Takes have been coming hot and heavy about the WoW Forever beta since the moment it went live, and I am sure nobody has been asking, “Sure, but what does Wilhelm think?” But you’re going to get my opinions anyway.
WoW Forever
That said, my takes are lukewarm at best… though, that is probably more due to my understanding the assignment compared to some people.
TL;DR – It’s vanilla WoW content with some updates. It’ll do. I’m good. Is it Nov. 4 yet?
As for people not understanding the assignment, that started as soon as you get could into the game, at which point there was a hew and cry because there was a queue to get in.
A pretty formidable queue. I got to see it, the joy of working from home.
16,702 people ahead of you
This got people declaring immediately that the megaserver idea was a failure and WF was doomed… or that Blizz is dumb and couldn’t count how many boxes they sold.
Me? I take the long view.
To start with, this was a beta test, so finding problems like this was the reason for even being here, because you don’t want to find these problems on launch day. Do we not remember the launch of WoW Classic back in 2019?
It took 100 minutes longer back in 2019
Over at GamesRadar they have a post about the Blizz team’s surprise at the popularity of the beta and how that open salvo helped them find a problem. For the former, I am sure the sales gave them some idea… but those sales also came five days before the beta… three business days… and you don’t completely reconfigure your server environment in three days. So we got a PTR environment. Them’s the breaks.
And by that evening you were able to log straight into the game without a queue, so it was no longer the worst problem in the universe.
I’m not going to declare it “problem solved,” because launch day will still be a challenge. The game will be open to anybody with an active WoW subscription after all. But the beta finding a problem is a win… because, again, you signed up, and likely PAID, to be in beta. (And if you paid you’re an idiot like me. Welcome to the club.)
So what did I do once I got in?
I made a cash elf druid. I paid for the damn cash elves, I was going to play one.
Also, they have a new starting area and it would be nice to see something new. And then I dropped into the world and… whoa Nelly, I was not alone in that desire it seemed.
Cash Elves everywhere
That image doesn’t give you the sense of the density of elf flesh in the little corner of Azeroth. I carried on the the first quest, which was being stripped by the host of locust that was us, and decided I could maybe save that for later.
So I went and made a human paladin. I was always going to roll one up. It is my default… and also I want justice for the original pally talent tree. I want a viable tanking or DPS pally.
Here is where I ran into the difference between standard definition and high definition models. The Cash Elves are pretty much the same when you swap the option, and there is a checkbox there in the character creator to let you check it out.
I would say… I was not impressed with the high definition update.
SD top, HD Bottom
These two… do not convey the same look. I had to take a minute to go to retail to see if the human male model is as bad there… but no. I mean, it isn’t great with those options, but somehow WF HD is a third version of character models. Maybe they covered this in one of the panels and I forgot already, but holy moly!
(As an aside, posting this image to Reddit has yielded me my most popular item on the site for 2026. If there was still an annual Reddit recap, this would be on it. Also, WF has people confused and they are posting in WoW, WoWClassic, WoWForever, ClassicPlus, and a few other subreddits about it. There is a message in that somewhere.)
On the bright side, human males seem to be the worst off in the HD models, though somebody at Blizz seems to have pushed the mascara slider a bit too far on some of the female options. It isn’t just a night elf problem anymore. But dwarves, for example, look good.
I went back to standard definition, tried to block high def from my thoughts, and rolled on into Elwynn Forest with my pally. And it was packed.
Not just a cash elf problem
That dismayed me a bit and after running around for just a look, I logged off and left it for later.
In the early evening, when the queue had subsided… I saw 400 people ahead of me but the estimate was under a minute and it was only a few seconds before I was past that… I dropped back in and found myself in a still crowded starter zone.
But not as crowded as before.
There was still competition for mobs, which is especially painful as a pally who has no ranged attack yet and needs a sec or two wind up that mashie for a hit, during which just about any other class seems to feel almost obligated to tag the mob for themselves. That, however, is the same old story of vanilla.
Most of the place was as you remember, but there were a couple of changes here and there.
For openers, some of the harvesting tradeskill trainers are now hanging around the place, so you can get started right away before you get to the first inn. There is even a quest to help you get your harvesting skill going.
Here, read a book about it
There is also at least one new quest for me in the human and dwarf starter zones, which I avoided doing. I saw some concern about additional quests pushing you forward out of zone content too quickly, which always has and always will be a hazard in a game where you have rested experience, unless you just want to punish people for pushing ahead too fast.
It does feel a bit faster than maybe actual 2006 WoW, where I would often split time between the human and dwarf starter zones to keep the quests at or below level. But where I hope this kicks in is during the classic 30-50 slump zone. I can live with a little extra speed early on if they can smooth that out a bit.
That will have to wait. The beta has us capped at level 20 for now. At least I haven’t seen anybody higher than level 20, though I will admit by Sunday I was seeing a LOT of level 20s.
Let’s see, what other items are there to go over?
Mega Servers
I like this idea in theory. I don’t want to relive 2006 with friends on a dozen different servers. In practice… we’ll see. I am getting a bit tired of this message popping all the time during peak hours.
World Refresh Again!
I hope they have something better when November 4th arrives. I’ve had that message come up three times in five minutes. I get it, you need to manage layers and population… but still, other games have managed this better. WoW Classic managed this better in 2019!
Also, the mega server isn’t great for Euros, or so Reddit would have be believe. Isn’t there a cloud computing solution for that?
