Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.’s hugely successful MMO World of Warcraft (WoW) has changed a lot in the last 10 years, but even after five expansions and dozens of content patches, one thing has always stayed the same: the strict division between the Horde and the Alliance. But now it seems that even that may be changing, but the reason for it may be more practical than you would think.

Blizzard has announced that it will be testing out a new Mercenary Mode, which would allow players to temporarily switch their allegiance and fight for the opposing faction.

“In an upcoming patch, we’ll be adding a feature that allows you to act as a mercenary for the opposite faction in PvP,” Blizzard said on the WoW blog. “Whenever your faction is experiencing a long wait time to get into Ashran or unrated Battlegrounds, agents of the enemy faction will appear in your base in Ashran (Stormshield for the Alliance, Warspear for the Horde). These agents will allow you to enter Ashran or Battlegrounds disguised as an enemy player, and actually fight as the opposite faction.”

“Maintaining the spirit of the core Alliance vs. Horde fantasy”

In the past, WoW has always maintained a strict two-faction PvP system with the Alliance (Humans, Gnomes, Dwarves, Night Elves, Draenai and Worgen) on one side and the Horde (Orcs, Undead, Tauren, Trolls, Blood Elves and Goblins) on the other. The Mists of Pandaria expansion introduced the Pandaren race, which could choose which faction it wanted to join, but once the choice was made, there was no switching sides.

While the two-faction system always worked well to generate conflict between the two sides, especially on PVP servers, there was one serious problem: The Alliance nearly always vastly outnumbered the Horde.

This is obviously problematic for world PvP, since it can be difficult for Horde players to quest without getting swarmed by a horde (heh) of Alliance, but it is also a serious issue for Battlegrounds, which works on a queuing system. Players on the overpopulated faction are forced to wait out longer queue times before they can join the battle, and boredom is not something you want players to feel in any game, especially one that requires a monthly subscription.

“Our goal with Mercenary Mode is to allow players who want to participate in Ashran or unrated Battlegrounds the ability to do so without having to wait through long queues, while still maintaining the spirit of the core Alliance vs. Horde fantasy,” Blizzard said. “We’ll be testing this feature soon on the Public Test Realm and look forward to hearing your feedback!”

Screenshot by Eric David | SiliconANGLE