It has been a long time coming, but the wait is over. Cross-Faction gameplay between the Horde and Alliance is coming to World of Warcraft.
“I am pleased to announce that we are working on adding the ability for Alliance and Horde players to form premade parties together for dungeons, raids, and rated PvP,” Blizzard announced. “There have been two decades’ worth of code and content crafted with the assumption that parties can only have players of a single faction.”
The goal for the change was to focus on organized, instanced gameplay and make it an opt-in feature as much as possible. Friends have been cut off from playing in groups because of their faction ever since the start of World of Warcraft. Cross-Faction instances allow people to group in raids, dungeons, and PVP. By setting it as an opt-in feature, those who wish not to team up with the opposing faction do not have to do so.
The following guidelines will be put in place for Cross-Faction instance gameplay:
- Players will be able to directly invite members of the opposite faction to a party if you have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship, or if you are members of a cross-faction WoW Community.
- Premade Groups in the Group Finder listings for Mythic dungeons, raids, or rated arena/RBGs will be open to applicants of both factions, though the group leader may choose to restrict the listing to same-faction applicants if they so choose.
- Guilds will remain single-faction, and random matchmade activities like Heroic dungeons, Skirmishes, or Random Battlegrounds will all remain same-faction
Sadly, Cross-Faction gameplay will not be available in time for the 9.2 Eternity’s End update but is expected before the next expansion. There was no word on whether or not this change will come to Classic either.
