What happened to the “faction” system?

When I first played EverQuest I was amused for the fact that finally an interesting genre just started. Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining how things are going to improve in the coming years; with more complex worlds. I was thinking if EverQuest was that complex imagine how it is going to be 10 years after that with better computers, servers and ideas.

I was wrong. MMORPGs were degrading since then they became shallower and shallower. Every time a new MMORPG is release it removes at least one feature from the previous one till we ended up with extremely flat MMORPGs and then the producers wonder why they failed.

The Faction system that was implemented in EverQuest is different than World of Warcraft’s Reputation system; but in a way it was the same. In World of Warcraft,  reputation was linear and rigid which means you can not go hostile on your own race and you can always improve your faction with anyone without ruining your repuation with the opposing party and of course you can’t befriend many factions like The Forsaken if you’re an Alliance player heck you can’t even improve your reputation with many factions (like Gnomergan dungeon) at all.

EverQuest Faction system was complex. You can befriend ANYTHING and become the enemy of ANYTHING except for beta-factions which includes Bears, Tigers, and other unintelligent beings. That’s the beauty of the faction system in EverQuest. You can do anything you want. My friend managed to improve his Ogre Warrior’s Kelethin faction because we were staying most of the time at that region and he needed to shop so we went on killing a lot of Crushbone Orcs till his Ogre became friendly with Kelethin.

Killing anything that belongs to a faction will trigger a faction hit. If my memory doesn’t deceive me killing an Orc that belongs to Crushbone Clan will ruin your Indigo Brotherhood faction and Crushbone Orcs faction (that’s a given) but improves three opposite factions one of them being Kelethin City and Guards the other two I believe Felwithe City and Guards (High Elves) and the Dwarves of Kaladin.

I rolled a Dark Elf Shadow Knight and as some of  you know Dark Elves are Killed on Sight almost everywhere. So, I wanted to achieve something and went to Crushbone to kill Emperor Crush to impress the guys in Kelethin and so I did until I get the message “Your faction with the Indigo Brotherhood could not possibly get any worse” I had no idea who were these Indigo guys..

Weeks after I decided to travel to my home city Neriak to meet my Shadow Knight Guild Master and to my surprise while in the city I got attacked by the warriors in the Common District. I managed to barely escape to the third gate to realize then that the Indigo Brotherhood was actually the Dark Elf Warrior Guild!

The question is; what heppend to this system? why are we limited with our actions? why can’t I kill anything I want and deal with the consequences? Why are we going backwards in terms of progress instead of ahead? The Faction system feature is just one of many others that I found amusing in EverQuest. It is not only nostalgia that we talk about here, it is real game mechanics and features that we demand.

Let’s just hope someone would pick the faction system idea up and improve on it even further. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts!

EverQuest Faction