Cross-faction soon?

[Dorfadin]

They added cross faction gameplay in Rift MMO... 1 yr before it died lol

[Akta]

Cross faction would be the major selling point for wow! If they keep restrictions in cities and create more neutral hub then it would work.

[yeetcannon]

Cross-faction is needed to keep the game healthy. At this point it is only unhealthy to keep the games player base split apart.

It helps the cash shop. Imagine all the players that chose horde purely because it is better for mythic+ & raiding for the longest time and their friends play there so they are forced to. All those people can faction change to Alliance and play the faction/race they want to.

I'm one of those people, played Alliance for many glorious years but had to switch to continue playing with friends.

I absolutely fucking loathe being Horde and the very day faction restrictions are dropped & you can do all forms of content cross faction, I'm gonna be spending around $600 to change every single one of my characters back to Alliance.

[Snowfunk]

Old idea, but I think it's becoming a reasonable step to take.
Personally, I'd love to see it.

I don't think the game is dying anytime soon, this expansion is definitely in a slump, but aside from that the player base is in a natural decline.
Allowing cross faction guilds, raiding and dungeon running would serve to revitalize the game.

This old factions at war narrative has more than played its part, it's long overdue to go away.
But the biggest benefit, something I personally value highly, is to simply let players play the race they most prefer.
On the same tangent, I really wish they would loosen up the class & race combinations.
Just let people what they want, with whom they want.

This game is old, and aging still, holding on to old lore and narrative principles is simply not necessary.

[Luck4]

I bet the cross-faction system will be a 10.0 feature.

[sensei]

They added cross faction gameplay in Rift MMO... 1 yr before it died lol

Final Fantasy XIV has no factions and everyone says they're stealing WoW's players soooo

[Julmara]

i dont want to have any alliance scum in muh raids o3o
for real thou its overall a good idea for example when you need special racials for a raidboss or mythic+

[Nnyco]

Without buff for Alliance racials (or make them just the same as horde, just with diffrent names) hardcore players will still playing in Horde.

The irony hurts that someone with a nightelf avatar says that.

[Nootz]

Factions are already one sided with Horde dominating anything and everything in the end game. There isn't any reason to be Alliance right now besides aesthetic. Racials are strong but when no one is playing your side does it really matter? There's not enough players to really do anything meaningful unless you do everything exclusively within your guild. Just let everyone play cross faction. Make up some lore bs for why everyone likes each other now. Players that still have all the faction pride nonsense just play war mode.

I want to play Alliance characters but if I want to do meaningful endgame content I almost 100% have to play Horde to have any kind of chance at it.

[Luck4]

Factions are already one sided with Horde dominating anything and everything in the end game. There isn't any reason to be Alliance right now besides aesthetic. Racials are strong but when no one is playing your side does it really matter? There's not enough players to really do anything meaningful unless you do everything exclusively within your guild. Just let everyone play cross faction. Make up some lore bs for why everyone likes each other now. Players that still have all the faction pride nonsense just play war mode.

I want to play Alliance characters but if I want to do meaningful endgame content I almost 100% have to play Horde to have any kind of chance at it.

Sadly it's 100% true, Alliance is already on life support. If they don't enable cross-faction PVE Alliance is going to die in the next couple of expansions.

[scubi666stacy]

With mercenary mode in the BGs, the only reason to have factions divided is Warmode. Even in the Arena, where Gladiators have no loyalty besides their team, factions are a stupid divide. In all things PvE, even more so.

Also, Warmode has to be revamped and be a totally independent experience from all PvE content besides resource farming (and said resources should be used to get "craftable" gear from specific PvP gear traders). Set PvP objectives in the world to concentrate people on spots (defend settlements, flightmasters, bridges, etc.) or on routes (bodyguard a transport of important goods or NPCs) for players to get additional experience, gold, PvP currencies etc. Think bold if you want to create a world at war, and do this as a totally parallel world compared to PvE where all things are about slaying monsters and looking for treasure.

Edit: With such a system, I would add flying in the PvE mode much earlier, while removing it from PvP entirely.

