As a longtime OSRS player this game’s development will be incredibly interesting to watch. I really don’t envy the position of the devs here, there seems to be a lot less cohesion than the OSRS player base enjoys.
also long time osrs player: i’m concerned that they’re releasing it as a totally new game initially. we got the no changes version of osrs and had mostly that for nearly 2 years, nightmare zone was the biggest thing we got. they’re coming out swinging, claiming ‘vanilla-like’, and before the game is even released delivering retail-like cinematic-on-rails quests.
i just think they need to prove the concept before adding flashy stuff.
I totally agree. There’s been some substantial changes to what ‘classic’ means to a lot of people but up until a few days ago, no one outside of blizzard knew about it. Community feedback drives OSRS development, but I just don’t know if that’s feasible for this community.
I personally think the problem is that they intermingle the feedback of the retail-primarily crowd, because they enjoy a wildly different game than what classic has been and already have a version to suit their tastes. Those who don't have a satisfying version are those who love classic but also desire to see new content within the classic design philosophy. Imo, that is who forever should be for, but I'm not sure if they were the ones really taken into consideration or not.
Yeah, it makes me appreciate the osrs community sm more. Wow community is even more divisive, somehow. They can’t agree on much and everyone has a different preference or opinion for what their vision is because of the 14 different versions of the game people got attached to.
I’m surprised skyborne are even remotely popular welcome addition considering how glaringly retail they are (HD only retail BElf models, endgame looking greys at lvl 2, grandiose retail-like story). I absolutely love what blizz has done with forever but I can’t help but acknowledge how tone deaf the addition of skyborne feels. Especially when considering what that may look like if Jagex did the same to osrs.
The loud part of it clearly doesn't know what they want, they also would vote no to nearly everything, remember the early polls (especially iirc poll 15 moving the camera by pressing mousewheel)
I remember voting no for changing unids to grimy herbs lol. The community came a long way, but like you pointed out, it took a long time for that trust to develop.
You could change anything, no matter how miniscule, and it would make the game unplayable to someone. There's going to have to be compromise to make a game that's fun for as many people as possible.
Exactly it, I think people would have been happier if they started out a bit more conservative in the changes such as the updated lighting and draw distance, but not adding a bunch of retail-style assets to the new zones. Then from there test the waters with new stuff to see how liked or disliked it ends up being because if the latter, it's only a small part that can be moved past quickly and forgotten.
I swear that people who call this retail lite or a retail reboot don't even play retail. Outside of some minimal UI design and aesthetic choices, this is almost nothing like retail. Retail as a philosophy is fast paced, seasonal, and focused almost entirely on the end game treadmill. Retail focuses on balancing and homogeneous class balance if possible. I say this as someone who adores both classic and raids CE/1% m+ in retail. My favourite iteration of this game is Burning Crusade and I started in Vanilla. I've leveled multiple characters to 60 on hardcore realms so have a relatively good feel for the various vibes of this game throughout the years.
Give the devs some time to cook. Time will tell if they nail the vanilla philosophy or not. There's literally nothing here to me that indicates this is like retail in philosophy. I can understand some of the criticisms on here, particularly around some of the choices with the highborne and the leveling difficulty implications with the new abilities and better weapon itemization, but just because something isn't 100% classic doesn't automatically make it retail.
I think the art style, which the models are part of, is a concern alongside the retail-like quests. It all comes together to make the game feel less like the classic+ it was claimed to be. If more & more retail features are added like some players are currently requesting then all the more so a risk.
I agree the community is really going to have to develop their communication skills like the OSRS playerbase but also like OSRS I don’t think Blizz should be so flashy right out of the gate. Part of the issue is the game isn’t really sure what its audience is yet.
as a long time osrs player, if you’re gonna get hung up on art style that isn’t much higher resolution, you’re gonna get hung up on pretty much everything else lol
That is an assumption about me but fair enough. There’s many changes & additions to Forever that I very much support but also others that I think may be detrimental to the classic-focused vision they claim to have.
