Blizzard wrapped up today's live Q&A with the Midnight and Forever teams, and opened the beta as soon as it ended. It was the first time the developers took community questions after BlizzCon, and they landed several new decisions: a ban, a raid structure and a PvP system that looks nothing like retail's.
Here is everything they said about Forever, grouped by topic. The transcript of the stream is Wowhead's liveblog; the video is on the official Warcraft channels.
GDKP banned, and a crackdown on gold
The most clear-cut decision of the day: GDKP will not be allowed in WoW Forever. That's the raid format where loot is auctioned for gold and the pot is split at the end.
Blizzard's reasons:
- It tends to reach such ubiquity that it displaces the guild structure, and they want to protect the social core of the game.
- When that happens, the barrier to entry for new players gets much higher: anyone without gold is priced out of content.
- It's a convenient way to launder gold for people buying and selling it.
Two promises follow: they'll be actively watching the economy and they'll be very punishing towards gold buyers. Wowhead adds that Blizzard feels it has been too lenient in the past and reads permanent bans into that; that's the site's interpretation, not a Blizzard statement.
Raids: one 10-player and one 20-player in every tier
This is new and concrete. Forever won't start with flex raiding, but Blizzard wants to accommodate guilds of different sizes, so:
- Every single tier will have a 10-player raid and a 20-player raid. Not just the first one: all of them.
- The 10-player raids will have a lot of bosses, not a trimmed-down version.
- They want it to be easy to graduate from a dungeon group to a 10-player raid guild.
- Neither dungeons nor raids will have multiple difficulties. One piece of content, one difficulty.
This confirms and extends what interviews had already said: fixed size, fixed difficulty, no scaling. What wasn't known is that the 10-and-20 pairing repeats in every tier. The first two, Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit, already fit that mould.
PvP: there will be no rated ladder
Blizzard said PvP is something they want to invest in, and then ruled out what many expected:
- There will be no rated PvP. No scored arenas the way retail does it.
- Instead there'll be a new PvP progression track that resets every season, meaning every tier.
- They're adjusting Honor so that parking in Alterac Valley stops being the best thing to do.
- There'll be a new battleground with its own reputation: the Darkspear Islands, already known from yesterday's Kotaku interview, which also covered a 14-rank honor track.
Realmless: shared battlegrounds and no switching rulesets
Two details about the realmless system that weren't out there before:
- You pick a ruleset instead of a realm: PvE, PvP, Roleplay or Hardcore. On stream they called it PvE; Blizzard's official summary called it "Normal".
- You play with people in your ruleset, except in battlegrounds, which are shared across all of them.
- You can't hop from one ruleset to another without a character transfer.
And an infrastructure note: Forever is realmless, but not regionless. Oceania players will be hosted on Oceania data centres and will share the US-wide auction house. If you play with friends in another region your ping may go up, because the game picks the data centre that works best for the whole group.
On world events, they said they're putting effort into making global events feel global, but they dodged the question about the Ahn'Qiraj gates. Still no answer there.
Names: the last name is mandatory and can't repeat across rulesets
Two sentences settle a question we'd been carrying:
- You do have to put something in the second name field. The last name isn't optional.
- Names are region-wide, and the same full name can't be reused across rulesets either.
That resolves a contradiction we had flagged in No realms: rulesets and last names. Blizzard Watch had written that each full name was unique within each ruleset, which would have allowed an "Anna Forever" in PvE and another in PvP. It's the opposite, and stricter: one per region, full stop. With name reservation on October 27, it's worth knowing.
Skyborne: why they aren't high elves
The lore question of the day. Blizzard explained where the Skyborne come from and why they didn't use the chance to add high elves:
- The Skyborne ended up in the Skywall, the elemental plane, and suffused themselves with elemental magic because they have no Sunwell.
- Why not Thalassian high elves? The answer was "why not both?": they'll be back in Quel'Thalas in the future.
- They did want to do elves in Forever, but their ambition for Quel'Thalas was too big for a low-level zone, and this wasn't the moment.
- They even considered having high elves start in Northshire Abbey, and it didn't feel right.
- The Skyborne let them explore combinations elves have never had, such as Druid.
Both Skyborne factions and their classes are on their page.
HD and SD models
- The HD models option exists so people who aren't die-hard Classic fans will play; the SD ones are there for players coming from Classic.
- They've updated the race animations (spell casting, running) while keeping them grounded in a Classic feel, so the HD/SD toggle works properly.
- The skeletons for the HD and SD models are the same.
Addons: the modern client API
- Forever will use the modern client API.
- Boss encounters are a lot simpler in Forever.
- Unifying the API with the modern game should make life easier for addon authors.
It fits with what came out yesterday: the addon restrictions introduced in Midnight will also be active in Forever.
What isn't happening
Two answers in the negative, given in the Midnight portion but relevant to Forever:
- There will not be another new race in the Worldsoul Saga.
- The first-and-last-name system won't come to the modern game during the Worldsoul Saga. It stays in Forever.
And there'll be a weekly podcast
Blizzard announced a weekly podcast for the next six weeks. With launch on November 4, that lines up almost exactly with the weeks left.
Quick questions
Will there be GDKP in WoW Forever?
No. Blizzard confirmed in the Q&A that it will not be allowed, and announced active economy monitoring and a crackdown on gold buyers.
Will WoW Forever have rated PvP?
No. Instead there'll be a PvP progression track that resets every season, plus a new battleground with its own reputation.
How many players are the raids?
10 and 20, and both in every tier. There's no flex mode and no multiple difficulties, in raids or dungeons.
Can you switch rulesets?
Not directly: it takes a character transfer. Battlegrounds, though, are shared across all rulesets.
Is the last name mandatory in WoW Forever?
Yes. You have to fill in the second name field, and the full name is unique per region, with no repeats across rulesets.
The beta is now open: how to get in and what you can play is in the beta guide, and if you bought the physical Collector's Edition, here's where your code arrives.
