How would you allow cross-faction play with a satisfactory lore to justify it?

[Soon-TM]

Just listen to the ending cutscene of WCIII. The foundation for cooperation was set here. Its extension has been completely forced, inorganic and artificial since.

Yes, WC3 RoC ends up with proto-Alliance and proto-Horde joining forces in order to defeat the big bad, WoW style. But TFT ends not only with Arthas donning the helm of domination, but also with the Horde (the Western one anyway, plus Ogres) storming a major Alliance stronghold and killing a racial leader.

The problem isn't the faction war itself, but rather the Manichaean way it has been written from MoP onwards, with a shiny white, goody goody Alliance and a comically evil Horde (except when there is an Alliance sockpuppet at its helm).

[Aresk]

I though it sounded sarcastic myself.
Though I think one question hasn't been answered yet.

If my Orc Hunter buddy wants to group up with my Human Warlock and we want to pick up a quest in Stormwind should the stormwind guards attack the orc player if not then what is the lore explanation of that not happening?

Yes? Cross-faction, by its nature, implies factions still exist. Faction-specific quests would probably remain faction-specific, but you could do that quest from Lady Moonberry together, as its a quest available to both factions, and you could go into an instance zone together--though that introduces issues where Alliance and Horde have different instances (e.g. Shattered Halls has different NPC quest givers at the beginning based on faction).

They could also implement a toy called "white flag" or the like that not only opts out of PvP but also removes a faction flag from the character for purposes of NPCs belonging to the other player faction. Have the white flag be a long buff that persists through death, and once a player goes through some questline for the other faction to illustrate their willingness to cooperate, they're awarded the toy and can then be neutral for instances where they have to go through another faction city (e.g. reaching Stockades easier).

[ravenmoon]

The WoW team seems to have finally begun to step in the right direction by heeding community feedback. And it only took multiple disasters to get there...

Anyway let us assume a true miracle has happened and all these talks of WoW 2, Azeroth revamp, abandoning of the cosmos plotline (Shadowlands and other realms) finally materialize. So Blizzard heads finally tell the writing team to reel it back and go back to the basics and chill out with mystery box chase of the lore and make more grounded stories. The new exiles reach zone proves that they can do it...
So now the biggest pickle we have to deal with, merging both factions because the gameplay is almost dead on one side and it is affecting the other side. But how will this be done without pissing off many people? Before would could always argue some immediate emergency allows us to cooperate but a couple of name characters and a few champions are not the entire faction.

After Legion it was totally possible to say both faction can drop the faction divide and come together but the Horde's genocide of the Night Elves threw a 3 tone wrentch into that. So how do you do this? How do we explain how Orcs and Undead players or NPCs are not killed on sight in previously Alliance locations?
Do we wave the amnesia wand and have everybody be super best friends or would you do something else?

it's easy, done many a posts about it a few years ago. But I'm out of essays.

[mickybrighteyes]

For one raid? sure. To merge both factions where one was just a year ago burning an entire nation alive with no remorse? Harder to stomach that imo. We essentially have to have a convincing "These guys are totally cool now don't worry ok?"

I think it's more harder to stomach because people refused to accept a universal player faction when it made sense to have it.

Arthas came down and we had to unite against him... but then one asshat had to declare war and for some reason everyone fell in for that. A literal point in time thaty would destroy teh world happened and we all rallied for it... but said war was still on going for some reason. Legion invades... not a damn soul can trust one another (despite every major order of the era figuring out what the hell was going on and 'technically' uniting to take on the real issues but that information just dropped off the face o the earth somehow)

Really WE the heroes who make up the repeatedly united faceless masses that DID united we should have gotten wise and broken off to go be freelancers a LONG time ago. This is not to say that Ironforge and Orgrimmar should suddenly open the gates to one another. but we the players should have been removed from rank and file troops sometime after we turned into major war leaders and vanguards for the planet.

[Lodreh]

Alliance and Horde are disbanded... you are a mercenary... help whichever peoples you want.

