“This friend is playing a different version of World of Warcraft”
This is a really new and super frustrating bug.
To clarify first, I’ve had my girlfriend on my bnet as a RealID friend as long as we’ve been together (April 2017),
I’ve recently been unable to invite her to a group via the friendslist at all. Not when we’re on different realms, not when we’re on the same realm and right next to each other.
I’m editing in suggestions we’ve both confirmed are NOT the case;
- We both own Shadowlands on all 3 of our respective accounts.
- Neither of us play Classic/TBCC.
- Both of us are on an NA Account.
-
I am not able to invite her, but she can invite me no problem.
- We can circumvent this by doing the good ol /invite name-realm, but it’s just far less convenient than hitting O and clicking invite after so many years.
- We are both on the exact same subscription billing schedule and there are no discrepancies between billing times.
- Both of us regularly shut down our PCs
- Both of us are at the latest updates when it comes to the game and the bnet client
- We have both removed all our addons and re-added them one by one, that does not seem to affect it.
- We both renamed the Cache, Interface, and WTF folders and re-launched the game. Nothing.
Does your friend own Shadowlands?
We both do, yes. Including on our 2nd and 3rd accounts.
The friends list does not work across regions, so my question would be to have her look at her account list on the launcher, does it show US or possibly EU?
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are they playing classic or burning crusade classic?
Neither of us play classic.
Oh dear, I’ll have her look. But why would this matter after 5 years of it being perfectly fine to do?
She is not on an EU account though.
Perhaps someone remained online while a hotfix was pushed … and the other didn’t?
I dunno, I am grasping at straws here. If you guys have been grouping up and playing since 2017, I am at a loss as to why it suddenly wouldn’t work now. Four years of playing together probably precludes the mistakes of “whoops, I am playing Classic while she is playing Retail.” Though, stranger things have happened which is why we ask.
I’d suggest both of you logout, reboot your machines, open the Battle net launcher, and see if one of your clients needs an update.
Good luck!
That’s what we thought too, but both of us regularly shut down our PCs, both of us are at the latest updates when it comes to the game and the bnet client…And yes, we’ve been playing together long enough (Almost daily every day for that long) that we’re just…worried.
It started happening only the end of last month as well 
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Yikes. I thought it was worth a shot, but oh, well. This is definitely a weird one (I’ve never heard of this before, nor do I see anything trying to Google this issue.)
Do you folks have other characters on your accounts? I’m trying to get at whether this is affecting any characters you try to group together, or only two specific characters.
What happens when you log completely different toons (than the ones you’re getting the error on) and try to group?
Also, I take back what I said about Google. It’s early. I am sans caffeine. But there are many reports over the past few years about this exact issue. Unfortunately, as I am reading them, many of them turned out to be mistakes of one person in WoW Classic and one in Retail, or a region discrepancy.
I’ve not yet found any info about two standard Retail players, confirming they are on the same version and region, not being able to group. 
In the social tab, there is an option called “Block chat channel invites”. Try checking that.
Also check for mods, there are blocks group addons.
I am not sure either are the case, but you bring an odd one, maybe both due a UI reset, then submit a bug report.
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Ahaha, we both have 2 accounts full of characters we’ve been playing together for YEARS which is why this is so weird.
We did just try this on our WoW1 accounts, and we had no issue.
Hopping back to our WoW2 and WoW3, respectively, we suddenly have the issue of me not being able to invite her, but she can invite me no problem.
We can obviously circumvent this by doing the good ol /invite name-realm, but it’s just far less convenient than hitting O and clicking invite. And again…It’s weird that this is happening now.
Okay. I thought you were stuck without recourse.
Use the work around for now, and as Kozzae mentioned, post the issue in bug report.
When a text command works, but the corresponding UI click doesn’t, I always recommend a full UI reset, because that strongly indicates the UI is preventing the function from working (if it were a bug affecting the actual mechanics of grouping with the person, text commands wouldn’t work either.)
Best of luck!
Will do. We checked that and everything looks…normal, to say the least.
Thanks for the help anyhow you guys, yall rock.
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Is their any chance that the subs the two of you were playing on at the time renewed within a day or two of each other?
Regular subs that reach the end of their current sub period are often give up to three days of game time to process payment delays instead of having access to the game immediately.
During the three day grace period, however, access to some external blizzard systems may be interrupted. - e.g. you might only have access to support forums and not to general discussions.
As your situation happened at the end of two consecutive months, I was just wondering if one of the accounts was technically expired and within the grace period where it might have restricted permissions.
Admittedly a shot in the dark though.
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Sorry for the late reply, and I very much appreciate your input and thought on the matter! But that is definitely not the case. We’re both currently mid-6-month-sub and our renewal is at the exact same time every time (We subscribe together, hah, so romantic) so this probably isn’t the case.
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