World of Warcraft: Forever will be realmless

While discussing server systems infrastructure during the World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive panel, Blizzard casually dropped a bombshell: there won’t be any realms. Instead, players will be able to choose one of four gameplay styles: Normal, PVP, Roleplay, or Hardcore (coming at a later time).

The gameplay styles will work like a mega-realm. Factions will still be completely separate, and you can only group up with other players on the same faction and same gameplay style. Hardcore will be on its own in a closed-off system. Similar to current WoW Classic, if your Hardcore character dies, you will have the option to transfer it to one of the other gameplay styles. What’s new is that this includes PVP for the first time.

Collections and Legacy Points are account-wide and will be shared across the three regular gameplay styles — Normal, PVP, and Roleplay. In Hardcore, any Collections and Legacy Points you earn will also be shared to the other three gameplay styles, but not the other way around. If you want it in Hardcore, you have to earn it, but your characters on the other gameplay styles can benefit from your Hardcore progress.

Realms in Classic have been a bit of a prickly topic, but this is one of those quality of life changes that will improve the experience of the community across the whole. One of the core and/or nostalgic draws of Classic was community and server identity. However, the world was different back when WoW started and digital connection was not so prevalent in our lives. Blizzard recognizes that we’re living in a world that is intimately connected — everyone is a text or Discord ping away — and also that players will naturally gravitate toward a thriving server where it’s simply easier to group up or get something crafted.

The reason we had realms in the first place was simply because the servers could only handle so many players, but in the 20+ years they’ve managed to improve the technology to handle all those players in one location. Different servers also gave players the option to have their desired name without competing against everyone in the world (of Warcraft). How is WoW: Forever going to handle that? One word: surnames. That’s right, you get two names in WoW: Forever. What I want to know is why this isn’t added to every version of WoW.

What do you think about having no realms, and how will it affect you? What’s the first gameplay style you’ll choose? Let us know!