Holy Crap, It's Finally Happening

 Hey, so you know how I've advocated for the ability for players in World of Warcraft to opt in to cross-faction gameplay?

And how that's something that Blizzard has pushed back against forever, despite the huge demand for it?

Well, guess what?

That's about to change!

Note that this is going to be somewhat restricted - automatic matchmaking like Raid Finder and Group Finder, and the like will not allow this. However, pre-made groups for Mythic dungeons, Raids, and even, it seems, some rated PvP.

The system is opt-in - you can directly invite RealID friends, and if you make a pre-made group using the Group Finder, the group leader will need to check a box to allow cross-faction groups.

Notably, in "outdoor" areas, members of your party or raid that are part of the opposite faction will be unfriendly to you (or hostile, if in War Mode) and you can't cast beneficial spells or the like on them (though you can still communicate in party chat). However, once inside an instance, you'll be fully friendly members of the same group.

This is actually going to be applied to old instances as well, though with a couple exceptions: specifically, the Battle for Dazar'alor, Icecrown Citadel, and Trial of the Crusader, as these are all instances with a significant section dedicated to cross-faction fighting (they don't want your Night Elf to attack Muradin during the airship battle). I'm curious to see if this applies to other instances with minor faction differences - like the party of mercenaries before the Thorim fight in Ulduar, which I think has members of the opposite faction.

This change is huge, and very welcome. It's also, I think, a wise move given the smaller population the game has these days, and will help a lot with faction imbalances. I wonder if we'll see more Alliance races in the World First Mythic races now (hm, two different meanings of the term word "races" in the same sentence.)

The expected release for this feature will be 9.2.5 - they don't think it will be ready for 9.2 (which is coming out any week now).

I'm sure there will be some people decrying this as taking the War out of Warcraft, but as the blue post points out, there's been a history of cross-faction cooperation since Warcraft III, and I think the shift from defining the factions around their conflict toward defining it around their identities is a smart move.