Players in the Oceania (OCE) region of World of Warcraft: Forever are currently encountering a persistent night cycle, a bug that developers are actively considering how to address. This issue stems from the "realmless" nature of Forever and its connection to North American server architecture, which forces OCE players into a perpetual in-game night.
The 24-hour day/night cycle in World of Warcraft: Forever is designed to sync with a player's local time. However, due to the smaller player base in OCE, these servers often share infrastructure with North American servers. This means that when it is evening in North America, it is also night in Azeroth for OCE players. The problem arises when OCE players log in during their local evening hours, finding the game perpetually locked in darkness because their server time aligns with North American nighttime.
As noted on the World of Warcraft forums, logging in at 7 PM local time can result in pitch-black conditions, and even Saturday afternoons can be dark. This effectively prevents players from experiencing the game's daytime environments unless they drastically alter their sleep schedules to play during early morning hours. This is particularly frustrating given the visual improvements in WoW: Forever, which include impressive lighting effects and dynamic weather.
Lead software engineer Ana Resendez acknowledged the issue in an official podcast, suggesting a potential solution that involves using Australia's local server architecture. This would allow for an Australian timezone setting. However, Resendez also raised a concern about immersion-breaking transitions, asking how players would feel if their day/night cycle abruptly changed when joining a group with North American players.
Senior game designer Josh Greenfield specifically solicited feedback from Australian players regarding their willingness to accept such abrupt transitions in exchange for experiencing daytime. Early responses on the r/wowforever subreddit indicate a willingness among OCE players to adopt this solution. Many players are accustomed to using in-game items or abilities to alter the sky and time of day in the retail version of World of Warcraft. They argue that in the slower-paced gameplay of WoW: Forever, where players spend more time in groups and less time joining and leaving instances, these sudden shifts would be infrequent and less disruptive than perpetual night.
Some players have also proposed alternative solutions, such as adjusting the base day/night cycle duration from 24 hours to 20 hours. This would gradually shift the time of sunset and sunrise over time, allowing players on more rigid schedules to eventually experience all the lighting states of the game world.