World of Warcraft: Forever has been in the wild for one week, and now we have all kinds of stats to sink our teeth into as they relate to the most popular races, classes, and faction in the latest version of developer Blizzard’s MMORPG.
Forever launched November 4, becoming the biggest launch in WoW history by concurrent and returning players. Aside from that fact, Blizzard hasn’t shared additional information on exactly how many characters have been made or what classes are most popular.
For that, we turn to Raider.IO, a WoW stat-tracking website more commonly used in the modern version of the game to provide rankings and details related to raids and Mythic+ progression.
According to the site, close to 3.9 million characters have been created across all regions and rulesets so far. Around 48% of those characters are on the Alliance, with nearly 52% being on the Horde.
The most popular two races aren’t all that surprising–undead and humans. Despite being the most boring choice imaginable, humans have always been a popular choice in WoW Classic thanks to their strong passives and the ability to be most classes. In Forever, they currently make up 37% of the Alliance population. Undead, on the other hand, are getting a massive boost from being the only Horde race to currently have access to Paladin. They make up nearly 40% of the Horde.
It won’t shock you to learn then that Paladin is Forever’s most-played class, with undead Paladin being the most-played race-and-class combo.
Skyborne elves are WoW’s newest playable race, available to both factions. Around 10% of all characters are Skyborne, and faction-wise they are fairly even. Around 10% of Skyborne are Alliance and close to 11% are on the Horde. Consdiering how popular blood elves are in other versions of the game, the number of Skyborne feels low by comparison, though the fact they cost $30 to access probably has something to do with that.
As for what rulesets are most popular, the normal (PvE) server is far and away the biggest, with over 2 million characters. The PvP ruleset isn’t too far behind with around 1.5 million characters. Those two rulesets dwarf the size of the game’s two RP rulesets, which combined have around 250,000 players.
With the exception of standard RP, every ruleset has a larger Horde population, a subject Blizzard recently commented on officially. In a forum post, Blizzard announced its goal is for PvP servers to be as close to 50/50 faction balance as possible, and would be placing restrictions on creating Horde characters on PvP rulesets in an effort to make that a reality.
“World of Warcraft: Forever’s PvP is at its best when the Alliance and Horde are on equal footing, and we are dedicated to helping maintain that balance so that we can all witness battles at the epic scale that has made WoW: Forever PvP so memorable thus far,” Blizzard said.
One week after WoW: Forever’s shockingly smooth launch, we’ve been impressed how visual updates and Blizzard’s changes to the classic WoW formula have made the MMO feel brand new again. Forever received its first major class and dungeon changes earlier this week.
