Blizzard has outlined its strategy to prevent the issues of "dead" or "unsustainable" server rulesets that plagued World of Warcraft Classic. In a recent episode of the WoW: Forever podcast, senior game designer Josh Greenfield detailed the tools the development team can employ to maintain healthy player populations on the game's various rulesets.
Historically, World of Warcraft Classic saw servers decline in population over time. This resulted in players struggling to find groups for essential activities like raids and dungeons, and negatively impacted the in-game economy and auction house. In some extreme cases, Blizzard facilitated free character transfers to help players move to more populated servers.
World of Warcraft: Forever will utilize a different approach with mega-servers tailored to specific rulesets. Despite this, concerns may still arise for players selecting a ruleset they fear might become unsustainable long-term. Greenfield addressed these concerns, citing the example of the separate RP and RP-PvP rulesets. Initially, there were worries that splitting the role-playing community could lead to one or both rulesets failing to maintain a viable player base. However, Blizzard now believes these communities will be self-sustaining but has backup plans.
"If someday down the line, if something happens and one or both of those populations can't quite sustain themselves, we have options if we do need to say link up their auction houses or allow them to group for instanced content," Greenfield explained. He emphasized that these measures would only be taken if absolutely necessary, as the team is committed to the current path of separate rulesets.
During Forever's development, Blizzard considered allowing players from different rulesets to group together for instanced content or to merge auction houses. Ultimately, the decision was made to maintain distinct communities, partly due to economic differences between PvE and PvP rulesets, such as the ease of gold and item farming on PvE servers. This led to discussions about cross-ruleset trading and other potential restrictions.
"Ultimately, these are different mindsets, these are different rulesets," Greenfield stated. "Let's keep them separate for now. That is a part of original WoW that we don't want to just throw out completely. But I think the tech is set up in such a way that if we ever did really feel like we needed to make a change, we could do so." He characterized these options as "levers we can pull if we need to," underscoring Blizzard's commitment to flexibility. These assurances are expected to provide relief to players apprehensive about choosing the wrong ruleset.
In preparation for Forever's launch on November 4, Blizzard has also been refining the game's layering system and announced changes to racial abilities. Notably, World of Warcraft: Forever will feature full controller support, a move executive producer and vice president Holly Longdale described as a step towards making WoW playable "wherever you want" and "on whatever you want."