All About Tech ft. @Shobek | Episode 6 - The WoW: Forever Podcast

Technology and Performance

• The team moved toward a shared, modern codebase so WoW: Forever can benefit from ongoing engineering improvements and security updates. It also gives designers better tools for making data-driven changes, such as adjusting talents, without relying on hard-coded fixes.
• Beta testing helped the team identify performance issues and refine the new world-partitioning system. Developers say the experience improved substantially by the end of beta, though they caution that zone transitions and world refreshes may not always feel perfectly seamless.
• The system divides the world into smaller areas that can be tuned independently. This helps manage crowded zones, keep areas populated, and support large gatherings without requiring one uninterrupted world to handle everyone at once.

Large Groups and World Events

• Developers are exploring ways to make it easier to organize groups larger than 40 players, possibly through “armies” or alliances. No feature or group size has been announced.
• The team discussed detecting major PvP battles and adjusting server resources to keep them running smoothly. The launch version is expected to reflect the state of the system at the end of beta.
• The technology is intended to make future events easier to build. The team mentioned possibilities such as large-scale PvP, fishing tournaments, holiday activities, arena events, and world-boss gatherings, without promising specific additions.

Realms, Communities, and Playing Together

• WoW: Forever aims to reduce the need to choose among many individual realms. Players choose a ruleset, while the system works to place friends and guildmates together and encourage repeated encounters with the same players.
• During beta, the system moved players too aggressively. At launch, joining a group should prompt players to move rather than automatically relocating them, giving players time to choose. Guilds and friends will also help determine the community players encounter.
• Communities are designed to change gradually as player activity shifts, rather than locking players into the same pool indefinitely. Language settings can influence who players encounter.
• PvE and PvP rulesets will remain separate at launch, partly to protect their distinct play styles and economies. Developers said the technology could allow changes later if needed, but emphasized their commitment to the current approach.
• Faction balance is managed within each ruleset. If one faction becomes too dominant, character creation for that faction may be restricted.
• Australian players have local hardware to help reduce latency, but grouping across regions can raise questions about day-night cycles and event timing. The developers invited community feedback on how regional time differences should be handled.

Community-Building Ideas

• Proximity voice chat has been considered, but there are no firm plans. Safety and comfort would need to be addressed.
• The team wants to support activities beyond leveling, combat, and raiding while leaving room for players to create their own events. They described WoW: Forever as a long-term project with room to respond to community ideas.

Featured People and Source

Featured people: Josh Corbett (host), Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield, Ana Resendez, Frank Williams, and guest Shobek.

Source: The WoW: Forever Podcast, published by the World of Warcraft channel. Savix is mentioned as an example of a player who might take part in large organized battles.