Ion Hazzikostas, a developer for World of Warcraft, spoke with streamer Maximum recently on Twitch to discuss Shadowlands and said that the team is currently working on a mechanism to introduce cross-faction guilds, meaning that players of both the Horde and the Alliance will be able to create their guild.
Blizzard added a means for players of both factions to team up in PvE content to complete dungeons and raids in patch 9.2.5. The developer had previously stated that guilds would continue to be single-faction and that random matchmade activities like Heroic dungeons, Skirmishes, and Random Battlegrounds would maintain the same faction.
Blizzard appears to have been developing the concept in secret, though. As a result, cross-faction guilds “may be easier than we imagined; we’ll see,” he continued, adding that these changes are tugging at systems and code that have been created to function in a specific way for 20 years.
At this point, it’s unknown when Blizzard plans to add the new feature to World of Warcraft, though players may likely see it with the game’s next Dragonflight expansion.
A brand-new skill-based mode of aerial locomotion called Dragonriding, which will be featured in the April-announced game Dragonflight, would allow users to fly on the back of their own Dragon Isles Drake. According to Blizzard, the expansion will debut “on or before December 31, 2022.”
However, there are reservations about fully enabling cross-faction communication. Ion says that we want to ensure that there’s some opt-in relationship; you’re not simply getting a whisper from a random cross-faction individual who ganked you. That’s excellent news, at least for WoW purists. At least it will be feasible for those who wish to maintain the war in Warcraft to completely disregard the changes and limit preset group finder groups to single-faction only.
The right amount of experience and nostalgia must coexist, which must be carefully considered. For example, it’s not the same game as World of Warcraft, which wasn’t invented until 1797.
