If there’s one thing WAR is really good at, its not being afraid to do things that are sometimes considered unpopular or a bad decision, but in the end are for the greater good. Take the newest Producer’s Letter. Full of City Siege changing goodness, it ends with a wee little paragraph that has rubbed off the wrong way on some people.

Remember what I said about focusing on the present? Well, we couldn’t let a producer’s letter go by without giving you at least a small peak at the future, now could we? Well, here’s the bombshell: By 1.3.6 players will have the capability to play as both Order and Destruction on the same server. We did this in Camelot, because we wanted to give players more choices about where they wanted to play and who they wanted to play with. We’re aware of the possible downsides (such as cross-realming) and we’re aware that people have a lot of realm pride, which we believe is very important, so we’re going to be introducing a significant lockout timer to switch between realms. Warhammer has a lot to offer between Order and Destruction and we want to give you the opportunity to experience all of WAR with a single account while still maintaining ties to the community of your home server.

To be perfectly honest, when I first heard about this I spontaneously spit some Sunkist upon my screen. (Alliteration is fun!)  My initial reaction was that this was an awful move and went against everything WAR stands for.  After I’d taken a moment to calm down and think clearly however, I realized that this is most definitely for the best. Before I prove my point, let’s discuss some probable negatives.

• Cross-Realming: We know it’s going to happen, Mythic knows it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.  Will it suck?  Only as much as you want it to.  Some people will ragequit the game because people will inevitably trade kills for crests, possibly throw fights to aid the opposing side, un-own keeps to prevent domination flips, etc.  Originally this was my key “holy shit this is a terribad idea” reason too, but more on that in a moment.
• Realm Pride: It sort of becomes obtuse to have Realm-Pride after this change.  It’s like rooting for the Patriots one day and the Colts the next, something just isn’t right about it.

Now then, to counter myself with the pros!  While its true that Cross-Realming is bound to occur, there’s no way in hell Mythic would be stupid enough to implement this without having numerous safeguards in place to prevent foul play.  After all, the entire game is based around large-scale PvP where players co-depend on one another to succeed.  If that trust were broken chaos would ensue.  (Wait, does that mean Destruction wins?! OMG Its Their Master Plan!!)  As for Realm-Pride, after 1.3.6 while some people will distance themselves, others will become all the more zealous in their cause.  Undoubtedly “true-blood” or “pure” Destruction and Order players will emerge, flailing their ePeens around claiming that they will only fight for one cause.  In the case of WAR, this is a good thing.  These newfound patriots will lead the way to keep morale and the sense of rivalry strong on both sides.  Finally, we end with the most obvious pro, you can play all of your toons on the same server now!  No longer will you be fully separated from your friends and rivals, and Slurms can stop confusing everyone by switching sides and servers over and over!  I mean hell, if that doesn’t tilt this into the positive range I don’t know what will!