Factions opening up should look like this.

[Accendor]

We know they are exploring mixed faction raiding and grouping etc.. to be honest, i think they should go much further.. they have to find a way of opening up more of the races to both factions without losing uniqueness of the dual faction system. Here is the best way to do it.

**EDIT**
TLDR - version

1. If you are a player, you can play for whatever faction you want. Group/guild/raid with whoever you want. However you make your character and start in the traditional faction, before the choice to choose comes.
2. In the lore/story - only humans/gnomes/dwarves are alliance exclusive and on horde Orcs/Trolls/Tauren - this doesn't affect players (players can still choose any faction), all the other races have left the faction unity, and are doing their own things. New friendships and enmities exist on a per race bases


Here is one way of fleshing the detail of what happened to the races in lore.

• Open up some races to both factions, but keep some races core off.
• Open up raiding, grouping to faction team ups.
• However guilding would require a changing faction with your character - yes if you can join a guild in the opposite faction with your race, even if that race doesn't work with that faction - it's an individual choice.
• Lore is important, so the factions are still going to be important, but how the races do them will change Dramatically

Race wise Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Orcs, Tauren , Trolls are staunch loyal to the alliance and horde respectively ...and this is where all the faction drama mostly remains.. other races have rivalries , but also friendships based on sub-factions, and is dealt with on a per-race basis.

But everyone else can now choose either. For the faction locked, you can still join a guild of the opposite faction, but you can't change your faction.
For the races who can choose, once you choose your faction, it's final on that character (that's why paid faction change remains), however you can still join guilds of the opposite faction with taht character.

Here's How
Kul'tirans - the pirate faction is friendly to the horde
Worgen: night elf worgen and Val'Sharah worgen are friendly to the horde

Night elves: The night elf playable faction (the Darnassians) no longer care about the factions - they view the alliance as unfaithful and the horde as morally weak - but they don't stop individuals joining either - night elves who do aim to "restore" their faction. Highborne night elves actually want to lead the races rather than retreat from them so you can role play as one of them actively joining either faction to help lead or guide. Night elves should be developed as faction anyway

Lightforged - focused on the goals of the Light, unlike the first Draenei to contact Azeroth, they aren't picking sides, the Light wants EVERYONE. Lightforged develop a very close friendship with blood elves, building on the shattered offensive with normal draenei.
Void elves - although Silvermoon still doesn't want them near the Sunwell, yet they are the only ones that can protect it from Ethereal void incursions which will surely return, some blood elves know this and void elves sometimes ally with the horde to be in a better position to help

Blood elves: Blood elves are horde, but high elves are alliance - same race, same options, you can choose your faction, if you go alliance you're now called a high elf. Thalassians have generally drifted away from faction fanaticism and loyalties, they help out but pursuing magical themes like the light with Draenei, and the arcane with nightborne from the kaldorei empire are where their future lies. As a long lived race, the blood elves have looked well beyond the horde, the horde isn't their making nor their responsibility, it's a young faction spearheaded by a very young race (the orcs), building a racial future on it, is not a priority, they help for now, securing magical mastery is far more important, hence the close allies with Lightforged and nightborne.

Forsaken: After the vents of the BFA prequel novel , Calia Menethil, there are humans and forsaken willing to work together. Some forsaken are happy to fight for the alliance, even though acceptance is few and far between. No more Sylvanas re-enforcing the horde, . While most forsaken are with the horde, because most humans reject them, this isn't always the case, in especially in Lordaeron now, a lot of families have come to accept their loved ones in this new form, but still many do not.. this is a very interesting dynamic to explore that faction limitations prevented. Undead , like night elves above, should be developed as a powerful faction, although as a player you pick either the horde or alliance.


Goblins: Bilgewater are generally horde friendly, but like all goblins, they care more for profit, and don't care about batting for the other side, , however uou can now play as a Steamwheedle goblin too, there is no aesthetic difference on the goblin model between Bilgewater and say a Steamwheedle cartel, you can pick whatever side you want.

