End of Beta podcast: hidden secrets in levels 1–30, RP-PvP at launch and a level 60 cap

RP-PvP: from no plans to launch in one week

On the October 15 podcast, Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield explained the team's hesitation about RP-PvP: roleplayers are a smaller community and a second roleplay Ruleset could split them further. He said there were no current plans while the team kept reading feedback, without ruling it out. On October 22 he posted that, after looking at what it would take, Blizzard will add a Roleplay-PvP Ruleset for launch on November 4.

The timing for name reservations is less firm. Blizzard's official Bluesky account said RP-PvP becomes available at early name reservation on October 27. The blue post and Clay Stone's post on X say the team is working hard to make that happen, and the updated Rulesets article calls it a plan. Either way there is no extra slot: reservation still allows three characters in total across all Rulesets. The announcement and the updated article did not publish new RP naming rules or enforcement plans for Forever RP-PvP, which is what players asked about most, along with whether the Ruleset will have enough people.

Sources: Aggrend: the Roleplay-PvP Ruleset is coming to WoW Forever, October 22 · Podcast Episode 4, October 15: concern about splitting the RP community · World of Warcraft on Bluesky: RP-PvP at early name reservation · Clay Stone on X: RP-PvP for launch · Choose your Ruleset in WoW Forever (updated October 22) · Claim your character names: three characters total across all Rulesets

What the beta kept hidden

Clay Stone, Associate Production Director, framed the goal: Classic is a game players solved years ago, and the team wants parts of it unsolved again. Lead Encounter Designer Michael Nuthals said the technology lets items stay hidden until somebody finds them, using the example of entering Scarlet Monastery without knowing what Herod drops. Asked about the first 30 levels, Aggrend said some secrets there were turned off for the beta. He described the Deadmines trousers that speed up smelting, which he knew existed but first saw when they dropped for him in the beta. The host, Josh Corbett, recalled earlier talk of thousands of things being held back; that figure is his recollection, not a new count.

Some content was only paused. The Duskwood torch quest was disabled for the first week, and once enabled, so many players carried torches that it caused performance problems the team fixed. The idea spread: thief-catching guards in Stormwind, Ironforge and Orgrimmar now take out torches at night. Some new dungeons and raids were protected so that players could not load into them at all. Lead Software Engineer Ana Resendez said the team had to decide what finding an item means and whether that stops at a Ruleset, without stating the final rule.

Clay also warned about datamining. Different versions of WoW share many assets and code, so files can contain things never meant for Forever, and that had happened recently; Blizzard had made the same point about a group of datamined art assets the week before.

Sources: Official WoW Forever Podcast, Episode 5: End of Beta Special (October 22), paraphrased · Blizzard on datamined assets not intended for Forever

Past level 30 and the launch plan

The beta stopped at level 30, with four of the nine new dungeons and no raids. Clay said the rest had been tested heavily in-house, and that players who explored into Riverglades had not played the quests built for it. After joking that he had been promised a launch with zero bugs, he said the team will play alongside players after launch and fix problems as fast as it can. Ana explained that live runs on different hardware from the beta, and the remaining time before launch goes to polish and processing feedback.

When the host called it Blizzard's biggest beta, Clay put it more carefully as one of the biggest betas Blizzard has had. On the first day the team kept hitting concurrency limits and raising them. Players spread out faster and further than expected; the team considered walling off new zones such as Mount Hyjal and decided to let people explore.

Sources: Official WoW Forever Podcast, Episode 5: End of Beta Special (October 22), paraphrased

Level 60, raid sizes and boss teasers

Clay said the level cap stays at 60 and the team does not intend to go from there, with new content added both along the leveling road and at endgame. He is particularly interested in reactions to the higher levels, where Classic's questing historically had gaps. That is a stated direction, not a guarantee for every future patch.

Michael Nuthals called 10- and 20-player content, patch after patch, one of the team's commitments. Sizes are meant to stay fixed so a group of ten can plan ahead and two groups of ten can join for 20-player content. Onyxia is meant as the classic night when everyone comes out to kill a dragon together, and the encounter team's difficulty target is beer and pretzels: bring friends, work out details such as kill order, and show up with potions and perhaps a flask.

Bosses have not been announced, but some fights were teased. In The Barrow Deeps, one encounter gives a damage buff with a cost that can get you killed, and another features a pair of spiders. In Hyjal Summit, the raid alternates between attacking a possessed undead creature and the ghost possessing it, and a body horror fight was also teased. Molten Core returns revamped, the word used at BlizzCon, with little more beyond a half-joke that Golemagg may involve more than tanking. Older dungeons get an additive approach, with slight differences through quests and objectives. Homes, manors and hidden instance portals were mentioned as hooks for later, without any player housing announcement.

Sources: Official WoW Forever Podcast, Episode 5: End of Beta Special (October 22), paraphrased

Language, regions, quest drops and campfires

There is already a preferred language setting, and the game tries to place you near people who speak it, but it is a preference rather than a hard line. Region is the hard line: choosing English in Europe keeps you in Europe, and Europe and North America will not play together at launch. Ana would not say never and hoped they could get there one day.

The host asked for quest drops that every group member receives. Aggrend said some work already rotates those drops between group members and that grouping is not dramatically slower than people assume, without promising shared drops. Ana said players found unfriendly uses for campfires, which could kill characters, and someone described fires placed in starting zones where new players ran into them; the team is considering changing how fires affect health without making them harmless. The viral clip of players vanishing outside Orgrimmar was left for a likely upcoming tech episode.

Sources: Official WoW Forever Podcast, Episode 5: End of Beta Special (October 22), paraphrased