Blizzard has updated its overview of rulesets in World of Warcraft: Forever. The main news is a Roleplay-PvP ruleset, which will now be available when WoW: Forever launches on November 4. Blizzard also plans to offer it during Early Name Reservation, which starts on Tuesday, October 27, so RP-PvP players should be able to claim names alongside everyone else.
For players who missed the original post, here is how the new system works.
Rulesets instead of realms
World of Warcraft: Forever drops the classic realm selection screen. Players choose a ruleset, and each one works as a large shared population rather than a single server. Blizzard says the goal is to remove the stress of picking the right launch realm while keeping Azeroth feeling busy and lived in.
The rulesets are:
- Normal: the standard experience, with PvP only when you opt in.
- PvP: open-world conflict in contested territory.
- Roleplaying: a home for players who want to lean into the fantasy and find like-minded adventurers.
- Roleplay-PvP: the newly confirmed option arriving at launch.
- Hardcore: death carries lasting consequences. This one comes sometime after launch.
Players can also set a preferred online language to meet others who share it. It is found under Options, then Languages and Social in the System section. The setting is account-wide and has a 24-hour cooldown between changes.
Grouping, factions and moving between rulesets
Each ruleset is its own space. Groups, dungeons and raids only include players from the same ruleset, and cross-ruleset grouping is not supported. Battlegrounds are the exception: they can mix players from different rulesets, though Hardcore stays separate. Horde and Alliance still cannot group together on any ruleset.
Switching rulesets is deliberately limited. If you want to play somewhere else, you need to make a new character there. Hardcore will be a closed environment, but a Hardcore character who dies can transfer to another ruleset, including PvP.
Collections and Legacy Points are shared across rulesets on your account, with Hardcore handled differently. What you earn in Hardcore can carry over elsewhere, but progress from other rulesets will not flow into Hardcore.
On the PvP ruleset, faction balance gets extra attention. Blizzard plans systems similar to those used in Season of Discovery, where new character creation could be temporarily limited for one faction when needed. You can also only have characters of one faction on the PvP ruleset; once you make an Alliance character there, you cannot create a Horde one, and the reverse is also true. Normal, Roleplaying and Hardcore allow characters from both factions. The update does not say whether the new Roleplay-PvP ruleset follows the same one-faction rule.
The full details are on the official World of Warcraft site.
Source: World of Warcraft official news.