Mechagnomes: Mostly bat for the alliance because of the strong gnome connection, however, the horde helped out, and they are more interested in knowledge and technology, as long as the horde is also open to their ideas and experiments, there are enough Mechagnomes who don't mind fighting for them.
Vulpera: Started running into a lot of issues in many lands once they could leave Zandalar, and actually found a lot of alliance races full of mistrust for them and their thieving ways, however, they got on very well with rogue guilds, black market ops, and they are viewed like how some countries view gypsies a noisome pest, they aren't organised, so the Vulpera aren't with anyone, Vulpera can choose who they work for.. after approaching the horde, it was quickly discovered that the leadership acceptance of the horde was pretty much only applicable to the Vulpera there at the meeting,

Turns out they only demonstrated the usefulness of the race, as for loyalties, well that's an individuals thing.

Zandalari: Have stepped back enormously from the horde, Sylvanas' scheming that lost them most of their fleet, lost a war against the alliance, in fact where is this help they needed? with Uldir under control and N'zoth defeated, the horde is more trouble than it's worth, and they hate the alliance. Still isolation isn't an option. Zuldazar is an independent kingdom, but both alliance and horde can go through it, and Zandalari trolls can fight for either faction. However you're looked down on if you choose to help the factions, especially the alliance, but many Zandalari who do, do it for power. It's much harder to get on with the alliance as a troll than the horde.

[If there were two allied races that would be faction locked, it would be Zandalari and Mechagnomes]

Mag'har orcs have a contingent of Lightbound who preferred the alliance, but also Shadowmoon who were drawn to the void elves (who whie technically work both factions are officially alliance)

Highmountain Tauren: This one is easy, they've got on well with kaldorei types, nightborne and night elves are something they're use to and never had trouble with, the friendship and separate lives continue... Highmountain druids are a much bigger thing in their society and their influence allow as night elf druidic friendship - though Darnassians aren't alliance bound anymore and this is more tied to druids than all Darnassian night elves, Val'Sharah works a lot with the nightborne, their peace with kaldorei druids opens up a door for Tauren into alliance societies and cultures, though this isn't common outside the broken isle and thus outside the night elves.

Have I forgotten anyone? Remember Stormwind humans, dwarves and gnomes are alliance locked. Orcs, Tauren and Darkspear trolls are horde locked.

Did you research a bit of the BG story of each race? Because I feel like you have not

[StationaryHawk]

However, the removal of the barriers, makes the entire reason for the heavy alliance/horde lore push irrelevant, as such the story /lore needs to also adjust to reflect this. So changes must come there too.. this is why i go into detail. If you want ot protect some modicum of the story/lore you have to make adjustments to this too.

All it takes is for Blizzard to stop writing expansions around the faction conflict. The story would be better off without a MoP 3.0 that tries to put the war back in Warcraft.

[Paperfox]

Either guilds should completely ignore factions (ie: any toon can join any guild), or up to the guild owner at creation. So if you want to only allow allies or horde into your guild then you can set it up that way. Currently existing guilds would get a choice - when the guild owner logs on - so that they could make it faction specific or keep it to open to all which would be the default.

I can see the main hubs (SW & Org) remaining faction specific, and other races would have rep grinds to do. Why would an Orc be welcome in the Night Elf capital unless they were proved to be a friend? I would imagine that the Nelves would have quite a bit of orc specific armor laying around which they can't use and would be willing to sell to their friends.

[OrangeJuice]

Approximately 0% of players give a shit about faction story enough to jump through additional hoops to be able to do the cross faction content. You're basically arguing to annoy everybody with a fundamentally pointless system. Everything that players need to understand about cross-faction play can be explained with a text box that says, "Hey, opposing faction people can now apply to your guild/group."

First of all, I've noticed the last 2 weeks you've been stealing my arguments I've used against you. Is that why you quote me so much? To steal my arguments?

Where did you get your number to prove 0% of players care about the lore? I personally care, I don't remember a survey going around asking me if I cared or not, so how did you calculate this, or is it just a made up number you're using to make your point sound more believable?

Did you ever once considered PvP when you allowed cross faction qing? Are you even aware the ladder is separated between horde and alliance? Do you know how good orc/human is in PvP, and why mixing them together would be a bad thing? Also didn't you say the game has more subs now than ever before? So why would the game need to combine the two factions anyways if its playerbase is so large?

[Melusine]

We know they are exploring mixed faction raiding and grouping etc.. to be honest, i think they should go much further.. they have to find a way of opening up more of the races to both factions without losing uniqueness of the dual faction system. Here is the best way to do it.

