World of Warcraft is relaxing the age-old Horde vs. Alliance factional divide
Blizzard has announced the unthinkable: the Horde vs. Alliance factional divide in World of Warcraft is being relaxed. As in, soon you will be able to invite an Alliance character to your Horde instancing party and vice versa. No longer are we to be enemies! Now we shall be… ugh… argh… gah…. I can’t quite say it… Friends.
The news comes from WoW boss Ion Hazzikostas, who announced and explained the decision on the game’s website.
“For years now, many players have questioned whether the rules restricting communication and cooperation between Alliance and Horde need to be so absolute,” he wrote.
“The faction divide could keep close friends from playing together, or cause players to feel that their faction leaves them with far fewer opportunities to pursue their favourite group content. But these downsides have long been justified in order to preserve a central element of the Warcraft universe — it all began with a game titled, ‘Warcraft: Orcs & Humans,’ right?
“But, to quote a one-time Warchief of the Horde,” he added, “‘Times change.’
“I am pleased to announce that we are working on adding the ability for Alliance and Horde players to form premade parties together for dungeons, raids, and rated PvP.”
The idea is you will be able to directly invite members of the opposing faction (via their BattleTag or Real ID) to your group – or open the applications to both factions when using the Group Finder – and then fight together as friends inside an instance. This will not, however, carry over to the outdoor, open world. There, you’ll remain unfriendly to each other, or hostile if in War Mode, even if you’re in the same group.
Guilds will join the pan-faction love-in yet, but as as Hazzikostas told IGN in a supporting interview, “At this point I know better than to close any doors.”
On the WoW website, he added: “There are likely those who have read this far with some unease, worried that this is chipping away at a foundational principle of Warcraft. At BlizzCon in 2019, when an attendee asked about cross-faction play, we responded at the time that ‘Alliance and Horde separation … is a pillar of what makes Warcraft, Warcraft.’
