Online talk:Factions

Split

I'd like to suggest that this page be split into two, possibly three pages. One for Alliances, one for Guilds, and maybe one for non-joinable factions. Alliances and Guilds are not remotely the same thing, first of all. You can join multiple Guilds without any conflicts, but you will belong to exactly one Alliance at a time, chosen upon character creation so it's not even optional. Alliance affects what areas you see, which areas you can't see until Veteran levels, whose you fight in PvP, etc. Guilds affect none of these, and in fact the Guild quests are the same in all but name regardless of Alliance. (This is to say nothing of Player Guilds, which should be yet another page, albeit just a description of the mechanics rather than an attempt to list them all.) Non-joinable factions I'm not even sure would count. They're basically groups of NPCs, usually enemies you have to fight in PvE. I guess they could be listed, but on a separate page from Alliances and Guilds, since they're entirely another thing. Secondly, there are a lot of situations where you might want to link to one of these pages separately. Any Alliance War page that talks about Alliances should probably have a link to Online:Alliances when it does so. Pages about the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, etc. quests should all link back to Online:Guilds. They're separate concepts and should be treated separately. Either way, the word "Faction" is never used to describe either Alliances or Guilds, so this should probably be removed altogether. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 16:44, 11 April 2014 (GMT)

I'm indifferent over whether we split them onto different pages or just split this page into more appropriate sections using those names. Factions seems like a useful "catch-all" term which encompasses the Alliances, Guilds and Non-Joinables into one page, so if we do split it up, we could still transclude part of the resulting pages here. As a secondary note, I believe "Factions" is a common term to use in MMOs for your character's main association, so the page should exist in some form. --Enodoc (talk) 17:49, 11 April 2014 (GMT)

Further to my comment above, I think it would be beneficial to have ON:Guilds as our detail page for "Player Guilds", as that's the name they're referred to with in-game (ie, not Player Guilds). In which case, the "NPC Guilds" should not be moved to such a page. Although wherever Player Guilds and NPC Guilds are detailed, we will need a link to the other page. --Enodoc (talk) 20:18, 19 April 2014 (GMT)

I've created a page at ON:Alliance. (I considered "Alliances" but opted to just make it a redirect. Hard to say which is better.) So, if by your suggestion, ON:Guilds is used to detail Player Guilds, what would you call the page that deals with the regular guilds (Mages/Fighters/Undaunted)? I don't think "NPC Guilds" makes sense, since the Player can join them, thus making them not just for NPCs. Whereas "Player Guilds" are guaranteed to contain only Players and no NPCs, so that's a more accurate description in my opinion. "NPC Guilds" sounds like what you might call any non-joinable factions, whose members are all guaranteed to be NPCs. That might be a good way to break them down - "Guilds" for joinable built-in guilds, "Player Guilds" for guilds created by Players and guaranteed to contain only Players, and "NPC Guilds" for non-joinable guilds, guaranteed to contain only NPCs. Not sure whether it's worth splitting between friendly and hostile NPC Guilds, especially since it's possible some of them may be friendly to one Alliance and hostile to another? Not sure if that happens ever, though there are certainly NPC members of opposing Alliances in each Alliance's territory, which would presumably be friendly to their own Alliance if they ever met. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 19:32, 22 April 2014 (GMT)

Plurals seem to be the norm (case-in-point, this page being called Factions), so I would suggest Alliances should be the page and Alliance the redirect. Do we need a separate page for the NPC Guilds? I agree that the Alliances are important enough to have their own page, and, while I'm not saying the Guilds are not important, could they not just remain here, in comparison to how other namespaces handle them? That way, ON:Guilds can still be used for Player Guilds. It's the Alliances that are really the main thing to distinguish. There's not really an awful lot of detail for the other factions that's needed aside from this list, as the main details are on the faction pages themselves. --Enodoc (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2014 (GMT)

