Ruleset Changes What Gathering Pays
A herb sells for the same coin on every realm in Forever. What the ruleset moves is the time side of the trade: how many minutes of a session go into picking, how many go into travelling back, and how much raw material ends up on the shelf because of it. This is that comparison, with the parts we cannot measure marked as such.
The ruleset is charged in minutes, not in coin
A gathering route is three things in a loop: travel to the node, the pick itself, and whatever interrupts the two. Nothing in a realm setting touches the first two. Respawn timers, stack sizes and vendor values are properties of the world, not of the realm type. The ruleset only sets how often the third item happens and how expensive each interruption is in travel. That is why the honest way to compare realms is in hours of a session rather than in gold on a listing.
That framing also explains why the same route feels different on two realms with identical rules. Density of other gatherers decides how many nodes are already gone when you arrive, and competition inside one copy is a separate variable from the combat ruleset entirely. A quiet PvP realm can out-pay a crowded PvE one on the same loop. Treat ruleset as one input into gold per hour, not as the whole of it.
Everything below assumes the same character, the same two gathering trades and the same loop, changed only by where it is run. How the realm setting feeds into the wider price of gold is the longer argument in realm rules and gold, which covers more than the gathering side.
PvE, PvP and RP-PvP from the route's side
PvE. The only thing standing between a gatherer and a node is another gatherer. The cost shows up as empty spawn points, not as corpse runs, and the usual response is to widen the loop or move it to a quieter hour. Planning is predictable here: a route that worked last night works tonight at the same speed, so a session can be estimated in advance. That predictability is worth more to a crafter restocking materials than to anyone chasing a single rare spawn.
PvP. The same loop now carries interruptions that are not about nodes at all. The visible cost is the fight; the larger one is usually the travel it adds, because an interrupted lap restarts from somewhere other than where it stopped, and repair plus the walk back are charged on top. what a death takes back is the small half of that bill, and farming under open-world PvP covers the rest. Gatherers who stay on these realms tend to move in pairs; farming in a group against alone changes the maths more here than anywhere else.
RP-PvP. Combat rules match PvP, so the interruption risk exists in the same form. What players expect to differ is the population mix and the hours it plays in, which would change how contested a route is without changing any rule. We have no population figures for Forever realms, so read RP-PvP realms and their market as the description of the type rather than as a measured comparison.
What the shelf looks like from each side
Raw material supply is the sum of hours that got finished rather than abandoned. If interruptions take a share of every session on one realm and almost none on another, the thinner shelf is the one where gathering is slower, and the materials that suffer most are the ones that come from contested ground rather than from quiet corners. what reaches the auction house is the visible end of that, and it moves by material category rather than evenly across the list.
The second effect is on who is buying. Each realm has its own two buyer lists, and a lopsided faction split can do more to a stack of ore than the combat ruleset does. A gatherer choosing a home realm is choosing both at once, which is why the ruleset argument on forums rarely settles anything on its own.
Our reading, labelled as ours. For a player who gathers to sell, the quieter ruleset wins on throughput; for one who gathers between other activities, the difference is small enough to ignore next to route choice and play hours. Neither half of that is a measurement.
What we cannot check yet
We have not seen published gold-per-hour figures for any Forever realm, by ruleset or otherwise, and we are not going to invent them. Nothing in the material we have read describes different node density, different respawn behaviour or different vendor values by realm type, so we treat those as identical until something says otherwise.
What would change this page is simple enough to state. A per-realm population picture, or a clear pattern in material supply holding across several realms of each type, would turn the reasoning above into something closer to a measurement. Until then the useful conclusion is narrow: pick the ruleset you want to play on, then build the route around the hours you actually log in.
Questions
Does a PvE realm pay more per hour of gathering?
On the same route with the same character, a realm without open-world interruptions should finish more laps in an hour, so yes in principle. In practice the number of other gatherers on your loop often matters more than the ruleset does, and a crowded PvE realm can pay less than a quiet PvP one. We have no measured figures for Forever realms to put behind either case.
Are raw materials cheaper on PvE realms?
That is the usual expectation, on the argument that more finished gathering sessions mean a fuller shelf. It is reasoning rather than data: prices on any realm also depend on how many crafters are buying, how the faction split sits and which hour you post in. We have not seen per-realm price comparisons for Forever and will not publish guesses as numbers.
Is RP-PvP just PvP with different names?
For a gathering route the combat rules are the same, so the interruption risk is the same in form. What players expect to differ is who is online and when, which affects how contested a loop is without changing a single rule. We have no population data for Forever RP-PvP realms, so that part stays an expectation.
Should I reroll onto another ruleset to farm faster?
Only if you were planning to move anyway. A reroll restarts professions, Legacy progress and the whole levelling bill, and the throughput gap between rulesets is not something anyone has measured for Forever. Changing your route, your gathering hours or farming with a partner costs nothing and moves the same number.
Sources
- Blizzard's official site, where realm types are listed as realms are announced — World of Warcraft news and realm announcements.