Horde and Alliance will soon play together?

Many WoW players dream that Horde and Alliance can play together. The game director shared his thoughts on it.

The conflict between the Horde and the Alliance has long been an important aspect of World of Warcraft. But over the years this has been softened further and further. For several expansions, some players have wanted the Horde and Alliance to be able to go into battle together, form groups and have adventures together. Game Director Ion Hazzikostas has now spoken out about it.

What is the problem? The division into Horde and Alliance has always been an important pillar in World of Warcraft. Red or blue, orc or human, storm wind or orgrimmar. Many players identify very much with their side and yet this strict separation also brings problems. The available pool of players, for example for dungeons or raids, is halved.

Also because some people simply do not want to change their side, for example because of the guild or simply longstanding habit, it is difficult to leave that behind.

Therefore, his wish is: Cross-faction play should be made possible, Horde and Alliance should be able to play dungeons, raids or arenas together.

What did the game director say? Actually, the conversation was about pacts and why they can now be freely changed all at once (with patch 9.1.5). Hazzikostas explained:

The story and world fantasy are extremely important, and if they are in line with the gameplay, it is ideal, but when story considerations alone produce frustrating mechanics, then that is a conflict that we need to resolve in favor of gameplay.

The user MajicMundl then asked: “Does that also apply to cross-faction gameplay?” He was referring to a possibility that the Horde and the Alliance can play together.

Hazzikostas then replied:

It does. The emphasis above is on the word alone ’. The division into factions is more than just the plot. There is no easy solution here, but especially when it comes to accessing endgame systems like Mythic + or Raids, such a barrier is a big problem that we know we need to address. So you are obviously at least thinking about solutions and are not completely averse to the topic.

What does Hazzikostas mean by that? When Hazzikostas speaks of the fact that there is more than just a story that is important for the separation of the factions, he is alluding to the entire game world. After all, cross-faction groups would bring a whole series of questions and sometimes illogical incidents to light. A few of them would be:

• Can Alliance players who are in a Horde group just be peaceful in the Horde cities?
• What about quests that ask Alliance players to kill Horde characters? Would that be done by a Horde character?
• Is an Alliance character suddenly “friendly” with the Horde factions, if he wants to do these quests so that he can even accept the quests?
• Should the system only work in closed areas such as instances or raids?