Players from the Alliance keep bailing on their faction, so those left behind want to be able to do PvE content with the Horde so they have bodies in their raids and keys.
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See - I’m willing to accept horde and alliance grouping for raids or maybe dungeons - but I don’t want to go into each other’s encampments. That would actually decrease my enjoyment of the game.
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I think they could actually succeed with a third faction if they added a bunch of cool races and allowed it to be a neutral faction meaning you could play with horde or alliance.
Imagine Tuskar, Vrykul, Ogres, etc as a third faction I’m sure it would attract tons
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There’s 4-5 times more active CE horde guilds than alliance and all the world first guilds are horde. So this creates a problem for the raiding scene so many alliance players end up having to transfer to horde side to join a new guild. Slowly but surely alliance CE guilds bleed off into horde.
It’s the same problem for M+. If I log on a horde character and compare against alliance there’s easily 5 times more keys listed at any time of the day.
Allowing crossplay eliminates this problem as the no-longer divided population pool can now simply play with all available players.
And at this point in the game there’s almost no reason not to do this.
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I would say they have an extremely low opinion of Alliance players to the point they seem to have ruled out the possibility that there may be an issue. Once you understand that their posts make perfect sense from that perspective. That doesn’t make them right, it just gives the lens they look through.
Basically in a nut shell it is that people want to have their cake and eat it too.
They want to play with their friends, AND they don’t want to have to choose between that and their favorite race, their favorite city, their faction perk.
It’s the idea of give me what I want, and remove the cost. Even if that means stepping over and smashing the thematic pillar that adds and has the potential to add so much more to the game than just everyone sitting together holding hands singing kumbaya.
Instead of addressing things that might add value or enrich the experience of the game, they advocate for the removal outright.
“Dont heal the cavity–just remove the tooth”
Not expanding, not world building, not redesigning–not creating nuance or balance or order or looking at it from multiple angles and considering different options—
ahhhh, just throw it away!
“I want to be a void elf with a mohawk”
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This would actually make sense as opposed to cross faction play between alliance and horde. It’d provide something new that people just getting into the game wouldn’t have to invest too much time playing through old content just to try and understand the factional issues between the horde and alliance. Old players would have something other than the same stale content that keeps getting churned out and everyone currently invested in their respective faction would have a new faction to play against in a two way or even three way battlegrounds.
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Right, what we really need is to divide players up even more by adding a third faction for no clear benefit to the game other than to “spice things up.”
This faction would probably be populated almost exclusively by current Alliance players because why would anyone who plays Horde for access to the majority of the raiding population leave to join a faction that would have even fewer players?
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He (Shawano) just stated what clearly, you (Wow) either choose to ignore because you follow that very mindset or you just don’t care to look at the underlying issues about the problem. Take your bait and go annoy someone else.
It’s funny that you would talk about cross-faction play being “short-sighted” and then in the same paragraph talk about how we need a third faction actually. Nothing in the quote of Shawano’s post explains how a third faction “has the potential to add so much more to the game”; it merely asserts that such potential exists. You’re butthurt because you know it’s objectively a stupid idea.
I assume people believe that if you can cross faction group then they’ll have more people to play with.
I imagine it would be true for everything but to a much lesser degree for Mythic raiding as that involves a guild, which involves being on a certain server and I can’t see Horde bros transferring from like A52 to superDeadServer#5 to raid with an Alliance guild 
but it would allow Horde on that server to join if they were so inclined though that doesn’t seem like it’d be very helpful.
Homogenization and the removal of unique design and game mechanics ultimately has made this game worse over the years. Cross faction would see another large portion of the player base outright quit and never return contrary to what some of them believe. But hey, some people would rather cling to their laziness and selfish behavior. It’s not like it isn’t easy to already level new toons from 1 to max within a few days, if that, depending on one’s personal time to invest in playing the game. I find it terribly difficult to believe this comes down to people wanting to play with friends just because of how easy it is to do that now. Know people on another server? Just go start a toon and level it there. Different faction on the same server? Same thing.
