Which WoW Dungeons Will Support Cross-Faction Gameplay

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Cross-faction gameplay is finally on its way to World of Warcraft, but it’s not clear at the outset exactly which dungeons are going to get the cross-faction treatment. What is currently known mostly revolves around the concept of cross-faction play as a brand-new phenomenon in the Warcraft franchise. For the first time in over 16 years, players will be able to join with former sworn enemies in playing a whole host of endgame content, including World of Warcraft’s Arena, Battlegrounds, Raids and Dungeons.

Blizzard has announced that the Group Finding tool, which allows players to assemble a team of chosen applicants for whichever challenge they face, will have an opt-in setting that displays applicants from both the Alliance and Horde. This is a positive move on the social side of things as now players no longer have to pay for a race change to play with their friends. Another benefit is that players now have the agency to choose whichever faction they personally identify with, without it having an impact on who they can play with.

While some worries exist about how streamlined this addition will be on the outset, Blizzard has assured players that the transition will be as seamless as possible. After all, the only real change being made to the game’s design is the removal of a barrier that was only in place to prevent Alliance and Horde interactions in World of Warcraft. This begs the question, however, as to how some faction-specific content will be altered and what impact this will have on player experience, both in terms of lore and gameplay.

How Cross-Faction Gameplay Will Work for Group Finder (& LFG)

There are two kinds of Group Finding tools in World of Warcraft, automatic or LFG, and manual Group Finder. Both are used to assemble a team for endgame content, but LFG will automatically select a random group of players who are also queued. This can be done for Normal, Heroic and Timewalking dungeons as well as the easiest raiding difficulty, Looking for Raid (LFR). Blizzard has stated that cross-faction play for automatic group finder is not yet available, and the LFG tool will only look for players in the same faction. This could possibly change at a later date, but as of now only manually assembled groups are cross-faction.

Despite automatic LFG not being cross-faction and the resultant queue-times likely remaining unchanged, it will be far easier to find groups using the manual Group Finder tool. Most endgame content, particularly difficult endeavors like Mythic dungeons as well as Normal, Heroic, and Mythic World of Warcraft raiding, will be open to cross-faction. Leaders can choose whether to opt-in to viewing applicants from the opposite faction, which will likely greatly expand the number of players signing up to join that group.

Arguably the life-blood of World of Warcraft content, more difficult dungeons and raids will be far more accessible to everyone since currently, many premade groups tend to sputter out due to not enough players wanting to join. Removing the barrier between players who merely want to enjoy the same content will hopefully reinvigorate the PvE sphere of gameplay. While faction identity may be an integral part of the game for most, Blizzard appears to have realized that isolating half the player base from the other can only serve to hurt the game in the long run.

How Cross-Faction Gameplay Will Work for WoW’s Mythic+ Dungeon System

Mythic+ dungeons are a cornerstone of challenging World of Warcraft content. It works as an end-game version of dungeons that adds more and more layers of difficulty each time the player successfully completes the dungeon within the given time limit. Using Mythic Keystones which are earned upon completing a Mythic dungeon, players pit their skills against a system that, based on which level the Keystone is, becomes increasingly difficult to get through by adding mechanics that force players to come up with new strategies for success.

There is no cap on how high players can push their progress, and there are even official tournaments wherein the best of the best pit their skills against the most difficult content in the game. Mythic+ is a hugely popular gaming mechanic and Blizzard’s introduction of cross-faction gameplay will extend to World of Warcraft’s Mythic+ and its Group Finder tool. This means that friends in other factions can finally play together, taking advantage of specific racial combinations to further push the limits of World of Warcraft’s most punishing mode of hardcore gameplay.

Dungeons & Raids That Will Not Be Open to Cross-Faction in WoW (Yet)

There are a number of Dungeons and Raids in World of Warcraft’s extensive amount of legacy content that were designed at the outset with faction differences in mind. These include two of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion raids, Icecrown Citadel and Trial of the Crusader. Both of these, coupled with the dungeon known as Trial of the Champion, involve different encounters based on the player’s faction. In Icecrown Citadel, one of the game’s most beloved raids, there is a battle between factions in airships, which wouldn’t make sense if the players themselves were a mixed bag of Alliance and Horde.

Cooperation between factions is one thing, but actively betraying your own side is quite another. In Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Champion, players encounter specific fights where the aim is to best a boss comprised of the opposing faction and to witness vitriolic back-and-forth banter between onlooking faction leaders. At points in time where the story demands increased tensions or outright hostility between the Alliance and Horde, the corresponding dungeons are difficult to rework into World of Warcraft’s cross-faction gameplay.

The most famous and recent instance of the Horde and Alliance having totally different encounters is that of Battle for Azeroth’s raid, Battle of Dazar’alor. The entire raid is designed to be a totally different experience for red and blue players since all the bosses revolve around the Alliance invading the city and the Horde defending it. Even the dialogue and sequence of events shifts based on who the player fights for, so smoothly incorporating cross-faction play into this raid would prove a monumental task.

What is also likely going to be faction-locked for some time is another feature of Battle for Azeroth: Warfronts. These are instanced PvE battles where players have to siege and capture the enemy faction’s settlements, and having both Alliance and Horde players assault an Alliance base would likely break the immersion for many. That said, thus far in terms of PvE, only dungeons and raids that deal with threats outside of World of Warcraft’s Horde and Alliance rivalry are going to be cross-faction from the get-go.

The player base is currently buzzing with conversation about this monumental change in World of Warcraft’s most fundamental aspect. Many players are excited for the long-awaited unification of the factions so they can finally play with their friends without sacrificing their personal choice, while others are skeptical of this change and what it will mean for the game going forward. Regardless, it seems as though the Alliance and Horde are finally joining swords to enjoy the game’s content together.

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