Dividing Velious content among the Dwarf / Dragon / Giant factions
 

So a big concept with Velious was how players were supposed to pick one of 3 factions to support. What if you had to actually hard choose a faction for each character, and different Velious items are locked behind each faction (only characters in that faction can loot/trade the items, and specific high priority NPC's when engaged in fight will banish nearby people who aren't in the intended faction). This could naturally cause guilds to form along faction lines and would limit the power creep of each character in the Velious expansion, as nobody would be able to get all of the best gear possible.

I've separated the content among the 3 factions, both thematically and trying to make it relatively balanced (probably a couple things can be tweaked, let's discuss):

DWARF faction - Has access to the least amount of S-tier items, but the widest range of content. Focused on the earthiest parts of Velious and fighting the giants.

*Lodizal
*Ring War
*Velketor's Labyrinth
*Kael
*Holgresh beads
*Siren's Grotto
*Western Wastes giants
*West Temple of Veeshan

DRAGON faction - Attuned to the strangest, most mystical parts of Velious. Fights against evil dragons.

*Sleeper's Tomb
*Plane of Growth
*Plane of Mischief
*Kelorek`Dar (decided he's evil and was banished to Cobalt Scar in my head cannon)
*Dragon Necropolis
*East Temple of Veeshan

GIANT faction - Seeks to destroy the strongholds of the dragons and dwarves. Balanced around being the faction that can fight in North ToV, where the highest amount of the best items in the game are, so therefore the least amount of areas are available.

*Wuoshi
*Thurgadin
*Skyshrine (drops for Kael armor quests moved from West ToV to here)
*Western Wastes dragons
*North Temple of Veeshan

Which faction would you choose for each class? How many alts would you make to have a Level 60 class of each faction? :D

Kelorek'Dar is on CoV faction so that breaks apart your headcanon.
The only giants in west wastes are triggered from the scout quest.
I would argue that plane of mischief, velks, siren's grotto, and lodizal would be faction neutral. Siren's Grotto is kind of everyone's problem, same with lodizal, and Velketor was banished from Kael and everyone hates him so I'd argue he's free game for everyone.

There are quests from the giants that involve invading dragon necropolis and one that involves fighting forces from plane of growth so those should both be accessible to giant faction.

Kael should be accessible to dragon faction because, firstly, they literally give quests for you to go kill giants there, and secondly, the giants are literally their #1 enemy.

Sleeper's Tomb should be giant faction because the dragons do NOT want you in there at all. They literally made the place to keep a world ending threat subdued, why would those same dragons send you in there to wake him? Jaled Dar's Shade is the only one who wants you to go there and he is aligned with the Ring of Scale which opposes the Claws of Veeshan.

Give west ToV to giant faction, the sole concern of the Coldain are the giants, whereas the dragons are more of a far-off, looming threat which is currently the least of their concerns.

I went ahead and made a list of the best possible gear you could get on a warrior for all 3 factions using items solely from OP's list despite the parts I disagree with

Thurgadin: https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_...action_warrior

Skyshrine:
https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_...action_warrior

Kael:
https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_...action_warrior

So it looks like thurg faction is the worst, least ac, least HP, and the least resists.

Skyshrine faction has the second best ac and HP, around the same resists as kael, but since OP put sleeper's tomb on the list for skyshrine faction for some reason they can get dual SoDs assuming warders are at play

Kael faction has the highest HP and AC, and the best stat-wise weapons

The point was to make all relevant high-end items restricted to one specific faction, for uniqueness and reducing power creep. Nobody actually needs anything beyond Kunark gear. So I'm most concerned about what people feel would be a good balance with that restriction.

Correct, only the Dwarf faction would be able to do that popular quest.

With 3 wings in ToV it felt natural to me that each faction gets a wing. :)

It's a skyshrine faction quest and has nothing to do with the coldain.

It's killing giants, which is the Dwarf theme! Where quests originate can be changed anyway, but it would already be perfectly fine to remain located in Skyshrine, since the Dwarf faction isn't hunting there. For the purpose of this thread I mostly just stuck with what already exists, but ideally I'd make a lot more changes to the zones to fully build this idea (or for any better version of the game in general). Skyshrine and Plane of Growth, for example, are massive places with content that just sits there unused, since it's mostly not worth doing.

How about we just launch a new server and Make Blackburrow Great Again.

MBGA!