It isn’t just that however either, the fact the factional divide is also hard coded into the game isn’t something easily solved. I’m not really sure why people think the devs can just flip a switch and change that though. That’s something that could take years of altering the base game’s code, if they even could.
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My take…
Players want to be able to play with who they want when they want regardless of faction. Totally understandable/relatable. The playerbase feels there arent enough players. Alliance players, or rather some, feel there arent enough of us. A reasonable portion of Horde players might actually prefer Alliance but play Horde because someone they know does. Preach, regardless of your perspective, mentioned in a video he would prefer to play Alliance and a good number of fellow guildies would too but he cant convince everyone to switch so he chose to stay Horde. One can speculate how much the numbers might change if players did just choose the faction that works for them instead of worrying about who else is playing what etc but thats not a completely fair point either. Its not unreasonable either…
We are between patches and its no secret subs are down as people either dont like whats here or have done what they wanted to and took their time off.
That said, as Alliance, I dont feel its difficult to find groups at all, at least not in relation to the current phase of the expansion…between patches.
I see story being a case for cross faction. Its hard to really completely negate that arguement though it isnt a good one in certain circumstances as mentioned by others in other threads.
I personally think we should keep it the way it is but others feel Alliance will die off and nothing but Horde players left. Bit extreme imo but we all have our opinions.
The universe is built off the conflict between factions regarless of how often they come together for the sake of existing and eventually going back to killing each other. That concept gets old too but I think Blizzard should probably decide what its doing and stick with it, like so many other aspects of the game right now.
I dont think Shadowlands is horrible but it could certainly do better. I think the games current state is far more significant a thing to worry about than cross faction play.
Get people back and playing and wanting to play…then see if its worth bothering to invest in this.
I suppose I should add also that some people I think want a ff14 type experience where everyone is just with each other and others just want to be able to do group content with a buddy regardless of faction. I dont think its a bad idea to be able to do group content regardless of faction but its a fine line imo.
I do NOT want faction identity to disappear a together. Its so embedded in the game for so long. I think a LOT of work would have to go in to changing it and the payoff for Blizzard and community probably wouldnt be worth it verse investing in a better experience for each faction when simply playing the game.
Hope that take/opinion helps.
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For horde…I want this for pvp.
When you are number 360 in line…you are waiting for 9 teams of 40 alliance to show up lol. that can take a bit.
I would take cross faction pvp. Why would my horde be killing drek and not van in AV? Not really caring tbh. I want the match and its chance at win for points.
Its not whether the healer is blood elf or a night elf to me end of the day. They die not for their race or faction. they die because one must kill healers lol.
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When people think or smell that warcraft/blizzard is on their heels in any way they pull out all kinds of requests and demands and ideas with the thought that maybe theirs will get picked so the masses will be placated. Like bread and circus in the roman times.
We keep trying to kill “bring back 2h shaman” but sure enough, when blizzard screws up or people are angry about something that damn thread shows up again. People hoping blizzard will be desperate enough to move their little pet.
something something high elves
playable ogres/murlocs/whatevers
pvp requests
bring back mage tower (look that one worked!)
we want progression servers (sort of worked, they made classic)
probably lots more
EDIT: player housing, seeing that one now, that gets resurrected all the time whenpeople think they have a chance
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Let both factions to queue up for M+ together.
Let both factions do raids together.
Let both factions do end game activities.
I dont think it matters much for leveling, but PVP (arena+RBG) & PvE is what matters imho.
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What if you have more than one friend and they’re not on the same faction and you want to play with both at the same time? What if you have one friend who is just a bit too flakey for you to rationalize investing a bunch of time into grinding out a whole new character just to play with them?
Also the grinding doesn’t even stop when you hit level 60; that’s when it begins. Not everyone wants to redo the honor grind, the tower knowledge grind, the soul cinders grind, the obtaining-gold-for-legendaries grind, the Archivists Codex grind, the professions grind, the domination shards grind, the stygian embers grind, the covenant sanctum grind (optional but if you care about transmog it matters), the gear grind, etc. I also want to have access to all the legacy content stuff that I had to grind out and that I still use, such as my optimized Legion mission tables, my azerite gear and other timewalking gear that I still use during timewalking weeks, any rep-gated schematics or enchanting formulas, etc.