Well, of course the other games don't have Player Guilds (or Alliances for that matter), so modelling this off of the previous single-player games isn't going to be a perfect solution. Player Guilds are distinctly different from both Alliances and built-in Guilds. And the term "Faction" doesn't seem to be used anywhere in the game. I agree that players might think to search under "Factions", so this page should still exist, but most likely as a redirect to Guilds, since that's the official term. As for NPC Guilds - they can be grouped with joinable Guilds for now, I suppose, but I suspect there's a lot more of them that aren't currently listed. If the list does get too long, we may want to separate it anyhow, to put emphasis on the joinable Guilds, which are the ones the players are most likely to be interested in. The Player Guilds page also needs to exist, to show the process of creating Guilds, joining, Guild benefits, etc., and this should be entirely separate from all the others, since it's a feature which is so far unique in the series. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:37, 23 April 2014 (GMT)

I guess the issue really is the fact that so many things could effectively be covered by the same word. Of course "Guilds" being used for the built-in, joinable factions is an accident of circumstance; we're only grouping them under "Guilds" because Guild is in their name; if they were called the Mages Alliance and the Fighters Alliance, we'd be having this discussion over a different ambiguity. But here's how I think we should break it down:

Factions

The primary use for the word "Factions" in an MMO setting is to identify the player's main allegiance, in ESO they happen to be called Alliances.

Every grouping of characters who work together towards a common goal is also a "faction" (small f).

Therefore, I think ON:Factions should cover the basics of the Alliances (with a link to Alliances), and the list of all other in-game factions, from the joinable ones like the Mages Guild and the Undaunted, to the passive Knights of the Flame and the enemy Sea Drakes.

Guilds

The primary use for the word "Guilds" in an MMO setting is as a player-created group of players.

An accident of circumstance means that two [three] of the three [five] joinable in-game factions in ESO are also called "guilds" because Guild is in their name, and all of them use Guild as their quest grouping.

Therefore, I think ON:Guilds should cover the basics of the player Guilds, with an honourable mention to the Mages/Fighters/Thieves Guilds in a disambig {{About}} message on the page so people know to look on the Factions page for that information.

My essential idea of the breakdown here is to use Factions for the built-in factions, and Guilds for the player-created guilds, and to not mix those terms up except when stating on both pages that the joinable factions are called Guilds. --Enodoc (talk) 08:27, 23 April 2014 (GMT)

I agree with that. Player Guilds on Guilds, and all others here. The Alliances page is a touch redundant with the Alliance War page, though there is a case for its separation. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 22:57, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

Imperials

The Imperials are their own faction in the Alliance War, but under what name? They are mostly referred to as simply the 'Imperials' but the faction should have a page separate to the race. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 22:59, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

Imperial Legion? Jeancey (talk) 23:14, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

That'll do for now, there are legionaries in the game. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 23:22, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

Renrijra Maor / Renrijra Krin

Currently only Renrijra Maor exists here as a faction, but Zulana and Khari are members of Renrijra Krin, however I'm not sure whether they are Renjira Maor. I listed their faction as Renrijra Krin right now. Tib (talk) 10:25, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

If there are non-maritime members, might as well have an ON:Renrijra Krin page. —Legoless (talk) 16:51, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Organization

Thoughts on organizing the NPC faction lists (Other Factions/Enemy Factions) by zone? Or maybe by base game factions vs. factions added in DLCs/chapters?--FioFioFio (talk) 15:32, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

The easiest method is to start work on the alphabetical pages like the lore faction pages. The only ones left here would then be the Alliances, Guilds, and possibly Joinable Factions. The Battlegrounds factions seem rather limited, though I'm sure a case can be made for their inclusion. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:32, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Right, I was just talking about the last two lists, since Battlegrounds is right now limited to three teams and the Joinable Factions list is fairly short. Thanks for the answer! --FioFioFio (talk) 18:38, 5 September 2017 (UTC)