World of Warcraft: Forever has suffered a bit of a PvP debacle since its official release last week, with faction imbalance drama hitting a high – but Blizzard is working to remedy it.

Yes, the studio is well aware of the issue – one that, if you're out of the loop yourself, has seen folks complaining about everything from too many Horde players to unplayable PvP realms – and a recent update on its official forums proves as much.

"It's vitally important that the PvP rulesets in WoW: Forever have balanced factions where both factions vie for supremacy," it begins, and I'd certainly agree there. "Creating memories of epic victories and stunning defeats that we all remember for years to come," after all, is what it's all about.

Blizzard says that that ideal balance, however, isn't there – even if it is "close," so to speak: "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."

In turn, the developers are rolling out some changes… and, unsurprisingly, restrictions.

"To better set the stage for the neck-and-neck conflicts we all want, we've adjusted the character creation system to better recognize the overall state of faction balance in each region's PvP rulesets, rather than what may feel like snapshots of points in time," Blizzard explains.

"Our goal is to bring things as close to a 50/50 faction balance as possible." And, yes, this means you can't create characters willy-nilly.

"In the short term, that means that it will become increasingly difficult to create characters on the more populous faction in each region – currently Horde on North American PvP rulesets or Alliance in EU Roleplay-PvP," as the devs say.

"As everyone settles and shifts, these may flip to the other side," though. It might be a bit annoying to Horde hopefuls in the US or those who prefer teaming up with the Alliance in Europe, but it makes sense.

In Blizzard's own words, "We recognize that while restrictions are in place, it can be frustrating to not be able to start playing a specific faction in that moment, but this is a necessary trade-off for the long-term health of the ruleset, especially early on when guilds are being established and rivalries developed."

The current imbalance isn't sustainable, basically, not to mention all of the controversy it's sparking.

Blizzard concludes that "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" – and I'm hopeful, personally.

All of the commotion has put me off dipping my toes into PvP, but Blizzard's adjustments might just change that.

Here's hoping we see better balance between the factions in PvP in the days to come in both the US and EU – it's evident that Blizzard's on the case, at least.

Blizzard admits "some zones had become too crowded in WoW: Forever," lowers population in the MMO's areas with the most "significant congestion"

Developer of entertainment products and pillar of the global economy Rockstar has announced that Grand Theft Auto 6, its much-ballyhooed upcoming Bonnie and Clyde simulator, will be targeting 30 frames per second on consoles. Coincidentally, "on consoles" is the only place Rockstar has currently announced the game is releasing, so GTA 6 is a 30-fps-or-bust experience for the foreseeable future.

"Grand Theft Auto 6 has been fully developed from the ground up to provide the best possible experience for the current generation of consoles, targeting 30 frames per second while pushing both platforms to their absolute limits to bring the vast and rich world of Leonida to life", say the boys and girls in Edinburgh, while offering a little sweet treat to PlayStation 5 Pro owners in the form of PSSR (PlayStation of Soviet Socialist Republics—no, wait, sorry, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) support and ray-traced shadows.

Why am I telling you this on PC Gamer dot com? Partially because the traffic gods would beat me with a roll of pennies in a sock if I passed up an opportunity to write about GTA 6, but mostly because I'm very smug, and wish to subject other people to that.

Let's be real, the odds that GTA 6 was gonna target 60 fps on the box you have under your TV were always slim to none, but hearing it makes me feel more vindicated in my choice to wait for the game to hit PC than ever. I'm sure Rockstar's tech magi will make it a very nice 30 fps indeed, but my TV has 120 hertz in it. My monitor? 144, which I gather is kind of on the low end these days.

When it comes time for me to luxuriate in the lights of Leonida, I want to do it with maximum butteriness, I want all the bells and whistles set to 'on', and I want to do it on a proper gaming platform (German Linux). I'm excited to hear people's reports about what this game's actually like when it finally hits consoles in just over a week, but personally? I've never been happier about my choice to wait for GTA 6's inevitable but unannounced PC port.

World of Warcraft: Forever's quests are kind of a pain in the ass—they are this way because of the archaic, pre-solved quest design of the early 2000s (which is still very much more convenient than the MMOs that came before it). But it's also somewhat deliberate.

