I just did some reading on Blizzards faq's regarding their upcoming mandatory upgrade to a battle.net account . It says and I quote:

What will change in World of Warcraft after the forced migration?
The core gameplay experience will remain unchanged as a result of the migration. However, you’ll be able to take part in all of the new Battle.net features, such as cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game chat.
 

I have a problem with the cross-faction part. Won't that allow Alliance and Horde players to communicate with each other? That is fine on PvE servers I guess, but I play on a PvP server, and that could definitely affect gameplay if one the factions decides to raid an enemy city all the while chatting with a friend who plays on that opposite faction. I mean they actually could get a heads up on how many people are on the way to defend the city and such. I hope this will not be allowed on PvP servers!!!

I don't understand the cross realm faction chat.  That's IN GAME?  Or is it like a java chat on the website?  ya know, like...the forums that lets you talk to anyone?

Maybe the xfaction is a channel that you can join.

Originally posted by MidniteHowl

I just did some reading on Blizzards faq's regarding their upcoming mandatory upgrade to a battle.net account . It says and I quote:

What will change in World of Warcraft after the forced migration?
The core gameplay experience will remain unchanged as a result of the migration. However, you’ll be able to take part in all of the new Battle.net features, such as cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game chat.
 

I have a problem with the cross-faction part. Won't that allow Alliance and Horde players to communicate with each other? That is fine on PvE servers I guess, but I play on a PvP server, and that could definitely affect gameplay if one the factions decides to raid an enemy city all the while chatting with a friend who plays on that opposite faction. I mean they actually could get a heads up on how many people are on the way to defend the city and such. I hope this will not be allowed on PvP servers!!!

Blizzard hasn't elaborated at all, but I don't think that will be a pvp feature. If I had do take a guess, I would say that the "cross-faction" stuff would be related to Deathwing or Arthas since both sides struggle against those two enemies. As far as pvp and city raiding goes, guilds who do that already create toons on the opposing faction to act as spotters.

People that have friends/guilds on oppisite factions have been logging into their oppisite-faction alts to warn or trashtalk impending world pvp for years.  I don't think that will change anything. 

 I would also assume that you will now have a way to learn new languages. You can't talk to the other faction because they don't know Orcish or Common

  Meh, you can do it now via vent. Don't really see much of a difference. Besides ... world pvp in wow is a joke, like it would have much if any effect overall in the game. Most of the time the other faction already knows if your coming to there capital city regardless of chat or spies.

WAIT A MINUTE, WOW has PVP?

When the hell this happen?

Yeah I know a lot of people make opposing faction spies, but a cross faction chat channel would make it even easier...nobody would even have to log on an alt to spy long as they have a friend already there. And yeah I guess they could have been doing it all along using Ventrilo, but I would have to think that a majority of the people are not using it since you would have to have a paid subscription to it to have a good number of accounts. I'm hoping that Blizzard has thought of this already, and will not make it easier for PvP people to raid cities. I play an alliance character and as everyone knows, the horde outnumbers the alliance on most servers. So this would make it even harder for us few alliance players LOL.

Originally posted by Swanea

I don't understand the cross realm faction chat.  That's IN GAME?  Or is it like a java chat on the website?  ya know, like...the forums that lets you talk to anyone?

It's actually cross realm and cross faction. It isn't cross faction only across different realms. From what I've read, yes, this will be in game. Actually Blizzard had a picture of the WoW friends panel that shows a friend in Starcraft 2, and another friend on a different realm. Obviously, this is their testers since SC2 isnt out yet.

Here's the link to the faq page I got this info from : us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/recaps/battlenet-panel.xml