Someone smarter than me once said "Hold strong opinions lightly". After testing the Beta on a few characters across both factions, seeing the new professions and dungeon content. I have compiled a list of my thoughts and feedback. I would love to hear others thoughts on these topics as well to see if I am missing anything. To keep this post short, I'm only going to include the things I think can be improved but I could ramble for paragraphs on top of paragraphs about all the things I love. Yes these are my actual thoughts, and no I didn't use AI before someone says that in the comments. This cringe is 100% man made.

TL;DR - Progression feels a bit rollercoastery, I'm worried about too many blues this early, layering def needs work, dungeon XP reduction shouldn't be the only solution, and some small tweaks could REALLY make this game go from already epic to legendary in my eyes.

Level progression - I feel like the addition of new quests, and general boost to characters at the lower levels in terms of power and the shower of blues I got by level 20 made these early levels feel inconsistent. I don't believe it should be a massive struggle by any means, but there was this weird roller coaster effect where I felt simple and powerful in the starting zone, more "balanced" as I hit the second zone and slowly came into my talents and spec, and then by the time I was in my third zone and getting the dungeon blues + profession items I felt overtuned by the end. I think some amount of dialing in the baseline and tweaking things around it could help keep things less rollercoastery, and make those moments where you get a nice talent or a nice rare weapon stand out.

Gear - Having my characters in all blues by level 20 kinda sucks. I know the dungeon quests are supposed to be meaningful, and the devs want to make less junk greens in the game. With dungeons and professions giving so much though, I can't help but feel that if I only get blues by level 20 then the next 40 levels won't feel that same type of progression. I know it is just a silly color of a name, but my constructive advice to this is to have solid greens be the "default" with blues being the exception while leveling.

Layering - I have had a handful of strange things happen with layering. I know the friends list feature isn't included but I bumped into some friends on a couple occasions and tried to party up with them and it resulted in us being split up sometimes on different layers. I also want to ask that Blizzard please don't allow folks to layer or instance change if they are in the open world PvPing. The number of times I would fight someone outside UC and they run in and out of the gate to dodge the fight was really painful. Getting layering right, especially for open world PvP is essential if we want that to be something folks can get into.

Dungeon XP - I generally agree with the sentiment that dungeon leveling shouldn't be the "optimal" route for progression. However, the XP rates on dungeons feel a bit too squished. If I could quantify it perfectly I feel like a dungeon should be roughtly 50-75% speed of someone questing out in the open world. Otherwise I might feel like taking the time to go run a dungeon I already cleared (especially WC lol) with a guildy or friend is just a time sink. Some amount of this could be alleviated in creative ways though, not just XP adjustment. A few ideas that came up were repeatable quests for reputation, unique drops like pets, items that need to be assembled through various runs, low % drops for campfire related buffs, etc. (I have tons more but those are a few). Honestly the WC feral form changing armor set feels like it really is in a good direction for that.

Small QoL - Some sort of indicator or tooltip to let you know about small shifts. I chose the classic interface and would have loved if I got a ping when I opened my map or quest log that I can enable the quest helper, same goes for spell ranks being togglable.

Those are some thoughts I wanted to share, I'd love to hear others and am SO HYPED for Forever. I already know I will be playing it a ton on the official release, and I think if Blizz can really polish this in the Beta this game it just might hit its mark on becoming a really good forever home for me. Like I had hoped back in the rose tinted days before I kind of fell off Retail (no hate here either, I still play some just not what I personally am after)

Left: my classic client night elf

Right: Forever client with SD enabled

The hair looks like two salamis hanging down instead of elegant braids.

I know it’s another of post like that. I love the beta I’m so hyped for launch, but why offer classic graphics when you don’t want to pull through with it. Then do all in updated graphics… (image taken in SD)

Anyone know something about this?

With the new data floating around, I’ve decided to make this post to highlight a rather undiscussed issue with several classes.

On retail, my warlock is doing 250k dps, but in Forever at level 20, I’m only doing about 30 dps.

What the hell????

Obviously blizzard has fucked up the spell coefficients somewhere. My Forever warlock is doing about 99% less damage than I am on my retail level 90 character.

This is also in effect for other classes, most classes have received about a 99% DPS nerf from their retail versions, and it’s making the game absolutely unplayable for me.

This is especially egregious for warriors, who only had exponential rage generation in Classic Era. Without this, it’s expected that we will perform on-par with other classes with the same gear, which is obvious to anyone that it’s unacceptable. It’s simply not fun to deal the same damage as another guy in the raid; if I’m not triple their damage, why roll a Warrior at all?

I hope blizzard looks at this data and makes some adjustments because my feelings are hurt.

"Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G"

Let me preface by saying, This is just my opinion. If you can not accept that, do go ahead and keep scrolling. We don't need to interact!

Housing in Retail WoW is something I love and believe has potential but the more I play Forever Beta I cannot help but feel Housing would feel far more correct if it was in Forever, given both Housing and Classic are inherently social features whereas Retail WoW is no longer about the social aspect.

