Development Preview: Cross-Faction Instances

I always love how that type fails to realize that war against … The Old Gods? … The Scourge? … The Burning Legion? … Twilight Cultists? … The Iron Horde? … The Jailer?

… is still war …

But I don’t expect terribly much logic emerging from the tiny minority on the other side of this issue!

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why do you think “conflict” can only mean open and constant “hot” war?

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That’s why I love watching them shrink away and wilt when I throw that suggestion right back at them.

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This is a step in the right direction. =) The lack of cross-faction guilds means that the Horde will likely remain the strong favorite for serious raiders. I was also unclear as to how cross-faction groups will be integrated into the group finder. If they’re not, then this change actually solves very little.

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What about a “Peace Mode” for us “worthless” casuals?
On top of cross faction party, which would also allow player characters to access fly points/non PvP vendors/facilities such as inns and auction houses etc. of both faction(At least in non-current expansion contents).
I’m totally OK with handicap such as -20%ish xp/rep/gold, excluded from PvP ladders/matches, disabled battle grounds, and super long cooldown (if ppl turned on “Peace Mode” then turned it off, they need to wait one month or even more to be able to turn it on again, since trust between factions are difficult to establish.)

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Heresy… it won it day…

This is as it seen as this news bring out

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On the same server it would make perfect sense. We can transfer items between factions via the AH, so there doesn’t seem to be a precedent to keep goods and services confined to their respective factions.

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peace mode = turn off war mode and go fishing.

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It’s not this big, really. They only overwrote some switches and variables in the end which will return to its original state if the player leaves a group. It’s temporary.

I never said it had to be constant war.

And they all sucked. People don’t remember the Wrath Gate because it was Blizzard’s first in-game cinematic; people remember what happened right after it.

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Can we please have cross faction guilds as well? None of this is exciting to me if I can’t switch my race and not be in my guild anymore.

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Excellent news. Hopefully by 10.0 you’ll have expanded upon this fully and opened up guilds to this as well. To those that would try to hold story or “faction identify” as antithetical to the idea of it, it’s clear that you’re actually NOT following the lore very well. The factions have been working together longer than they have apart. Even in BfA no one could figure out the reason for the faction war/divide.

I’m incredibly happy to see this sort of arbitrary divide being removed, now let’s just take things the rest of the way.

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This will suck if we can’t do random BG’s together. At the least let one of us mercenary mode so we can still smash together. Also cross faction pvp would really really help queue times!

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Would that be the Wrath Gate cinematic in which a group splintered off from the safe little “Faction” of the Horde and decided to blow up EVERYONE with plague bombs?

… yeah, I like that cinematic. Let’s have LESS Factions and MORE Violence.

it’s so weird watching people who complain about simplistic writing and realizing that what they consider good writing is nothing more or less than “BAD PEOPLE DO BAD THING, GOOD PEOPLE FIGHT THEM, BAD PEOPLE GET PUNISHED”

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One thing I want to bring up;
I host honor farming premades, and have for years now. Just casual little 5 man groups of players ranging from literally scared of PvP first timers, to R1s.

The only thing that’s really bothering my group right now is the inability to group for unranked battlegrounds. While all of us want to maintain Horde vs Alliance, it’s the reason so many of us play this game over other MMORPGs, we also don’t want people to still feel forced to roll an Alliance alt just to be able to participate.

Is there any possibility at a later date - this does not need to come immediately - for cross-faction groups for unranked battlegrounds to “ground” everybody to the faction of the party leader? As in, it would race change everybody to the equivalent race on the opposite faction, much like how merc mode does things already?

This would maintain the illusion of Horde vs Alliance in full, while still allowing everybody to play with each other in their content of choice. As somebody who cares deeply about maintaining faction pride, this wouldn’t effect anything any more than merc mode already does.

I imagine this could come at the same time as unlocking cross-faction functionality on the faction theme raids. (Which… expanded Timewalking for older raids? :eyes: )

And yes, cross-faction guilds.
I do want to point out this might be delayed because of them needing to recode how guilds work. Partying up and communities are a bit less work, and frankly, having stuff playable with them expanding on it later is better than waiting forever as damage continues to be done.

And for people complaining about rated PVP;
Arenas had nothing to do with factions in the lore ever.

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It’s a start.

Alliance and Horde identity is what is fundamental to Warcraft

That does make me laugh, though, considering you’ve been constantly adding Alliance flavor to the Horde for most of the game now.

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Yeah and the Horde was forced to retreat during broken shore, didn’t stop the delicious faction hate then either.

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Still waiting on those examples of stories without some form of conflict.

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That’s the real reason they don’t want this. They don’t like “messy” conflicts without clearly defined boundaries … and sadly, most of them will never realize how much this cripples the storytelling / writing we get.

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