WowAce

Neutral NPCs that have no faction group receive the players' faction icon if they are PVP flagged.  The FFA icon is not entirely correct since they are friendly to the player and can't be attacked.  Not showing the icon hides the information that they are acting as guards to discourage or prevent PVP.  We need a unique icon to display this information.

Umm this is intentional. It's how we've always done it.

Hmm... That's new for me. And quite surprising. Why on earth would Thrall have Alliance symbol on his portrait.

Okay I misunderstood. I thought you were just talking about NPCs that did not have a faction and were PVP flagged. However, after looking into this I can't reproduce what you're saying. Opposing faction NPCs have the proper icons for me. I'm curious this returns when you're targeting one of them: /dump UnitFactionGroup("target")

If it's two nil's then the NPC is actually not flagged as Horde or Alliance and it's behaving as expected.

Actually, I made a mistake. Flagged and aligned NPCs do have proper flag. Only flagged and non-aligned have player's faction flag. Still, I think it would be more logical if flagged and non-aligned ones have FFA flag. Like:

return [[Interface\TargetingFrame\UI-PVP-]] .. (UnitFactionGroup(unit) or "FFA")

instead of

return [[Interface\TargetingFrame\UI-PVP-]] .. (UnitFactionGroup(unit) or UnitFactionGroup("player"))

in line 38.

Talking to ck there's really no clear correct thing to do here. These are typically vendors and other NPCs that also function as guards.

Player's faction icon isn't entirely correct because they may attack you if you begin PVP'ing.

FFA isn't entirely correct because you can not attack them.

No icon loses the display of the information that these are guards in neutral areas to stop PVP'ing.

Guess we need our own "guard" icon.

Edited the ticket to be appropriate to what we really need. It's not a defect it's something we could improve thus enhancement.