Yesterday, Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft will receive patch 9.2.5 next Tuesday. The update includes a highly requested feature: cross-faction play. The 17-years-old MMORPG never allowed Alliance and Horde players to group up, but now that's going to change.
Here's an official overview of how cross-faction play works in World of Warcraft and where it is not allowed.
GROUPING UP
To invite members of the opposite faction to a party, players must have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship or be members of a cross-faction World of Warcraft Community.
Players will have the ability to find Premade Groups in the Group Finder for dungeons (Normal, Heroic, Mythic, and Mythic+), raids, rated arena/RBGs, and also Torghast. However, the group leader may restrict the listing to same-faction applicants if they choose.
Once in a party, members of the opposite faction will remain unfriendly while outside of instances, though they will be able to communicate through party and raid chat, as well as use /say and /yell within proximity of one another.
Upon entering a dungeon, raid, or rated PvP match, however, all members will be friendly and able to assist each other in combat, trade loot, earn shared achievements, and otherwise fully engage the same way members of the same faction do.
GUILDS
Guilds will remain single-faction, and random matchmade activities like Heroic dungeons, Skirmishes, or Random Battlegrounds will all remain same-faction.
LEGACY INSTANCES
The functionality of the cross-faction instance feature will also apply to legacy instances and is available at all levels. However, there will be several older instances that cross-faction parties cannot enter due to faction-specific components, and they are:
- Trial of the Champion
- Trial of the Crusader
- Vault of Archavon
- Icecrown Citadel
- Baradin Hold
- Siege of Boralus
- Battle of Dazar'alor
- Darkmaul Citadel (Exile's Reach dungeon)
The next World of Warcraft expansion, Dragonflight, was unveiled last month. It will feature a new race (Drachtyr), a new class (Evoker), and the ability to become a Dragonrider. There's no release date yet, but it will likely launch this Fall.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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