Cross-Faction Play Is Coming to World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft's developers have been notoriously against allowing cross-faction interaction. With the latest instance of negating the possibility of faction dating as recently as Blizzcon 2019, when an attendee asked about the possibility of cross-faction play and got the response, "Alliance and Horde separation ... is a pillar of what makes Warcraft, Warcraft".

Three years have passed since, and World of Warcraft has announced the possibility for cross-faction interaction ... with a caveat.

Cross-faction parties will begin in 9.2.5 PTR, allowing players from both the Horde and the Alliance to form a party. Although they will continue to be hostile everywhere in Azeroth, Draenor, and Outland, all of the members of the party will be able to understand what each other say. To form a party, players will have to invite the member of the opposite faction through BattleTag or RealID, or a cross-faction World of Warcraft community. Once these groups have been established, both members will be able to search for Premade Groups in the Group Finder listings for Mythic dungeons, raids, or rated arena/BGS. That will be the extent of the cross-faction integration. Once in a dungeon, players will be capable of trading, comparing achievements, and healing the opposing faction members.

The limitations present for cross-faction interaction are set in World of Warcraft in large part because Blizzard isn't ready to let humans into Orgrimmar, stating it would "undermine Azeroth's shared reality". Players will be able to opt-in to cross-faction events, such as Group Finder leaders being able to negate cross-faction interaction. This option will allow players that desire to continue with the canonical animosity between factions to continue the roleplay.

Although these changes will be made to the retail version of the game, they will not be included in World of Warcraft Classic. Ion Hazzikostas stated that, although he doesn't see a reason — both technical and ideological — to implement cross-faction in the Classic version, Blizzard will be open to community feedback and reconsidering if the desire is there. This will also apply to the implementation of cross-faction guilds in the retail version of the game.

These changes will be applied to PTR 9.2.5 for beta testing awaiting feedback and will release on the official patch 9.2.5 later on.