- Blizzard is attempting to bring a new fix to the world’s arguably most popular MMOMRPG
- The company will allow players from opposing factions to band together and tackle in-game objectives
- This should allow to fix falling population numbers, reduce waiting times and give World of Warcraft a welcomed boost
Blizzard will be bringing Alliance and Horde players together and allowing them to team up for dungeon crawls, raids, and PVP action.
An “Enemy of My Enemy” Situation
The never-ending rivalry between the Alliance and Horde in World of Warcraft has come to a tentative end, and while some fans have called this the latest of Blizzard’s series of bad decisions, others have praised the opportunity to bring the two warring factions together. After all, this war has been going on for over a decade now, so perhaps a time of peace is long overdue.
Effectively, Blizzard revealed that WoW’s 9.2.5 update will finally allow cross-faction dungeon crawls, raids and even PvP matches. This will definitely cause a bit of confusion if you are a hardcore PvP-er and have to remember that the character next to you is your friend.
But on the plus side, the decision provides some upsides, too. Since WoW first appeared, people were forced to choose between their friends and the classes, races, and factions they liked best. This rivalry was of course good-humored and served as the basis of the game’s success over the years, but it also caused some discomfort.
Now, though, this can be put to rest – at least to some extent. Blizzard doesn’t expect to completely eliminate conflict – not even close. Even though you would be able to come together and tackle objectives in the game, the open-world would still be a competitive place where skirmishes between the two factions are as usual an occurrence as anything else.
While 9.2.5 update is still in the works, it’s an opportunity to make players feel less alone, reduce waiting times, and introduce new ways to access gaming content. It’s also a way to patch ailing populations and servers that are overwhelmingly playing one faction or the other. None of this will matter much now anyway. Meanwhile, Blizzard has lost 20 million active subscribers between 2007 and 2021. A lot of these numbers are attributed to World of Warcraft and Blizzard’s pattern of sexual harassment on female employees that has caused an uproar over the last year.
