Blizzard says World of Warcraft: Forever will launch on November 4 with major improvements to layering, the system that drew some of the loudest complaints during the game’s beta. In a statement to GameSpot, WoW: Forever associate production director Clay Stone laid out the first round of changes coming before release.
Layering splits a busy realm into several parallel copies of the same world so servers can handle large crowds without buckling. Players in different layers cannot see or interact with each other, and the game can shift a player from one copy to another. Beta testers said that happened too often, pulling them away from people they were playing alongside.
What Blizzard is changing
According to Stone, players will no longer be separated from the people they saw on boats and zeppelins once the loading screen ends. Riding a transport with a crowd and arriving to find that crowd gone was one of the beta’s most common frustrations.
Blizzard is also changing how large groups are handled around capital cities. Under the new rules, big groups won’t get layered when they enter or leave a capital, which should keep raid parties and guild gatherings together in the most crowded hubs.
Stone was clear that layering is not going away. He said there will always be some amount of layering in WoW: Forever, but the team plans more improvements through launch and beyond, with the goal of making the world feel as seamless as possible.
The gap players will notice
The statement does not address layer changes at zone borders. That is a key complaint from world PvP fans, who say crossing into a new zone can drop them into a different copy of the world in the middle of a fight. Blizzard has not said whether that behavior will change before November 4.
For a refresher on how the test period played out, see our earlier report on the WoW: Forever beta and its November 4 launch. Fans who spent the beta chasing rivals across zone lines will be watching launch week closely to see whether more fixes arrive.
