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I'll try to abstain from writing an essay like "The BT/MW universe according to me". 
In the community warfare "month" we got us a lot of preliminary info from PGI about what it would be about. Sounded pretty good for the most part, but what could be possible implications beyond what we got told there?
Was tempted to split the next parts among a couple of posts, but I'd rather keep the spam down.
In the ideal case over the time of development for the first year or even shorter, PGI should IMHO achieve to create or at least support some sort of "Faction Identity"(FI). What is that supposed to mean? Many of you might be familiar with the term "corporate identity", and goes in the right direction. What would IMO be beneficial in terms of long-term player commitment and naturally income from the game for PGI is a sense of "belonging". That is, enabling players to identify strongly with their in-game faction by means of in-game features (this would also apply to the "mercenary" faction hopefully).
There would be several ways to achieve that. The first and most obvious way is via graphical means. Look at our affiliation icons in the forums here, that's a good start. In the same category I would rank faction-specific paint jobs (both free and paid-for ones). A somewhat faction-specific MechBay/hangar layout would be another one. (A full faction-specific interface option might be something for a later expansion, that could be too much work for starters.)
A bit of "faction lore" like the ISN news feeds on our forums here is another angle. I think the BT franchise in particular has lots to offer in that regard, more than many competitors. Even more when the clan part of the game (eventually) kicks in full-scale, quiaff?
This additionally offers a pretty good angle for PR just before or after launch IMHO. Remember the original MW2 game and the Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon-specific trailers? How many people got hooked by those very trailers to the whole BT/MW universe and remained so since? Granted, PGI won't be the only company going that way, here's another example of a similar approach:
Now imagine... we would have a trailer for each faction roughly along these lines, perhaps with a faction-specific accent, a hypothetical MechWarrior of each faction recounting what the viewer is about to see. I personally think this would both convey a major "sense of belonging"/FI and also be a really great PR vehicle. Let's sketch out a bit an example for the Merc faction.
You would have someone with a real "experienced" face and voice telling you about that last contract that went slightly sideways at first. Accompanying BattleROM with some nice cutscenes. Switch to the Mechbay and a brief conversation of how much money the new supplies will exactly cost, a moan on how that will decrease the profit margin. Switch to "payday" and a house representative handing over a stash of C-bills (not necessarily literally). Switch to storyteller meeting up with his pilots to break the news about the profit from that last contract and that the next one is already in dry sheets.
Just one very rougly sketched example of how this could pan out, of course, not going to bother everybody with a script here. I am well aware that this goes slightly beyond the "core gameplay" issues and might even border on classical MMORPG territory, but wouldn't it be simply an awesome feature? And foster a heightened sense of FI by this means? You could even make it work for the international distribution nicely. Not talking about something like fully synchronizing those trailers in multiple languages right away (would be an option though), but just give the Steiner trailer some accents to appeal to the western europe market i.e., make the Marik accent appealing for the eastern europe/russian one, the Kurita for the eastern asian one, etc. (Mind me, this is a PR feature mainly, not advocating "nationalizing" the factions here.)
Another angle, which has already been mentioned in the past on these forums, is "faction merchandise". I view it more as a long-term perspective matter. Selling/shipping T-shirts or mugs or faction badges/stickers of whatever seems a good way to provide extra income for PGI, but needs the game to be somewhat established on the market first. Also something that could be easily outsourced. Still, would be a major buff to create and maintain a FI for sure.
And last suggestion here from me to the purpose of the FI feature would be for PGI to have a specific person as liaison for "faction issues" after release or even in beta, maybe even one for each faction if the game is very successful right at start. The objective of that one would be to maintain close ties to all the community parts and a sign of faith from PGI's side that the factions in game are and remain meaningful. Also that would enable something like a both player-/PGI-induced "special campaign month" or something, where the limelight shines on one faction for one month, targeting all over the length of one year.
Naturally, I might just have suggested things/features already planned by PGI.
(I should probably have written all this up in December as the assigned "community warfare month", but time around Xmas is somewhat busy for some of us in real life unfortunately.)
! Space Vikings + Hot women + all the Mead you want = Epic Win