Back then, forcing you to run halfway across the map to talk to some dude halfway up a mountain (or in the example I'll talk about later on, a fight pit on an island somewhere) was a way to get you out in the world, exploring it, originally unfolding new questing hubs or putting new flight routes and settlements in front of you.

Over time, that design fell by the wayside in favor of convenience. The prospect of having to go out of your way for something that wasn't a strictly superior source of XP became a 'waste of time'. And to some degree, I get it. If you're worried about efficiency, having to jog for five minutes might feel like a chore.

Besides, WoW's always been a game that people are rushing to solve, and I think that's just grand—solving puzzles is fun. I am the kind of person to cheer on speedrunners, to be fascinated by optimisation. People are clever and determined and they will find unique and novel ways to push the envelope.

But boy, am I glad I'm not listening to them.

Quest helping addons have been a point of contention since Forever's launch—partially because some of them are paid services—and while I'm not going to comment on the meta-drama, I will say that, from an experiential point of view, avoiding them was the right choice for me.

That's not to say I've simply been bumbling about. I've been looking at the quests that land in my log and trying to figure out the most efficient way to get through them; and I'm at what I think is a respectable level 32 after around 52 hours /played (a number I've only hit because I am playing this game as part of my job).

I'm also not a complete vegan. I'm using the modernised in-game quest map marker, like some kind of oldschool pescatarian—though I will say that we did have these back in vanilla. They're just part of the UI, now.

But I've also not been sweating the small stuff. Did I do a quest chain in an order that means I've gotta hoof it back across Darkshire? Sure. Did I miss a dungeon quest? Cool, whatever. I'll either come back to it later or just not do the quest. I have free will and an "abandon quest" button.

And, more to the point, I've occasionally been taking holidays from that efficiency to go and do stuff that's way out there. For instance, the "Fire Hardened Mail" warrior questline, which sent my alliance character all the way to goddamn Razorfen Kraul in the Southern Barrens.

While there, I met an incredibly chill group of fellow allies who informed me there was a quest a little ways into Thousand Needles and, together, we hopped down the lift, grabbed a book, nattered a touch, ran away from centaurs, and then—like, 40 minutes later—finally got into the dungeon, where I tanked the whole thing as Fury because pickings were slim and nobody in their right mind would've made this trek.

Another warrior questline—this one mandatory—asks you to take the hike from Theramore all the way up to an island off the coast of Ratchet. And it's here that the Forever of it all kicked in, and those hand-crafted, zone-specific weather effects and lighting tricks instilled such a deep feeling of zen in me.

It was pouring it down with rain as I jogged up the beach from Theramore. I had to dodge a bunch of murlocs on their islands, snagged a few ore deposits on the way, and swam through stormy, turbulent seas to the Barrens' coastline. When I got there, it was sunset and considerably less rainy, so I jogged through the shallow waters to Fray Island just as the sun kissed the ocean.

And hey, it turns out that this time, I did actually more-or-less take the most efficient route—but this questline, a mandatory class quest to get all your stances, has a lot of experiences like it mirrored in other quests that are actually off the beaten path.

The actual Fray questline isn't anything special. On paper, it's just a "stand in a spot and beat a few mooks to get your stance". But the fact I had to do all of that nonsense made it memorable. Similarly, while my Fire Hardened Hauberk is a pretty nice blue, it was objectively not worth my time to do the long, arduous quest to get it. And yet, I had a great adventure anyway.

And it got me thinking: When was the last time I had an adventure in WoW? Not a quest, not a delve, not a seasonal track, but an actual honest-to-god adventure? One I chose to engage with, one that required me to think about how best to get to some far-flung place, one that required me to talk with other players (the horror), and one that—more importantly—took a lot of time I could've used elsewhere?

For some players, that whole journey is replaced with an arrow, or a 'do this next' prompt. And I'm not saying you can't enjoy the game in that way. For some, efficiency is a sport, and they should get to play ball. But boy did I make the right move for my own personal enjoyment, and I'd recommend that if you're feeling a little pale around the gills about questing to unplug and do the same.