Something is bubbling beneath the surface at Activision Blizzard. The company has been undergoing huge structural changes lately. In mid-January, we were able to report that Microsoft had acquired Activision Blizzard for a staggering amount . We guessed that it probably would not be long before we could expect to see some major changes in the original company and its many games.

Microsoft seems to have been out with the rake as soon as possible. In any case, one could read yesterday on the World of Warcraft's official news site that two major changes are coming to the game in the near future.

Boosting is no longer allowed

A few days ago, Blizzard officially announced on their forum that they would be more aware of players' activity, especially in terms of what they define as' organized help ', which occurs both in booster environments and among gold farmers.

Boosting is a service that certain players use, whereby through a transaction of in-game currency or real money, a 'boost' is bought from players or companies.

In this way, it will be possible for players who either do not have time to 'grind' through the game content (or who are not skilled enough) to access the top of WoW's elite content, with exclusive gear and what else comes with.

Now Activision Blizzard has chosen to point out (possibly after Microsoft's announcement) that a definite company (eg websites or groups / guilds in WoW) that specializes in this type of service is not allowed. The reason for this is that it goes against the game's EULA and thus is not allowed. The boosting environment in particular had started to get big in connection with the growing Esport, which was to be found in WoW and the introduction of Mythic + dungeons.

This also means that players could in fact pay other players to help them qualify for Esports events, without actually putting the hours into the game themselves. While this does not seem to be the biggest problem, it does show a general trend in the gaming universe that has been necessary for the company to point out to their fanbase.

Horde and Alliance can now play content together

The all-important news, which has either made fans scream GG with excitement or sighing cry QQ in frustration, is the plan to enable people from both factions to play together . This way, it will be possible for an Alliance player to group with Horde players in a raid, for example.

The positive thing about this is that it will make the queue time significantly shorter, as it will be easier to find more people to play with, for the more demanding content. At the same time, it may also help to diminish the toxic mentality that has existed in Azeroth for a long time, which has been driven by both factional conflicts and race wars internally within the respective factions. The downside, however, is that the very foundation on which World of Warcraft is built (Horde> <Alliance) is going to be less in focus - and potentially could end up being totally indifferent in the long run.

A big part of the hallmark of WoW is precisely the division of players into red or blue camp. Most live events (Blizzcons) are just started by the spectators being asked: “Horde players - are you ready ?! Alliance players - are you ready ?! ”, after which each faction fors & oslash; ger to make the most noise.

Whether the need to let Alliance and Horde play together is for strategic reasons (for the game's survival after a general decline in active players) or as an attempt to clean up Activision Blizzard's toxic work environment, which is also quietly softened into their fictional worlds, are not to know.

On the other hand, it will be interesting to see how they intend to explain away many hundreds of years of war, with the implementation of this new function - it is also not more than two years ago that the war between the two factions reached its peak and resulted in a lot various war crimes that many players had a hard time coming to terms with.

What the future holds for Azeroth's residents is uncertain - but you can be sure that the implementation of cross faction gaming will not go unnoticed.