During the World of Warcraft Q&A panel this past weekend, Blizzard confirmed that it’s not planning on dropping any walls between the factions to allow Alliance and Horde to play together. This isn’t going to come as a surprise to folks who’ve been watching WoW a long time, of course, since this is a question that’s been coming up at these Q&As for years. 2016:
Here’s 2017:
And now, 2019:
Players are pretty grumpy about this continuance of the faction divide, however, since the game’s actual narrative has long been suggesting collaboration (“breaking the cycle“) rather than more eternal war. It’s not even clear why the divide needs to be there mechanically, which leads speculation that faction transfers generate a ton of money for the company. I find it pretty bizarre since it’s one of the few PvE-centric MMOs out there with this kind of split.
Eliot’s going to talk more about the story issues later this week later today, but for now, let’s just focus on the mechanical impact of preserving Horde vs. Alliance. Are you bummed about the faction divide in WoW Shadowlands?