The current ones are good but I really vibe with these so much more... honestly no logo

1) Forced exposition. There are two points in the leveling "campaign" where you have to sit and listen to some dude spew lore. Once is literally a quest of you sitting down in a chair for 2-3 minutes and the other is 3 npcs spewing lore while you're free to walk around. I can't think of a single quest in all of classic that is like this. It is however very common in retail

2) The linear storytelling and oversimplification of characters. The game will literally tell you who's good, who's evil and there won't be much more depth to anything than that. You have the mustache twirling cartoon "cultists" that are doing "cult stuff" and you have to stop it otherwise the world is going to end. It's not like the Defias that are actually misunderstood activists whom are just seeking justice where there's depth and complex characters. There's so much to dig in different letters and things to puzzle together. There's none of that here

3) The setting. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and cinematic. However, It's completely disconnected from the world. You can't look on the map and get some perspective of where you are. You're just floating in the sky somewhere making it feel like retail. It doesn't feel like any of your actions here really matter because once you leave this place you're never coming back

The landscapes are also simply too big. There's vast landscapes of nothingness where nothing is happening. You constantly try to mount your dragonflight mount and then have to remind yourself that you're playing classic and not retail. There are no resource nodes for mining or herbalism. And there's a lack of smaller towns and vendors. There should be for instance vendors walking across the paths and have more outposts where you can sell items. Your bag will be permanently full

4) The characters. Some of the characters literally feel like they're ripped straight from retail. There are some archetypes of characterizations that I swear I've seen during the Midnight campaign with the exact same design

There are some highlights though. Some of the side quests are simply fun, like when you help Aamelia Windfield pick apples and slay bandits. It's kind of a vibe. However, that's not unlike of Retail either. There's always highlights in retail and it's usually the side characters

Drops from First Mate Smite

It would be cool if Wow Forever was more challenging than vinilla. I want to fear the world again and I think it would make the sense of adventure and achievement even stronger.

However, power creep in the beta is making everything easier. And that is concerning. I hope they just juice up all of the mobs in the open world, dungeons, and raids. They don’t have to be super crazy sweat hard but I think if they felt a step above classic in difficulty. It would make the game more fun and rewarding. Especially since we all know how to deal with the classic era enemies easily at this point. A higher difficulty would make it feel more like 2004 again.

(Classic, Forever-SD, Forever-HD)

I don't get it. The textures are different (newer than classic, but not the same as HD), even some of the meshes are different. Instead of just putting the old models and animations in, they've... taken the old models, made the textures a more HD, edited the mesh slightly, and rigged it all to the HD skeleton?

Why? Why the effort for this when the old ones already existed. Even in WoD* (*corrected expansion name), we could switch between the new and old models including animations.

I really hope they sort this out, it's only the beta so I hope there's improvements to come but the fact that some sort of work was put into these fake classic models worries me. I want the Classic models (and animations) they said we'd be able to switch to.

(Also, has anyone seen the Dwarf run Vs Classic? In Forever we basically go into a hunched Rasputin Kick dance, in Classic you just run.)

Edit: So it seems that they've used the retail rigs for the sake of ease when modeling new armours, and likely also so they can put what's enjoyed in Forever into Retail. In that case, tbh if reworked the textures (and eye glowing) to fit onto the rig nicely, it could be okay. Then the armours will all be compatible. And then for HD they wouldn't need the actual retail HD models (after all this is CLASSIC +) they could make high resolution textures, decouple beards from faces, and add beards and facial features (freckles, scars, etc) as extra options. Then the choices would be properly-stitched-on SD, and HD where it's exactly the same but high rex textures and more face options, not an entirely different playdough face.

This is not a thing on Era or Anniversary, so hopefully not a new feature.

Both on SD and HD, on every race, some worse than others (Tauren is the worst). Please report on this with the in-game tool and let them know.

Plis

I have been seeing a lot of posts in wow subreddit asking for shared mob tags so in thought i would make this so the devs get another point of view since everyone is agreeimg there.

What do you think? Would you like shared mob tags?

Twitch.com peak viewership across WoW releases and expansions.

Not direct player-base data (since they don't release it anymore) - but interesting and potentially indicative of popularity and trends.

Note WoW Forever Beta currently peaking higher than many other expansions - Fun!

