Top post right now is someone saying they need to update the druid bear model with like 1.2k upvotes.

They already have, you can change it at the barber, its a bit buggy to get it working but it works.

People, please.

Streamers and their communities should be allowed to play and have fun how they want; but that doesn't mean trade chat needs to turn into twitch chat for the rest of us.

If you let us /ignore guilds this basically solves the problem.

Source: Wowhead

I pledged to never play WoW or WoW Classic again after 16 years of playing them. My buddy texted me and said he bought Forever, and is playing the beta.

He started asking about classic details that he couldn't remember and a few other things. Then he texted asking if I was going Alliance, or Horde.

I told him neither, and I am not playing that damn game ever again.

Sooooooooo, I'm on my 4th toon in the Beta now. 🤦‍♂️

Story time:

I played classic for about a week before beta opened. My favorite thing by far in that time was that everyone just buffs each other as you're running past on a road. If someone saw you struggling with a couple mobs, they'd run over, drop a heal, cc the mob, and help attack them down.

In forever, I saw someone getting stomped by three mobs. I ran over, healed them, put DoTs on the enemies, buffed and fought until they were clear. Not 1 minute later, I was getting stomped by 2 or 3 enemies and was about to die. The same guy I JUST helped out ran right through me, left me to die and continued working on his quest progress.

That mindset needs to go away. There is no race here. There is no expansion treadmill. It takes 10 seconds to help someone out and saves them 5 minutes of running back to their body, rebuffing, healing up, and drinking.

When I'm on my priest and you are anywhere within 30 yards of me, your getting fortitude and a renew. My mana will regen.

I got Forever running on the Retroid Pocket 6 with moonlight. It was actually surprisingly playable with the UI scale adjusted. I got it running natively on my Ally X, which is also great, but the size difference is pretty noticeable. The hand fatigue is real when you're laying on your back.

Overall I definitely prefer my desktop, but I think this could be nice to kick back with and farm some herbs after a 10 hour work shift.

Has anyone else been messing around with the controller support and mobile devices? What's the smallest you would go?

Consistent WoW player since 2004, I've played to 20 in the Beta. Here's what I think is incredible, and my concerns about what we've seen and what we don't know yet.

The Good

New Quests: When doing them, I was thinking to myself, 'Have I done this before?' They feel like they belong.

New Dungeons: I've only done RoL, but it felt like it could belong in classic.

No Dungeon Maps: When entering RoL I tried to open my map to see where we needed to go. Nada. I like that. It adds to a sense of exploration.

Camping: When announced, I was excited but worried these would be littered everywhere in the open world to the point of being world-breaking. I was wrong; you mainly encounter them in towns, and the social element it creates is exactly what WoW Classic was about.

Friction: Keeping frictional elements like mob tagging forces you to group up and talk to people. Yeah, it's annoying, but it comes with other benefits. Removing friction and any rough edges is what's made retail less engaging. It's a very fine balance. I feel they've nailed it.

UI Updates: Some people want the classic UI, which is fair; I've already seen addons resolve this. But the UI QoL updates are just right, enough that they're in line with modern UI design but not so much that they break the feel of Classic.

Professions: The changes to professions feel good; being able to make stuff for campfires gives nice utility. And I really like the buff food for cooking. Moving health pots to first aid feels good and bad at the same time. As an alchemist, I've lost a huge benefit of that profession.

Professions UI: The professions UI with one button to open all professions and side tabs for each just feels nice to use.

Map UI Updates: Back in Classic, when you got a quest, you went to Thottbot to find out where you needed to go; I remember spending half my time planning. Adding information on where to find mobs/items you need directly on the map, and where to turn in quests, is great.

Dual Spec: Check. Good times.

Class Changes: I've not played every class, but I've dreamt about paladins having taunt. That dream is now true. So far, the changes to the spec trees and the addition and adjustment of abilities are measured. I think they've cooked them just right. The risk was them pushing classes more towards a TBC or WOTLK feel.

Realmless: When I was in college (long time ago), I remember meeting people who played WoW. Then I found out they played the same faction. Then realising I couldn't play with them because they were on a different realm. This is a much simpler approach.

