Less than a week after the announcement, the WoW: Forever beta has begun, and I have been playing it whenever I have the chance. My background with Warcraft goes all the way back to the original strategy games (you can listen to me wax nostalgic on this episode of Flashback 64). I participated in the original beta for World of Warcraft and was there day one for the launch of the game in 2004. Since then, I’ve played WoW casually (Classic and Retail) on and off, relatively consistently. Despite everything, World of Warcraft is a top-5 of all time game for me, so needless to say, I was stoked for Forever.
World of Warcraft: Forever promises “WoW the way you remember it” with four core pillars guiding the design:
-approachable and familiar
-the world as the main character
-the journey before the destination
-protecting and nurturing the social experiences that make Azeroth feel alive
The seven hours I’ve spent with the beta so far isn’t enough time for me to confidently say Blizzard nailed all four of these core pillars, but it’s looking good.
For the beta I created a Horde-aligned Skyborne elf and have spent my time in the new starting zone, Zephras Isle. This starting experience evokes feelings of the Blood Elves in The Burning Crusade, but less prickly and melancholy. It’s a far cry from the linear, cinematic starting zones of Retail- here you’re spending a lot of time running around, reading quest text, and slowly completing tasks. It’s a far more methodical leveling experience, and one that, like Classic, really lets you feel your progress.
Forever does provide more guidance than Classic, if you want it. The quest tracking provides map and compass direction, which eliminates the need to look outside of the game for where to go. While I have fond memories of print strategy guides and Wowhead quest pages, this is a modern QoL feature that I welcome.
In no way does the quest guidance take away the feeling of exploration for me. With the absence of flying (a good thing imo), you are spending a lot of time running around in WoW: Forever. This allows opportunities to take in the sights and really get a feel for the land. The more I play, the better sense I get of the Skyborne’s story and situation. This comes from not just quest text, but Zephras Isle itself. The race has gotten some hate online for “coming out of nowhere,” but their story is already feeling like a part of Warcraft lore to me.
I also appreciate the statement of intent behind the Skyborne. The race, storytelling, and starting zone feel new, but familiar, and show that Forever is neither Classic or Retail, but its own thing. I’m a mid-level Warcraft lore nerd- I read some of the novels and reference books, but only the stuff related to characters, events, and zones I’m interested in. Warcraft elves (specifically Night and Blood) are my favorite depictions of elves in fantasy full stop, and while the Skyborne haven’t captivated me in the same way as those two iconic races, I welcome their addition here.
On the tech side of things, this is a beta, but it’s a beta for a Blizzard game a month and a half away from launch so the polish is generally there. The new lighting and higher definition character models do a lot of heavy lifting here, taking the iconic (I’d argue perfect) art direction of WoW and making it even more visually appealing. In general, everything has worked as it should so far, and the three bug reports I’ve made have been relatively minor: weird visual flickering around my character when the light hit a certain way, an aggro NPC not noticing me immediately despite being right next to them, and a quest item disappearing from the ground. There were some initial server woes (queues and lag), but those seem to be taken care of.
I plan to go more in-depth and address each of the four design pillars individually as I play more of the beta, but my initial impressions of WoW: Forever are extremely positive. In a broad sense, it seems that Blizzard succeeded at giving us a modern Classic (or Classic Plus if you’re nasty) version of World of Warcraft. If they continue to nail the experience, this will likely become my forever home for the foreseeable future.
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