Factional "Never say never" is borderline insulting at this point.

[Kelduril]

Then it's possible to open up factions while still limiting the cross-realm restrictions. Sure, it's still a smaller pool to draw from, but cross realm doesn't seem to be the core issue with Mythic.

Does cross faction hinge on Cross realm working? I figured they are two separate things here.

It would be ridiculous to be able to play cross faction but not cross ream

[Unholyground]

I already had the ultimate solution only allow real ID friends to group regardless of faction but allow them to invite their friends to the same group if they need to it solves literally all their problems and doesn't break the factions, done end of story.

[exochaft]

Does cross faction hinge on Cross realm working? I figured they are two separate things here.

Unfortunately, at this point in time it sort of does. The activity that is hit the worst by factional barriers existing is mythic raiding, and the trickle-down effect is that people have segregated and migrated to their own servers, where either Horde or Alliance vastly outnumbers the opposing faction. If you remove the factional barrier, mythic raiding would not improve at all unless you could raid with people from other servers. Mythic+ and PvP would have some tangible benefits from removing the factional barrier because there already isn't a server restriction for those activities. It boils down to Blizz clutching to the old mantra of server identity, a concept that was thrown out the window when they allowed people to transfer servers/factions in minutes... it's the reason we're largely in this situation to begin with.

[huth]

The equivalent of ''soon''.

Well, 2 years ago they still said "not a chance", so...

[rrayy]

And yet you accuse everybody of it and even started your tirade with a post that didn't ask for that at all. No, the vast majority isn't asking for it, and you actually have to go search to find people doing so, with most just using "faction removal" to mean "faction barrier removal", not actually asking for Horde and Alliance as entities to be dissolved. This is strictly about gameplay, not lore.

Now you are lying and put words in my mouth. I never said a vast majority. I said that there are people who ask for complete faction removal and that it happens in every thread. You even admitted as such through implication from the "vast majority" line. So, no it is not strictly about gameplay. There are players who want factions completely removed. Period.

[rogoth]

The only thing that's borderline insulting is the disgusting level of entitlement players have over any controversial topic Blizzard ever discusses. Blizzard doesn't owe any of us shit and your pathetic emotional outburst isn't going to miraculously change anybody's mind.

i have kinda deduced from our interactions that you're in the US, now i don't know what the laws are like there for this sort of thing, but here in the UK, and much or europe as a whole, have some pretty strict safeguards in place for customer satisfaction and making sure the product is sold correctly and is representative of what was marketed, meaning that, should ANYBODY who has bought WoW and a game time subscription, a faction change or server transfer etc, or any of the 'store' items is entitled to have no only a fully functioning product as advertised, but also to have a say in some of the feedback, which consequently means that if player numbers aren't good enough and it's impossible to play the game in a way that you would like (and as advertised in many stores/online) then you can should you wish take legal action against blizzard for a myriad of reasons related to the laws and safeguards regarding customer satisfaction and security, these things are alien in the US and to my best knowledge simply don't exist, so no, blizzard do actually 'owe players', not just from an opinion standpoint but from a legal one also, at least here in this region of the world.

[Tadkins]

IT's nto going to happen. They may make it so you can queue cross faction, but they are not going to re-write a 15 year old game to eliminate factions.

Eventually the game will have less subs than it currently does. At that point it just won't be feasible to keep that population split.

[Santti]

He's just a waiter!

Also its a really dumb claim, especially now that the horde is wipining out entire cities and has also lost most its stronger characters.

The horde v alliance story has left more lasting damage to azeroth than any villain save death wing. There is no way they are stronger because eachother. This isn't like there's decades/centuries of peace for people to get soft and weak and corrupt. There's a world ending threat every 2 years and if there isn't one the horde and alliance have to exhaust eachother's forces.

It is flimsy as balls, yes. But it is an explanation in the lore, nonetheless. It doesn't really have to make much sense, either. Blizzard is an avid chaser of the "rule of cool", after all. We appear to have an inexhaustible source of soldiers and heroes.

But it wouldn't surprise me if this little scene is all but forgotten. And even if they still do remember this, they could just make a number of other reasons why it's no longer relevant.