**EDIT**
TLDR - version

1. If you are a player, you can play for whatever faction you want. Group/guild/raid with whoever you want. However you make your character and start in the traditional faction, before the choice to choose comes.
2. In the lore/story - only humans/gnomes/dwarves are alliance exclusive and on horde Orcs/Trolls/Tauren - this doesn't affect players (players can still choose any faction), all the other races have left the faction unity, and are doing their own things. New friendships and enmities exist on a per race bases


Here is one way of fleshing the detail of what happened to the races in lore.

• Open up some races to both factions, but keep some races core off.
• Open up raiding, grouping to faction team ups.
• However guilding would require a changing faction with your character - yes if you can join a guild in the opposite faction with your race, even if that race doesn't work with that faction - it's an individual choice.
• Lore is important, so the factions are still going to be important, but how the races do them will change Dramatically

Race wise Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Orcs, Tauren , Trolls are staunch loyal to the alliance and horde respectively ...and this is where all the faction drama mostly remains.. other races have rivalries , but also friendships based on sub-factions, and is dealt with on a per-race basis.

But everyone else can now choose either. For the faction locked, you can still join a guild of the opposite faction, but you can't change your faction.
For the races who can choose, once you choose your faction, it's final on that character (that's why paid faction change remains), however you can still join guilds of the opposite faction with taht character.

Here's How
Kul'tirans - the pirate faction is friendly to the horde
Worgen: night elf worgen and Val'Sharah worgen are friendly to the horde

Night elves: The night elf playable faction (the Darnassians) no longer care about the factions - they view the alliance as unfaithful and the horde as morally weak - but they don't stop individuals joining either - night elves who do aim to "restore" their faction. Highborne night elves actually want to lead the races rather than retreat from them so you can role play as one of them actively joining either faction to help lead or guide. Night elves should be developed as faction anyway

Lightforged - focused on the goals of the Light, unlike the first Draenei to contact Azeroth, they aren't picking sides, the Light wants EVERYONE. Lightforged develop a very close friendship with blood elves, building on the shattered offensive with normal draenei.
Void elves - although Silvermoon still doesn't want them near the Sunwell, yet they are the only ones that can protect it from Ethereal void incursions which will surely return, some blood elves know this and void elves sometimes ally with the horde to be in a better position to help

Blood elves: Blood elves are horde, but high elves are alliance - same race, same options, you can choose your faction, if you go alliance you're now called a high elf. Thalassians have generally drifted away from faction fanaticism and loyalties, they help out but pursuing magical themes like the light with Draenei, and the arcane with nightborne from the kaldorei empire are where their future lies. As a long lived race, the blood elves have looked well beyond the horde, the horde isn't their making nor their responsibility, it's a young faction spearheaded by a very young race (the orcs), building a racial future on it, is not a priority, they help for now, securing magical mastery is far more important, hence the close allies with Lightforged and nightborne.

Forsaken: After the vents of the BFA prequel novel , Calia Menethil, there are humans and forsaken willing to work together. Some forsaken are happy to fight for the alliance, even though acceptance is few and far between. No more Sylvanas re-enforcing the horde, . While most forsaken are with the horde, because most humans reject them, this isn't always the case, in especially in Lordaeron now, a lot of families have come to accept their loved ones in this new form, but still many do not.. this is a very interesting dynamic to explore that faction limitations prevented. Undead , like night elves above, should be developed as a powerful faction, although as a player you pick either the horde or alliance.


Goblins: Bilgewater are generally horde friendly, but like all goblins, they care more for profit, and don't care about batting for the other side, , however uou can now play as a Steamwheedle goblin too, there is no aesthetic difference on the goblin model between Bilgewater and say a Steamwheedle cartel, you can pick whatever side you want.

