Riot's MMO Team Is Playing WoW's Record Launch. Blizzard Calls Forever Its Biggest Launch Ever, and Riot's MMO Chief Answered WoW's Executive Producer With One Emoji.

What Happened

Blizzard says WoW Forever set records for peak players and returning players, and it published no number for either.

The record

• Peak players. WoW studio Blizzard's official @Warcraft account says World of Warcraft: Forever was "The biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players." It is Blizzard's new permanent version of the game.
• Returning players. The same post claims "The highest number of returning players in WoW history."
• No numbers. The count behind each record is not published, and Blizzard named no previous record holder.
• Twitch peak. Twitch's WoW category peaked at 1,119,734 viewers on November 4, per Streams Charts as cited by timesaver.gg and InstantCarry. That counts viewers, not players.
• Post timing. The post went up on the evening of November 6 in the US, two days after the November 4 launch.

The exchange on X

• The congratulations. Fabrice Condominas, executive producer of Riot's unannounced MMO, posted "Huge congrats to everyone behind #WoWForever" on November 5.
• The joke. The same post says "One MMO team just launched. Another MMO team is now 'doing competitive research' with suspicious dedication." That line names no team. We read it as Riot's.
• A WoW dev reacts. Josh Greenfield, whose bio reads "WoW Classic Dev", replied with a bare eyes emoji.
• WoW's answer. Holly Longdale, WoW's executive producer, replied: "for some it's competitive research, for us it's...quality reassurance. It's a good day!"
• One emoji back. Condominas answered Longdale with a single eyes emoji, before Blizzard's record post.

Salvatore's stream

• Streaming the launch. Orlando Salvatore, a senior engineering manager on the Riot MMO who used to work on WoW, streamed Forever on November 4.
• Already recruiting. Before launch, Salvatore was looking for Horde players for a PvP guild.
• The praise. On November 5, Salvatore called it a "Flawless launch" and "undoubtedly a return of a juggernaut."

What launched

• Levels 1 to 60. Forever covers levels 1 to 60 on the original continents, and it adds zones the old game never had.
• A permanent game. Blizzard's launch post calls it "a permanent home alongside modern and Classic WoW."
• Subscription, PC only. Forever comes with a regular WoW subscription and runs only on PC, per GamingBolt.
• No realm list. Rulesets replace realms. The launch post says "Each Ruleset functions as a broad player ecosystem rather than a single traditional realm."
• First raids. The first raids open December 9.

Launch complaints

• Faction lock. A thread on Blizzard's forums about a faction lock on PvP passed 300 replies, per wowguide.net. It was the top day-one complaint.
• Empty cities. Players there said cities felt empty with too many layers, the separate copies of the world that split up friends in the beta.
• Blizzard's response. Blizzard said it would adjust, and the gaming site MeinMMO also reports layering problems.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

Forever adds a new permanent game to what players can play today, on top of modern WoW and Classic.

• Riot's reset. Riot co-founder Marc Merrill's March 2024 thread said Riot reset its MMO because "the initial vision just wasn't different enough from what you can play today."
• Ruleset reversal. Blizzard first said a roleplay-PvP ruleset would split players, then added one for launch.
• Riot's crowd plan. Riot has said nothing about how its world will hold a crowd.
• Riot's posts. Condominas and Salvatore said nothing about Riot's own game, design or dates.
• No public build. Riot has shown none. One fan reply to Condominas, from @oALTIERE, asked for "Just an animation, a weapon asset, a t pose character, anything."

Our read. Riot's own test got harder this week. Forever now sits inside "what you can play today", and by Blizzard's account it drew back more lapsed players than any WoW launch. That suggests lapsed MMO players will come back for a rebuilt world they know. With no count published, the size of that audience is unknown.

Record crowds and empty cities in the same week tell us the hard part of a modern MMO is how you split players up. All of this describes the market Riot's MMO would enter. It predicts nothing about the game.

What to Watch

Blizzard's launch post dates Forever's first raids to December 9.

Your Take

Reported from World of Warcraft and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.