World of Warcraft: Forever Launches Smoothly Except for Horde PvP Issues

After high demand caused a rough start for the World of Warcraft: Forever beta, many players expected long queues, disconnects, and worse when the game launched in full on Wednesday. Those problems did not materialize, making it one of Blizzard’s smoothest game launches yet.

But as players reported in multiple Reddit threads, one group had a harder time. Many Horde players who chose the player-versus-player (PvP) ruleset struggled to create characters at all. Some players also found the game strangely deserted when it should have been at its busiest. Both issues are partly attributable to Forever’s server structure, which differs from those in previous versions of WoW.

Forever does away with the discrete servers WoW has used for the past 22 years. Instead, players choose a region and a ruleset: Normal, PvP, or Roleplay. They can then play with anyone who made the same choices. The game dynamically manages the world’s population using “layers” that always include friends and usually include other players someone has seen or grouped with before.

As players flooded in on Wednesday, many more chose Horde than Alliance under the PvP ruleset. Blizzard limited their numbers to prevent a massive faction imbalance and unfair gameplay. Unlike in previous versions of WoW, Horde players could not switch to a less crowded server or one with a more even faction distribution. They had to wait for more Alliance players to join the PvP ruleset and balance the numbers.

For players who logged in to a quiet world, Blizzard may have applied too many layers at launch to keep the game from becoming too crowded to play. “We are aware some zones feel more empty than they should,” WoW: Forever designer Josh Greenfield posted on X. “Tomorrow we’ll be tweaking some numbers to make things feel more lively. Sit tight!”

Greenfield also acknowledged that boat and zeppelin transports between WoW: Forever’s two continents had broken and had been temporarily replaced with portals.

Otherwise, Forever had an extremely smooth first day. The stress tests appear to have paid off.

Source: Polygon