Interview With World of Warcraft Director Explains Why Blizzard Didn’t Add Cross-Faction Play Before

It feels like it's been forever since we have been asking Blizzard to implement cross-faction play to World of Warcraft. And after more than a decade of gameplay and updates, the restriction is being lifted. This change arises from Blizzard revisiting things that the company has said 'no' to in the past that the community had asked for, one of which is cross-faction play. In an interview with game director Ion Hazzikostas, he stated that "The answer had always been well, it's Warcraft, it's Orcs versus humans. It's Horde versus Alliance. It's what defines our whole IP", comparing the World of Warcraft factions to the Sith vs. Jedi ideologies present in Star Wars. He swiftly retracted that statement due to the Sith and Jedi being ideologies, in comparison to World of Warcraft's factions being something you're born into, not something you choose.

"Jedi and Sith and that universe are ideologies, they're choices. Someone chooses to walk the path of the light or to go to the dark side...You're born Alliance, you're born Horde. That's not a choice you make. That's something that's assigned to you and that predestined fate isn't necessarily something that we want to necessarily stand by, the idea that your lot in the world because you were born an elf, you must hate trolls and nothing can change that. And because you were born a troll, you're their eternal enemy. That's not the world we want to build, but it's also not the world we really have been building or the story we've been telling for the last 20 years and going back to Warcraft 3. At the end of the day, it was about the factions coming together to defeat Archimonde to stop the major threats to our world. We frankly probably reached the tipping point a little while ago. But in a game like this, we're stubborn and traditionalists and it's scary to say: let's uproot this foundational pillar of what the game has been for over a decade. But it's time." - Game Director Ion Hazzikostas

Although this doesn't mean that humans will be welcome in Orgrimmar just yet, Blizzard might slowly be opening its doors up to cooperative play in the world of Azeroth. In large part due to players meeting friends outside of World of Warcraft that are opposing factions, and hoping to let them unite in the world of Azeroth, even if it's just to run some Mythic dungeons.

Another reason why World of Warcraft hadn't implemented cross-faction play is due to the technical hardships that this would imply. Ion Hazzikostas mentions that the party system expects there only to be one faction in each party, and several things throughout the years of content that the game has incorporated ping back to this over and over, which will prove to be a major hurdle for Blizzard to overcome.

Although there won't be any story progress acknowledging the change since the Horde and the Alliance are already at an armistice, Ion Hazzikostas does tell us that this change probably does mark the end of all-consuming faction-conflict based expansions such as Battle for Azeroth, with the future expansions focusing more on the changes made to the story, such as the survivors of the burning of Teldrassil, Genn Greymane's story arc, members of the Forsaken, and more, all while allowing players to decide how they feel about the opposing faction.

Finally, Ion Hazzikostas was asked what the foundations of World of Warcraft were, now that the faction conflict was dismissed as one of them. 

"It's easy to assume as shorthand that the core idea is Horde versus Alliance. I think if you go back to like Warcraft 1 or Warcraft 2, well then yes, that literally was the case, because it was just a two-faction RTS game where the plot was created as a contrivance for why these factions are fighting each other. But really from Warcraft 3 onwards, I think the ideals of Warcraft have been adventure, exploration, but also the fact that we actually fundamentally have more in common than what separates us. That Alliance and Horde are both defending their homes, searching for homes, fighting for family, for honor, for justice." - Ion Hazzikostas

Ion Hazzikostas takes this prompt as an opportunity to leave the tale on a positive note depicting that both factions are essentially trying to do the same thing. Will this reveal the fate of the Horde and the Alliance? Will cross-faction questing in Azeroth and beyond be implemented? Only time will tell.