Cross-realm guilds finally come to WoW in The War Within expansion

Your community dreams are finally coming true as the next World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, brings the long-awaited cross-realm guilds.

With the moves toward cross-faction play, cross-realm guilds seemed like the next natural step, but Blizzard only said that they would come after Dragonflight. Ion confirmed during the BlizzCon 2023 WoW Deep Dive that the next expansion will come with cross-realm guilds. And not only that, but that Mythic raiding guilds won’t suffer. Mythic raiding will be available cross-realm from day one, meaning guilds won’t have to wait until the Hall of Fame fills up. This has long been a point of contention and frustration, especially considering the faction imbalance. The Hall of Fame isn’t going away entirely though. It will still exist, though as a way to commemorate the top 200 guilds each season and tier, reflecting their accomplishments, rather than a method to unlock quality of life gameplay.

We’ve been seeing this direction to breaking down WoW barriers in the past several expansions. First, when cross-faction raiding came to Shadowlands and the ability to mail items between your cross-faction alts, and it was further expanded upon in Dragonflight when they added cross-faction to guilds. We have also seen hints toward breaking down server restrictions when auction house commodity sales went realm-wide in patch 9.2.7.

This goes a long way toward making WoW a more social, community-minded game. While these faction restrictions and server barriers served an important function when WoW was new, they have long since become deprecated, especially when the community has grown and gone are the days of grinding. Removing old restrictions and barriers like this allows players more freedom while still letting them play with their chosen friends. For as long as WoW has been around, hitting its 20 year anniversary next year, friend groups have become scattered and new friends often find themselves on very different servers. Opening up communities to cross-realm means everyone can play together and do the content they want while still participating in the social function that makes WoW what it is.