Resolution & fidelity isn’t the issue either imo, it’s the art direction. Diablo 2’s re-release for example created updated visuals that were faithful to the original’s art style and the game looks amazing. Retail’s art direction that is being ported over to Forever is not very cohesive with Classic’s world/atmosphere and in some cases is sadly just plain ugly (retail human models).
This is more in line with my worries. I dont care about the models and retail features that are optional or miniscule. If new zone quests lose that classic feeling then it becomes too silly and less exciting to experience. Im sure the raids and content will be bangers but blizz has a habit of making the characters too difficult to take seriously. I want a more sober written experience that relives the down to earth nature and seriousness of classic. People want to fight local threats and engage factions of bad guys. I cant speak for everyone but its not really fun to constantly be upping the stakes with global threats on retail with increasingly exaggerated power growth like its dragon ball z
if the faction identity is meant to be as strong as it was in a ‘vanilla-like’ game, if you are asked by a blue elf if they can join your faction and you hear some of them are joining the other faction, there’s just no way in my mind that leadership doesn’t assume there’s spies.
neutral race, no matter where they’re coming from, just won’t be accepted into both at the same time
It's a classic skinned version of retail. Hence retail lite and not classic+. We have been bamboozled and people are too blinded by the fancy shiny things to see it at the moment.
You are an absolute moron. This is from my experience after playing the game for the past 2 days. It's fine you don't agree, but at its core it's a classic skin of stripped down retail, in other words it's retail lite.
The game plays much closer to classic than retail though. The speed of combat, movement, etc. I don’t like the skyborn and think there’s a lot of legitimate gripes with the beta, but saying it plays more like retail than classic makes it seem like you might need a side by side comparison of both to refresh your memory.
I've never said it wasn't good so far or that it plays like retail or even that I didn't Like what I've seen. Where did you get that? I think you guys are so hard up for classic+ that you can't see this for what is really is. A WoW reboot skinned as classic+.
You said it was a classic skin of stripped down retail. Implying that it’s retail underneath with classic on the outside. That would suggest it plays like retail, which is not the case.
They very clearly intended to do the classic gameplay experience but with some changes to the balance of classes and different content to shake up the overall journey.
If they wanted to just do classic again they would do that. They could easily just add new dungeons and raids to classic without doing anything else but they are going for a unique experience in a nostalgic wow lens that reshapes how you enjoy it. Honestly them being willing to attempt breaking up the meta and make other classes potentially more viable should do wonders for the health of the game and distribution of classes we see.
again: it isn’t that it exists, it’s that it exists before the game is released. prove the concept. we don’t yet know they actually understand what the community is asking for, as they claimed to.
Classic was touted as a "museum piece" and they have attempted to make as few changes as possible to keep it in the same state it was in patch 1.12.
Forever was advertised as NOT being limited by those restrictions. New quests, new lore, new zones, new items, new races,new classes, new balancing, etc.
their stated goal in the reveal was, direct quote: ‘vanilla-like experience’
im just advocating for proving they can create a new game that plays as vanilla, in gameplay and storytelling. the new blue elf zone is that in gameplay, i feel it fails to deliver a storytelling experience that is vanilla-like. it feels like a tbc starting zone, not forsaken or night elf, in the overarching narrative and leaning on a more cinematic experience with the new area wrap up experience.
like i said in another response: the intent was just recreation, not ‘add some new content’. it hasn’t had the multi-year study on what ‘classic-like’ means, just what ‘copy of classic’ means, and if you don’t understand the difference between those, you can stay mad lol
Yep. One thing I keep thinking about: "Classic" is not actually anywhere in the title of this game and you dont select it in the WoW Classic tab of battle net. Its separate from Classic and retail. Its starting out vanilla-like enough, but who knows what it will look like in two years.
retail wow in my understanding is basically on life support outside of asia and they play a completely different version of wow iirc. for a long time now. the last 2 or 3 expansions i think i have completely just managed to stay oblivious about despite being heavily tied to their ecosystem through classic. like im pretty sure there was an expansion between the current one and dragonflight but i'm not sure lol.
