We’re now about a week past BlizzCon and much digital ink has been spilled detailing out every last item mentioned about WoW Forever at the event. But questions still remain.
WoW Forever
The big one seems to be “What is WoW Forever?” I’ve been over that one a few times in various locations. It is not WoW Classic, or even vanilla WoW, for specific definitions of the terms. But we’ve been down that path before. In 2019 there were some loudly declaring that WoW Classic wasn’t REALLY WoW Classic because of some detail or need to adhere to the state of computing 15 years past launch.
But it is not merely retail WoW set in 2006 Azeroth. (Blizz was very careful not to say “2004 Azeroth” and the purists who long for Captain Placeholder were not doubt enraged once more. There are so many bad threads to downvote in r/wowclassic now.) We’re not getting flying mounts or Dungeon Finder… hell, the summoning stones won’t even summon party members. You will need a warlock for that.
And it certainly isn’t World of Warcraft 2. No, it is not that.
Instead, it is more like Alternate Reality WoW, a version of 2006 Azeroth with the hindsight and resources to make different choices and have additional content to tell different stories.
There were a million different visions of “Classic Plus” floating around over the last few years. But Blizz could only make one. And the one they chose adheres to the high level definition commonly espoused in these threads and discussions, in that it is a return to the 2006 world where there will be new content to explore in that original context. So we get new zones, new dungeons, new race/class combos, revised skill tree and abilities, a new race (that can go either Horde or Alliance, if you have the $30), and a lot of new quests and storylines to help tie the world together.
There is also the promise of staying at level 60, never raising the level cap, and instead having horizontal progression with new raids, dungeons, events, and other content as time goes on.
I have a side bet that we get a level cap announcement at BlizzCon 2029. But I am a cynic because I have seen how we behave and how companies react… and how they reneg on their promises the second holding to them might possibly affect the bottom line. (Looking at you CCP/Fenris!) I feel that at some point some senior exec will overrule Holly Longdale and insist player numbers are down and WoW Forever needs a hook to reel people back in.
But I wouldn’t bet the pink slip for my car on it. Guild Wars 2 has maintained a viable business model without raising the level cap. But it also had to start selling content expansions, something it had said wasn’t in the plan early on. So if you think the WoW Forever cash elves are a problem, I bet you’re in for a rough ride as time goes on.
Or maybe not.
Maybe the Holly Longdale vision is that multiple parallel versions of WoW running along and getting updates will keep people subscribed and hopping between them. Maybe when we’ve played out the initial WoW Forever content and checked out The Last Titan, there will be a 2029 re-launch of WoW Classic, now more classic than ever, that will keep us going.
I don’t know, but it could happen.
The other question, which gets expressed in a few ways, seems to boil down to wondering who the target audience for WoW Forever really is. The fact that it isn’t simply WoW Classic or retail, that it is some third path, seems confusing. And that is not without reason.
Blizz tried to sell us on a lot of details… the paladin talent tree remap landed hard with me for sure… but the vision was a bit hazy, too wrapped up in a mix of hope, dreams, and no small amount of nostalgia. Such is the nature of visions.
So the answer to that is pretty specific to individuals. Do you want to play an alternate reality version of WoW? I get if you don’t. There are so many other titles out there to play. Too many. I’ve felt the pressure of choosing this month with the launches and updates so far, and now we have this!?!?
Potshot, Ula, and I watched BlizzCon… not together, but were watching it in parallel and chatting on Discord, registering our reactions and comments. We watched ALL the WoW Forever panels. I am glad we did. Personally, I felt like I *got* it after the first deep dive. But then the next panel gave me some new perspective. It was quite a ride.
In the end, come Sunday afternoon, when we things had wrapped up, we made the decision that we were going to go for it. We were going to try and get the group back together. The three of us were on board right away and Bung, who has been having a busy summer so hasn’t been playing with us for a while, declared he was up for it as well.
That gives us a group of four… which is something we have managed to work with before. We did all of Blackrock Depths in WoW Classic, which added up to a dozen runs, with just a group of four. (Oh man, I do hope they do some dungeons like that in WoW Forever. We don’t need any more linear, 15 minutes or bust, Dungeon Finder tuned instances.) So four could work.
But there is also Earl from the original group, who was with us for a while during original WoW Classic, until he was stranded in Japan during Covid. And Meclin is about and on our Discord server and played a bit of retail with us when we were trying out WoW Midnight.
And, of course, going all in, we bought the cash elf DLC… and not just the basic $30 version to get ourselves name reservations. We went in on the $60 version for more fluff… including the original WoW Collector’s Edition pets… and guaranteed beta access.
Beta access? That is a hazard. That could lead to a quick burnout.
On the other hand, Blizz has been pretty good at limiting beta to make sure you don’t burn out right away. I remember the WoW Classic beta and writing a post about two weeks before launch moaning about how all I wanted to do was play WoW Classic.
Beta started on Thursday, but I am writing this before that moment. This is the final, untainted by the reality of the game, view of the situation. We’ll see how well it holds up. I am sure I will have opinions next week.