Official WoW Forever podcast, episode 6: our summary

Name reservation had hiccups on its first day. The team uses it as a rehearsal for launch day, to check what it expected and fix what it didn't.

Hardcore comes 'shortly' after launch. No date.

The realmless work started with an earlier Hardcore mode, where the number of realms went from about 200 to about 2.

The 2019 re-release started as a snapshot of the game, and every later change from the modern game had to be pulled over by hand, security and compliance updates included.

For WoW Forever, the team started from the modern code and lets data decide which rules run, so improvements made for all of WoW come for free.

Designers can now move talents and change their order with real tools, something they could not do on the old code.

Server performance owes a lot to work done for other WoW teams. That does not mean housing is coming to WoW Forever.

Each zone or small group of zones is its own partition. The team tunes which zones are joined together, and it will change after launch as crowds move from starting zones to cities.

Players appearing or vanishing at zone borders, such as at the Orgrimmar exit, was mostly gone in the last days of the beta and the server stress test. More bug fixes come for launch.

During the beta the team profiled the slowest calls between server and client, and cut or bundled the messages the client does not need: this is what helped large battles.

The world will not always be seamless: you may still hit a zone border or a world refresh. The team stays vague on purpose so the system is not exploited.

The number of players allowed in a zone can be tuned, so busy zones like Westfall or Durotar stay lively without being overfull.

Early in the beta, about 17 systems moved players around too often. The team tuned them down after the first week.

At launch, joining a group shows a pop-up instead of moving you at once, and you get a time window to move when it suits you. This matters for Hardcore, where a sudden move could land you next to an elite.

The system tries to place you with the same people again and again while you level, so they become friends, groupmates or rivals.

Once you join a guild, you should end up in worlds with your guild's community when you are not grouped. Guilds you keep crossing form your community, like big guild names on a 2004 realm.

Your client's language decides which players you mostly see. A setting lets you change it later.

Your community follows how you have played over the last few months, so it slowly changes over time. Players who join in two or three years should still find people questing with them.

Ignoring someone does not remove them from your community; the team does not want players to empty their world. It may change later.

The point of going realmless: you can no longer pick the wrong server. You only pick a ruleset, and a friend in another city of your region can play with you.

A single world cannot hold hundreds of thousands of players, so some partitioning is unavoidable, as layers were in 2019.

PvE and PvP players grouping for dungeons was debated inside the team. Rulesets stay separate at launch, mainly to keep each economy apart.

If the RP or RP-PvP population ever gets too small, the team could link auction houses or allow grouping. It is a lever, not a plan.

Faction balance is handled inside each ruleset, aiming at 50/50: if one faction tips too far, it gets locked. So a faction can be open on one ruleset and locked on another: making Horde on PvP does not mean Horde is open on RP-PvP.

Australia has its own server hardware for a better ping, and you can still group with players in the Americas: the group is placed in one of its members' worlds.

An Australian time zone is possible, but day could turn into night in seconds when you join a group. The team asks Oceanic players for feedback, holidays included.

Armies of 80 to 120 players, or alliances of raid groups, are only being discussed. Nothing is announced.

The team also looks at servers that grow around a large PvP battle to keep it in one piece.

World events were rebuilt so they start reliably, unlike the Ashenvale PvP event in Season of Discovery. Few new events at launch.

Ideas on the board: large PvP events, a fishing tournament, an arena event that only runs at certain times like the Darkmoon Faire, and world bosses that bring players together.

A Blood Moon style event, as in Season of Discovery, came up: the team admitted the old one was buggy and said a new one would run better.

Proximity voice chat has been discussed, with safety as the main concern. No plans.

The team keeps time for smaller content such as class quests, not only raids and PvP.

No podcast during launch week; the next episode comes two weeks later and is about lore.