We don't know yet.
Alpha testing is scheduled to start next year hopefully not too late. We are in late pre-alpha testing now.
It is likely that there will be faction, affecting your status with different communities and races. Quite likely to the point where you may be kill-on-sight in places until you do something to change that.
It is far less likely that there will be any blanket faction such as good or evil. Each community/race will have its own definitions of such, after all.
No idea what guilds ESO has I played for 15 minutes - truly disliked the interface.
Quite possibly if a NPC meets a hostile NPC of another faction or even an animal they will have at it but I don't think this is known yet.
Apologies for not linking other threads - these topics have come up in many threads but I don't recall one specifically focused on them.
Mordiaky said: Good to hear this. What I am referring to but npc guilds like in elder scrolls (not eso) for example the images guild, the thief's guild, warriors guids not only to train at but become a member of that guild or guilds. Not like player ran guilds but in a way to open more quest, items, abilities or even special events.
From what we know, except the "Keepers" that doesn't seem to be the case. ESO games are based on dynamic choices affectif your character overall specialization, at will. Guilds are "just" structures fitting to some of thoses archetypes and tell story.
Pantheon is based on a classic and strict class choice, meaning your character can't evolve differently that the class you picked, thus guilds would only concern non-class activities such as arenas, bounty hunting, monster hunting, exploring, etc...
Mordiaky asks: Can I be good, evil or in the middle depending on my actions in the world? Can an ogre walk through the elf city if his/her/it factions are good enough?
Alpha with the Dev’s video with CohhCarnage. At 52:50 Joppa answers a question about Factions and goes into some extra detail that relate to how NPCs may respond to you.
Joppa says: “You can’t talk about having an open living breathing world without having real dynamic faction relationships between the different denizen’s of the world. From the get go you will be making decisions, performing actions, that will start to effect your faction with certain races and other factions within the game world. It’s not limited to factions. Alignment will also play a role. We will see some of that with the perception system. Not only are your decisions and actions effecting your faction alignment with other denizens of the world, but your also going to be progressing along a ‘Moral’ alignment as well. So you may have some NPCs that respond to faction, and you may have some that respond to alignment, and you may have some that respond to both. Our hopes is that it will create a pretty deep system of interaction between NPCs and the other denizens of the world as your character takes shape throughout the game.”
LOTRO has NPC guilds for crafting - when you join a crafting guild you get access to better recipes after you increase your faction in the guild by crafting items for them.
Things like this are always possible but the design of Pantheon crafting is probably not very far along yet.
Mordiaky said: Can I be good, evil or in the middle depending on my actions in the world? Can an ogre walk through the elf city if his/her/it factions are good enough? Will there be NPC guilds like there are in elder scrolls? Will I see NPC battles, conflict in game?
From some of the conversations I heard in dev streams faction is definitely going to be a thing again. Meaning it was only a thing before in old EQ1. And if you screwed up your faction it could be a nightmare.
Fixing faction in EQ1 was in some cases crazy hard. And impossible in other cases.
Many stupid players in EQ1 ignored faction in their lower levels, killing 1000's of the wrong race of npc because they were easy and gave good xp. Only to find out they were now KoS in numerous cities and unable to join their guild on certain raids.
I'm quite sure Vanguard had factions, too?
I vaguely remember having to grind for days with a friend of mine because we accidentally engaged -- and possibly killed -- the wrong guard, i.e., one that we were in good standing with. He (the guard) joined another fight we were in, probably because we hit him with an AoE or one of us targeted him by mistake.
Jabir said:I'm quite sure Vanguard had factions, too?
I vaguely remember having to grind for days with a friend of mine because we accidentally engaged -- and possibly killed -- the wrong guard, i.e., one that we were in good standing with. He (the guard) joined another fight we were in, probably because we hit him with an AoE or one of us targeted him by mistake.
Yep. There were factions as well as a full on diplomacy system/advancement track.
Yes Vanguard had faction, but nothing like original EQ1.
Vanguard had factions for all spheres. Adventuring, Diplomacy and Crafting.
I still remember having to grind my crafting up on all three continents to gain access to their craftable items.
And diplomacy grinding was insane. On my fan site I tracked all diplomacy factions for all npcs on all continets, so that helped.
zewtastic said:Yes Vanguard had faction, but nothing like original EQ1.
Vanguard had factions for all spheres. Adventuring, Diplomacy and Crafting.
I still remember having to grind my crafting up on all three continents to gain access to their craftable items.
And diplomacy grinding was insane. On my fan site I tracked all diplomacy factions for all npcs on all continets, so that helped.
Now I know where Wildstar took their Crafting ideas of doing dailies in specific areas and unlocking feats by completing achievements in a tree tied to each "zone" of crafters NPC.
