If you’ve been eager to hop into World of Warcraft: Forever, create a Horde character, say “lok’tar ogar!” (victory or death!) after an intense PvP match, you’re going to have to wait. There’s an ongoing faction lock on Horde characters in PvP rulesets until further notice.
In a game like WoW, premised on being big on faction warfare, achieving some form of balance across player numbers ensures no one side dominates PvP. And since Forever does have a dedicated mega-realm (ruleset) for PvP players, this faction lock has become a source of frustration.
We’ll look into what we know so far, and update you once it’s finally been lifted.
Table of contents
No lok’tar ogar until further notice
The faction lock happens when you try to switch over to the PvP ruleset and create a Horde character. Chances are, you’ll be stopped by the game. The error box will state this is due to a “population imbalance.”
If you’ve ever encountered faction restrictions in WoW before, this is a similar situation. Just like the error says, it’s very likely that one faction probably had a lot more players than the other.
“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,” community manager Kaivax said in a post. “Our goal is to bring things as close to a 50/50 faction balance as possible.”
What can we do with the Horde PvP ruleset faction lock?
There is no definitive fix for the faction lock as of writing. Some common (albeit unproven) solutions include the following:
- Trying every couple of minutes
- Waiting until a server restart and creating a character by then
- Waiting until the end of maintenance and creating a character
There has been no proof that paying for a new account or getting an account boost can fix the lock, so better to stay safe and avoid these. If you want to wait a couple of minutes, avoid using an auto-clicker to be on the safe side.
While waiting, you could also do the following:
Take one of the team and cross over
Perhaps the most common “answer” to the lock problem is to create a character in the other faction to help balance the population. Unfortunately, this will lock your account’s PvP ruleset to that faction.
Go to PvE for now
If you already have a character in the PvE ruleset, you can hop on there and enjoy its more casual leveling experience. You can still toggle World PvP via the options menu.
Try the RP-PvP ruleset
Should you want to take the game’s adventuring fantasy more seriously, maybe the RP-PvP ruleset works for you. This just has the added requirement of actually roleplaying your character, so speaking in dialogue, following cues for anything out-of-character, and just fully immersing in Azeroth. Perfect if you want to roleplay your character’s heritage on top of high-stakes PvP.
The faction lock affected the Alliance too
Character creation restrictions in PvP rulesets weren’t just exclusive to the Horde, however. Blizzard also locked the creation of Alliance characters to some degree, in a bid to ensure character populations across each faction are as balanced as realistically possible.
As such, you might have some difficulty creating characters of a specific faction in a specific region:
- Horde on PvP rulesets, NA
- Alliance on Roleplay-PvP, EU
Kaivax assured this is temporary and helps the “long-term health of the ruleset,” especially now when guilds are slowly being established.
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No Horde characters in PvP, but what else is happening?
Other players took to other avenues to explore the faction lock situation as well. While there’s no definite solution aside from waiting, here are other things you should take into account:
Customer service cannot unlock it manually
There are also other players who have already experienced some version of faction locking before it got widespread. They also posted about it in the Blizzard forums.
However, Yryadorne from customer service clarified that their team isn’t able to unlock this manually.
Trial accounts don’t work either
Some players asked whether trial accounts also affected the count. These are accounts where you could only play for free until Level 20 (with restrictions) without a subscription. Kaivax replied that their testing concluded the trial accounts had nothing to do with the imbalance. They explained that the 55/45 split focused on the “active logged-in population” of players across all levels.
There’s no evidence that creating a lot of trial accounts would fix the faction balance, especially if part of the consideration is that they are “actively” logged in.
Double-check if your error is related to something else
Just to be on the safe side, it might be a good idea to check if your Horde lock is related ot any other character creation errors. Blizzard outlined this list, which could be a useful reference:
- You might get throttled if you have been trying to make a character repeatedly
- You can have a maximum of 70 characters in a single Forever account
- You cannot have a Horde character and an Alliance character if you’re in the PvP ruleset
- If you deleted a character of one faction in order to switch to the other, the game might still count your affiliation with the previous faction for a short while
If you’re frustrated, you’re not alone
A lot of players expressed frustration with the inability to create characters in their favored Faction, especially those who want to sink their teeth into PvP in Forever.
The situation has been particularly difficult for players who also want to play with friends of one faction, only to find out it’s currently locked.
One Blizzard forum post even requested some form of compensation, as there’s no proper communication surrounding the faction lock. Other threads also called out the lack of any virtual queue, estimated waiting time, or any way of knowing how long until the restriction is lifted.
Faction locks did happen in the good ol’ days
The idea of faction-locking isn’t new to Forever, but it certainly came as a shocker to players still getting used to the idea of having one mega-realm to play on.
Things were different in the OG release and Classic, where you could have characters in different realms. Back then, you could only be Horde on one PvP realm and Alliance on another. Faction rules only applied to new players when one faction was starting to crowd a specific realm, so newcomers had to adjust by joining the rival group.
