{"id":189266,"date":"2024-08-22T14:30:54","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T19:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/?p=189266"},"modified":"2024-08-22T14:24:36","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T19:24:36","slug":"cross-faction-queues-war-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/2024\/08\/22\/cross-faction-queues-war-within\/","title":{"rendered":"Rejoice! Cross-faction queueing is coming in a future patch in The War Within (with some limitations)"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s official! Cross-faction instance queueing will finally be added in a future World of Warcraft<\/a> The War Within<\/a><\/em> patch… with some significant limitations. The WoW<\/em> team is working on allowing cross-faction instance queues for fully formed groups. Yes, friends, our frustrations are (almost) at an end. Let’s discuss why this feature is so important and the crumbling bastion it represents.<\/p>\n

Cross-faction instance queueing has been a pain point when so many social faction walls have been removed from the game. While you’ve been able to do cross-faction groups<\/a> since patch 9.2.5 and cross-faction guilds<\/a> since patch 10.1 (and now cross-realm guilds<\/a> in The War Within<\/em>), some ordinary grouping activities have remained blocked on faction lines. Currently, anything you queue for \u2014 LFG dungeons, LFR, timewalking, or holiday events \u2014 only forms single-faction parties. The upcoming change will allow fully formed groups to queue regardless of individual player factions, which will make it possible to do timewalking and certain holiday events cross-faction for the first time.<\/p>\n

But requiring a full party makes other cross-faction queuing a little less useful, since you still can’t fill your party out by jumping into a queue. It could certainly be useful for LFG dungeons, making for a convenient way for an existing party to get to normal and heroic instances. LFR raids seem a little less viable, as it would require a very large group. The pre-made group finder will continue to let you make your own groups and invite people, but none of the LFG tools will automate cross-faction groups.<\/p>\n

Based on an interview with Production Director Michael Bybee<\/a>, it sounds like there are a lot of “gotchas” to conquer before implementation. Bybee emphasized that super pro-Horde\/pro-Alliance players should still be able to maintain their faction-based playstyle. But players with cross-faction friends who have already formed a group have already decided to play with the opposite faction, and letting them queue for instances relieves some significant heartburn of that experience.<\/p>\n

This is going to be a big step forward for cross-faction play, even though there are still quite a few limitations to the experience. This update will come sometime during The War Within<\/em> expansion, which at least puts it on a somewhat near horizon, though we don’t know exactly when.<\/p>\n

Keep the social improvements coming, Blizzard — we’re ready for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s official! Cross-faction instance queueing will finally be added in a future World of Warcraft The War Within patch… with some significant limitations. The WoW team is working on allowing cross-faction instance queues for fully formed groups. Yes, friends, our frustrations are (almost) at an end. Let’s discuss why this feature is so important and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":150381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[78456,3],"tags":[68856,76493],"yst_prominent_words":[31772,8879,10028,42539,35530,9392,8935,44618,9789,8675,8803],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189276,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189266\/revisions\/189276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189266"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=189266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}