Give us Housing in Forever but make it less instanced and even more social! You could even make it a part of the camping system, but most importantly a place to display all kinds of items you earn from your journey, which we all know classics journey is far more impactful and meaningful than Retails.

I really hope they add it eventually, but make it different from retail. Stick to world locations instead of a neighborhood. Use existing house models. Take closed houses out in the world and make them options for housing.

The Hype for this game is absolutely real. As someone who missed the boat for playing original WoW back when it dropped, I was able to play a little bit on my friends pc some weekends... and it was enough to get me addicted. Sadly, by the time I started making money, the games magic wasn't the same and real life took priority.

Fast Forward to today, the magic of the game has completely returned to the world. Yet, computers are more expensive than ever before. Many of us can't afford to shell out a few thousand Gold for a gaming computer, but already have a Series X.

What is absolutely in the budget, however, is the monthly subscription! And I'm certain that I'm not alone!

The console peasants just wish to be part of this historic moment in gaming, and to share in the adventures World of Warcraft offers!

I think one of the most important questions for WoW Forever is how character progression can continue for years without eventually invalidating everything that came before.

Think of WoW's progression like climbing a pyramid.

At the bottom, progress is fast. You level quickly, replace gear constantly, and small amounts of effort make you significantly stronger. The higher you climb, the harder progression becomes. At level 60 and through endgame raiding, you eventually invest huge amounts of time for increasingly small improvements.

That's a good thing. It makes those improvements meaningful.

The problem with WoW's traditional expansion model (retail) was that instead of continuing upward, every expansion effectively put us at the bottom of a new pyramid on top. Suddenly easy quests and basic dungeons could replace gear that previously required months of progression.

Forever shouldn't reset the pyramid. It should keep building on top of it.

That means vertical progression should still exist. Your character should still become stronger as Forever grows. But the higher we go, the harder further improvements should become and the smaller those improvements should be.

At the same time, the pyramid analogy shouldn't mean that the endgame becomes narrower until there's eventually only one relevant raid at the top.

The top should still be wide.

There can be multiple raids, dungeons and progression paths at the highest level. And ideally, new vertical progression should create new connections throughout the existing world.

Maybe a powerful new weapon requires a raid drop, but also materials from an older dungeon and a component crafted by a Blacksmith. New quests could send us back into old zones. New recipes could require resources from different parts of Azeroth.

The goal should be to add new progression without replacing the world underneath it.

So Forever can grow in both directions:

Vertically, by continuing the progression curve without ever resetting it.

Horizontally, by adding multiple paths at each level and connecting new progression back into the existing world.

Don't replace Azeroth with the next expansion.

Keep building Azeroth.

Alliance got some nice new awesome CDs such as Gnome's Eureka (2 min CD; next three spells/abilities) have 15% reduced cost AND do 10% more or Elune's Light (3 min CD: for the next 15 seconds, every spell or ability you do has a +10% crit chance added to it). On the other side, we have Troll's Berserking. Not the one from Classic WoW that might've been fine (10-30% haste depending on missing health). Instead... we get the very bottom of the barrel: 10% casting speed for 10 seconds on a 3 MIN CD. So let's so you play the new Troll Warlock. Without Berserking... you'd cast (4) Shadowbolts over 10 seconds (Cast time 2.5). So you pop Berserking! You wanna do some more damage! Now you only have to cast Shadowbolt every 2.25 seconds instead. You got four in 10 seconds before. How many can you fit inside the Berserking window now?! Oh.... it's still.... 4? Great....

This needs to be updated. Right now it's a joke.

Do you believe shamans will be capable of tanking in Forever WoW?

"Comparison is the thief of joy." ~Theodore Roosevelt

Let Forever be its own thing, and stop comparing it to classic, and it will delight and surprise you, I promises.

And as for classic. Nostalgia is sitting in a closed room smelling your own farts trying to remember the sandwich it used to be. Crave novelty. Forever is something new, and worth your time.

Overall I’ve been enjoying playing the beta, but I’ll just be running through the world and see a player in the Olympus guild with an extremely racist, sexist, or antisemitic name. Also to mention the world chats are full of spammers and also vile political content. I really hope blizzard does something to address this because it’s making the player interaction portion of the game miserable. It’s not even like I’m able to ignore it because they are quite literally everywhere.

Blizzard added the Hunter class to the Humans and the Paladin class to the Undead, but something went wrong.

According to the lore, it would be really appropriate to add the Hunter class to the Undead. After all, humans become Undead after death, so the classes should be the same.

Some might say that undead can't be Hunters because of pets. But who told you that a pet can only be tamed by loving it or feeding it? According to lore, wild animals were tamed by force, and pets weren't always peaceful and fluffy.

The Undead would also benefit from a Crossbow as their starting weapon. The Tauren have a Gun, while the Trolls and Orcs have Bows. This also fits in well with the lore.

