Cross-realm World of Warcraft raids in patch 4.3.2

By Robert Purchese Published 10 January, 2012

Tackle raids or Battlegrounds.

Gamers from different World of Warcraft realms (servers) will be able to raid together when patch 4.3.2 is implemented, Blizzard has revealed.

You and your Battle.net Real ID friends can take on "older" normal or heroic raids as well as use Raid Finder.

You can form Battleground raids, too.

You'll automatically be placed in the same instance once banded together.

Note, however, that the recently added Dragon Soul raid can not be tackled by cross-realm raiders.

Blizzard yesterday detailed a beefy list of hot fixes being made to World of Warcraft patch 4.3, Hour of Twilight.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 5 months ago

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  • DefendoCroc #1 5 months ago

    Who givesa a rats ass.

  • Daeltaja #2 5 months ago

    That sounds about as much fun as rubbing your chaffed balls of vinegar soaked sand paper.

  • shikz #3 5 months ago

    i want old raid zones in finder then i might come back :)

  • mvrander #4 5 months ago

    Having lost a year and a half of my spare time to WoW, this news doesn't interest me in the least.

    The most fun to be had in that game is in 5-man content. Raiding is just full of too many egos, too much blame and too much stress. When that filtered down to 5-mans a year or two since I moved on to games where people don't just insult everyone else when they themselves make a mistake.

    Each new expansion is just more of the same. It's a superbly made game, with a phenomenal post sales approach but each expansion from now will drive numbers down instead of up like they used to.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #5 5 months ago

    I remember being 40-man raid and guild leader in late 2005. It was both my best and worst gaming experience.

  • paulf #6 5 months ago

    This may make it easier to get into a raid but does nothing about the quality of the people you raid with. It's bad enough queuing for 20 mins to do a five man then have people leave. Not sure what can be done about though

  • George-Roper #7 5 months ago

    And so the deeply troubled community aspect of WoW continues to be on the decline. All this cross-realm PUG nonsense has utterly destroyed any sense of community in the game.

    I so wish that Vanguard had been properly supported by SOE. The lack of instances, generally speaking (towards the end, they did install shards for raids), really helped to maintain a 'world', much in the same way that EQ did. I miss that a hell of a lot in MMOs nowadays :(

  • Dizzy #8 5 months ago

    Why would they even invest time in a feature like that? Was there really demand for x-realm raiding????

  • Daeltaja #9 5 months ago

    @Bertie

    I know exactly how you felt. I only really remember the good, however.

    @Dizzy

    I guess it's Blizzards attempt at curbing the rapidly dropping player populations, but I can only see this having a negative effect. They've made a few poor choices over the past few years now, that can be directly linked to the fall in subs. Welfare epics being the biggest.
    Edited by Daeltaja at 10/01/12 @ 13:40

  • Stratix #10 5 months ago

    Soon to be announced, cross realm questing...?

  • Hellion83 #11 5 months ago

    Post deleted at 20:12:17 01-02-2012

  • darkmorgado #12 5 months ago

    @shikz

    "i want old raid zones in finder then i might come back :) "

    This. Heroic versions of old raids would give them a new lease of life.

  • Ryboy #13 5 months ago

    Subscription when I got into SWTOR beta and will not be returning. Cross-realm shit and Pandas?! Buh-Bye!

  • Rajin #14 5 months ago

    @darkmorgado

    Been saying this for ages, just up the level and loot in ALL The raid instances. It can't be that hard can it? Blizzard still seem lost on what to do with earlier content.

    Every expansion made most of the expirience worse instead of better(burning crusade, many boring quests aside, was the only good expansion so far)

    Catalysm was supposed to remedie this up to level 60. But everyone must do the exact same thing for level 58-78. Blizzard made leveling quicker in these zones leaving the content in the dust.


    Last time i played wow it was a singleplayer expirience with some instances, most older and mature public have left the game leaving the ''not finished instance within set time of 20 min) as the leftover crowd. Noone is communicating with eachother, fun guilds are difficult to find and blizzard don't offer new quests in their updates.

    Frankly like some others, i gave up on mmo's. Once you actually realise the hours lost which could be spent on your real life or 100 other games you will lose interest.
    Edited by Rajin at 10/01/12 @ 14:35

  • George-Roper #15 5 months ago

    @Hellion83

    rather plunge my toilet on a sunday afternoon and I hate doing that..

    Excellent comparison!

  • Shikasama #16 5 months ago

    Nothing quite kills gaming like having to rely on 24 or 9 other people.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #17 5 months ago

    the age old problem with WoW still happens no matter how many 'features' (normally at a premium) they throw in just adding cap level raid content every 4-5 months isn't going to help keep the playerbase they NEED something more then that.

    Proper World PVP/zone control 'could' help that, but the engine is probably too old to support it (as they took old city and town raiding early on) also if the crafting system was actually part of the endgame and not just a throw away cash sink (like the Onixia Cloaks for BWL)that could help too.

    WoW is just 'get to cap grind instances/pvp for 'better items', repeat.' theres no other reason to login beyond that.

  • Daeltaja #18 5 months ago

    I loved my time with the game, even if it took 4 years of my life. It genuinely provided me with my most memorable gaming moments ever and I get butterflies when I reminisce about killing Rag, Neffy or Cthun. However, that chapter in my life is firmly closed and even though I'm playing SWTOR now and will be trying Guild Wars 2 no doubt, I can play them more casually and less as an addict, as that sense of wonderment and loot cravings are all but gone now.

    I don't wish WoW a death or anything but it seems as if it's simply coming to the end of its life. No doubt it will still be around in 6 or 7 years, particularly when Blizz make it F2P if Activision have any say in the matter. I'd rather see them pull the plug on it much earlier (they'll have Titan out anyway) and give it a beautiful send-off, then keep it on life-support with crap updates and more stupid decisions like the above.

  • DefendoCroc #19 5 months ago

    @George-Roper Indeed , pre *any* expansion 'Fear' raids in EQ were the most harrowing yet enjoyable experiences i had in mmo land, and we played EQ from such an early age 98% of the guild were from USA so we had to wait till 12am before people came.

    And you literally were putting your virtual life in their hands, you die in fear and had 24hours to do CR or you loose everything, and you might do a 12 hour session and not get a single piece of stuff.
    Carebear wow players havent got a clue how 'gay' the game they play is (maybe they have actualy) ...

  • darkmorgado #20 5 months ago

    @Rajin

    I gave up wow early last year after it became clear just anoemic Cata was. I then dipped my toes in the beta for SWTOR and was so impressed I immediately preordered the CE. And I dont regret it. It's familiar enough that you can easily slip into it, but different enough that it feels like a new game. And the story elements are great, with multiple choices, certain missions only triggering depending on your choices, etc. If you're getting annoyed with wow, I'd recommend giving tor a try, but unfortunately atm there's no trial period.

  • Rajin #21 5 months ago

    @darkmorgado

    I will probaly when it's cheaper in the summer, then i will play a lot in 3-8 weeks time(with vacation etc in between)

    Subscribing however is something i'm rather reluctant towards.