Cross-realm and World PvP comes to WoW!

Logan Booker has the latest from Blizzard on cross-realm combat and world PvP for World of Warcraft.

Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft will soon support cross-realm and world Player versus Player combat, busting long-established server barriers that prevented such activity and revitalising outdoor PvP combat.

The two additions to WoW's PvP arsenal are scheduled for release in the title's next patch, 1.12, and will be available via the public test realms for players to abuse before going live.



Yes, you may say, you heard about these features a few months ago… but now we have all the juicy details you could possibly want.

Cross-realm PvP
Like the titles says, as of patch 1.12, players who PvP in Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley will finally be able to venture beyond the limits of their current realm and bury as many swords into the bellies of their inter-server enemies as they want.

The new system as it stands will work by assigning realms into 'battlegroups', and only realms in the same battlegroup will be able to compete against each other. It's not known at this time how large these battlegroups will be and as such, how limited the realm choice. Previous rumours on the feature suggest realms will be linked in batches of 16.

Regardless, the battlegroup lists will be available on the World of Warcraft website once the feature is live.

The major benefit of cross-realm PvP is a solution to one of the big problems associated with battlegrounds PvP - faction imbalances. Servers with populations that greatly favour Horde or Alliance can look forward to shorter waiting times, and more even match-ups. Additionally, guilds on separate realms that have been itching to take each other on will finally have the option, although we're not sure how guilds with the same name will be handled. Players from other realms in a battleground will have their originating realm name appended to the end of their character's name.



As far as game mechanics go, things won't be terribly different from they are now. All items except conjurables (water, food, healthstones, etc) won't be tradable between characters of different realms. Otherwise, everything is the same including honour, quests and communications.