Mechagnomes: Mostly bat for the alliance because of the strong gnome connection, however, the horde helped out, and they are more interested in knowledge and technology, as long as the horde is also open to their ideas and experiments, there are enough Mechagnomes who don't mind fighting for them.
Vulpera: Started running into a lot of issues in many lands once they could leave Zandalar, and actually found a lot of alliance races full of mistrust for them and their thieving ways, however, they got on very well with rogue guilds, black market ops, and they are viewed like how some countries view gypsies a noisome pest, they aren't organised, so the Vulpera aren't with anyone, Vulpera can choose who they work for.. after approaching the horde, it was quickly discovered that the leadership acceptance of the horde was pretty much only applicable to the Vulpera there at the meeting,

Turns out they only demonstrated the usefulness of the race, as for loyalties, well that's an individuals thing.

Zandalari: Have stepped back enormously from the horde, Sylvanas' scheming that lost them most of their fleet, lost a war against the alliance, in fact where is this help they needed? with Uldir under control and N'zoth defeated, the horde is more trouble than it's worth, and they hate the alliance. Still isolation isn't an option. Zuldazar is an independent kingdom, but both alliance and horde can go through it, and Zandalari trolls can fight for either faction. However you're looked down on if you choose to help the factions, especially the alliance, but many Zandalari who do, do it for power. It's much harder to get on with the alliance as a troll than the horde.

[If there were two allied races that would be faction locked, it would be Zandalari and Mechagnomes]

Mag'har orcs have a contingent of Lightbound who preferred the alliance, but also Shadowmoon who were drawn to the void elves (who whie technically work both factions are officially alliance)

Highmountain Tauren: This one is easy, they've got on well with kaldorei types, nightborne and night elves are something they're use to and never had trouble with, the friendship and separate lives continue... Highmountain druids are a much bigger thing in their society and their influence allow as night elf druidic friendship - though Darnassians aren't alliance bound anymore and this is more tied to druids than all Darnassian night elves, Val'Sharah works a lot with the nightborne, their peace with kaldorei druids opens up a door for Tauren into alliance societies and cultures, though this isn't common outside the broken isle and thus outside the night elves.

Have I forgotten anyone? Remember Stormwind humans, dwarves and gnomes are alliance locked. Orcs, Tauren and Darkspear trolls are horde locked.

Let me simplify how cross-faction SHOULD theoretically work.

We return to Azeroth some time later from the shadowlands to see that WE made 2 critical errors. The first is, we defeated a First one in the Shadowlands that drew our worlds together, and more or less, sent out a beacon through the twisting nether to inform the voidlords specifically where in the universe we are. The second one is as a result of our absence on Azeroth. Stormwind and Orgrimmar have both fallen to encroaching armies. The Horde and Alliance have been defeated by lightforged Garrosh ushering in a band of zealots from alternate Draenei under the leadership of the Naaru Prime, Xe'ra to hunt down the Mag'har orcs that evaded capture on alternate Draenor. Stormwind has been brought down, as the lightbound Draenei (not to be confused with the Lightforged) demolished the primary city of the Alliance after Turalyon refused to turn over Alleria and the void elves to the lightbound. Yrel defects, unable to continue fighting for the lightbound after they attack the lightforged, and becomes lightforged, herself to replace Turalyon after he is struck down in the initial fight for Stormwind. The entirety of the lower portion of the Eastern Kingdoms has fallen. The dwarves, under the lead of the queen regent, Moira, and her son, king Dagran Thaurissan II have retreated into the nearly impregnable Blackrock Mountain. Gnomeregan has sealed itself up, after being completely cleaned up with the aid of the mechagnomes and now serves as a sanctuary for the remnants of what was the Alliance. The Admiralty of Boralus and the Empire of Zuldazar are in terrible jeopardy of being taken over by the lightbound. Kalimdor has been divided, once again as Thunder Bluff has been entirely destroyed, Orgrimmar has been sacked, and Azshara is now in complete control of the lightbound. Even the Venture Company and the Steamwheedle cartel have now formed an allegiance with the rebellion forces of the Alliance and Horde remnants.

There is no Horde or Alliance, anymore. Both have found a common enemy in the zealots of the lightbound. In the next 2 patches, as the voidlords make their way to Azeroth, there will be a 3-way battle which involve the Revolutionaries v. the lightbound v. the voidlords. AND... Gilneas is inhabitable, and Quel'thalas has been revealed after all this time.

[Beefhammer]

This sounds awfully convoluted. Factions opening up should mean that if you're doing a M+ or raid group that people from both factions can see your group and apply to be invited.

