Day 2 of WoW: Forever's pre-purchase name reservations, and Horde players on the PvP ruleset still can't create a character. On October 29, a player named Bronx posted on Blizzard's official forums: "Its day 2 on name reservations and i still cant make a horde character on the pvp realm due to faction imbalance." Less than two hours later, another player, Trget, opened a separate thread with the same story: "I have played on Horde since Vanilla, I go to reserve my name on PvP ruleset and I get an error saying I cant due to faction imbalance." As of this writing, neither thread shows a reply from Blizzard.

Bronx's post puts three questions to the studio: how large the faction discrepancy actually is, what numbers Blizzard would consider balanced, and whether a future paid faction service would end up first come, first served. "I am not looking for a refund im still going to play," he wrote, "but just some kind of response to these questions would be greatly appreciated." Trget's version is blunter: "does this mean I either play alliance or I dont play at all?"

The two threads stand at 19 posts from 9 participants and 9 posts from 8 respectively — all player traffic so far.

What is confirmed, and what is not

Confirmed: two players hit the same error independently, about an hour and a half apart — character creation on the PvP ruleset failing with a faction imbalance message — and, per the posters, the problem has persisted since the second day of the reservation window. Neither thread contains a blue post.

Not confirmed: nearly everything else. Blizzard has never published the imbalance thresholds behind the gate, so nobody outside the company knows how far Horde is from reopening on PvP rulesets. There is no timetable for lifting the lock, no word on whether it is deliberate population control or a bug, and no statement on scope — neither thread reports an equivalent lock hitting Alliance or PvE rulesets, but Blizzard has not said whether the restriction reaches beyond Horde on PvP.

Dates worth keeping straight: the reservation window opened October 27 and closes November 3 at 23:59 UTC+8, with the global launch set for November 5. The launch-day queue crashes and the overly strict name check were separate problems — most disconnects were resolved, and Blizzard confirmed a fix for the name check — but the faction imbalance gate has yet to receive any official explanation.

What players can do now

  • Planning to roll Horde on a PvP ruleset? Mind the window: the end of the lock is not announced, and every day it stays shut is one more day of the reservation window Horde players cannot use.
  • Track both threads for movement: Cant Reserve Name and So when can we start making horde characters.
  • Anyone hitting the same error can add their report to the threads. The three answers Bronx asked for — the discrepancy numbers, the balance target, and the rules of any paid faction option — are all with Blizzard.