Blizzard's Rulesets video: why PvP locks your faction and where fallen Hardcore characters can go

On Thursday 5 November 2026 at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET), the day after launch, Blizzard published a six-minute video on rulesets. Much of it matches our guide to the rulesets, but it goes through the reasons behind the rules and adds a few details on factions and Hardcore. The video says PvE where the game's list says Normal.

Why there are no realms

The team started from one question: how to let as many people as possible play together. Blizzard says realms built strong communities, but players tended to crowd onto the most populated ones, even when another realm suited their style better. In Forever you no longer choose where to play but how. Blizzard adds that the goal is not one giant server, but to make it easier for people who play by the same rules to meet.

A choice that does not change

On PvE the outdoor world always follows PvE rules, on PvP it always follows PvP rules, and you cannot switch between them as you like. Blizzard says this is deliberate: outdoor PvP only works if everyone in that world has accepted the same risk. The factions also stay apart: no parties, raids, guilds or battleground teams across Alliance and Horde.

Separate economies

The auction house, trade and guilds stay inside a ruleset. Any PvE player can trade with any other PvE player in the region, and the same goes for PvP, but the two economies never mix. The reason given is that gathering ore under the threat of an ambush is a different experience, and the economy should reflect that.

One faction on PvP, with temporary limits

Blizzard expects opinions on this rule. On PvP your faction choice applies across your entire regional PvP ruleset: if you create an orc there, every PvP character you create afterwards will be Horde. There is no second PvP space for the other side.

The video also confirms temporary restrictions on character creation when an imbalance starts to affect the experience, with adjustments that aim to affect individual players as little as possible. It gives no thresholds or durations, and it does not mention the messages players have been seeing since launch, but it is the clearest official explanation so far of the Horde locks on PvP.

Hardcore, when it arrives

Hardcore is not available at launch and will live in its own isolated environment. The news is what happens after death: in the past fallen Hardcore characters could only return to PvE, while in Forever they can be sent to any of the three other rulesets. The faction rule still applies: you cannot move a dead Horde character to PvP if you already have Alliance characters there.

Roleplaying

Roleplayers get their own outdoor world and do not share zone copies with PvE or PvP players. Anyone who wants combat in their story can still flag for PvP.

What the video does not answer

Roleplay-PvP is not in the video: the description says so and confirms it is on the list. So the video does not answer whether the one-faction rule applies there too, or whether players will be able to move characters between rulesets. It also says nothing about the characters reported on the wrong ruleset after the maintenance of 5 November.

That evening Blizzard also posted Forging Forever, an article that links to the replay of the Taldramir stream. There is nothing new about the staff itself: what we know is in our article on Taldramir.