World of Warcraft is getting closer to cross-faction guilds. They’re set to arrive in Update 10.1, Embers of Neltharion, and will change much of how people can get in and play WoW with each other.
Robin previewed all of the major features coming in 10.1, and there's a lot more than just cross-faction guilds on the way. Yet, with Blizzard continuing to open up previously long-standing barriers, this will be one of the biggest ones yet. Some people feel strongly that they want to remain just Horde or just Alliance, so in making these options available, Blizzard has given players choices to participate or not. When it comes to guilds, this will continue.
Not only will you have a chance to convert your existing guild to across-faction guild if you want to, but you can leave things as-is if that’s better for you too. That said, adding this huge change so soon is going to take some time to settle. It does make for a lot simpler experience for those already in guilds. If you had to disband and reform a guild just to switch it to the new cross-faction option, that would be a huge mess, especially for larger guilds or inactive members of any size guild. Sometimes people take a break and return, which is nothing new in the WoW community.
With such a big change, there is going to be the need for practical experience,data, and community feedback before it’s implemented. This will be where the PTR comes in. Blizzard plans to include cross-faction guilds for testing from the start of the PTR. If you’ve been trying out cross-faction instances or other options, and want to see what whole guilds are like, this will be your chance to hop on and help the devs to polish the feature into its final form.
More on this over at World of Warcraft.