Yup. Make all instanced PvP and all PvE content cross faction. Remove hostile zones and open world PvP be a free for all for those who want to flag themselves.

- - - Updated - - -

Let me simplify how cross-faction SHOULD theoretically work.

We return to Azeroth some time later from the shadowlands to see that WE made 2 critical errors. The first is, we defeated a First one in the Shadowlands that drew our worlds together, and more or less, sent out a beacon through the twisting nether to inform the voidlords specifically where in the universe we are. The second one is as a result of our absence on Azeroth. Stormwind and Orgrimmar have both fallen to encroaching armies. The Horde and Alliance have been defeated by lightforged Garrosh ushering in a band of zealots from alternate Draenei under the leadership of the Naaru Prime, Xe'ra to hunt down the Mag'har orcs that evaded capture on alternate Draenor. Stormwind has been brought down, as the lightbound Draenei (not to be confused with the Lightforged) demolished the primary city of the Alliance after Turalyon refused to turn over Alleria and the void elves to the lightbound. Yrel defects, unable to continue fighting for the lightbound after they attack the lightforged, and becomes lightforged, herself to replace Turalyon after he is struck down in the initial fight for Stormwind. The entirety of the lower portion of the Eastern Kingdoms has fallen. The dwarves, under the lead of the queen regent, Moira, and her son, king Dagran Thaurissan II have retreated into the nearly impregnable Blackrock Mountain. Gnomeregan has sealed itself up, after being completely cleaned up with the aid of the mechagnomes and now serves as a sanctuary for the remnants of what was the Alliance. The Admiralty of Boralus and the Empire of Zuldazar are in terrible jeopardy of being taken over by the lightbound. Kalimdor has been divided, once again as Thunder Bluff has been entirely destroyed, Orgrimmar has been sacked, and Azshara is now in complete control of the lightbound. Even the Venture Company and the Steamwheedle cartel have now formed an allegiance with the rebellion forces of the Alliance and Horde remnants.

There is no Horde or Alliance, anymore. Both have found a common enemy in the zealots of the lightbound. In the next 2 patches, as the voidlords make their way to Azeroth, there will be a 3-way battle which involve the Revolutionaries v. the lightbound v. the voidlords. AND... Gilneas is inhabitable, and Quel'thalas has been revealed after all this time.

There was no reason for factions after WC3. In alpha you could group and communicate with everyone. It was forced in 2004 and serves no purpose today.

[Beloren]

Faction lock never made sense. No lore needs to change to allow it. Ion said as much in the interview where he said they're open to it: "If Thrall and Jaina can work together, why can't players?" The system for faction removal is simple. Guilds and groups are completely removed from the faction system. They never should have been a part of the Horde or Alliance. You may join a group with any other player to defeat the enemies of Azeroth. Your guild is not registered with your faction, it's a mercenary company who will take whoever it can get.

But lore is interesting. If players can work together, then I’d like a story that shows some blood elves working with humans or Draenei.

And the many inter race collaborations.

If Jaina and Thrall can work together there must be groups within every race that prefer corporation and represent the players who want to worn together.

It is more interesting to facilitate that through the lore. The whole horde hating alliance is boring and very simple. It is also unrealistic even within the story.


Why limit it to just players able to get along while the story is still unrealistically shit. So a blood elf player can team up with a human okay but in the story you still have blood elf nation hating all humans?

Without lore changes and just leaving it for players it makes the game and lore even more stupid.

[schwarzkopf]

What a ridiculously overly complex system.
What factions opening should look like: Horde and alliance players can join groups and guilds together. It has no influence on the game lore whatsoever.

In New World - factions can join up for PvE content, but not for guilds or PvP.

That works pretty well.

[Redwolf]

Exactly. We have already 17 years of lore of horde and alliance working toghether to overcome the bugger threat.

It would just take a small chain quest to tell the story of this change (cause some kind of "explanation" ia needed) but then it's should be just a switch flipped on.

WoW, unfortunately, is not really a story driven game. Story/lore is mostly functional to justify gameplay.

Best reasoning I've seen, and maybe on this very site is Thrall can work with the Alliance, why can't we?

Edit: Two posts later someone had the very quote, and it was from Ion.

[Log Cabin]

You know this will encourage boosting even more, right?

