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World of Warcraft Forever has been incredibly popular, and has gone down as the biggest WoW launch in history. It’s little wonder, then, that some zones are absolutely packed with players — but thankfully, Blizzard has implemented a fix.
In a hotfix last night, Blizzard lowered the population in overcrowded zones, which should give players more of a chance to get quests done without competing with a hundred other players to tag a spider. In the developers’ notes, Blizzard also noted that “We’ve made this an even bigger change on the PvP ruleset, following feedback from players that they felt overcrowded in several places. We will continue to monitor how zones feel and make further adjustments as necessary.”
Unlike past versions of WoW, which had a variety of servers available, World of Warcraft Forever has one server that’s divided into different rulesets: PvP, PvE, RPPvP, RP and Hardcore. Instead of dividing players among different servers, Blizzard uses layering to group people into different instances of the world. And because WoW Forever’s whole thing is being surrounded by other players, Blizzard seemingly opted to try and get as many people into each layer as possible without causing problems.
However, while it’s fun to see hundreds of players running around each zone, this approach has caused some issues. Some people on the PvE rulesets have reported difficulties in being able to finish quests, especially in the earlier zones, as they have to compete with dozens of different players to get anything done. But the problem is especially bad for players in the PvP rulesets because of a faction imbalance.
At least here in the US, The Horde is much more popular than The Alliance, and that’s causing problems. For Alliance players, they’re outnumbered when they’re questing in the world, which means they get killed instantly in later zones. For Horde players, they can’t create new toons, because Blizzard is throttling character creation to try and preserve faction balance.
Blizzard Community Manager Kaivax has addressed this in a seperate note last night, saying, “It’s vitally important that the PvP rulesets in WoW: Forever have balanced factions where both factions vie for supremacy, creating memories of epic victories and stunning defeats that we all remember for years to come. While even the most extreme case in a region is currently at roughly a 55/45 split, that is not as close as we want it to be.” Blizzard wants to get that balance as close to 50/50 as possible.
To address the matter, Kaivax says, “In the short term, that means that it will become increasingly difficult to create characters on the more populous faction in each region – currently Horde on North American PvP rulesets or Alliance in EU Roleplay-PvP. As everyone settles and shifts, these may flip to the other side.”
Despite some of these growing pains, though, World of Warcraft Forever is still proving to be one of the smoothest launches in Blizzard history. Launch night went off without a hitch, thanks to the servers running on around 251TB of RAM and over 70,000 CPU cores.
World of Warcraft Forever November 9 Hotfix patch notes
November 9, 2026
Classes
- Druid
- The Cooldown Manager no longer shows Berserk, and now correctly shows Lacerate when learned.
- Idol of Ferocity no longer lists Mangle as an ability it discounts.
- Feral
- Fixed an issue where Feral Charge (Cat) was not putting the Druid in combat right away.
- Fixed an issue where Natural Instinct was not applying correctly to Lacerate or Pounce.
- Fixed an issue where the Pounce Stun debuff was not showing in the enemy debuffs while active.
- Hunter
- Vulgara the Insatiable and the Shrieklings of Zephras should now belong to the correct hunter pet families.
- Fixed an issue causing Hunters to sometimes aggro enemies from very far away by targeting them.
- Mage
- Flamestirke’s ticks on the ground no longer incorrectly consume clearcasting.
- Arcane Concentration’s activation chance now correctly splits across the cast and every bolt (was granting 10% on cast and per bolt).
- Paladin
- Fixed an issue where Consecration could stop dealing increased damage to enemies if targets inside of the Consecration despawned previously.
- Fixed an issue where Cooldown Manager wasn’t showing Seals correctly.
- Priest
- Shadowform no longer breaks when casting Fear Ward.
- Power Infusion will now correctly persist when used on allies.
- Shaman
- Updated the visual effect for Lightning Mastery.
- Lightning Overload now deals the correct amount of damage for Lightning Bolt.
- Fixed an issue causing Improved Ghost Wolf to not hold the Night Watchman’s Torch in its mouth.
- Warlock
- Completing “Summon Felsteed” will correctly grant the player the appropriate riding skill.
- Developers’ notes: If a player completed the quest before this hotfix, summoning the Felsteed once will grant them the apprentice riding skill, allowing them to ride other mounts if desired.
- Fixed an issue allowing Incinerate to be available to non-Destruction specializations.
- Completing “Summon Felsteed” will correctly grant the player the appropriate riding skill.
- Warrior
- Thunderclap no longer tracks its duration on the target via Cooldown Manager and now only shows its cooldown.