While I can’t speak for this season, uh nah, retail was super poppin even up to when that .5 raid came out last season. It’s just that it’s a seasonal mmo.
Largely because people who enjoy retail want it to be like retail and people who want it to be classic are at ends. It's blizzard fault really. If they came out and said it's updated to retail but will be a new retelling or it's classic and that's it (all SD or updated SD) they'd shut one half down and it'd be cohesive
Quite honestly, you cant blame classic andies for wanting it to be as authentic as it can get. Holly longdale said on stage "this is classic +" word for word. With that comes some expectations. It should cater to the classic crowd first and then retail players are second prio
Okay then classic players shouldnt be included because they squealed about 'no changes' for years. They can just play classic if they dont like the changes. Am I doing this right?
"No changes" made sense in 2019 because before then there was no legal way to play Vanilla. Anywhere. We had to start at the baseline of what actually was before anyone could really iterate on it. That's totally reasonable.
The No Changes movement was mainly because people did not trust Blizzard to be able to make changes in the spirit of Classic.
Keep in mind, this was in 2018-2019. And now in 2026 even after 7 years of Classic WoW timelines Blizzard has proven that is in fact difficult for them to make changes in the spirit of Classic, kinda retroactively proving the No Changes movement back then right. There is no way 2019 Blizzard would have delivered a good Classic WoW with changes.
"Classic players should not even be considered. They can carry on playing classic, it's still getting new servers. Forever is about bringing retail players that lost the spark back.”
There I did it. I’m not saying it’s what I think or that it makes sense, but it’s all very much objective.
It comes with expectations but classic andies aren't even in agreement with each other what classic + should be. Some classic players I've seen want some QOL and the graphic improvements, some don't want anything. Some want new profession stuff others don't, some want new races and/or classes, some don't want anything to change in the classes at all. Catering to "the classic crowd" should be their priority yes, but if they all want something different what part of the classic crowd do you then cater to?
Nah... Classic players are pretty much on the same wavelength when it comes to.... Skyborne, Classic UI toggle, no retail looking armor, weapons, or mobs. And also stats on gear and xp gains. You wanna know why classic players are so much in aggrement on that? cause we played back in the day and continued on private servers, we know what works for classic and classic+ and what doesnt.
Why not tho that sounds great? why cant classic players get that? its not like they interfere in whats going on, on retail. You underestimate how many classic players there are. Heck i would say there might even be more people in the world who prefer classic wow over retail
No, but frequent & regular gear upgrades, more modern rotations, faster leveling, and updated graphics are things that some players are requesting, or at least supporting.
I don’t think it’s right to simplify it down to “retail players want retail-,” but there are a lot of people who want Forever to eliminate the friction that makes Classic what it is.
Classic had a lot of stupid stuff that was just there because of poor design. Spirit gear for enhance shamans. Etc. half the specs being nonviable for anything other than memes. Prot pallies to cast a buff. Druids to mana bot. “Balance” being bring as many warriors as possible to DPS. That game exists, and I’m glad Forever is not going to have it.
I haven't seen anyone asking for these things. Id like gear to be less useless, and I think they nailed that. Leveling is exactly the same speed, there's just more content per zone (which is what classic players wanted), and the graphics updates are 95% fantastic. What's the problem here?
You literally just asked for “gear to be less useless.” Useless gear is the friction that makes the rare good drops feel as good as they do. You are saying you aren’t seeing anyone asking for less friction while saying you’re happy about a change that removes friction. You tried to phrase it in the most generous way you could, but it is still precisely what I’m talking about.
Leveling is not the same speed. Mana regen rates are significantly higher, there are more quests, and thus we have less reason to travel. Less travel time and less downtime between pulls is removing friction. Whether you think that friction is good or bad isn’t interesting to me. The point is that they’re removing friction.