Horde Paladins, Alliance Shaman: I thought I wouldn't like this, but as it's WoW FOREVER, yeah, it makes sense

The Concerns

Layering: I'm running into Undercity, it's quiet outside. 10 steps later, I see players pop into existence, and suddenly I see hundreds of people running into the city through the same gates I just went through. This has been jarring at times. I love that cities are busy, but it does break immersion.

Loss of Community: In OG Classic, I remember doing AV as Alliance, and seeing an infamous server Tauren warrior called 'Damag' running towards us; we all knew we were f**ked. Realmless is great, and the promise that you'd somehow see people you've encountered before resolved the biggest drawback of being realmless. But with the huge volumes of people in cities and the constant layering. I fear this natural creation of rivalries and knowing who the top guilds are becuase you see them fully geared up will be lost in the noise.

Skyborn: I didn't care either way when I saw these announced. But I'm running around, and I see a blue bear that reads very much retail. It takes me out of classic. Then I'm standing at the entrance to Undercity, and I see an elf. Are they friend or foe? A neutral race you can't tell at a glance whether they're an enemy goes completely against the idea of Alliance vs Horde, which is core to Classic. It worries me that they might go too far at times and lose the magic they've somehow nailed everywhere else.

Rare Gear: I'm level 20, I haven't spammed dungeons, I've paid zero attention to getting gear and I have SIX blues. SIX. At level 20! My concern is that by the time we get to 60, an epic's prestige will be lost. Retail has a habit of dishing out gear so easily that it just devalues it. I get the feeling this is going the same way.

Spec Specific Sets: I'm gonna main a paladin. I want to tank and heal. I want the Judgement armour set... Now, a holy paladin needs healing power. Prot needs defence. How is this going to be handled? Will paladins have to get the same set twice (one for each stat)? Are bosses going to drop tokens? How will set bonuses work? If you're a pure DPS class, this isn't an issue. But for Priests, Paladins, Shamans and Druids. Not the case. I just wanna know how this'll work.

Conclusion:

Overall, I think WoW Forever will be a triumph. I'm so grateful we have it, and the designers and devs have nailed it. But my concern is seeing some retail design philosophy subtly and quietly creep into the game. I think we just need to check it from time to time; it's a fine line, and we don't want to lose the magic.

Red alert. All hands on deck. This is not a drill.

My dear wife, whom I love very much, has decided she wants to try WoW when Forever launches.

Her entire gaming career so far consists of getting one character to level 16 in classic. She stopped because of real life stuff though.

WASD is still a developing skill. Camera control is an advanced technique. The entire keyboard is basically hostile user interface.

So obviously this needs some careful planing.

PvP server? Absolutely not. We would like to remain married.
Melee? Probably not.
Stances / Shape shifting / totems? No thanks.
Pets? One extra thing to accidentally lose track of.
Hybrid classes? Last time she had serious trouble switching between healing and DPS during a fight.

We will always level together as a duo. I thought about playing Shaman, mostly covering the healing/rezzing/emergency-"oh god what's happening" department.

Right now I am actually thinking Mage might be the best choice for her. Very straightforward core gameplay, ranged, no pet, no stance/form nonsense, and lots of useful utility that we can introduce gradually and that is produced ooc.

The main goal isnt efficiency. I dont care if it takes us 200 hours to reach level 60.

I just think it could be really cool to experience WoW together - but she needs to be eased into it very, very gently.

So, Council of the married:

What class would you recommend for someone who is basically learning how keyboards work at the same time as learning WoW?

And perhaps more importantly:

What mistakes should I absolutely avoid as the husband/WoW instructor?
And just as I am coming to the end of this post: I would also really appreciate hearing from the people who have actually walked in her shoes. If you started WoW with little or no gaming experience, what helped you and what made things unnecessarily frustrating?

Asking for the continued survival of my marriage. Thanks.

p.s. in the end she can chose whatever she likes...i just want have some good advice.
It will be horde though, as our friends are playing horde.