It might but at this point does it matter?

we are getting to the point where the horde could be looking at 2-4 raid realms total with the alliance down to 2.

Blizzard should be more worried about people being able to play their game rather then how many realm transfers they can milk

[AwkwardSquirtle]

But lore is interesting. If players can work together, then I’d like a story that shows some blood elves working with humans or Draenei.

And the many inter race collaborations.

If Jaina and Thrall can work together there must be groups within every race that prefer corporation and represent the players who want to worn together.

It is more interesting to facilitate that through the lore. The whole horde hating alliance is boring and very simple. It is also unrealistic even within the story.


Why limit it to just players able to get along while the story is still unrealistically shit. So a blood elf player can team up with a human okay but in the story you still have blood elf nation hating all humans?

Without lore changes and just leaving it for players it makes the game and lore even more stupid.

That's already the case though. It's not just for players. The Argent Crusade was a collaboration of Paladins from the Alliance and Horde as far back as Classic. The plot of Warcraft 3 was the Horde and Alliance putting their differences aside to defeat a common foe. Shattrath was filled with Blood Elves and Draenei. Dalaran accepts magi from both the Horde and Alliance. The Cenarion Circle allows in Tauren and Trolls despite being a Night Elf organisation. Goblins work with whoever will pay them, and ran the neutral AHs for years. In fact, the very example you cite of a human teaming up with a human has specific lore precedent: Varian Wrynn had a whole comic series working with Valeera Sanguinar.
It's already weird that we can't group up when it happens so much in the lore. No major shake-ups need to happen.

[Mysterymask]

Why limit it to just players able to get along while the story is still unrealistically shit. So a blood elf player can team up with a human okay but in the story you still have blood elf nation hating all humans?

You can look at it like Lorethemar and Anduin don't get along, blood elves commonly don't like humans but you are a mercenary and don't really give a fuck

Hell even then Blood Elves don't hate STORMWIND they aren't too happy with the Kirin Tor and more specifically Jaina of which seems mostly uneasy

Orcs, Undead, Night Elves, and Humans are the outliers and for good reason the rest of the races are mostly in along for the ride

[Thraenduil]

The way of opening the factions, this is how i envisioned it.


1. Players can play with people of opposite faction, but only after they travel to any of the opposite faction's capitals with special missive that gives
safe pass through enemy zones and complete a quest chain to get approval for accepting and completing quests of the sub-faction the capital
belongs to.
You also learn the language of that faction to chat with players belonging to that faction.
Example: Orc goes to IF and gets a permit to do quests under Ironforge faction and can also speak to dwarf players. To get access to all quests on
Alliance side they must visit all capitals. They learn common language after 2 capitals to speak with all races.
If a race doesn't have a capital, like gnomes or goblins, they use the capital of the sub-faction they reside in.

2. Player can be exalted only with their own sub-faction. Services with other factions get cheaper the more reputation you get. Dwarf gets best
prices in IF, human in SW and so on.With enough rep, vendors in cities get uncommon and sometimes rare items in stock.
Factions outside capitals like Netherwing, Silverwing Sentinels or Thorium brotherhood work like before.

3. Players can form guilds with players from opposite faction. The capital they register their guild in becomes their home. Player can join a guild if
they speak at least the language of guild's home.
They then get access to several different daily quests that give reputation to capital's city guard. Guild can get exclusive rewards like capital's own
tabard, armor set and mount after enough reputation is earned. If player leaves the guild or their guild disbands, they lose those rewards. They
need to join other guild with same home to use them once again.

4. Player can only trade with people they can speak with.

5. When joining a battleground like AB, player must first choose the side they battle with. They do this by visiting the battle master in a faction
capital and swearing allegiance to them. If a battleground has no associated factions like EotS, player does nothing.

6. Profession trainers with highest level recipes reside only in certain capitals and give them to players with enough reputation.

[arkanon]

I have a different idea:

There is a meeting between faction leadership where they decide that since we have actually been fighting side by side to protect the world for a very, very long time, the "war" is meaningless. The war ends, pvp becomes wargames, and open world pvp is simply considered skirmishes.

Everyone gets to play whatever race they want, they get to fly whatever flag they want, and everyone gets to play together.