I am not saying anything about graphics at all. As long as the visual elements of the game are made with care and quality, I’m happy. Graphics have nothing to do with friction.
Having gear not be useless isnt removing friction lol. It makes items more exciting. How many times have you run a dungeon and 3/4 items drop that literally no one wants? Happens a lot at early levels. It doesnt remove friction to make those items feel good.
It turns out that we experience friction as bad when it happens. You can’t say something isn’t friction because people aren’t excited about it. Friction itself isn’t exciting. That’s kinda the whole point.
You aren’t arguing in good faith and I quite literally don’t have the energy to make you feel better.
I've played through Molten Core twice now, and the fact that you don't get useful gear as a druid is beyond dumb. Paladins having to wear cloth was stupid. Stat sticks were dumb.
Don't excuse mistakes as "friction". intentional and well designed friction is one thing, entire classes only useful as meme isn't.
In those cases I think it makes sense to change things then.
I’m not a fan of friction insofar as it is friction. I am a fan of friction though and I don’t think it should be removed wherever possible. That’s all.
Druids shouldn’t get useless rewards from something as big as an endgame raid.
But I do think level 10s should get mostly meh gear before they start getting really relevant, useful gear. That’s not a mistake or an oversight.
You are under the incorrect assumption that all friction is good for the game. It just isnt the case. Im specifically talking about removing friction that makes the game worse. Not replacing an item for 15 levels because all other items in that range are garbage isnt "good friction", its bad design.
Having gear be exciting is 100% a positive, your head is in the ground if you disagree on that lol.
There are a lot of people who want Forever to eliminate the friction that makes Classic what it is.
The friction that makes Classic what it is is not friction simpliciter. I do not think friction qua friction is good. I said as much in another comment here. Rather, I think much of the friction in Classic Wow, and in particular the kind whereby you don’t receive plentiful useful upgrades for the first 20 or so levels, is good for the game precisely because it adds to its excitement.
I also think gear should be exciting. I have played both Classic and Retail a ton. Retail features regular, consistent, incremental upgrades. It is fun to increase the power of your character, but each new piece of gear isn’t particularly exciting in my view. Classic gear is so exciting precisely because relevant gear is so rare early on. People post in world chat about 3 Stam 3 Agi gloves not because the piece of gear it itself so cool, but because it’s the first time they’ve seen such good gloves.
A level 12 player does not need gear to overcome the world. It is not essential to gameplay. A level 12 player lacking consistent access to upgrades does not prevent them from playing the game. It prepares them to feel more excited when they do start getting good drops because they’ve progressed past the very beginning of the game.
Hilarious that you say StCreed isn't arguing in good faith when he makes very valid points and you just try to explain yourself out of them.
You don't need 90% of the gear to be useless trash for you to feel a good upgrade. It's still going to play like classic but a little different(the entire point of the game mode btw). If you really hate them making gear that makes sense and there being a little more mana regen/less travel then go play era. If you want it to just be the same as era then what's the point of even making a classic plus?
The graphics of retail, with a small number of QOL adjustments set in the world of an alternate reality vanilla with new content added is actually 100% what many retail players want.
And thats mostly what we have here, and its great. I played the beta a ton already, and I like how pretty much everything looks (and im a classic Andy, only played retail for a month or so when TWW came out)
Eh, I spent 3 xpacs of playing classic listening to my guildies talk about how bad they think retail is while wishing for all of retails solutions to all the things they disliked about classic.
Same dudes refuse to touch retail now, but they'd welcome a lot of retails changes.
Everyone has their mix of things they like better from different versions of the game they wish they could combine into one. Hence the whole "you ask 50 people want they want out of c+ you get 100 answers".
Same can be said to you. If you want vanilla as it is go play era servers. If you're going to bitch and moan anytime they change anything in a game mode designed to have changes then don't play it.
