The bitter war between World of Warcraft's two major factions, the Alliance and the Horde, has always been a fundamental part of MMOs, or rather, has always existed. In addition to fueling player-versus-player battles in open worlds, competitive battlegrounds, and arenas, Horde and Alliance players often experience very different sides of Azeroth. They have different zones, quests, and stories, and interaction between the two is usually limited to emoting and killing each other.

However, this is not always the case, although keeping the two sides in conflict is a key element of WoW's appeal, said game director Ion Hazzikostas during a World of Warcraft Q&A panel as part of BlizzCon 2021, he said that there may come a day when concessions will be made to allow players of different factions to work together on cooperative group activities such as raids and Mythic+ dungeons.

This statement was made after Hazzikostas received tough questions from players about the imbalance in player population between factions and the frustration many players have to deal with when their servers are not as populated as others.

"This is something we talk about a great deal," he said. We know there are very real issues, especially at the high end of the raid and Mythic+ scene."

Hazzikostas explained that at the time of the Mists of Pandaria expansion, Horde races such as orcs and trolls had superior racial abilities compared to other Alliance races. Because competitive raiding guilds are always looking for an edge, many players began to turn to the Horde. As a result, players were increasingly forced to give up their Alliance characters, creating a kind of vicious cycle.

Looking at the total population of WoW, Hazzikostas found that the ratio of Horde to Alliance is fairly even. However, for certain social and hardcore players, Horde is more popular, negatively impacting the high-end raiding and dungeon-running communities.

"It's the social dynamics that make people stay in one faction or move on," says Hazzikostas. "If you're a raider looking to join a top-end guild, [on the Horde side] the feeling is that you simply have more options, and if the first guild you choose doesn't work out, there are other guilds you can look for and turn to. If you want to run high-end Mythic+ dungeons, there are more people [on the Horde side] who want to do that content. This is a difficult problem to solve. You can't undo this movement that happened over time; it would take something tremendous to make people who switched from Alliance to Horde suddenly want to return."

Hazzikostas added that while he doesn't think anything can be done about the imbalance in the short term, it is a "top priority" in the long term and must be addressed while also maintaining a sense that these factions are at odds with each other.

"Identity and factions are important in Warcraft, and no matter what we do in a few years, it is essential for us that when we all meet at BlizzCon in Anaheim, there will be cheers from the crowd for each faction. If we lose that, we have lost something precious."

Later in the interview, the topic turned to another major issue: the server population. Here, Hazzikostas spoke about Blizzard's ongoing efforts to consolidate servers in order to address faction imbalances and the problem of servers not having enough players to maintain a healthy culture. At this point, panel moderator Scott Johnson asked Hazzikostas directly if Blizzard would ever consider having players from different factions play together in raids and dungeons to address these ongoing issues.

"Honestly, I would never say never," Hazzikostas replied. 'That's kind of what I was getting at in my earlier answer. There are plenty of reasons why it is essential to preserve the identity of a faction. In an ideal world, all of these priorities would coexist, but at the end of the day, an MMO like World of Warcraft is about being able to play with your friends and where you want to play, and the faction that you identify with and feel you belong to the most. If you can really pick and choose, and you don't have to sacrifice it because you need to be with a group or want to be in a more highly regarded guild, then there is definitely a greater strength in faction identity. I have a colleague who is a lifelong Alliance player and now plays Horde, but really wants to be an Alliance and does so for guild reasons. There are tens of thousands of people in the world in the same situation, maybe more. I want to do something for them."

While it may seem heretical that "World of Warcraft" will one day group players regardless of faction, there is plenty of narrative precedent: many of WoW's expansions have forced Horde and Alliance to band together for survival It has long been a meme that the two camps begin by feuding with each other until an existential crisis forces them to unite for survival, as was the case in "Mists of Pandaria," "Legion," "Battle for Azeroth," and the current "Shadowlands" expansion, ancient feuds are in the background.

Nevertheless, as Hazzikostas said, it is a big issue that needs a lot of consideration, so don't expect to see Horde and Alliance players playing hand in hand in the flower gardens anytime soon. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that some kind of bridge between the two factions is needed.