[Triceron]

The horde v alliance story has left more lasting damage to azeroth than any villain save death wing. There is no way they are stronger because eachother. This isn't like there's decades/centuries of peace for people to get soft and weak and corrupt. There's a world ending threat every 2 years and if there isn't one the horde and alliance have to exhaust eachother's forces.

They're stronger because the competition they have with each other pushes each side to adapt and overcome, rather than be complacent in a time of peace.

And as others have said, this fictional world seemingly has an inexhaustable number of soldiers, so the focus of building strength is solely based on ... Warcraft.

[zeidrich]

It's a really easy thing to solve conceptually. Open up inter-faction communication and chat channels, same with group finders.

Quests can remain exactly the same as before. Allow players to group together for raid and dungeon content. In the rare occasion where theres a different experience based on faction like BDA, tie which version you get to the group leader.

World PvP is all but dead as it is anyways, make war mode FFA or guild based. A FFA war mode would actually be a lot of fun I think, when I turn on war mode I generally just see either entirely one faction, or one faction camping a particular area like the maw portal. War mode being FFA would completely change that dynamic. Battlegrounds are just filled with players assigned to red and blue teams.

The problems I'm sure are both largely technical, and also in how to present it to players so they don't hate it. There's probably lots of weird stuff like how opposite faction tagging your mobs turns them grey but same faction doesn't. A lot of systems tie into the faction separation.

But the concept of just letting everyone play together in essentially one faction, making PvP team based instead of faction based, and changing war mode to something that's faction agnostic is a relatively simple idea and I really see no downsides.

[segara82]

As cute as the whole red vs blue thing is, it is stale as fuck.
No side can ever win this conflict, so the only way it can ever end is by a NAP and a peace treaty.
We constantly have NAPs because we all have to work together to beat the big bad.
WOLK, Cata, MoP, ... every fucking time. We heroes have even made cross-faction groups with our clubhouses in Legion .
The whole thing is stale, done, put a fork in it.


In universe it will never be all kumbaya and rainbows. There are cults, traitors and inside threats while outsiders, aliens and demons threaten from the outside.


And as a game they will have to make cross-faction play possible sooner or later. With a 17 year old game the numbers of players can (and will) only go down.
At a certain point the numbers of players will be so low that guilds/raids can't be formed (fast enough) anymore. The loss of group activity will then result in even more players quitting and making WoW no longer profitable enough to keep running. Blizzard can delay that point by making cross-faction play possible.

Cross-faction play does not mean an end of the factions, just the removal of the speech barrier, grouping restrictions and setting all the town guards to friendly.

Want to show your disdain for the other faction? Turn on War Mode and duke it out with the other willing players and the NPCs.

[Diaphin]

They absolutely shouldn't. When they remove the barrier they become the same as the other failed MMOs like ESO who had to break down the factions because their playerbase wasn't big enough.

Warcraft is built on the Alliance vs Horde conflict, it's its identity. If they bring down the walls EVERYONE will just roll Human.

No thanks.

Wasn't Warcraft 3, the one Warcraft game anyone even played, all about humans, elves and orcs letting go of their differences and work together to fight a common foe? And wasn't basically every single faction war plot in WoW notoriously unpopular? And isn't pvp in WoW actually so unpopular, that they have to tie in faster PvE Progression into Warmode as well as PvP Equipment being the most reliably and for some classes even strongest form of equipment?

[Trend]

If only we had 10 man mythic raids and cross faction raiding the raiding scene in the game would surge to a renaissance. From 3000 mythic raiding guilds to 30000.

Why do you think those changes would magically transform average players into mythic raiders?

[huth]

Now you are lying and put words in my mouth. I never said a vast majority. I said that there are people who ask for complete faction removal and that it happens in every thread. You even admitted as such through implication from the "vast majority" line. So, no it is not strictly about gameplay. There are players who want factions completely removed. Period.

I didn't claim you said vast majority. Seems like it hit a nerve, though. You're the one oddly focusing on this whole "remove factions" thing which is, at best, requested by a tiny minority.

[Puupi]

Why do you think those changes would magically transform average players into mythic raiders?