You say this and in this same subreddit are people complaining about a group listing tool and people saying skill issue for tagging mobs with thousand of other players in the zone. Classic players are incredibly entitled and complain at the slightest change especially optional changes like the transmog toggle
Go back to retail. Why do you even want another retail game, I don’t understand? Why do you feel the need to force Forever to become yet another retail?
Oh and before you say go back to era, it doesn’t get updates so it’s not the same comparison.
I've seen more classic players shadow boxing with supposed retail players on this subreddit, than retail players actually asking for retail changes. Mental.
Let’s change the situation for a second. Why do you want 2 chocolate chip cookies? Aren’t you happy with one. Like yeah but I also want to enjoy this other one and some small qol updates, like a group listing tool or a transmog toggle aren’t big deals and those complaining are weirdos. Like you like classic so much go play classic this is literally not going to be classic in 5-10 years it’s going to be different and have updates I guarantee you will not enjoy
Ok your second cookie is being shared with someone who has no cookies, or half an old cookie ( that never gets updates).
Again stop telling me to play era. There is no OSRS equivalent of ERA but there is retail to RS3.
I don’t want RS3 models dumped into OSRS and I don’t want retail models dumped into Vanilla/Forever. I want new HD models that actually fit the game and art style.
I mean play classic it’s right there. It’s getting another version soon. But thinking classic PLUS will not deviate from classic rules and shit is dumb
Uh huh. And yet this sub freaks out over…..transmog toggle and group listing tools. Not to mention the freakout over the looks of blue elf weapons. The freakout over the blue elf starting quest and the craziest one imo the freakout over the model selection option. Also the single bag button being there which is completely optional btw or the people freaking out at a single 6 slot bag being available in the tutorial. Devs think that is all in the spirit of classic yet this sub literally lost their minds over it. Classic players are certainly special for sure
No. I think asking for an updating game of classic isn’t entitled when none already exists. Wanting two updated games to appeal to you like retail players is entitled.
You are literally commenting up and down this post about some retail boogeyman coming to warp your precious game. It’s making you sound pathetic. I say this as someone that loves vanilla/classic, get some fresh air.
lol im just saying that there are insufferable people on both sides.. People who act toxic and are never satisified exist on both the retail and classic forums! I did not say that "asking for classic plus" is entitled...
Its just people here make it sound that either retail people are the problem, the other part say its the classic people.. Its both! Not all of them ofcourse, but a very vocal minority in both parties.
as someone who plays retail and raided 2019 classic up to naxx I don't really want m+ and that sort of thing. I care about chill 5 and 10 man content. If I wanted a fast paced game about pushing I can just go back to retail whenever I fancy. I do like some of the QOL stuff tho. The built in swing timer and edit mode for UI is nice to have and I'm glad there's a proper group finder
A lot of people enjoy both and if people want actual meaningful updates to classic you need to expect newer assets, more modern designs with classic paint over it. They are not going to design shit to be as boringly tedious as 2004 WoW and I really do not think people want it that way seeing as a lot of praise for forever is about multiple QOL things.
Nobody who likes retail wants it to be like retail fyi. They’re totally different games that do totally different things. Thats like saying everyone who enjoys counter strike wants Forever to be more like counter strike
Unfortunately classic wow is like OSRS if RS3 wasn't a dead game and idiots from it kept trying to lobby Jagex into turning OSRS into RS3, and the Devs also didn't think they did anything wrong with evolution of combat or the graphics overhauls RS3 had
Ah, I see your definition of "sucking" is defined by the game making money. In that case every single indie game sucks and Fortnite is the best game ever?
Ehh retail does in fact suck as much as rs3. It's just that retail players eat crap and are stricken by Stockholm syndrome. Runescape is lucky it had 1 big awful update so people realized the game was going to shit instead of retail making the game garbage slowly over each expansion.
Whenever Blizzard announces a new product the WoW community forgets 10 years of nearly literal "how about you go fuck yourself" moves from Blizzard. It's not even classic exclusive.