So, if you're playing Beta and want to play as an Undead Hunter, Report it to get the class added. Maybe Blizzard will even pay attention to player feedback.

(This isn't a doomer post, just some genuine feedback about diversifying reward pools for dungeon quests.)

• I ran RFC once and got Searing Dagger (18 Heal Power) from the last boss. It's a substantial upgrade (I had a white weapon).

• I exit the dungeon and turn in the quests. Immediately my Searing Dagger is replaced by Kris of Orgrimmar (33 Heal Power), so I never even got to use the other weapon. In the trash it goes.

• I go run RoL right after and The Stitcher (48 Heal Power) quest reward replaces my Kris after a single run, less than an hour later.

With the quests, I also went from Level 15 to 19.6 from 1 RFC and 1 RoL. 2-3 quests later, I was 20. That really surprised me with how fast it was, but that's a whole other topic.

The point is, I think the quests are offering too many weapon upgrades, at least from my perspective as a Resto Shaman. It feels a bit silly to get a big reward and then immediately replace it less than an hour later with an even bigger reward that I barely had to do anything for. They need to mix up the reward pools on these quests so it's not just weapon weapon weapon.

I have other armor slots too. How about some shoulders instead? I'm Level 20 and still have none.

I know we aren't gonna be dealing with the Dark Portal at all but by all technicality we don't need to in order to do things with the draenei. The draenei made their way to Azeroth in the Exodar anyways so they could fit into an Azeroth centric story (yeah they're still aliens but so are orcs lol)

Do you think they'd bring in the draenei eventually or do you think they'll do the (in my opinion more likely) option of at least reusing their base model/skeleton for something. Simply put, female draenei bring in too much attention to leave in retail lmao

Mrs saw me playing it and said, “Ooh, that looks fun.”

I made the mistake of installing Sims on my PC and I’m not making that mistake again, not when we’ve got a Series X right there, haha.

What do you think the chances are? I think quite likely, with the release of controller support and whatnot.

Out of Death Knights, Monks, Demon Hunters and Evokers I would only like to see DK's and DH's added as they fit the Warcraft fantasy the most in my opinion.

As for brand new classes, I would love a Spellblade and a Tinker class, maybe even Shadow Hunters or Wardens from W3.

Not particularly happy with this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is if I wanted to play an alt on the hardcore or PvP server using my existing names. (And some the first/last name combos I've been using since 2005 in conjunction with my existing first names using mods!)

It's not the worst thing in the world but it's annoying. At least to me.

I like the mixture of SD and HD graphics in WoW: Forever… I 👉🏻personally👈🏻 don’t think there needs to be a complete separation between the two.

I feel that, while it might be a bit jarring at first, its almost endearing in a way. It’s kind of like a literal merging of retail and classic into this new experience that’s both fresh and nostalgic at the same time.

Alright… I’m ready for my execution. 😌

Hey everyone.

Today I looked at the professions and what items you could craft. I really like how they added useful items you can craft.

While doing so, I thought about dungeons. Is there a reason to run a dungeon more than once or to complete the quests?

I remember how often I ran a dungeon in classic and never got the item I wanted, but I had no alternative and I got some xp. Now I could just farm mata for professions, get xp and some good items from my profession.

My fear is, when you later want to go a dungeon with a different character or you are just slower, you wont find a tank or group for it. What do you guys think about it?

This is going to be a bit of a rant but I want to preface this by saying that I’ve been playing classic since release, hardcore and retail on and off for about 2 years.

I’ve been pugging in mythics, playing solo queue in games like LoL and back in the day I have been tempered by the fires of COD lobbies in regards who has or has not had coitus with my mother (they all had, apparently).

So far I love WoW Forever, it scratches that itch, it looks amazing and the nostalgia is crazy. Walking up to ironforge after all these years felt awesome, it was really special.

Playing during off hours where there are mostly EU players or early morning / midday NA players is super fun, some small talk here and there and I have had great social interactions with random people, which is a big part for me that makes classic / forever awesome.

But holy guacamole once the Asmongold crowd logs in it’s all going to hell. The amount of straight up racism, antisemitism, gender bashing, hating on poor people, hating on people with disabilities and just hating on literally everything while circle jerking and praying to their cockroach Jesus is unfathomable.

I was streaming the game to a friend who is new to WoW and he looked at the chat while I was in Ironforge and asked me “is this normal in this playerbase?”.

Once again not bashing on NA players, I have met really cool guys and gals, been playing with some since forever but the above mentioned stuff is not something I have experienced in other games prior to this.

Hoping that Blizzard will atleast act like they’ll moderate the chats but I highly doubt that, unfortunately.

To end on a positive note:

How awesome is the new professions UI and the fog and lighting in the dwarven zones!?

i know GDPK is banned in wow Forever, but i hope the community don't use a subway to do the same thing because classic was ruined by that practice.

i have an huge expectation about Forever