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

[huth]

Wrong. They're Horde cause it's easier to raid. If cross faction becomes a thing everyone goes Human because of how busted the racial is.

Alliance race balance says otherwise. You're just making shit up to justify your claims.

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Either that or, y'know, the faction thing might really just be a core tenet of the game even if people want to subvert it for gameplay reasons.

Personally i'd think that if they'd really wanted to balance the factions they'd start actively stimulating it by i.e. offering free server transfers, faction/race changes and that both in batch and per character and/or increasing the cost of any such action that would make the imbalance worse.

Thing is that this would obviously cost them money, so i do not expect them to ever do it.

What would free tranfers achieve when nobody takes the offer because the opportunity cost isn't worth it? The problem isn't money. The problem is that it wouldn't work. Make the cost of faction transfers to Horde to high and people will just level up new Horde characters instead.

The only way they could fix the imbalance this way would be forced transfers, and that's unlikely to be a can of worms they'd like to open.

[Kauko]

How many times I wanted to attack a champion of my faction while farming mats... imagine WPVP with no A vs H but Free for all outside of city/village borders

[Binaris]

As long as they can keep "balancing" things to get money out of faction transfers it won't happen. They will wait until the problem is so large that it is the only option.

[Cæli]

being able to group with the opposite faction (for free because that already exists for a fee) is something that will happen eventually I think
not sure how that would be implemented though
maybe through the bnet friends list
or they will create some kind of "diplomat" system where you can go and you make "peace" with select players or guild

[Swnem]

Honestly, I hope that's what's happening. I for one have already set my chat settings so most toxicity doesn't hit me, but I'm a veteran. The new player walking into this woodchipper of tribalism they've created is a much bigger "health of the game" issue.

I think you are exagerating. Once the sides are merged in terms of gameplay i think you will see people joke with each other but there will be no tribalism to the point of not accepting people cause of their faction/race. If it does it will be some douchebag everyone will ignore. I know in my guild we would kick people like that.
More players is a good thing for both sides and tbh most people don't care about the story.

[Uko]

Blizzard just needs to do what they are best at and steal an idea from another game and refine it. In this case just steal how ffxiv does factions. They all exist and there is tension between them but they dont lock the player from playing with people from doing things with other players of a different faction but they still exist in pvp and are explained away as training exercises between the factions to keep everyone sharp incase they are called upon or something goes down.

[Kelduril]

Alliance race balance says otherwise.

Source please

[RobertMugabe]

What made WoW so interesting initially was the fact that you always had a different faction of players that hated you and you were at war against.

If anything, Blizzard should double down on that. BfA was such a disappointment already very early on as it was very clear that it was just everyone vs sylvanas rather than truly alliance vs horde and overall the expansion was really about the old gods after all.

However even I would rather see them remove factions than continue the situation like we have right now, where only every other expansion the faction conflict plays a minor role and otherwise we're all just great friends. In SL, ALL of the faction leaders are good friends with each other (besides Tyrande), so we might as well remove the factions.

[Itori]

Its pretty sad that they havent merged factions yet, the faction vs faction theme in modern day is dead. The only reason i can think of them waiting is because theyre making quite a bit off their expensive faction transfers.

[huth]

Source please

You first.

[Logwyn]

Its pretty sad that they havent merged factions yet, the faction vs faction theme in modern day is dead. The only reason i can think of them waiting is because theyre making quite a bit off their expensive faction transfers.

They could still keep the factions even add more just let us team up with all players regardless of choices. Spin it into more of we are all fighting the big bads just we are choosing to do it a different way.

Kinda like The Secret World does it. Three factions but you can team with anyone for PVE and just break it apart for PVP. Or just let the player choose what faction their Orc is in.

[dreaderus]

The change would be so massive for the story uniting the factions would have to segue into other major changes, like a significantly expanded guild system, totally revamped war mode, or even an entirely new game. Knowing Blizzard, they won't just smoosh the two factions together and call it a day. There will be a special Blizzard twist on the whole thing if they do it.

I recall "teamwork" many times happening in the game its dumb this hasn't already not happened even if implemented in a fashion where players can choose

[Kelduril]

You first.

My source for what lol

Wrong. They're Horde cause it's easier to raid.

You said this yourself. It's easier to find groups as Horde. Are you asking for a source for your own statement?

You might either be the most brilliant or illogical internet lawyer ever

[huth]

My source for what lol

Well, how about we start with your claim that everybody would change to human. You're just justifying that with some nebulous affirmation that "their racial" is "so overpowered".

Or for that matter your claim that there is no problem when Alliance provably takes several times longer to fill the Hall of Fame now than it did during Legion.

You said this yourself. It's easier to find groups as Horde. Are you asking for a source for your own statement?

And you previously claimed they prefer Horde because they like it more, rather than due to the practical benefits. So you're already moving goalposts.

[Traveler Voltin]

the show and tell for them is opposites.

Tell: Alliance vs horde is the root of the game.

Show: Faction war is stupid. we need to make peace. we need to band together to fight greater evils.

[AriochIV]

I find that there's plenty of toxicity in the game that has nothing to do with factions.

[Breccia]

I for one don't see them ever doing it

When membership gets low enough, I do. Special servers or a "warmode" toggle. Basically, what @Wheeler said.

I agree with the spirit of your post, however.

[crusadernero]

While I absolutely do not want horde and alliance to be merged and cross faction being a thing, Shadowlands kinda seems to be the xpac to do it.
Like, we could have made it so pvp is vs the other covenants, so a Kyrian human and orc fight side by side. That would ofc be very imbalanced because of cov abilities and such, but you get the idea.
BFA had me really excited, for I thought it would be an xpac of purely allies v horde war, but ofc turned out to not be, since we gotta fight some world destroying common enemy every xpac... It should just have been better written tbh and we could have had a good war xpac.

Agree. I really thought BfA would be all out faction war and content surrounding that. Sure there was some here and there, but thats not really what it ended up being. Yet again the faction war was a side activity. They could have done so much more with it. It could even take place in EK/K.

On topic: Its bound to happen sometime. Blizzard is just waiting for the right time and probably the right xpac to do it in. An xpac that really breaks down the barriers between the two factions once and for all. Probably when every known horde/alliance leader is dead.

[Azerate]

Faction is imbalance is simply not as bad as some people make it out to be.

Everything up to and including heroic raids and M+15 is perfectly puggable on Alliance at the moment still. Once that becomes an issues, I agree that they should then address it and allow some kind of cross faction play. Now? No.

[MoanaLisa]

It's possible that you're too easily insulted. The reason they always hedge on stuff is because our "community" to use the term loosely used to take every goddamn thing they ever speculated about and turned it into ironclad promises.