Seems like it would just make more sense for Blizzard to let people play cross-faction.
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I don’t really want cross faction play. I like that the factions oppose one another both narratively and in terms of gameplay. Orgrimmar is an enemy capital city, Alliance treating it no different than Stormwind would just be a sad loss.
I feel like it’s valuable to the experience that the factions continue to actively oppose each other on some points, that in this world each faction retains its own motives, holds it’s own territory, and there are some places where you are welcome and some places where you are not based on your faction. I like that there is this difference in experience when it comes to the Overworld and story based on which faction you are.
But I do want a larger player pool to draw from for instanced content. So for stuff like Dungeons, Raids, Arenas, and Scenarios I kinda just want players to be players. Merc mode but without the extra steps. Maybe a technical design challenge but probably worth confronting.
Nothing highlights the need for a larger player pool (or at the very least lifting of cross realm restrictions) more than the Alliance vs the Horde Mythic raiding scene.
I definitely felt the shift at the end of Cata and really felt it impact my experience raiding following MoP. There was a large and noticeable shift in guilds across my server to go to the other side after cross realm raids were released post Siege of Orgrimmar.
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Can be solved through server mergers until they can develop new content to attract players back and hopefully new players too. Wasting time on anything other than new content considering how bad things have been going would be counter productive (currently).
Just the lazy and selfish ones that refuse to recognize there are already methods in game to be able to do what they want. Create characters on different servers and in both factions. Do server or faction transfers ,paid obviously in it’s current form but could have something like a free token given out per 6 months or a year to do a free character transfer to a different server or faction, whatever blizz felt was reasonable if at all. If that didn’t get some of them to be happier, a cross faction ability wouldn’t either since, afterall, their main complaint is not being able to play with friends. One has to wonder why that’s even an argument considering how easy it is to level toons now compared to Vanilla, BC, Wrath and even during Cata. After that, the leveling experience was dumbed down so much and to this point in SL that it’s basically a walking joke.
That’s a player problem. Blizzard couldn’t solve that if they tried. If they would prefer to play in the other faction, the choice to do so already exists. Destroying the factional divide isn’t as easy to accomplish as some people seem to believe. Unless blizzard has been actively working on altering the base game code for the last several years to accomplish that, i seriously doubt it’s ever going to happen considering how many expansions they’ve already released. Any of which could potentially break the game code along the way. So, as much as it pains me to say it, Ion was correct in his statement that it isn’t just the narrative preventing that from happening.
But it is unreasonable to subject everyone else to an idea that others do not want in relation to how it would damage the game experience for them. They should focus on their play time and let others do the same in kind fashion. The tools already exist for players to change servers and factions if they want to play with friends. That accessibility was added long ago in the base game (except pvp realms until somewhere around wrath or cata i believe when that finally got changed).
That’s a design philosophy problem that’s slowly been getting worse over the course of several expansions since cataclysm. It isn’t a cross faction problem. Blizzard just sucks at turning out enough new content to keep it’s player base happy. That’s on them obviously and it doesn’t seem to be changing either. I mean lets face it, 9.2 should have dropped just slightly before they went on their winter vacation. All the internal problems with their company has been fouling up the works.
I don’t either. Others do find difficulty in that however cause the populations are vastly different depending on server. Again, this comes back to server mergers being the best possible solution with as low as the subs are.
Excellent, at least you’re willing to admit it’s a valid point. It’s definitely one of the unique aspects of this game’s core design that made it such a success. It was at the very heart of the pvp community, especially when this game first dropped as an MMO. Too many people seem all too willing to ignore how many more players would leave if that was suddenly taken away.
Precisely! It’d be a waste of time and resources considering the current state of things.
They keep dropping players into one conflict after another with pretty much nothing in between. Therein lies a key problem.
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I think the benefits of it would outweigh the faction identity sacrifice.
- There would be more groups to choose from
- There would no battleground queues and faction imbalance
- People would be able to play their favorite races without being cut off from their friends or alts