I enjoy the flexibility that the current setting offers us.
Whether it’s crossing faction boundaries, holding a begrudging tolerance, remaining in wary isolation or dead set in pursuing vengeful warmongering: All are valid paths for our characters to venture into.
It’s great. 
I suppose both are easily combine-able. Except for the fact that all Horde bases in Ashenvale are up and running again, per Exploring Kalimdor… And then Darkshore is abondened by the Night Elves, but the Horde Trolls and the neutral Circle of the Ancients are still active in the area ._.
Anyways. Don’t want to get this thread offtopic; so I was also wondering.
With X-faction Guilds and normal/Mythic dungeons… Will they finally update the Group Finder Tool to include both factions? So I could get grouped up with a Horde as Alliance, and viceversa?
Great. Now they just need to take that last step, and just allow us to go to the other factions cities etc etc… Hope we never get another faction war, for it’d make no sense anymore.
Cross faction guilds are a godsend for neutral guilds (and even non neutral if they want a handy place to keep their NPC’s!), definitely looking forward to it. Hopefully we can just convert a guild into cross faction rather than having to remake the current ones altogether.
Just to throw my proverbial hat in the ring, I don’t think there’s any risk of the faction conflict ever going away permanently despite this, which should have been a feature since the start; as it’s been said, the current truce feels closer to vanilla terms (with a bit more baggage), and the red versus blue deal is a massive part of the Warcraft’s concept, both in lore and in marketing. If this means no 5th war any time soon but smaller, far more interesting conflicts between the banners, then it’s a good thing in my books.
This makes me happy.
Can’t wait for this update
I doubt we’ll see much of races in the opposing factions cities in rp, the guards would constantly aggro and I doubt many have patience for that.
The Horde don’t stay out of night elven lands tho.
They maintain their forts in Ashenvale and are the only faction with a base in Darkshore.
I don’t think it’d ever make sense for certain races in certain cities. But I think the opposite holds true as well. Maybe Night Elves would be welcomed in Thunder Bluff at some point as the story goes on, but never Dwarves for example. Something like that could be fun I think.
For sure, but there are still elements which can be exploited at a drop of a hat for some conflict, a good example would be Magister Hathorel being opportunistic in attacking Jaina (and co).
I don’t think we’ll see a faction war or conflict as a major theme (like you said) until the inevitable C-Dev turnaround happens, but there’s plenty of room for teeny-tiny factions to grate at one another.
As if to keep the ball rolling itself, Blizzard have just posted that this is only the beginning of bigger things for cross-faction guilds it seems and that they’re going to continue adding and iterating upon it in future patches.
https://twitter.com/Warcraft/status/1633951544671600640?t=8_czRMhWLcxrVFBRbxRtsw&s=19
Ultimately a good thing. The game has matured beyond the petty ‘race war in a fancy frock’ trope, it’s just sad it’s taken two blockbuster disasters back to back and perverted gamerbros to be ousted from Blizzard for this to actually happen.
The faction war could have been decidedly zapped in its tracks with MoP but they decided to keep it weirdly boiling away at low temperature on Draenor [why? Was Ashran ever explained?] and doubly so with genn and sylvanas wailing at you to play capture the tower while the Legion is wailing down on you from above.
There is absolutely no negatives to increasing connectivity and social options for players, both in an RP and non-RP sense. Those who do not wish to interact with the other faction in an amicable way won’t have to. Roleplaying a dinosaur is totally fine. Just as someone roleplaying a metaphoric asteroid is as well.
IMO Ashran just confirmed to me that trying to make PVP a part of the main story lore is just a massive hinderance.
If they’re still limiting cross-faction Common chat because of PVPers being toxic screechers still, then doubly so >_>
If only they could report people!
But that would entail someone doing something about the reports, and that would cost money.
Something an indie company such as Blizzard surely can’t afford.
If only there was an easy, low-effort workaround for PVPers being Toxic stains. Like, hrm, not enabling such a feature by Default on PVP servers or in Arenas/BGs?
#BIGBRAINTHUNKING
Galaxy brain idea.
Why not restrict cross faction features on PvP servers.
That means anyone who wants “ZUG ZUG ME FACTION WAR” can play on one of those servers?
PvP servers don’t exist anymore on Retail.
So why not when you have PvP enabled? That’s a good compromise.
You’re there to kill your enemy, not chat.
This is going to be an absolutely amazing feature for guilds that are truly cross faction. It’s a shame that they can’t make it so you can have multiple guilds you’re in like they do in Guild Wars 2 though. For the average player it would let them be in their raiding/pvp/social guilds across alts and for a guild like mine as an RPer, while my guilds are together championing neutrality and have a general name for themselves when working together, they also have their own solid identity.