Cross-faction soon?

[Vampyrr]

I didn't think the issue was factions as much as wanting to play what ever race you wanted to and still be a part of a faction. Having horde and alliance cross faction would be too much in my opinion, there needs to always be the 2 factions. Regardless if other factions are added. Having additional factions (new story lines) would bring something new to the game.

The factions can and SHOULD remain they are integral to the story WoW likes to tell. However the faction restrictions splitting the player base must go for the health of the game. All players should be considered adventuring Mercenaries who can group with who we like. The cities do not have to tolerate opposing factions so you wont see gnomes in Org or orcs in Stormwind. But I should be able to invite my friends who picked a troll because they liked them while playing my night elf because I liked them.

[AngerFork]

The factions can and SHOULD remain they are integral to the story WoW likes to tell. However the faction restrictions splitting the player base must go for the health of the game. All players should be considered adventuring Mercenaries who can group with who we like. The cities do not have to tolerate opposing factions so you wont see gnomes in Org or orcs in Stormwind. But I should be able to invite my friends who picked a troll because they liked them while playing my night elf because I liked them.

Mostly agreed. The factions should stay for the story, but players should be allowed to play with each other regardless of race/faction. But this does lead to some weird gameplay issues to be sure.

One example: let's say I join my NE Druid to a group that has an Orc Shaman. Generally speaking, we'd be able to do raids/dungeons together in a group. Possibly even instanced PvP. Where this gets weird is with world content. If the two of us are grouped, it would make sense that we could in theory heal each other when fighting a World Boss. But we absolutely shouldn't be able to heal each other if I'm trying to attack Orgrimmar or they are trying to attack Stormwind. So where then do you place the cutoff in this case? This is the main issue I see. You have to make it only for instanced groups (which does make it somewhat disadvantageous to have a cross faction guild) or you in essence are killing a major portion of World PvP.

[Vampyrr]

Mostly agreed. The factions should stay for the story, but players should be allowed to play with each other regardless of race/faction. But this does lead to some weird gameplay issues to be sure.

One example: let's say I join my NE Druid to a group that has an Orc Shaman. Generally speaking, we'd be able to do raids/dungeons together in a group. Possibly even instanced PvP. Where this gets weird is with world content. If the two of us are grouped, it would make sense that we could in theory heal each other when fighting a World Boss. But we absolutely shouldn't be able to heal each other if I'm trying to attack Orgrimmar or they are trying to attack Stormwind. So where then do you place the cutoff in this case? This is the main issue I see. You have to make it only for instanced groups (which does make it somewhat disadvantageous to have a cross faction guild) or you in essence are killing a major portion of World PvP.

Id say does not work in War Mode is a good restriction. WM Off generally Alliance and Horde assist each other anyways with rares and bosses.

[Raetary]

But we absolutely shouldn't be able to heal each other if I'm trying to attack Orgrimmar or they are trying to attack Stormwind.

This is a pretty bad example.
Nobody goes after faction hubs anymore and even if they did, Why not? Who cares? Its such such a weirdly specific scenario that i very much doubt anyone would consider or give a flying fuck about.

CFPs primary problem would be how warmode interacts with grouping and how it would work with guild members that are of the opposite faction.
Not random people doing irrelevant things.

[AngerFork]

Id say does not work in War Mode is a good restriction. WM Off generally Alliance and Horde assist each other anyways with rares and bosses.

Agreed on that, at least in the open world. I'm still good with War Mode Alliance/Horde instanced groups, but I do think it almost has to be off in the open world for it to work with War Mode.

Either that or War Mode becomes everyone vs. everyone unless you are in a group. That might be a bit chaotic, but I've generally enjoyed things like the Ordos item specifically for this reason.

This is a pretty bad example.
Nobody goes after faction hubs anymore and even if they did, Why not? Who cares? Its such such a weirdly specific scenario that i very much doubt anyone would consider or give a flying fuck about.

CFPs primary problem would be how warmode interacts with grouping and how it would work with guild members that are of the opposite faction.
Not random people doing irrelevant things.

