Cross-Faction Play in World of Warcraft is here. From now on, Horde and Alliance can play together – and everyone has many more players to choose from.
It was one of the longest-held wishes in a large part of the World of Warcraft community. Now it is finally happening. With the release of Patch 9.2.5, Blizzard allows for the first time in the history of the MMORPG for Horde and Alliance to truly play together. From now on, you can join mixed groups and tackle almost all content together.
What’s new? As of today (06/01/2022), it is possible to invite players from the opposing faction into groups and then tackle content together. This applies to PvE and PvP, but is primarily limited to instanced content like battlegrounds, dungeons, or raids.
Which players can you invite? To invite players from the other faction, they must either be friends from your Battle.net list (whether BattleTag or Real-ID) or you must be part of a cross-faction community. Additionally, all players that you can find through the group search tool can be invited.
As the leader of a group, you can actively decide whether you want to see characters from the opposing faction in the group search.
What content doesn’t work? A number of dungeons and raids cannot be played with mixed groups in Patch 9.2.5 yet. These are:
- The Trial of Champions
- The Trial of the Crusader
- Archavon’s Chamber
- The Icecrown Citadel
- Baradin Hold
- The Siege of Boralus
- The Battle of Dazar’alor
- Darkbreaker Citadel (Dungeon on the Isle of Exiles)
The reasons for this are that these contents play out slightly differently depending on the faction, offering different battles or dialogues tailored to each side. However, in the future, Blizzard aims to make this content available as well, just requiring more effort and thus time.
What still doesn’t work? The biggest limitations of the system exist in the open world. Your allegiance does not change when you join a group.
If you, as a human, join a group of orcs who want to make a quick detour to Orgrimmar, you cannot simply tag along – the guards will still beat you up. Even in war mode, you remain hostile toward the other faction and all its members. You can attack each other even in a group.
The system is primarily designed for instanced, closed content. The immersion of the open game world is not affected.
