How to link your guild's Discord to Forever, and what members need to enable

On 4 November, Blizzard published a guide to Discord account linking and guild chat mirroring for modern World of Warcraft and Forever. Blizzard says messages can pass between a Discord channel and guild chat, so a guild can stay in touch whether its members are in the game or out of it. Setup has three parts: members link their own accounts, a Discord administrator sets channel permissions, and the guild leader or an officer with the correct permissions links the channel. This is Blizzard's description, and we haven't tested it in the game.

What members need to enable

Linking starts in the game, and it connects your Discord account to your Battle.net account. Open the Game Menu with Escape, then open Options. In the Social tab, Blizzard says a new option will show: Enable Discord Functionality. In its Forever screenshot, that option sits near the bottom of the Social list with a Sign In button beside it.

Log into Discord before you start. Blizzard says choosing to connect takes you through some additional screens, and that you'll be asked to confirm the connection.

Read the confirmation screen

Blizzard's screenshots of those screens include a Battle.net page headed Confirm connection, and it's worth reading before you click. It says confirming will share your "account ID, BattleTag, character names, chat messages, voice chat, and your online and in-game status" with Discord and its users, to enable message exchange, invitations and Discord account creation. It also says you can only connect five different Discord accounts in a 30-day period, and that you can disconnect your accounts at any time in Account Settings.

What happens if a member doesn't link

Blizzard says that if a player hasn't linked their account, their in-game messages won't show in the Discord chat. Its screenshot shows what appears instead: the player's name, then the line "Sent a message to guild chat but has not yet linked their Discord account." So the channel can see that someone spoke, but not what they said. Anyone who wants their guild chat to reach Discord needs to link.

What the guild has to set up

This part has two stages. First, an administrator of the guild's Discord enables three channel permissions:

• Manage Channels, the ability to edit channel settings.
• View Channel, the ability to see and read the channel.
• Send Messages, the ability to post in the channel.

Everything else happens in the game, and either the guild leader or an officer with the correct permissions can do it:

• Press J to open the Guild & Communities panel.
• Select the Roster tab on the right side of the panel.
• Select Guild Settings at the bottom right.
• Under the Guild Control dropdown, select Discord Settings.
• Click a server. The window lists every Discord server you belong to, and the channels with linking permissions available.
• Select a linkable channel from the dropdown and click Link.

Where the messages land

Blizzard says you'll be able to tell whether a message was sent from Discord or from inside the game, and that you'll be able to adjust your chat tabs to suit. In its screenshots, messages from Discord carry a small Discord icon in the in-game chat line.

Blizzard says guild leaders will also be able to choose where Discord traffic goes, and to change it at any time in the guild's Discord settings: into regular /guild chat, or into a new dedicated /discord channel. Its screenshots show a checkbox for this, Separate Discord chat from Guild chat, on the panel that appears once a channel is linked.

Which name shows up

Blizzard says you'll also be able to choose the character name you want to display when chat messages arrive from Discord, using the Display Name dropdown. A tooltip in its screenshots describes this as the name "to be displayed for incoming chat from Discord for this user". The options are:

• Default uses the game's default, currently Last Online Character.
• Last Online Character Name uses the last online character for your Battle.net account in this guild.
• Discord Global Name uses your Global Name from Discord.

What this doesn't settle

The post gives no start date. It doesn't say whether a member who hasn't linked can still read Discord messages in the game, or which permissions an officer needs. It lists the three Discord permissions without saying whether they go to a person, a role or something else, and it doesn't say whether a guild can link more than one channel. Only the first Options and Guild Control screenshots are labelled by game; the others, including the Display Name tooltip and the Discord Linked panel, aren't, so they may not show exactly what Forever looks like.