While it might be a bit out there, it's still something that could happen & thus the devs have to consider it. I still on occasion see people talking about trying to get the War Bear achievement or go around on alts trying to get the fires done during Midsummer. So long as there's any sort of reason (even just for random PvP), people will try it, so it has to be looked at from a design perspective.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure that War Mode is going to be all that difficult to figure out. There are ways to separate out WM from non-WM design-wise that makes this easier. You could easily set it up so that cross-realm grouping doesn't override faction design in War Mode open world content & call it a day. People would generally understand this, especially if they could group for open world content in non-WM.

[Pons]

It wouldn't address M+ or raiding, but I would kill for tagged mobs to be both factions. I'm on a server with 5 trillion horde and like 5 alliance. I can't do world/daily quests during prime time or it takes an hour to do one quest.

[HolyCowBro]

Covenants hot swappable, the AOE cap removed and now for the trifecta... possibly cross-faction M+/raiding. It's a good time to be a WoW fan.

edit: I'm aware he said there is no "quick solution," but this is something that's been on their radar for awhile. Personally, I'm fine with the faction divide but it looks like there are a lot of ideas swirling around at Blizzard.

We can have cross-faction PVE and keep the faction divide. Just let us fucking play together!

[Jastall]

Mostly agreed. The factions should stay for the story, but players should be allowed to play with each other regardless of race/faction. But this does lead to some weird gameplay issues to be sure.

One example: let's say I join my NE Druid to a group that has an Orc Shaman. Generally speaking, we'd be able to do raids/dungeons together in a group. Possibly even instanced PvP. Where this gets weird is with world content. If the two of us are grouped, it would make sense that we could in theory heal each other when fighting a World Boss. But we absolutely shouldn't be able to heal each other if I'm trying to attack Orgrimmar or they are trying to attack Stormwind. So where then do you place the cutoff in this case? This is the main issue I see. You have to make it only for instanced groups (which does make it somewhat disadvantageous to have a cross faction guild) or you in essence are killing a major portion of World PvP.

If WM is on you simply can't group with the opposite faction no matter what or where you are. Activating WM drops your group automatically if there's another faction's player in it. If WM is off and you're grouped with Alliance players you can't attack Alliance NPCs, they'll be yellow to you. You'll be automatically teleported out of opposite faction capitals and major settlements so as to preserve that barrier as well.

Honestly while there's details to iron out RE the open world, for instanced gameplay loosening faction restrictions should have happened at the end of BFA.

[Dalyawow]

with the current state of the retail game possibly?

[InflaterMouse]

The factions can and SHOULD remain they are integral to the story WoW likes to tell. However the faction restrictions splitting the player base must go for the health of the game. All players should be considered adventuring Mercenaries who can group with who we like. The cities do not have to tolerate opposing factions so you wont see gnomes in Org or orcs in Stormwind. But I should be able to invite my friends who picked a troll because they liked them while playing my night elf because I liked them.

I do not agree with this at all. Sorry, different opinions. The factions are the base of the game and no they shouldn't be allowed to "adventure" together. A split faction makes way more sense, but the health of the game at this point is kind of subjective.

[BossManRoth]

Nope, they need to go. They've overstayed their welcome since MoP basically. Also the fAcTioN CoNFlIcT!1!! expansions need to go too. Those overstayed their welcome around Cata.

factions can stay, separate racial areas can stay. everything lore wise can stay. but if they opened up the lfg system to cross faction, even with the Mercenary system, that would be great.

[Molvonos]

I think dividing the playerbase in 2 seems to me like a old mmo concept that needs to modernize, factions need to stay for quest, reputations and story purposes but after 15 years and now horde and alliance being friends to the other faction leaders should make us be able to play with them, even if we still have horde/alliance territory forcing pvp.

What's funny about your statement is that originally, Everquest was 'good v. bad' with a smattering of neutral, but not once did they make it impossible to cross faction group/raid. Hell, if you were a bard or rogue, you could find masks that let you properly masquerade as another race as long as you didn't screw up and pick a religion. Everquest 2 tried to make it more cemented, but eventually caved and added neutral aspects and allowed full grouping/raiding.

WoW's the only MMO that has adamantly stood by it's 'Us v. Them' style of storytelling, but I have a feeling that many of the Old Guard who are being removed/left are the ones that fought with such fervor about keeping Alliance and Horde separate (despite the two factions repeatedly joining forces via storytelling).

