4. Server Systems
Infrastructure
So now moving up to the next topic, something I’m really, really excited about as an engineer especially: Server Infrastructure. So I want to start with a story the first time that I played in World of Warcraft, I was really excited to start playing, I got this Battle Chest and I don’t know if anyone also got that Battle Chest, but I was so excited. I come into my house after a mountain of CDs and just waiting for all of the updates to finish.
I was finally in and ready to play, and the first thing I saw logging in was this… Hmm. Realm? What realm? I spent a good amount of time trying to decide which realm to pick. I didn’t want to make the wrong choice. Back then, I was like, what’s Arthas? Who’s Dalaran? I know better now. But luckily, I knew I wanted to play with my friends. And me being from Mexico, it narrowed our options down pretty quickly to Drakkari and Ragnaros. So I called my friends and asked them, Okay, where are we going? And we decided to roll characters in Drakkari. I do want to do a quick shout out to all of my original Drakkari players.
No one in the crowd? I hear you! Yes! So, anyways, I jumped into the game. I probably spent like 30 minutes perfecting my character’s appearance, and it took me less than five minutes to die. But you know what? That’s a story for a different time. A few days later, though, I was talking to another group of friends, IRL, and I told them, Hey, I started playing WoW. Let’s play together. And they told me they played in Ragnaros. So that was it. I created an Alt in there, but it wasn’t the same. So as we approached the development of World of Warcraft: Forever, we didn’t just look at our own experiences. We looked at the experiences of countless of other players like you.
One of the trends we noticed in Classic was that players naturally gravitated towards the same realms, creating these massive realms and potentially long queues. We get it. In big realms, you always have people to group up with, a healthy economy, someone who has the recipe for that item you really want at any time of the day. The challenge is that back in 2004, the game simply couldn’t handle enormous numbers of players all locked in into the same realm at the same time.
Since then, thanks to the incredible work of our engineering teams, we made huge improvements to the technology. And today, we can support far more players on a single realm than ever before. With that in mind, and living in a world that is more connected than ever, we decided to invest even further into helping players connect and play with each other.
So in World of Warcraft: Forever, you won’t select a realm anymore because we’re going realmless. Yay, technology! We are doing it.
(crowd cheers)
Gameplay Style
So, okay, okay. Let’s not get too crazy. We’re not putting everyone in one giant realm. To start, instead of choosing a realm, just choose from one of the following rule sets. You know, it’s very similar to the current Classic offerings. You might want to choose normal or PvE, as referred to in Classic or some players call it like that.
In here, you can focus on exploration and only fight others when you choose to. So let’s do a live survey. Any takers for normal? Yea? Let’s go. Do it. If you’re the kind of player who wants every trip into contested territory to come with a little bit of danger and a lot of excitement, then player versus player or PvP is for you. Do we have any PvPers?
(crowd cheers)
There you go. Or perhaps you really want to dive into the fantasy of the game and look for other like-minded players, in which case role-playing might be for you. Any RP enjoyers in the crowd?
(crowd cheers)
Yes.And finally, once Hardcore is available post-launch, if you’re looking for the ultimate challenge where every decision matters and that has real consequences, Hardcore is your choice. So let me hear it. Who’s excited for Hardcore?
(loud cheering)
You’re so brave. You’re so brave to go into Hardcore. Okay, so once you’ve made your selection, there’s one more thing I want to make sure you understand. While World of Warcraft: Forever makes it easier than ever to play with your friends, there’s still some restrictions. Think about each rule set like a mega Realm. Here’s how it works. Factions are still separate. If you are Horde, my personal favorite. For the Horde! You won’t be able to group up with the Alliance players.
Alliance, too. Okay, let’s hear about the Alliance. Okay. So you will only be able to group up the dungeons and raids with the people of your same rule set. And if you choose Hardcore, you will be completely in a closed ecosystem. However, if your character dies, you’ll be able to transfer to another game rule set. And now, for the first time, you’ll be able to transfer to PvP.
Moving on, Collections and the system I just talked about, Legacy System, are still account-wide and will be across rulesets, except Hardcore. The things that you earn in Hardcore will be available in other game rulesets, but not the other way around.
Server Updates
So I also want to add another note. As part of the server updates, your characters will now have two names. So you can think about it like maybe a first name and a last name (I hear in the USA we refer to it to) and now that names are going to be unique, per region, we wanted you to be able to create original names like Anna Forever. So now you have the choice of getting two names instead of just one. So going back to my personal story, I have very fond memories of my time on Drakkari.
Those are some original screenshots, by the way, back in 2009. And we recognize that there are certain benefits and experiences that come from being part of our realm. World of Warcraft: Forever is a reflection of seven years of learning for our WoW team. As I mentioned before, players gravitate towards bigger realms. At the same time, they really care about community and sense of belonging. So we ask ourselves, porque no los dos? Why not both? And the result is something we’re incredibly excited about.
We have updated the infrastructure to give you the benefits of large realms with the goal of capturing the essence of the realm. So when you notice this is when you’re out in the world leveling, questing, or exploring, you may cross paths with the same players again and again. Maybe you help each other complete a quest, race for the same mining node, or simply go at each other as you pass by and maybe throw a buff or something like that.
And the next day, you might see the same player again and recognize their name. Over time, strangers become familiar faces, and familiar faces become part of your community. Or maybe think about it like wanting to group up for an elite. As you’re coordinating with your guild, we want you to encounter your guildmates out in the world even before you have grouped up. So, one crucial thing for me was joining a server that spoke Spanish, like I do, and for World of Warcraft: Forever, you will get that choice for your language preference, too.
And you will encounter other players who share that same preference. I also want to address faction balance. It is very important for our PvP ruleset. So we will have mechanisms in place to shoot for a Horde and Alliance faction balance, just as we introduced for Season of Discovery.
So with all these changes, we don’t want you to have to make the choice between potentially longer queues at launch or what would not be your Forever realm. So our goal is to give you the best of both worlds. The benefits of a large realm while preserving the sense of community.
We’re really excited for new communities to be born and also for you to bring your own. So can’t wait to see you in Azeroth. And now, to talk about the core of the game: Combat, Items, Classes, and Talents. I’ll hand things over to the 21-year veteran of World of Warcraft, Kris. Yeah, thank you.
| BLIZZCON 2026 WORLD OF WARCRAFT: FOREVER DEEP DIVE PANEL TRANSCRIPT | ||||
| 1. Intro | 2. New Systems | 3. Legacy System | 4. Server Systems | 5. Itemization |
