This article describes the mechanic. For a list of factions, please see Category:Faction
Factions are a measure of how others in the game world view your character. Factions run the spectrum between non-player characters considering your character their ally to being willing to attack your character on sight.
Description[ | ]
Faction can be used to refer to a few different things, primarily:
- 1. A group of characters that are aligned. Practically every PC and NPC belongs to some sort of faction. Many characters belong to multiple factions at once.
- 2. A character's current reputation with a faction. In this case, it's a shortened form of faction standing. ("I have bad faction with the dwarves")
Faction is calculated numerically, but this number isn't visible to players. You can get an idea of your faction standing by considering an NPC (See this page for details.).
All races have default factions. Classes also have their own factions, which can even put your character into a bad standing with their own race. An example of this would be a human dire lord. The majority of humans dislike the dire lord class and will thus be hostile to them.
Faction can be separated into 3 categories: Hostile, Neutral and Friendly, which can be determined based on the message given when you con an NPC.
Gaining and Losing Faction[ | ]
The most common method of increasing or decreasing faction standing is by killing members of the faction. This results in negative standing with that NPC's faction and potential increases to an opposing faction's standing.
- For example, say there is an NPC called "A bandit" who is a member of the "Thronefast Bandit's Gang". This faction is an opposing faction to the "Thronefast Lawkeepers". By killing the bandit, you would lose faction with the "Thronefast Bandit's Gang", but you would gain faction with the "Thronefast Lawkeepers".
You can see whether you gained or lost faction after killing a mob in the chat log. The corresponding messages are:
- Your standing with (faction) has gotten worse!
- Your standing with (faction) has improved!
Another method for increasing/decreasing faction standing is by completing quests.
FAQ[ | ]
From the official FAQ
FAQ (4.6) Are Races going to have specific factions at creation?
Yes. While there are some nuances to faction and alignment adjustment, evil races such as the ogre, skar, and dark myr will have a hard time getting close to good race cities. This is not set in stone, however, as you can adjust your faction and alignment through your actions in the game world.
FAQ (4.2) Will faction be important ... and will players be able to betray their home faction?
We like all of that in general -- the question comes up though: to what degree should these factions matter and does this sort of thing slip into PvP territory? If it does, you'd only see it in PvP servers. But changing your factions so NPCs will react differently to you -- this is all key to the game -- our faction system will be quite robust. Yes, you could betray your home or default factions.