For all the shit I (we) give Ion, I get the feeling that a lot of what he said was spoonfed to him by his superiors (which is a completely different problem) and now he's been given to talk a touch more candidly since it likely won't cost him his job (an assumption).

[Coldkil]

They don't actually need to change anything about factions. They just need to make guilds cross-faction, and make istanced content the same.

The problem is not faction lore or anything related to that. The problem is that naturally players flock to the most numerous side because you can find more people to play with, and that is just a pure gameplay thing.

EDIT: lore wise, it's been how many years that we had to "join forces to overcome the greater evil?" Hell in MoP we were literally questioned about the real utility of this HvA conflict.

It's time to wrap it up. Story has evolved and game has changed a lot. PvP can still exist, factions can still exist, make people just group up with whoever they want. There's warmode for optional WPvP and the faction imbalance issue would just disappear.

[Swnem]

Well... at least he understands it. I imagine they want to set it up in a new expansion. Though it would be better served for yesterday.

[Marrilaife]

While 3 factions would make everything worse in PVE it would instantly solve queue length problems in PVP. As long as none of the three factions is more than 50%

Lol, and how would you enforce that? The game could have 10 factions and you'd have 9 of them with 20% of the playerbase combined while 80% would flock to whatever evolved to be the "cool kids" faction where you can find groups, guilds, trade, boosts and w/e else is faction restricted. The natural path of least resistance is to pile on into one faction, unless there are in-game systems preventing it. Queues in pvp are already solved with merc mode on retail and horde vs horde bgs on classic.

Also the system solution to queues is very easy as we see on the picture, but a system that would elegantly force an even spread between factions hasn't been invented yet. "Just buff racials" doesn't work because they did exactly that at some point of the game and it didn't fix anything.

[T-34]

Blizzard is a company that promotes itself as "gameplay first" and it should finally deliver on that with removing all barriers for not only cross-faction play, but also cross-server play.
Let people stay on their realms, if necessary, but allow them to make guilds cross-faction and cross-realm and play the goddam game together.

Let factions be divided in story and cities etc. so the story and lore people can be happy, but let those that play the game, and not the story, play together.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I cannot say I have cared a whole lot for factions in a while. Kind of pointless divide in the playerbase. Sure, when the game had 20 million players and both sides were insanely populated it worked. As that number has gone a bit more back to earth it has become a score spot for sure. Not to mention the whole lore of the game is centered around faction corporation at this point. LONG behind us is this unworkable wall of say a WC or WC2. Really it started in WC3, you know, the whole coming together bit. Some new universe destroyer shows up and we team up to save the universe. Everyone in both factions work together, talk together, and achieve/fail together accept when the player is in control. For like the whole game. Just smash it together. Let people play where and how they like.

PVP can still be PVP. When the game can great two sided matches it does. If not it pushes games out as fast as possible when it comes to que ups. Warmode can still have the divide. It is totally optional and allows for the world pvp. For premades/created groups factions can mix because at this point it is about the competition and not zugzug. Sure, it might be a little immersion breaking but it can totally be shifted into a war game instead of A WAR as both sides prepare for the next world sized sword swinging loon to threaten it and they come together. Wouldn't even be that difficult.

So for me it makes sense and I for one enjoyed the hell out of the factions for many many years. But even with that said I think their time has passed.

[Deneios]

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.

Example if you check server ratios in EU i wouldnt want to be horde player on Silvermoon or alliance player on Draenor

[The Stormbringer]

I'd like it if we had more than just M+ and Raiding. I just want to be able to Party up and TALK and QUEST with people on the other Faction. Going into instances with them would be a huge bonus to that, but I don't want just raiding and M+. That would be extremely disappointing to me.

- - - Updated - - -

I'd love to give you a rebuttal for this myself but I think Max did better than I ever could on his stream earlier today.

Thanks for linking this. He has some really interesting ideas for the game. Some of this stuff would probably get me playing WoW again.

[Cæli]

fairly obvious to me that they'll implement cross faction grouping for things like dungeons, raids, arena, pvp