Dungeons
- Experience rewarded for all enemy kills in dungeons increased by 50%.
- Alcaz Prison
- Defeating Zarla Ober will now drop loot.
- Blackfathom Deeps
- Fixed an issue that could cause players to become unable to release after dying in Blackfathom Deeps.
- Blackrock Depths
- Fixed an issue that prevented the throne room doors from opening if the party wiped while fighting Emperor Thaurissan.
- Heart of the Mountain can now be looted more than once.
- The Drowned City
- Fixed an issue that was causing creatures inside the Drowned City to do about 30% more damage than intended.
- Deathless Marrow
- Lowered the health of the creatures in the Deathless Marrow encounter by 25%.
- Lowered the damage of the Deathless Sorcerer’s Fireball by 25%.
- Lowered the damage of the Deathless Watcher’s Charge by 50%.
- Reduced the cast frequency of the Deathless Guardian’s Shield Slam ability by about 50%.
- The Shaper’s Terrace
- The Shaper’s Terrace: Vitrix, Snowtalon, and Cinder now correctly drop loot and higher-level skinning materials.
- Cinder should now correctly spawn after players use the Archival Panel.
- Stratholme
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to mount inside Stratholme.
Enemies and NPCs
- Silverpine Forest – Fixed an issue where Ivar the Foul was respawning more slowly than intended.
- Teldrassil – Spawn time reduced for Ferocitas the Dream Eater.
- Un’goro Crater – Fixed an issue that was causing Young Diemetradons to spawn at level 58 (rather than 51 to 52).
- Zephras – Malduko Cloudcrush now respawns slightly more slowly.
Items
- Fixed an issue with the Pouch of Violet Dust preventing players from receiving an extra hour of duration of the Camp Benefits aura as intended.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Waylaid Crates and Craftsman’s Writs from dropping inside dungeons.
- Berdun’s Trusty Rifle no longer has random stats and is not Bind-on-Equip.
- Fixed a bug causing Nifty Stopwatch to share a cooldown with Dash, Blink, Sprint, and other movement abilities.
- Zephrali Greatstaff and Fallen Dragon’s Scepter now appear correctly oriented when sheathed on the player’s back.
- Gloves of Holy Might now work as intended.
Player versus Player
- Removed an invisible wall that was incorrectly blocking the roof of the Alliance base in Warsong Gulch. Please be careful up there.
Quests
- “The Monster Surfaces” quest item is now available to all players in a party.
- “Croaky’s Head” is now available to all players in a party.
- “Elmpaw’s Head” is now available to all players in a party.
- Mistreating Astor Hadren during the quest “The Deathstalkers” should now properly anger him, allowing you to fight him.
- Fixed a bug preventing Jom-jom from continuing his escape on “Jom-jom’s Escape”.
- The door available after the quest “Ever After” should now correctly teleport players who interact with the door.
- Fixed a bug keeping Terry Longdrink alive during the quest “Unwelcome Guests”.
- Fixed an issue where the quest “Find Bingles” was incorrectly categorized in Ironforge, rather than Loch Modan.
- Updated Skonk’s list to be readable by everyone going on “A Quick Grocery Run”.
- Henrig Lonebrow’s Journal now respawns more quickly, so that more players can get started on “Lonebrow’s Journal”. It has also moved slightly down the road. Look for a similar skeleton to mark the location.
- Addressed an issue that could prevent players from looting Berard’s Journal from Berard’s Bookshelf for “A Recipe for Death”.
- Resolved an issue preventing completion of “Fetch ‘n’ Fletch”.
- Fixed an issue where restarting the Rogue quest “Mission: Possible not Probable” was much less possible than intended.
- Resolved an issue where Jezap Jinglesprocket could fail to provide players a “Bloodmaster’s Ring”.
- Fixed an issue during the quest “Feathers in Flight” where players below level 60 could not loot the Hyjal Owl Nests.
Races
- Tauren
- Cultivation now correctly only goes on cooldown after completing the cast.
World
- Lowered the population of players in various zones where there was significant congestion.
- Developers’ notes: We’ve made this an even bigger change on the PvP ruleset, following feedback from players that they felt overcrowded in several places. We will continue to monitor how zones feel and make further adjustments as necessary.
- Resolved an issue where the flight path from Camp Taurajo to Thunder Bluff could unintentionally go through objects.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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https://www.ign.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-forever-hotfix-will-thin-out-overcrowded-zones-and-help-faction-balance
Jacqueline Thomas
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