The PvP ruleset locks you to one faction — decide before you roll

Finish these first

• Choosing a ruleset in WoW: Forever — Normal, PvP or Roleplaying

Steps

1. 1

   One faction. For the whole ruleset. Forever.

   This is Blizzard's own wording, and it is worth reading slowly:

   "On the PvP ruleset, players can only create characters for one faction. Once you create an Alliance character on the PvP ruleset, you won't be able to create a Horde character there, and vice versa."

   Not one character. Not one slot. The ruleset. The first character you create on PvP decides which half of the game you can play there, and there is no published way back.

   Everything else on this site is a decision you can work around. This one you cannot. A friend who rolls the other faction on PvP is not someone you can meet halfway — you would both need to start again on Normal, or one of you starts again on PvP.

   So settle this before anyone rolls anything: which faction, with which people, on which ruleset. That conversation takes ten minutes now and is impossible later.

   ~5 min

   • On the PvP ruleset, players can only create characters for one faction. Once you create an Alliance character on the PvP ruleset, you won't be able to create a Horde character there, and vice versa.

     Blizzard News: Choose Your Ruleset in World of Warcraft: Forever
2. 2

   The other three rulesets do not do this

   "On Normal, Roleplaying, and Hardcore rulesets, you can create characters from both factions."

   That is the whole difference, and it cuts both ways:

   • If you want to play both sides, or keep your options open, PvP is the one ruleset that forecloses it.
   • If you want the faction war to mean something, that foreclosure is the feature — nobody on your server is quietly playing the other side.

   Blizzard describes the ruleset as being for "players who want every trip into contested territory to carry more danger, excitement, and open-world conflict." The faction lock is what makes that true rather than decorative.

   Note it is per ruleset, not per account. Locking Alliance on PvP does not stop you rolling Horde on Normal. The lock lives on the PvP mega-server, not on you.

   ~3 min

   • On Normal, Roleplaying, and Hardcore rulesets, you can create characters from both factions.

     Blizzard News: Choose Your Ruleset — the other three rulesets

   • For players who want every trip into contested territory to carry more danger, excitement, and open-world conflict.

     Blizzard News: Choose Your Ruleset — what PvP is for
3. 3

   Why the lock exists, and what it tells you about population

   There are no realms in Forever — one mega-server per ruleset, per region. That removes the old escape hatch: when a server's factions went lopsided, people transferred. Here there is nowhere to transfer to.

   Blizzard has said what it plans to do instead:

   "For the PvP ruleset, faction balance remains an important consideration, and World of Warcraft: Forever will include systems intended to support Horde and Alliance balance similar to the approach introduced in Season of Discovery."

   "Systems intended to support balance" is not a number, and it is not a promise. What those systems are, and what they do if one faction runs away with the population, is not published. Nothing we found says what happens on the day the ratio goes badly wrong.

   Practical read: the minority faction on a PvP mega-server has a very different game from the majority one, and you are choosing your side before anyone knows which is which. If that matters to you, that is an argument for rolling with a group rather than alone — which is the point of the next step.

   ~4 min

   • For the PvP ruleset, faction balance remains an important consideration, and World of Warcraft: Forever will include systems intended to support Horde and Alliance balance similar to the approach introduced in Season of Discovery.

     Blizzard News: Forever Deep Dive Panel Recap
4. 4

   Darkspear Islands — the new 15v15, and what it is made of

   The new battleground is described by Blizzard like this:

   "For PvP, the Darkspear Islands will introduce a 15 vs 15 Battleground off the coast of Kalimdor, combining strategic control points with Arathi Basin-style flag captures and defense."

   Three things follow from that sentence, and they are the useful part:

   • 15 a side is not a number vanilla had. It is bigger than a 10-man and smaller than a 40-man, which means a premade is fifteen people who all turn up — a guild-sized commitment, not a group-sized one.
   • Control points plus flag captures means it rewards a team that has decided who goes where before the gates open. Pick-up groups lose these on coordination long before they lose them on gear.
   • Off the coast of Kalimdor is a location, not a mechanic, but it is the one detail that tells you this is new content rather than a returning map.

   What is not published: honor, ranks, rewards, queue rules, or whether it is available at launch or later. We have found nothing on any of these and are not going to guess at them.

   ~10 minNeeds a group

   • For PvP, the Darkspear Islands will introduce a 15 vs 15 Battleground off the coast of Kalimdor, combining strategic control points with Arathi Basin-style flag captures and defense.

     Blizzard News: Forever What's Next Panel Recap
5. 5

   Find the people before you make the choice you cannot unmake

   Every other checklist here tells you to find a group for a thing you are doing. This one is different: the group has to exist before the decision, because the decision is permanent and it has to match theirs.

   Fifteen people is also the shape of the new battleground, which is not a coincidence you should waste. A guild that lands on PvP with one faction agreed is a guild that can field a Darkspear Islands premade. Fifteen individuals who each chose separately are, quite often, fifteen people split across two factions and three rulesets.

   Post it, or find one: the board is scoped by region and ruleset and faction precisely because those three together are what determines whether two people can actually play together. For this decision, that scoping is not a filter — it is the whole question.

   ~10 minNeeds a group

   • On the PvP ruleset, players can only create characters for one faction. Once you create an Alliance character on the PvP ruleset, you won't be able to create a Horde character there, and vice versa.

     Blizzard News: Choose Your Ruleset in World of Warcraft: Forever