I also think the mega server is a bit of a defensive strategy for Blizz. No dead servers, no server merges, if this isn’t popular it is only one server and they can scale down the hardware commitment and let it run.
Last Names
I am so in for last names. I know that this is in there as a way to accommodate the whole mega server idea, but I come from an online gaming history where last names were special, so I just like having them. And I know the WoW community wouldn’t dream of abusing this new feature.
Like these fine citizens of Azeroth
Okay, well… maybe in the RP split of the mega server it won’t be so bad… though I do hear Blizz is banning people for going over the line on obscenity… which I am pretty sure they do on standard servers where you only get one name.
New Lighting
This got a lot of play in one of the BlizzCon panels, but is otherwise kind of subtle. A lot of places you have to stand and look before you can see how the new model has changed how the world looks. I’ll toss this image in as an example.
The blacksmithing area in Stormwind
I took this screenshot as a bit of a “damn, this place is crowded” demo. Then, when I was cropping it down I noticed that it was also an example of how the new lighting works, with the orange haze of the twilight sun lighting the area in a subtle way that is very different from how it looked in vanilla, and likely so versus retail as well.
If you are in a hurry and have your head down, you can easily not see it. But then it can suddenly grab you and you start to see if all around you.
Cash Elves
Nobody likes seeing blatant monetization, and this obvious monetization was obvious. That said, the cash elves… and I am afraid that name has just stuck for me, so I don’t even remember what they’re actually called… serve a couple of purposes, where “make Microsoft some money” is just one on the list.
A cash elf when you call him a cash elf
Another is to give the horde that “pretty” race that it is alleged that they were clamoring for back in vanilla. I remember that story. So if you’re making some strident argument that, say, goblins should have been the added race… well, you’re wrong. First, not pretty. Second, they already exist in later content and we’re not going in that direction. We’re staying in the vanilla timeline… which is why it couldn’t be blood elves either.
And if you’re argument is that the lore is whatever Blizz says it is… you’re right, and they have said it is this. But I know, people only like the lore when it meets their needs.
Anyway, given all the other things Blizz could have monetized, this feels like we’re getting off easy… for now at least. They did not, for example, change the subscription price or add in a WF surcharge. If you can resist the packs you don’t have to pay anything in addition to play.
The Camp Thing
The introduction to camps is one of the new quest lines in the starter areas. You get to go sit down by the campfire, get some instructions, and get a buff when you hang out long enough.
Sitting by the campfire
This is, no doubt, why you get access to gathering professions earlier, because they can add things to the camp to influence the buff. And I like, in theory, the community aspect of this, encouraging people to sit together out in the field. I am not sure how it will play
PvP
We only had two server options for the beta, “normal” and “PvP,” which says something about PvP.
Gameplay Style – Why can’t you just be normal?
Deciding to be normal, I did not opt for PvP. But I saw a thread on Reddit that declared that PvP would absolutely be the “make or break” feature for WoW Forever, which made me emit an audible guffaw as I thought, “Don’t ever change, you PvP forum warriors!”
But Blizz can fall into that trap too. I still remember Battle for Azeroth, when they tried to make all servers PvP servers and effectively made no servers PvP servers.
Classic versus Enhanced Experience
I misread this option and chose enhanced, then spent a bunch of time undoing the settings to change it back.
Are you experienced, or have you been experienced?
It does also appear that you get the retail WASD key setup no matter which you choose. I had to swap the mapping between Q / A and E / D to put strafe and turn where they belong. My brain is just hardwired to that at this point.
Also, it is a bit odd to see what appears to be Desolace through the portal on the start screen. I wonder what that portends.
Other Retail Things
I am not in love with the retail UI. Certainly, its default layout is something I find irksome. I will, however, allow that the edit mode from retail that let’s you sort things out how you like them is probably better than depending on some rando who made an addon that they might decide not to support a few months down the road.
Also the built-in junk seller is nice, and is one less addon I will have to go looking for.
Transmog… well, I will be able to wield that Kobold shovel forever on my ret pally. That is all I ask.
Controller Support
I thought this was kind of neat. It must be stone simple, because I figured it out pretty quickly.
Fighting the Defias with a controller
I was able to successfully run around, target, fight, cast, and loot out in the field, both with the pally and with my dwarf hunter.
I will grant you that characters level 20 and under are probably the ideal scenario. I am willing to commit to watching a stream of a 20 person raid using only controllers just to see how that plays out. But it still seemed somewhat viable. I ran around for quite a while with the controller.
The only hitch is that I could never finish turning in a quest. There was an option missing from the UI… or I just couldn’t find it… that let you end the quest.
And to swap out of controller mode you have to open up the options and uncheck the box in the correct area.
I want to point out how seamlessly other titles, like Forza Horizon 6, No Man’s Sky, and Valheim, transition between keyboard and controller mode. But that ignores the fact that WF is loading up a different hotbar when you swap, so it needs to reload the UI. I am not sure they can even get a hot key set to swap in that situation.
Still, the controller thing is interesting and putting WF on XBox or the Steam Deck is an long desired outcome.
Overall
What was my TL;DR at the top? ” I’m good. Is it Nov. 4 yet?”
What more can you ask for?
Overall it is another dive into World of Warcraft, this time down a path that is neither classic nor retail, but its own thing. I am going to continue to fiddle around with the beta. Maybe even get back to my cash elf druid once that starter zoned settles down a bit. I don’t see anything in the way of what I posted on Saturday about getting the band back together.