The Opposite Faction With The Upcoming ‘World of Warcraft’ Mercenary Mode
Player verses player combat is quite vicious in World of Warcraft. As part of either the Horde or the Alliance, players band together to defeat the opposing faction in open-world PvP and instanced zones like battlegrounds and arenas. Some players value their faction pride highly and freely use the /spit command to degrade enemy corpses before slaying another dirty gnome or tauren. However, keeping the factions together when queuing for battlegrounds or the open-world Ashran zone of the Warlords of Draenor expansion is about to change.
In an official blog post on the World of Warcraft website, a new Mercenary Mode has been announced. This optional mode allows players from one faction to fight alongside the, usually, opposition in order to shorten queue times. For example, if Horde players are experiencing lengthy queues for non-rated battlegrounds or Ashran, a few gnomes, night elves, or humans will be placed on the Horde team to start a match sooner. This Mercenary Mode option will not always be available and players will have to opt in to be placed on the enemy team’s roster.
World of Warcraft players wanting to act as a mercenary for the enemy team and speed up their queue times will have to speak to an NPC located in Ashran. This NPC is not always present and players must speak with it in order to queue as a mercenary. Players utilizing PvP as a mercenary will still earn the same rewards based on a win or loss of the they were a part of “with the exception of faction-specific achievements.”
A community manager for World of Warcraft further explained the system, notifying players that their race would completely change while acting a mercenary for the opposite faction. In fact, even racial abilities will change for a player mercenary. Other players will not be able to tell if a teammate is a mercenary right offhand or in the game natively.
MMORPG players will definitely recognize the upcoming World of Warcraft Mercenary Mode from other games like RIFT. The ability to play for the opposite faction was also available in that MMO game starting in early 2012. Eventually, the racial divide between the factions in that game were nearly completely dissolved where any race can play on either faction today. For World of Warcraft, this is currently not on the table as “mixed-faction” play is not part of the game’s Mercenary Mode.
Although there is no release date for the Mercenary Mode coming to World of Warcraft, players have a chance to test it and the introduction of flying to the game’s max level content on the public test realm. Patch 6.2.1 is currently on the test server which players can access by copying their characters to the public test realm and downloading the separate test client.
[Images via Battle.net]
