Start Here: Picking Your Ruleset, Faction, and Launch Plan

Confidence: community-tracked. Ruleset behavior and grouping rules below come from beta coverage and community documentation. Blizzard can still change details before launch — confirm on the character-select screen.

The short version

• Ruleset first, then faction. You can only group with players on the same ruleset and the same faction.
• Pick the faction your friends pick. Cross-faction grouping is not a thing.
• Meet at level 10. Starting zones are race-specific; the first shared hub is level 10.
• Agree on a pace before launch. Different play speeds break groups faster than bad specs.

Why the ruleset comes before anything else

Forever replaces the classic server list with rulesets. Your ruleset decides how the open world treats you, who you can group with, and what happens when you die. Changing your mind later means rerolling.

Ruleset	What it means in practice	Pick it if…
PvE (Normal)	Open-world PvP is opt-in. You can quest in peace and queue for battlegrounds when you want them.	You want steady leveling and dungeon focus.
PvP	Your PvP flag stays on in contested zones. Enemy players can attack you at any time.	You enjoy contested zones and world fights.
RP	Roleplay naming and community expectations.	You want an RP community and slower, social play.
RP-PvP	Roleplay rules plus permanent world PvP. Added for launch.	Your RP guild wants world PvP friction.
Hardcore	Death is permanent. Community reporting says this ruleset arrives after launch, not day one.	You want the one-life challenge — later.

The important part: same ruleset + same faction = groupable. Everything else is downstream of that.

Faction is the real lock

If your friends roll Horde, you roll Horde. There is no cross-faction group finder, no shared auction house, no "we'll meet in the middle." This sounds obvious until launch week, when someone picks a night elf because the starting zone looks nicer.

Decide as a group:

1. Faction — locked to your friends.
2. Ruleset — locked to your friends.
3. Starting zone — flexible, because you can meet at 10.

Where your group meets at level 10

Each race starts in its own zone. The first practical meetup is level 10, in the faction hub:

• Alliance: humans start in Elwynn Forest, dwarves and gnomes in Dun Morogh, night elves in Teldrassil. At 10, converge on Stormwind or Westfall.
• Horde: orcs and trolls start in Durotar, tauren in Mulgore, undead in Tirisfal Glades. At 10, converge on Orgrimmar or the Barrens.

Waiting until 10 is usually better than forcing everyone into one starting zone: the 1–10 experience is short, and nobody wants to reroll a race they dislike just to share a spawn point.

Five-player composition

A standard dungeon group is one tank, one healer, three damage. Beyond that:

• Avoid stacking the same class. Loot competition is the fastest way to sour a launch group.
• Hybrids (druid, paladin, shaman, priest) can flex, but pick a primary role so gearing stays sane.
• Decide who levels First Aid and who levels Cooking — the group needs both, and nobody should assume someone else is doing it.

The launch-day checklist

• Install and patch the client before launch day. Do not spend launch hour downloading.
• Set up addons and keybinds in advance. Quest and map addons are the big ones; a group where half the players can see quest objectives and half cannot will fall apart.
• Agree on an offline policy. Does the group wait for the person with a job, or does everyone play ahead? Decide before, not at level 14.
• Expect launch-hour instability. Queues and layer issues are normal on day one. Have a solo activity ready (professions, bag space, banking) for the rough patch.

Sources

• Blizzard: World of Warcraft: Forever announcement — launch date and beta timing.
• Wowhead: RP-PvP ruleset coming to Forever — ruleset lineup at launch.
• 17173 launch planning guide — starting zones, meetup points, group composition.