PvP Realm Restriction Removed

"As we've already discussed, we’re in the process of developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. To prepare for this new service, we've removed the restriction that prevents players from creating both Horde and Alliance characters on a PvP realm."

Holy crap... I almost wished I was on a PVP server. Mostly since I just imagined the benefits of being able to flip to an alt and corpse camp someone annoying on your own faction. Of course if I started on a PVP realm I'd not have a horde alt near 80 unless I transferred it (something I'll probably never do unless it was free).

One step closer in breaking down the barriers between factions. Eventually I'd like to be able to chat with the opposite faction, have them show up on my friends list, and run instances with them! Ok we'll probably never get to run instances with the opposite faction so long a Blizzard can make money off faction transfers, but the communication thing doesn't seem as far fetched as it once did.

Cross faction communication would be most useful for PVE server guilds that have a sister guild on the opposite faction. It is not uncommon to have alts on the opposite faction just to do the quests and see the content specific to the opposite faction. Being able to still keep in touch with all your guildies no matter which side you happen to be logged in on would be a huge benefit to communication.

That being said I probably don't want the player I just pwnd to whine at me, but compared to gold spammers and idiots on my own faction that would be a non issue.

The ultimate solution would be cross faction guilds... where a single guild can contain players from either faction and they would be able to communicate with each other, but not to the opposite faction outside the guild. These types of things already exist in lore, such as the argent crusade, cenarion expedition, and many other in game "guilds" having members from both factions.

Trading Bind on Pick-Up Items

So I was just sticking a DKP system into words earlier and got to thinking about the potential shady side of trading bind on pick-up items. Sure it provides a lot more breathing room for any mistakes since you don't have to wait a day for a ticket to go through. On the other hand think of all the shady things you can do if you have friends or fellow conspirators in the raid with you.

For starters in a pick up group you could ask someone to roll with you doubling your chances to winning or more, if they win they just trade the item to you. For DKP systems you could have folks spending their DKP on others as some part of deal on the side.

A lot of this will be prevented by common sense, if you see a warrior rolling on cloth or a mage rolling on plate there is probably something wrong. Still two people that roll on the same gear could do some pretty shifty things and no one would be the wiser.

Even without any such secret alliances there is now the possibility to bribe the winner of an item with gold or some other incentive to let you have the item instead. Perhaps some of this was happening prior by abusing in-game tickets, but I'm sure if you did it often enough there would be some repercussions.

Something to think about...