10 man raids are way more fun and vastly easier to organize. Less logistics and management.

Like it used to be.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

10 man raids are way more fun and vastly easier to organize. Less logistics and management.

Like it used to be.

I agree completely. 10 man mythic content allowed so many more people to see and experience the content. Remember how many guilds were doing mythic level content back in the 10 man days? So many. At the time I was on a pretty tiny server and we had like 20 guilds on each faction at least working mythic content. Now its like 10 servers across the whole world that pull that off anymore. It made mythic raiding extremely niche overnight. I dare say it's almost not even worth having anymore if you really looked at it from a top down business decision. Probably just here anymore because of tradition and that sucks because that content is some of the best stuff the game puts out and is probably the gold standard of MMO raid like content in any game. Just so silly they refused to just accept balance between the two would never be perfect and that doing the job was to hard.

[Swnem]

Well, 2 years ago they still said "not a chance", so...

That is because it is inevitable and everyone knows it. Unless they find a way to change the situation with some miraculous way or decide to make Alliance racials OP and open free realm and faction transfers.
You can't force the players to pick a specific faction to be able to play the game. Forcing players to chamge faction to be able to complete content is not a fair design either.

It leaves us with only one choice. The worse it gets, the more pressing it becomes. Cross faction has to happen.

From what Ion said, they don't have the tech ready either, but surely they have to be working on it.

[Relapses]

i have kinda deduced from our interactions that you're in the US, now i don't know what the laws are like there for this sort of thing, but here in the UK, and much or europe as a whole, have some pretty strict safeguards in place for customer satisfaction and making sure the product is sold correctly and is representative of what was marketed, meaning that, should ANYBODY who has bought WoW and a game time subscription, a faction change or server transfer etc, or any of the 'store' items is entitled to have no only a fully functioning product as advertised, but also to have a say in some of the feedback, which consequently means that if player numbers aren't good enough and it's impossible to play the game in a way that you would like (and as advertised in many stores/online) then you can should you wish take legal action against blizzard for a myriad of reasons related to the laws and safeguards regarding customer satisfaction and security, these things are alien in the US and to my best knowledge simply don't exist, so no, blizzard do actually 'owe players', not just from an opinion standpoint but from a legal one also, at least here in this region of the world.

What on earth did I just read? Are you trying to justify Blizzard making the game cross-faction on the basis that you can't find a good M+ pushing group on Alliance? Like, what the actual fuck my guy?

[Noct]

It ain't changing folks. They have said time and time again, and it's true, it is an iconic feature to this game. Feel free to continue whining about it if it makes you feel better, but it's going to remain this way.

[Swnem]

I agree completely. 10 man mythic content allowed so many more people to see and experience the content. Remember how many guilds were doing mythic level content back in the 10 man days? So many. At the time I was on a pretty tiny server and we had like 20 guilds on each faction at least working mythic content. Now its like 10 servers across the whole world that pull that off anymore. It made mythic raiding extremely niche overnight. I dare say it's almost not even worth having anymore if you really looked at it from a top down business decision. Probably just here anymore because of tradition and that sucks because that content is some of the best stuff the game puts out and is probably the gold standard of MMO raid like content in any game. Just so silly they refused to just accept balance between the two would never be perfect and that doing the job was to hard.

It's just frustrating to think about it. As always the community needs to fight the devs in order for the features the game needs to be added.
But, they want their Blizzcon shouts like they are still making a Warcraft RTS and they want to design big raid encounters where they can assume you have one of each class rather than add on use items to the encounter so any comp can complete it.
It always frustrates me when i think about it. WoW devs are so bloody stubburn and are a legit obstacle to the game getting better.

- - - Updated - - -

It ain't changing folks. They have said time and time again, and it's true, it is an iconic feature to this game. Feel free to continue whining about it if it makes you feel better, but it's going to remain this way.

I heard that about fair skinned elves on the Alliance.
Anyways, no. It's a feature of the Warcraft RTS that got imported. But, it doesn't need to be removed so cross faction play happens, so don't strawman.

Also, cross faction play will happen. You better get used to the idea.