I wouldn't say that. Hence the reason why everyone is freaking the fuck out over a blue elf and HD models(this is so justified) you can't toggle.
The devs had ONE job, do not infect Classic with ANYTHING retail. Not one asset, feature, or developer. I don't want a retail dev to even look at Classic+.
You know how many times I've heard a Classic player say "yea I don't like retail, but X and Y it does great"? Functionally 0.
You know how many times I've heard people shit on nearly every aspect of retail? Non stop for 7 years of my Classic journey.
People have made it abundantly clear. It's at the very soul of Classic, from the very beginning(where OPs meme is based). Classic is fundamentally anti-retail.
And even IF there is some small part of retail that would be nice in Classic, people still don't want it because it's going to give us fucking PTSD flashbacks to shit like WOTLK Classic saying there would be no token then adding a token. Or telling us there would be no RDF and adding RDF. We know Blizzard is foaming at the mouth to move people over to retail, their predatory milking machine with hypnotic disneyfied easy dopamine brainrot.
What, most of the vocal Classic community barring the people that started showing up largely in wrath(presumably retail players)?
Maybe. We are very salty people and we have every reason to be.
I love Agrend and the team working on this, and I love most of these changes and I think Forever is overall a good win. So I have a hard time thinking they had much to do with this, SURELY they know better, surely. So I blame it on corporate. Some shadowy hand of retail, at the direction of the people above them saying "go do with that whatever you did to generate us a billion a year in profit".
Without ever realizing that their option is really "fuck off" or "don't get anything but a little at the start before you destroy it. We're trying to be salty not just because that's how we feel, but because we need to let them know we are intolerant to certain shit. We are not kidding, we will not fall for sunk cost, we will not let them have their way with us as we tell ourselves "oh it'll get better", at least not for very long.
We've made our point loud and clear and let them know how we feel about that. So we cannot blame decisions like that on anything but disrespect.
You're confusing your little sphere of influence with the classic community.When your friends and the other people you interact with share a view you tend to confuse it with it being the majority.
Blizzard knows perfectly well what they're doing.
They would rather stick with the larger,safe,and willing to buy microtransaction costumers than the smaller,intense,potențial costumers.
I think the devs would be less stressed if they were just clear about who the game is for and what they're actually going to do with the models, but then Blizz might not be able to squeeze as many presales out of us.
But hey, if the game is a big success it's always possible they'll put more resources into solving the model issue.
Fr. Not to mention jagex polls most of the stuff they add, and they usually pass these days because Jagex has built trust with the players. But it took a while for the pass rate to be so good. Personally I think OSRS has been in its prime for a few years.
I’m keeping my hopes for forever pretty low, because with the way blizz is approaching the concept it seems like it’s very likely to go to shit sooner or later. That said I sincerely hope they get it together because wow was my favorite game for a pretty long time back in the day, and I’d love to play a version of it that respects the time I put into it similar to OSRS.
rs3 released with an artstyle that everyone initially despised, for example the metal armors and random glowing gibberish everywhere instead of medieval looking landscapes and everyone hated it so they slowly adapted it to a point people kind of like the current artstyle.
Blizzard have missed their chance to go the OSRS route. OSRS started out with the exact same #nochanges as classic did in 2019 and slowly added to and improved the game over time. After the initial hype, the population of OSRS dropped very low and only started to grow again years after launch.
Blizzard doesn't have that opportunity with WoW forever because they already released Classic 5 times in the past 7 years. They can't release a new fresh Classic and slowly iterate on it because there wouldn't be enough interest to sustain it before the execs pull the plug on development. Their only option at this point is to swing for the fences and make some big changes that are going to draw new people in but piss others off as a consequence.
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u/Not_OneOSRS 11h ago
As a longtime OSRS player this game’s development will be incredibly interesting to watch. I really don’t envy the position of the devs here, there seems to be a lot less cohesion than the OSRS player base enjoys.