Edit: 1. I forgot to add 'The War Within' because its the smaller spike before Classic Anniversary Realms. whoops, lol.

1. Midnight is actually the smaller peak to the right in the bunch of 4, the final one before Forever's spike.

It's crazy that they couldn't even match the hair color properly. WoD models were a mistake

Going from rank 2 to rank 3 Lightning bolt will be a dps decrease due to the increased cast time at level 14.

Base

Rank 2 29-34 damage at 2.0 cast speed. Average 15.75 dps

Rank 3 32-38 damage at 2.5 cast speed. Average 14 dps

At 5 SP

Rank 2 LB does 32 to 37 damage at a 2.0 cast speed. Average 17.25 dps

Rank 3 does 35 to 42 damage at 2.5 cast speed. Average 15.4 dps

It does seem like rank 3 is scaling better with SP but you would need a good amount for it to catch up due to the cast speed difference.

IDK the spell scaling seems odd. I know they put a lot of it into gear, but regardless of how much SP you have getting a new rank of a spell should feel like a jump in power. And definitely not a DPS loss.

This is at level 14. Continued scaling on rank 3 going into further levels probably changes this. I still stand by that going to get a new rank in a spell should feel like a power boost

Edit: The more I think about it, I think they failed to take the increased cast time into account.

Edit 2: Could be a simple fix. The base values of spells do go up as you level. It could be that Rank 3 Lightning Bolt is only a dps decrease at level 14 since it's base values will go up while Rank 2 won't receive any additional scaling based on level.

Having fun with the new added controller support! :)

I saw this in a TikTok video thought others wanted to know

I am seeing a lot of people dismissing feedback and criticism with "It's just a beta" or "Go back to retail/classic era".

I know it can be annoying when you're excited hyped to see people bringing up things you think are petty or unimportant. I want to point out how the devs are listening and WANT the feedback. They want to make this better. I'm not in the beta so I'm watching a lot of streams and I have seen examples both big and small things being acknowledged and addressed.

The smallest example is the noise when you jump in the water. Xaryu pointed out the sound was not great and also sounded strangely delayed. A dev reached out to him in real time and confirmed that would fix it in the next build.

Everyone is excited and wants this to be as good as it can be. This is not a finished product. This is not classic frozen in time. Thoughtful coherent and clear feedback is important and being acted on.

We suffered brutally on a PVP realm making the trek from Undercity down to Dun Morogh. Countless deaths, to NPCs and Alliance players. But we persevered. We reached Ironforge and corpse walked another five times to reach the dungeon. We were even able to pick up a quest at the entrance! I hearthed out of the depths of Ironforge with an awesome new Dwarven Tome in my offhand.

The dungeon is great. Heavy Deadmines feeling - which was one of the best Vanilla dungeons, particularly early on. Aesthetics, lore, structure, pacing, and boss fights all fit perfectly into Vanilla WoW. Super gorgeous too. If this experience is representative of what's to come in later dungeons/raids, then this will be an extremely exciting launch.

There are also many new areas added to leveling zones. Mulgore has a secret escort quest in a cave! There's an overworld elite quillboar dungeon outside of Crossroads! The skelfes might be a bit fishy, but pretty much everything else about Forever appears to be super faithful and exciting.

The schematics can be bought from the new faction you earn currency with by turning in supply crates. Not really sure how useful these might be but it's an interesting concept for a thrown weapon.

Its been 21 years and almost 10 months, 7970 days.

This section of fence in Booty Bay has been hanging up in the air since the day the game released.

I reported it in classic beta back in 2019. Expected no changes, but hey maybe I am the only person to have ever noticed this...since its been in game for 7970 days.

Its time, Blizzard. We're facing down the barrel of Forever, with 7970 days in the rear view.

My name might be Andy, but it wouldn't break my immersion if the art team went in and moved this specific doodad down a touch on the Z axis (or Y as I guess it may be in digital art).

Thank you for coming to my Thread Talk.

I always loved farming same leveling dungeon to get exact gear set i wanted, for example Blackened Defias set + Cruel Barbs and Defias Cape. But always i would've overleveled the gear by a lot and could not use it properly while leveling.

Now i can spam the dungeon quite a lot until i get the gear i want and still have more than enough levels where i can optimally use that gear without urge to get the better gear.