[Nathreim]

Just make it only for instanced content.

[Mysterymask]

Alliance and Horde are disbanded... you are a mercenary... help whichever peoples you want.

Don't even have to disband them, it's their war not yours and you don't have to join their military

[OokOok]

Factions should exist, horde should vs alliance and alliance should vs horde.

BUT by now, the players themselves shouldn't be horde or alliance by the lore. We work along side the alliance since officially wotlk when we worked together to take down ulduar, had friendly competition in TOGC and took on ICC together. Players should be a neutral faction of like minded warriors working together "mercs" so to speak, but the faction war should never cease to exist as it's impossible from a logical perspective for that to ever happen. Even in our modern world people still hate people, jews and muslims still declare war on eachother because of their religion. Asians all hate eachother, etc etc.

[Darkeon]

Current lore already justifies Cross-Faction play.

[shoc]

Remix the old-school Faction Reputations and apply it to world-hostility and world PvP.

Every reputation, even something like Stormwind or Ogrimmar, could have an option to denounce. Basically resetting your reputation with them to neutral, which means you can also initiate combat with guards of that city. So, you could be a Night Elf who is Hated with Stormwind and basically treated as Horde whenever they step foot there.

The only limitation is that you cannot denounce your own racial home faction. So you could not as an Orc denounce Orgrimmar.

On top of all of this, player-to-player PvP status and hostility would be based on one-another's faction status. So, a Goblin whose reputation with Orgrimmar is hated, would appear PvP-enabled to Orc characters.

This would allow servers and communities to draw their own faction lines wherever they damn well please. It could make for some emergent gameplay in the form of emergent player factions.

[mickybrighteyes]

Remix the old-school Faction Reputations and apply it to world-hostility and world PvP.

Every reputation, even something like Stormwind or Ogrimmar, could have an option to denounce. Basically resetting your reputation with them to neutral, which means you can also initiate combat with guards of that city. So, you could be a Night Elf who is Hated with Stormwind and basically treated as Horde whenever they step foot there.

The only limitation is that you cannot denounce your own racial home faction. So you could not as an Orc denounce Orgrimmar.

On top of all of this, player-to-player PvP status and hostility would be based on one-another's faction status. So, a Goblin whose reputation with Orgrimmar is hated, would appear PvP-enabled to Orc characters.

This would allow servers and communities to draw their own faction lines wherever they damn well please. It could make for some emergent gameplay in the form of emergent player factions.

IMO no faction restriction for race. Want to be an orc who turns on org. OK do it. Want to be a human who forsakes stormwind? fantastic. Undead who does NOT want to be Forsaken? More power to ya.

Hell I'd say go so far as to allow someone to get exalted with all faction cities.

For warmode and pvp? That'd be a quest chain that has some sort of reset period. Would be nice if it had some sort of cap on how many people could snowball on a cluster to try and keep it from being TOO dominated but I don't think that's possible in the current version of the game.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't even have to disband them, it's their war not yours and you don't have to join their military

so much this... though technically we did join in 'some' of the wars... a lot of the time we just happened to be the most experienced person for a random task that made no sense looking back.

[LostSinclair]

I'm not sure the factions can be erased since so many things hinge off of them but if it's just the players being given the choice then more then enough crazy shit has happened in lore to justify mass defections to the other side. And since there player population of races doesn't mesh with canon lore race population (i.e. way more blood elves and void elves than there could be) a 'small' percent of one side could defect to the other(lore wise) even if it was much larger actually.

Can only wonder how the 10.0 pre patch is going to go at this rate. There has to be something major involving the imbalance, the problem was left to fester to long to ignore anymore.

[InflaterMouse]

Wouldn't be a legit cross faction. I would start a 3rd faction that any race could join and have them at war with the Alliance and Horde over something. As a current Alliance or Horde player, if you decided to join them you would become hated with all factions specific to them and be marked as hostile with them.

