Midnight brings a new level of faction cooperation to WoW

The relationship between the Horde and Alliance has evolved significantly in the more than two decades since World of Warcraft launched. While the factions started as fierce rivals with their own classes and leveling paths, many of WoW’s expansions have seen them put their differences aside to face a greater threat. The 2018 expansion Battle for Azeroth sought to rekindle the flames of rivalry, pulling the factions apart again, but future expansions saw those rifts heal once more as everyone united to protect their shared world. In the game’s latest expansion, Midnight, the groups have never been cozier.

In WoW’s first expansion, 2007’s Burning Crusade, Blizzard Entertainment designers introduced the concept of Sanctuary, places where player-versus-player combat was impossible and members of the Horde and Alliance could walk and quest side-by-side. These locations have traditionally been overseen by neutral third parties that players from both factions were helping, like Shattrath City and Dalaran. But Midnight changes the formula by sending everyone to the blood elf capital of Silvermoon City, making it the first time that Alliance players have been welcomed into a Horde stronghold.

From a narrative and design perspective, the decision makes a lot of sense. Midnight opens with the Harbinger of the Void Xal’atath bringing her armies to Silvermoon to take control of the Sunwell, a powerful fount of energy viewed as sacred to the elves and followers of the Light. Silvermoon and its Alliance equivalent, the draenei city the Exodar, were both introduced in Burning Crusade and have been largely abandoned by players who moved on to Northrend in 2008’s Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard proved in 2010’s Cataclysm that it can have huge success with refurbishing existing zones rather than always inventing new places, and Midnight provided a perfect opportunity to do that for Silvermoon.

An early quest chain explains that the blood elves have reluctantly allowed members of the Alliance to stay in the city, only excluding them from an inner sanctuary reserved for the Horde. But none of that reluctance comes through in the many sidequests you can do in the city. In fact, some of these quest chains offer particularly sweet stories of people coming together across factions. A dwarf and elf reunite in Silvermoon for the first time since the war that broke out in Battle for Azeroth to pay their bar tab and go drinking again. They have a dynamic reminiscent of Gimli and Legolas in The Lord of the Rings, unlikely friends sharing teasing banter.

Even sweeter is a quest chain that starts with the snooty blood elf tailor Solwin Brightstitch, who is annoyed by all the new customers flocking into Silvermoon demanding his services. He finally finds a job he deems worthy of his talents from Gaari, a draenei with a blood elf cloak he’d like repaired. There’s a lot of flirting between the two over the course of this quest chain, which ends with the reveal that Gaari was forced to fight an old blood elf friend, who gifted him the cloak as a dying gesture. It’s a deeply emotional moment, demonstrating how often factions have fought against and alongside each other in WoW’s long history.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Midnight is the second chapter in The Worldsoul Saga trilogy, and it’s continuing a trend of breaking down boundaries between the factions that started in the first chapter, The War Within. That expansion allowed full parties of friends to do dungeons together, regardless of whether their characters were in the Horde or the Alliance. Blizzard has said that cross-faction queuing is also in the works. The unprecedented scale of Xal’atath’s threat seems to demand an unprecedented level of cooperation from the heroes of Azeroth.

These features aren’t likely to go away, even after The Worldsoul Saga ends. If anything, the new dungeon dynamics and warming attitudes seen in Silvermoon could finally mark the end of the divide between the Horde and Alliance. By the time the trilogy concludes with The Last Titan, Azeroth may finally be at peace — at least until the next expansion brings another threat for the Horde and Alliance to face together.