A huge part of the Warcraft experience has been it’s animosity – right from the initial RTS release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, the conflict was front and centre. Humans and Orcs, Alliance and Horde – they just don’t get along.
After 18 long years of World of Warcraft allowing players to truly embody the rivalry, Blizzard is finally ready to let bygones be bygones.
I mean, we were already hanging out on beaches and such
In a blog post today, Ion Hazzikostas (Game Director of World of Warcraft) explained how they will be working to implement a new way for friends to play together regardless of faction. A big part of the post was an admission that the slavish dedication to the eternal conflict has always had an unwelcome side effect in the sense that particular group content (such as dungeons) would always suffers from the split player base – something that generally has nothing to do with any narrative biffo, phat lewts are just phat lewts, yo.
So moving forward, systems will be put in place to allow premade parties of either faction to work together and conquer the challenging instanced content that forms a pretty specific core to the WoW experience – with challenge-based dungeons and raids now drawing from a massive pool of players, regardless of race.
There are a handful of caveats however – for example, a very small handful of faction-specific encounters will remain split – generally to keep the narrative intact. If the Alliance and Horde are having a proper story-based feud, it doesn’t make a lick of sense to have HandsomeOrc standing side by side with HumanPallyMan (at least until Blizzard finds a way to make this work, thematically).
A surprising part of the blog post absolutely comes from the admission of fault on Ion’s part. He makes reference to a BlizzCon attendee asking if there were any plans to incorporate cross-faction grouping, and the developers at the time made a very pointed comment that “Alliance and Horde separation … is a pillar of what makes Warcraft, Warcraft.” He now instead clarifies that it’s better viewed that the Alliance and Horde identity is a pillar of the Warcraft world – and as a long term Warcraft fan, independent of the MMO and it’s history – I actually agree.
How do you do, fellow Horde?
Finally some of us can set aside our cries of ‘FOR THE HORDE’ and ‘FOR THE ALLIANCE’, opting to settle a little more comfortably into the games over-arching narrative beat, saving the world of Azeroth from the myriad of threats that keep asking the factions to work together.
Honestly, we’ve worked together so many times at this point the idea of being enemies just felt rote and tired. So, until next we meet – “FOR AZEROTH!”
Are you a fan of grouping with new friends and old enemies? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