[garicasha]

There are also other solutions that would work. I always thought that the least-populated faction should get a 1% boost to damage, healing, and stamina in raids. It's funny how a trivial change for 99.9% of players would completely re-work the top 0.1%.

It has always surprised me that they never incentivized playing the lesser-played faction more.

[Mardux]

It would be nice to have access to the best racials while still being able to play with people on horde-side. But I doubt they'll open it any time soon.

- - - Updated - - -

Final Fantasy XIV has no factions and everyone says they're stealing WoW's players soooo

Maybe they should stop believing everything streamers say as if its gospel.

[Relapses]

There are also other solutions that would work. I always thought that the least-populated faction should get a 1% boost to damage, healing, and stamina in raids. It's funny how a trivial change for 99.9% of players would completely re-work the top 0.1%.

It has always surprised me that they never incentivized playing the lesser-played faction more.

Alliance racials are currently better than Horde.

[deenman]

Without buff for Alliance racials (or make them just the same as horde, just with diffrent names) hardcore players will still playing in Horde.

well with cross faction that wont be a problem anymore,99% can be horde,the 1% aliance wont suffer

[Relapses]

well with cross faction that wont be a problem anymore,99% can be horde,the 1% aliance wont suffer

Faction divide even to this day is much closer to 50/50 than a lot of players on forums will lead you to believe. That isn't to downplay the problem or shut down support of cross-faction, just wanted to point that the exaggerated takes you see on this forum aren't always representative of the actual situation.

[deenman]

Faction divide even to this day is much closer to 50/50 than a lot of players on forums will lead you to believe. That isn't to downplay the problem or shut down support of cross-faction, just wanted to point that the exaggerated takes you see on this forum aren't always representative of the actual situation.

dunno,i can buy that the raw numbers are close to 50-50,but the reality at endgame is nowhere near that,just look at wowprogress,also in my own experience i have seen it,my guild has been aliance until we changed in legion,we saw an insane level of difference,not only did the pool of recruits increase greatly,but so did their quality

[Marmot]

Elder Scrolls Online has three factions yet people can group up and do PvE content together regardless of faction. You can socialise and be in guilds together etc. The factions mainly exist for lore and pvp purposes (Cyrodiil in particular). It works fine.

[Relapses]

dunno,i can buy that the raw numbers are close to 50-50,but the reality at endgame is nowhere near that,just look at wowprogress,also in my own experience i have seen it,my guild has been aliance until we changed in legion,we saw an insane level of difference,not only did the pool of recruits increase greatly,but so did their quality

I don't think anybody would argue that endgame isn't heavily Horde favored. It's like that because of the shit Blizzard pulled back in Cata/MoP. They let Horde racials be ridiculously overpowered for two entire expansions and a lot of competitive guilds hopped sides. They fixed it by WoD but the damage had already been done at that point. Because the problem is largely a social one (and not one driven specifically by numbers), Blizzard has been hesitant to approach it. At 2019 BlizzCon, Ion's answer to the question was a flat no. Then before SL was released he mentioned that it was on the developers' radar. And now, at the midway point of the expansion he's on Twitter saying that they need to do something about it. It's anybody's guess when Blizzard will make changes but we could see it as early as 9.3 at this rate.

[deenman]

I don't think anybody would argue that endgame is heavily Horde favored. It's like that because of the shit Blizzard pulled back in Cata/MoP. They let Horde racials be ridiculously overpowered for two entire expansions and a lot of competitive guilds hopped sides. They fixed it by WoD but the damage had already been done at that point. Because the problem is largely a social one (and not one driven specifically by numbers), Blizzard has been hesitant to approach it. At 2019 BlizzCon, Ion's answer to the question was a flat no. Then before SL was released he mentioned that it was on the developers' radar. And now, at the midway point of the expansion he's on Twitter saying that they need to do something about it. It's anybody's guess when Blizzard will make changes but we could see it as early as 9.3 at this rate.

the issue was also reversed in wrath and cata with the pvp crowd being pretty much only humans,i rly dont see a way to fix this,like you said,its mostly social,and even if they overbuff aliance stuff it will just switch the pendulum,the only solution here is proly just cross faction,maybe even guilds,and make some neutral base cities