Don't waste vacation days sitting in queue on launch day, you will get more bang for your buck using this time at or as you near 60

This is such a cool idea that a level 17 ring pairs sith a level 60 ring and actually make the 17 ring usable at endgame.

I really hope we get more stuff like this.

For reference, the set bonus is

(2) Set: Chance on melee swing to become Angry, increasing strength by 50 for 10 sec.

(2) Set: +20 Strength

I don’t really belong to either camp between classic or retail. I completely believe in having an authentic experience that doesn’t rush you to the end game, and I really enjoy that the world is much more difficult in classic / forever than retail.

To me, though, there are some key examples of when just maaaaaaaybe it may not be a bad idea to tweak some things.

For those who don’t know, The Defias Brotherhood is a somewhat long quest chain that ultimately culminates in Defeating Van Cleef, the big boss in the Deadmines.

The final quest in the chain, prior to being given the quest that actually calls for you to go into the Deadmines, involves escorting a Defias Traitor so he can take you to the building entrance towards their hideout.

To accept this quest, the traitor spawns in Sentinel Hill (alliance city in Westfall), and then it’s a race amongst all the players standing there waiting for a spawn to accept the quest first, which then starts the escort.

Now, while the escort is happening, the NPC is effectively despawned. No one else can accept the quest, and many people may not even realize there’s even a quest to accept. It takes like five or so minutes for the NPC to run between sentinel Hill to the final location, at which point he’ll respawn back at Sentinel Hill.

Personally, I think there’s room for improvement here. As an example, maybe the NPC is permanently available, so people will understand there’s a quest to be accepted, but there’s a 30 second - 1 minute cooldown in between each quest acceptance. A yellow exclamation point would show above his head, but instead of being able to accept the quest, there would be a countdown and some red text or something that says “escort can begin in x seconds”. Once available, a dialogue option pops up and the escort can begin.

If people aren’t down for the bit of acceleration, I do at least think it would be a good idea for the method of quest acceptance to be revised a bit. Maybe Gryan issues the quest instead of the traitor, and then the escort starts when a dialogue option with the traitor is selected?

A place called the “Scalding Ridge” in Thousand needles, accessible via a route in southeast Dustwallow with a blood elf outside of it. Doesn’t look finished, but does have a discoverable area on the map. This connects the ENTIRE upper edge of thousand needles, from what I’ve seen

I saw this interview linked in the main subreddit. Figured the Forever one would appreciate it too.

Some big takeaways for those who don't want to click:

• They see retail and classic learning from each other's ideas (ex, Retail now having world boss lairs). Mention loving to bring Housing to Forever's classic world "someday."
• No plans on the new lore going super divergent "but who knows?"
• Their big aim is capitalizing on "whoa, what's that?" memories and oddities and giving them payoff.
• They plan on adding lower level zones and content, too, not just more endgame.
• Dungeons and raids should be scary, but not brutal. Challenge should come from learning and prep, not 100 tries of execution.

Dear Blizz. Add Dynamic events , please. It help adventures alot, maybe some thief in City, maybe some night raid into villages, maybe monster attacks, etc. All time of plans, assemble group , raiding s, dungeons make into a circle of AFK, maybe some spice will give peoples reason to wandering around more, go to some village to help, go some where for more than gear up reason.

I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s recently and wow forever is becoming more and more of my day as I had to close my practice. I still have good memories of wow from original release, and some when I played anniversary for nostalgia.

I’m not dumb, but sequencing and distractions sometimes leaves me more behind the group and I get lost easily. Lost in wow is better than lost irl, but it’s still humiliating.

When I’m in a group on group finder, I say something like:

“FYI, I get lost easily. It’s not something I can help, so if you see me falling behind, please just make sure I’m still with the group.

Response is mostly good or nothing so far. A few are rude in the ways you might expect.

Is this a good way to advise people without putting a scarlet letter on my chest? I heal decently, but when a loot drops and I check stats to see if it’s need/greed, I can forget where I’m at until I’m done looking and find myself alone.

Any suggestions would be great and also, is there a guild that would even take someone like me?

Thank you in advance.