Sorry, but this idea, as with many others, MASSIVELY overthinks the issue - just open it up.

[Adoxe]

Not everything in WoW needs to be convoluted and have 10 different reasons and gameplay systems behind it. Jaina and Thrall don't go through this effort when they team up, players shouldn't either. It really should be just as easy as pressing a button and done with it, the story already supports cross-faction.

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

-Timmy, we need a healer for our raid group tonight. Out druid is sick!
-I can't join your group, because you have a Tauren in the group and I am hostile to Taurens for some reason...

Obviously it would only have effect in open world combat.

[Mysterymask]

Obviously it would only have effect in open world combat.

I think this is where a lot of the disconnect comes from

No one is asking for cross faction grouping for outdoor content. In that regard it's fine and can and probably SHOULD stay separate. The issue comes in at indoor content like Guilds, M+ and raids. Personally I think Rated BGs and Arena should also be cross faction and a better mercenary mode should be in place for unranted BGs but that's just me.

In reality it should just be simple some of y'all's suggestions would just make the problem we have worse and all for "muh lore". Trust me your lore will be fine if a human joins Naga stole my Bike

[T-34]

Obviously it would only have effect in open world combat.

Oh absolutely. There are plenty of people that have a strong faction identity that want to gank the other faction and they should still have the opportunity to do so.
As long as no lore stands in my way to enjoy the gameplay.

It was a disaster this expansion where I was "forced" to play as furry on my hunter in order to be optimal. There is nothing more that I hate in-game as "furry" races and themes, but optimal is optimal. So I was optimal, but had to do all the furry-stuff.
Just as people that preferred a faction for lore or aesthetic reasons would often be sub-optimal because of that and had to suffer in their gameplay.

The forced mixture of gameplay and lore/aesthetics is in my opinion the worst thing about SL.
Lore should never punish those that play this game for gameplay reasons and gameplay should never punish those that play this game for lore reasons.

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

I think this is where a lot of the disconnect comes from

No one is asking for cross faction grouping for outdoor content. In that regard it's fine and can and probably SHOULD stay separate. The issue comes in at indoor content like Guilds, M+ and raids. Personally I think Rated BGs and Arena should also be cross faction and a better mercenary mode should be in place for unranted BGs but that's just me.

In reality it should just be simple some of y'all's suggestions would just make the problem we have worse and all for "muh lore". Trust me your lore will be fine if a human joins Naga stole my Bike

This could also fix the racial issue when you open up the factions for dungeons. This way, Horde and Alliance can team up if they so desire.
You could even make it a toggle in the group-finder if you want a longer queue and faction pride.

Then when in group, you can headcanon all you want to make it logical your Orc is fighting alongside a Human.

Oh absolutely. There are plenty of people that have a strong faction identity that want to gank the other faction and they should still have the opportunity to do so.
As long as no lore stands in my way to enjoy the gameplay.

It was a disaster this expansion where I was "forced" to play as furry on my hunter in order to be optimal. There is nothing more that I hate in-game as "furry" races and themes, but optimal is optimal. So I was optimal, but had to do all the furry-stuff.
Just as people that preferred a faction for lore or aesthetic reasons would often be sub-optimal because of that and had to suffer in their gameplay.

The forced mixture of gameplay and lore/aesthetics is in my opinion the worst thing about SL.
Lore should never punish those that play this game for gameplay reasons and gameplay should never punish those that play this game for lore reasons.

And they can still do so. There is war-mode for this.
But, unlike the current 'warmode-off' system, you can implement a different feature where each race has 1/2 enemies, which they can still choose to grind out similair to vanilla reps.

That way you can still gank other faction peeps, you can still walk around the world without anyone harming you, you could now be friends with SOME of the other factions... or not and you could now group with the other faction.

Seems to me like a win-win-win for everyone.

[Alanar]

no ti should not, faction opening should look like nothing, because it should never happen.

It will happen gerardless, but if they must just make it an invisible thing. Yes you can now q with more people horde and alliance. Like a fight for the same cause thing and thats it. We dont need horde and alliance to merge or what ever.

For the rest nothing has to change??

Op idea is way to complicated and tobig of lore changing aspect that dont make sense. Especially looking at blood elves that suddenly name change when they go alliance etc.. there is no need for this..