by Kathleen Malark

Created on: March 12, 2009   Last Updated: March 15, 2009

Adding a neutral faction to World of Warcraft would be impractical, useless and down right impossible. All of the arguments for a third, neutral faction have been addressed in much more feasible ways by Blizzard, the company in charge of WoW.

World of Warcraft is a massively multi-player online game that pitches two factions (the Horde and the Alliance) against one another. Players choose one of these factions when they create their character, and for the next 80 levels, they are essentially fighting for their faction. Players do quests, compete in arenas and battlegrounds, and engage in world combat in the name of their faction. Many would argue that being part of a faction, and therefore against another faction, is one of the most appealing parts of the game.

However, some players don't really care about their faction. They don't want the opportunity to kill players of the opposite faction, and find it exasperating to be killed, particularly in the middle of questing. While it seems that creating a neutral faction might appease these players, by the very nature of the game set up, players would still be able to kill member of this new neutral' faction. To fight a faction they are neutral with (such as the Goblins or Cenarion Expedition), a player can simply open their reputation panel and select to be at war' with that faction. As an avid Player vs. Player character, I know that anyone who played a character of a 'neutral' faction would be an irresistible target for me. So instead of offering a third neutral faction, Blizzard offers two types of servers: Player vs. Player servers, and Player vs. Environment servers. PvE servers do not allow players of opposing factions to kill each other out in the world, but rather limits PvP combat to battlegrounds and arenas. Players who don't want to fight the opposing faction can just transfer to a PvE server and not have to worry about it, making the argument for a neutral faction irrelevant.

Another argument for a third, neutral faction is that players of one faction are automatically hated by the other faction's NPCs, meaning that a member of the Horde attempting to enter an Alliance city or town will automatically be attacked by the guards. Hypothetically, a third neutral faction would be able to enter both without fear of attack. First of all, this would give the neutral third faction a large advantage - by being able to get double the amount of quests, have access to double the amount of outposts, it would cut their

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