Note: Activision Blizzard is still under investigation by the state of California for serious harassment charges. CEO Bobby Kotick is alleged to have known about such actions within his company – and performed some himself – and shielded the perpetrators from consequences.
When it comes to the story in World of Warcraft, Horde and Alliance may still be Horde and Alliance, but that doesn’t mean they can’t sometimes get along – maybe even work together from time to time. If nothing else, they could spend time together in instances. And soon, that’s going to be a possibility.
Today, the WoW team announced plans to implement cross-faction play in instances. When this new feature is implemented, it will allow players to directly invite friends from the opposite faction into dungeons, raids, and rated PvP with them. It will also allow players to apply cross-faction to participate in pre-made groups – provided the group leader doesn’t restrict the group to same-faction applicants. Be careful, though, because adding members of the opposite faction to your party won’t make them friendly everywhere. They’ll still be “unfriendly” when not in instances and “fully hostile” in War Mode, but they’ll still be able to talk in party chat.
It’s also worth noting that this new system will only impact the content listed above. As you’d expect, guilds will still be single-faction, as will random matchmade activities and battlegrounds.
There is more good news, though. Blizzard is designing the new matchmaking system to apply to legacy instances and all levels – with some exceptions. If you’ve previously had difficulty getting parties together for some of these earlier instances, this may be the solution to your problem.
Now, as for when this new feature is set to arrive, the general nature of WoW’s current party system means it’s going to take some work. It will not be ready for Eternity’s End, but it should be good to go in a later update – specifically 9.2.5.
