"This faction is currently unavailable on this ruleset due to population imbalance" means too many characters on that ruleset already belong to your faction, so WoW Forever has paused new characters for it. It's deliberate, not a bug, and Customer Support can't lift it. On launch night it mostly hit Horde on the PvP rulesets.
Key takeaways
- It's a live population check. Blizzard is aiming for a 50/50 split on each ruleset, and the dominant faction gets locked out of new characters until the balance shifts.
- Launch-night reports name Horde on PvP and Roleplay-PvP. Normal and Roleplay haven't had faction-lock reports.
- The lock flips on and off. Players got in by retrying, coming back later or hopping rulesets, but none of that is a Blizzard fix.
- "Creation of that type of character is currently throttled" is a separate message, and on launch night it hit every ruleset and both factions.
What does "This faction is currently unavailable" mean?
It means your side is winning the headcount on that ruleset by too much. Blizzard's support article, quoted by Timesaver, puts it plainly: "if one faction is significantly more dominant than the other, character creation will be temporarily restricted for the dominant faction. Customer Support cannot help bypassing this restriction."
The target is an even split. On Episode 6 of Blizzard's official WoW: Forever Podcast, the developers said "the faction balance logic happens in each individual rule set," and "each individual rule set, it's aiming to be 50/50." EU forum rep Yryadorne said the same thing on October 29: the game "may indeed temporarily lock the creation of new character for a faction", and "Customer Support is unable to unlock this manually."
None of this was a surprise. Blizzard's ruleset article said the PvP rulesets would use systems "similar to the approach introduced in Season of Discovery, where new character creation could be temporarily limited for a faction." What Blizzard hasn't published is the population numbers, or how big the gap has to be before the lock kicks in.
Which rulesets have the faction lock?
PvP and Roleplay-PvP, going by Blizzard and by what players reported on launch night.
| Ruleset | Faction lock? | Both factions on one account? | Launch night |
|---|---|---|---|
| PvP | Yes | No, one faction only | Horde locked and throttled |
| Roleplay-PvP | Yes, balanced on its own | Not published | Horde locked |
| Normal | Not described by Blizzard | Yes | No faction-lock reports, some throttled |
| Roleplay | Not described by Blizzard | Yes | No reports either way |
Timesaver's table, built from the US forums. The first launch thread on the error opened at 11:18pm GMT, 18 minutes after the servers came up, and every player in it who named a faction was Horde.
Roleplay-PvP isn't a back door, either. Blizzard said on the podcast that if you make a Horde character on PvP and then try Horde on Roleplay-PvP, "you might not be able to because the restriction might be there."
How do you get past the faction lock?
There's no confirmed fix from Blizzard. These are the routes players reported working, roughly in order of how often they came up:
- Keep pressing Finish. The lock flips. One player made their character "after a few tries", another alternated between the lock and the throttle message. Others reported 100-plus tries with no luck, so it's a lottery.
- Come back later. The lock reopens as the balance shifts. Account Shark's launch-night log puts it simply: Blizzard recalculates the balance during the day, so try again later. During name reservation, waits ran from about five minutes to a couple of hours.
- Hop to another ruleset and back. One player made a character on Roleplay, logged out, came back to PvP and could then create their Horde character, and said it worked for a friend too. Another got "No realms are currently available" doing the same. Two reports, so treat it as a maybe.
- Try a different race or class. The throttle message says "that type of character", and players got different results on different races in the same minute.
One player whose whole guild rolled Horde on PvP hit the lock within minutes of logging in, and got in after 40 minutes. A separate thread had Alliance creation going through at the same time, which is the balance system doing exactly what it says.
Don't open a ticket. Blizzard has said Customer Support can't bypass it.
Should you roll Alliance on PvP instead?
Only if you actually want to play Alliance there. Blizzard's character creation article says that "in the PVP ruleset, you cannot have characters of both factions simultaneously. If you already have a character, you cannot create another of the opposing faction."
So an Alliance PvP character tonight shuts Horde on PvP for you until you delete it. And you can't play across factions with your friends either: they need the same ruleset and the same faction to quest, run dungeons or raid with you. Battlegrounds are the only exception.
If you just want to be playing tonight, Normal is the easy fallback. It hasn't had faction-lock reports, and you can have both factions on one account there. Your reserved name is held per region, so nobody can take it while you're holding it on another ruleset. You'd lose that character's progress if you recreate it on PvP later, though, and Blizzard hasn't announced any free move between rulesets. I've already made the case for playing on Normal in WoW Forever, and a faction lock on launch night is another reason.
What does "Creation of that type of character is currently throttled" mean?
It means the game won't create that specific character right now, and it's a different problem from the faction lock. Blizzard lists the message on its character name support article with no explanation.
Before launch it mostly appeared when people retried too fast during the faction lock. On launch night it showed up on its own, on Normal, PvP and Roleplay-PvP, for Horde and Alliance, and for people making their first and only character. One player said they'd been throttled for an hour while a friend on the same ruleset and faction got straight in.
Timesaver's reading, which it labels as its own and not Blizzard's, is that it looks like a server-side cap on how many new characters of one race, class or faction can be made in a short window during the launch rush. That would fit the friend-got-in reports. The same fixes apply: retry, try another race or class, or come back later.
Will the faction lock go away?
Not completely. It's a balance system, so it'll come and go on PvP for as long as one side is more popular. It should get rarer once the launch rush settles and people stop rolling new characters every minute.
If you're Horde and set on PvP, the honest answer is patience. Keep an eye on Blizzard's WoW Forever forums and @BlizzardCS on X for any change. For the rest of the launch-night errors, the release schedule in our WoW Forever release times guide and what to expect once you're in from WoW Forever's new levelling are good places to start.
