WoW: The faction boundaries will be dissolved! Feature comes with patch 9.2.5

April 14, 2022

The fact that the faction borders will be dissolved in World of Warcraft has been discussed for a while. Now the developers are getting serious and want to test cross-faction gameplay. Then Horde and Alliance players will be able to play together in dungeons, raids and rated PvP.

For two decades, code and content have been developed under the assumption that factions can only consist of players from a single faction, and while the developers want to make this feature available as soon as possible, the scale of the change means it can 't be ready in time for the upcoming content update Patch 9.2 The End of Eternity. Cross Faction gameplay will be released as part of a later 9.2.5 update.

These rules apply (so far) to Cossfaction Gameplay

In crafting the ruleset for this new feature, the developers were guided by two goals:

Focus on organized instanced gameplay. Dungeons, raids, and rated PvP are at the heart of the most compelling arguments for removing faction splitting.
It should become an opt-in feature as much as possible. As for player preferences, there are decades of animosity to overcome. The developers are excited to be able to offer players the ability to work together across factions to defeat common enemies, but they also know that many players will react to this change with skepticism, and they don't want to override those preferences. It's all about giving players more options.

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These guidelines lead to the following system

Players will be able to invite members of the opposing faction directly to a group if they have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship

, or if they are members of a cross-faction WoW community.

Pre-made groups in the group finder for mythic dungeons, raids, or rated arenas/RBGs will be open to applicants from both factions,although the group leader can limit the listing to applicants from the same faction if they wish. Guilds will continue to belong to only one faction, and random activities such as heroic dungeons or random raids will continue to belong to only one faction (both because there is less faction coercion with random groups, and to avoid randomly putting a queued orc in a group with a night elf, thus compromising the opt-in nature of the feature).
WoW: Faction boundaries are being dissolved! First tests with patch 9.2.5 (1) Source: buffed

Once players are in a group, members of the other faction remain unfriendly in the "outdoor" world (and completely hostile in war mode), as they are today, although they are able to communicate via group chat. However, when they enter a dungeon, raid, or rated PvP match, all members are friendly and can support each other in combat, trade loot, gain common achievements, and otherwise cooperate fully, as members of the same faction have always been able to do. Read also these interesting stories 0

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One of the main goals in announcing this feature is to make sure that the developers capture all expectations and requirements to make this a smooth experience. A group raiding, crafting Mythic+ keys, or aiming for higher PvP levels should be able to work together seamlessly, whether it's a group from the same faction or a cross-faction group. Finally, cross-faction play is becoming a reality! What do you think? We're looking forward to hearing your opinions in the comments.

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