[draugril]

Yes, WC3 RoC ends up with proto-Alliance and proto-Horde joining forces in order to defeat the big bad, WoW style. But TFT ends not only with Arthas donning the helm of domination, but also with the Horde (the Western one anyway, plus Ogres) storming a major Alliance stronghold and killing a racial leader.

The problem isn't the faction war itself, but rather the Manichaean way it has been written from MoP onwards, with a shiny white, goody goody Alliance and a comically evil Horde (except when there is an Alliance sockpuppet at its helm).

... you do realize that these particular Alliance members crossed an ocean with the explicit purpose to wipe out the nascent Horde civilization, right?

[Toho]

... you do realize that these particular Alliance members crossed an ocean with the explicit purpose to wipe out the nascent Horde civilization, right?

What's ironic is that BFA totally vindicated Daelin's mistrust of the orcs and the Horde. Jaina's Warbringer confirmed it and her character ARC was about her forgiving herself for what happened.

Well before yet another 180 from this character.

[Vampyrr]

The WoW team seems to have finally begun to step in the right direction by heeding community feedback. And it only took multiple disasters to get there...

Anyway let us assume a true miracle has happened and all these talks of WoW 2, Azeroth revamp, abandoning of the cosmos plotline (Shadowlands and other realms) finally materialize. So Blizzard heads finally tell the writing team to reel it back and go back to the basics and chill out with mystery box chase of the lore and make more grounded stories. The new exiles reach zone proves that they can do it...
So now the biggest pickle we have to deal with, merging both factions because the gameplay is almost dead on one side and it is affecting the other side. But how will this be done without pissing off many people? Before would could always argue some immediate emergency allows us to cooperate but a couple of name characters and a few champions are not the entire faction.

After Legion it was totally possible to say both faction can drop the faction divide and come together but the Horde's genocide of the Night Elves threw a 3 tone wrentch into that. So how do you do this? How do we explain how Orcs and Undead players or NPCs are not killed on sight in previously Alliance locations?
Do we wave the amnesia wand and have everybody be super best friends or would you do something else?

The lore already exists! Alliance and Horde team up EVERY SINGLE EXPAC, including this one. It makes less sense to NOT have crossplay then to have it.

[Toho]

The lore already exists! Alliance and Horde team up EVERY SINGLE EXPAC, including this one. It makes less sense to NOT have crossplay then to have it.

As I have mentioned this earlier the factions themselves only very, very briefly cooperate to deal with an immediate threat.

What is being discussed is more of a unification where Horde players and Alliance players can quest together, trade, do dungeons, BG and raids.
The problem is that BFA made the Horde do horrible things that they have yet to answer for and if Horde players are expected to waltz through Alliance territories to pick up the kill 12 boar quests there has to be an explanation why the Horde player won't get killed on sight.

This situation is wholly different than Alliance and Horde stopping to kill each other in the middle of a god forsaken frontier like Northrend or Broken Isles long enough to face some world ending threat.
To be fair though there have been a few suggestions where the lore will allow players to dance around this

[Hubbl3]

We already have lore in place. Use the class halls.

[Mestalis]

Make every race it's own faction. Each race already has its own reputation.

[Vampyrr]

As I have mentioned this earlier the factions themselves only very, very briefly cooperate to deal with an immediate threat.

What is being discussed is more of a unification where Horde players and Alliance players can quest together, trade, do dungeons, BG and raids.
The problem is that BFA made the Horde do horrible things that they have yet to answer for and if Horde players are expected to waltz through Alliance territories to pick up the kill 12 boar quests there has to be an explanation why the Horde player won't get killed on sight.

This situation is wholly different than Alliance and Horde stopping to kill each other in the middle of a god forsaken frontier like Northrend or Broken Isles long enough to face some world ending threat.
To be fair though there have been a few suggestions where the lore will allow players to dance around this

We work with other factions all the time via neutral groups that dont care. The adventurers are more or less mercenaries so we can do whatever we like we are not beholden to our own faction.