During the beta finale of WoW: Forever, we had the opportunity to speak with Blizzard developers Aidan Moon and Kris Zierhut about undiscovered secrets and the topic of layering.
This is the third part of our interview with Principal Designer Kris Zierhut and Senior Game Designer Aidan Moon before the launch of WoW: Forever. You can comfortably jump to the other parts via our table of contents. A concise summary of the key findings can be found on page 1.
MeinMMO: Regarding the beta: Did you withhold content in the range of level 1 to 30 to avoid spoilers?
Kris Zierhut: Yes, there are secrets that will only be unlocked when the game goes live. Also, players haven’t found everything that’s already in the beta. We have over 600 new profession recipes that can drop from dungeon mobs, bosses, and rare spawns.
And crucially: Our dungeon and raid drops are completely missing from the local item database of the client. They cannot be datamined until someone actually loots them in the game. Our goal is to make the game “unsolved” again, so that the optimal way is not predetermined and players have to discover things for themselves again.
With the next teleport, we left the Riverlands to stroll through another, new region: Shen’dralas. This is a new level area for characters of levels 45 to 55.
Kris Zierhut: Aidan has just teleported us to Shen’dralas, which is located at the southern end of Desolace. The Valley of Bones has always been there, but we added a third branch that leads southeast into this new area.
The centaur storylines of the Kolkar and Magram continue here. The area also features arcane crystals connected to Shadowbreak West. The Highborne of Shadowbreak are the Shen’dralar, this zone is called Shen’dralas, and the Skyborn are the descendants of the Shen’dralar Highborne. They share an interwoven story that we will tell over the coming years.
Layering is the highest priority
MeinMMO: Since the announcement of Forever, my biggest concern has been the new server system and layering. We’ve seen clips where Alliance attackers suddenly disappeared at the gates of Orgrimmar due to layer boundaries, and even in the beta, raid members were phased into different layers for group photos. This is deadly for immersion, social interaction, and reasonable open-world PvP.
And that’s just one side. During the announcement, you talked about uniting the advantages of the old language servers and mega servers and thus eliminating their disadvantages. In the end, there should be a comparable community experience as on the closed language servers, but without huge queues, ghost servers, or faction imbalance.
Can you reassure me and all other players who are concerned about this in any way?
Kris Zierhut: Absolutely. Improving this experience is the highest priority for our engineering team. We are already addressing the issue with the area boundaries so that players will no longer phase out when leaving capitals, and we are also ensuring that groups stay together on ship and zeppelin rides.
After the launch, we will dynamically manage zone populations. Under the hood, we have matchmaking algorithms that ensure you remain on the same layer as players you’ve previously encountered when you transition from the Forest of Elwynn to Westfall. And through the option where you choose your preferred language, you can directly influence the players you encounter.
MeinMMO: I noticed this feature with the colored names of players I’ve been in a group with before in the beta. That’s actually helpful. Why did you decide on dedicated PvP and PvE realms instead of the war mode?
Kris Zierhut: The war mode requires its own baseline systems, reward structures, and tailored content to function properly. Integrating that into Classic would mean completely redesigning the world and core gameplay feel. Fixed rules fit much better with Classic.
On PvP realms, we strictly enforce faction balance: If you create a Horde character there, you cannot make an Alliance character. In the beta, the ratio was about 51.7% Horde to 48.3% Alliance.
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