Are WoW Cross-Faction Raids, Dungeons, & PvP Optional

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Cross-faction content is finally coming to members of the Alliance and Horde in patch 9.2.5 of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. The faction divide will arrive after the next major content update, Eternity’s End. Coming off Battle for Azeroth, the news was shocking to a lot of fans. With the progression of WoW‘s story, the implementation of cross-faction content in WoW is justified. Since the events of 8.3, factions have been coming together to face dire threats, and now after Eternity’s End, players will be able to come together with their friends on both fronts for patches and expansions beyond.

There are two goals that Blizzard wanted to focus on: organized instanced gameplay, and making this an opt-in feature. These two guidelines will be implementing other systems and will still have restrictions. When it comes to specific older legacy instances, some will not support cross-faction parties, and “outdoors”, cross-faction players will still remain unfriendly or even hostile if the player has War Mode enabled. Players will be able to choose if they would like to bridge the faction divide within their own gameplay, however, with the implementation of cross-faction gameplay In World of Warcraft, players who choose to opt-in may have more options when it comes to party finder. Organized instances are where things get more technical.

Opting into cross-faction organized instanced gameplay will only apply to Mythic dungeons, raids, and rated PvP. Players will be able to directly invite members of the opposite faction to a party if they are BattleTag or Real ID friends, or members of a cross-faction WoW community. Players may also decide to limit pre-made group and group finder listings to one faction if they are listing for the content where it is available. Random match-made activities such as Heroic dungeons, skirmishes, and random battlegrounds will remain the same. Higher-level WoW content such as Mythic+ keys, group raiding, and participating in high PvP rating battles will be able to happen for both single-faction and cross-faction groups, so it just comes down to the player’s personal preference with whom they would like to party up with.

How World of Warcraft’s Cross-Factions Will Work

However, there are small expectations for the implementation of cross-faction systems. Guilds will still stay single faction, but in-game communities will not, so players will be able to make a cross-faction community as opposed to a guild. Some specific older legacy instances will not be available for cross-faction play. The ones that Blizzard has disclosed so far are: Battle of Dazar’alor, which played different per each faction; the Trial of the Crusader, which had similar different-faction elements to Battle of Dazar’alor; and WoW‘s weekly Icecrown Citadel run cannot be completed with friends of the opposite faction mainly due to the infamous Gunship battle.

The faction divide in WoW has been a key theme in its storytelling for over 16 years and seeing the two factions merge together is overall an accepted, but largely unexpected change. As World of Warcraft: Shadowlands‘ story has progressed, the factions have been working together more since their divide in Battle for Azeroth. Players who decide to opt-in to the cross-faction content will have even more groups and opportunities to get the content done that they wish to complete, and the groups will still be there for players who decide that they would like to stick to the boundaries of their selected factions. Times are changing for World of Warcraft‘s story, and times will finally be changing for its systems.

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