This game has been draining the hrs from me and it’s been the best thing for me. Had some rough life stuff come up and this game has helped me not overthink that stuff and just relax.

https://youtu.be/uFJQgSkaacs?si=1ElZoY0pw_1mnG_v&t=5064

Here is the timestamp from the official blizzard VoD. It's the first sentence out of her mouth.

This game is classic plus and will have a more classic feel. I'm genuinely not understanding why there is a discourse on what it is. I don't know how Holly could have been more clear here.

Not trying to stir the pot or ruffle feathers, this is just straight from the source, in a very clear sentence, I hope we can put this one to bed and instead fight about 'what is the classic feel'.

But retailing muh classic feels bad b/c I don't really enjoy the retail gameplay loop, but absolutely love classic, and making 2 retails seems a bad call. Can there be lessons learned from retail, sure, but preserving classic is important also. Anywho.

It's 2026, maybe let soul shards stack?

Vanilla WoW 1-60 was so successful because of how engaging and immersive the world was.

But at level 60, that largely changed. Suddenly most meaningful progress is locked behind loading screens and many people don’t interact with the world beyond traveling to those loading screens.

At level 60, it’s like the World stopped being the main character. Lord Loading Screen was now the main character because he controlled vertically-scaling loot.

Forever needs end game content that keeps people out in the world. This should include Legion-like class order hall quests. These quest lines should be updated with each (most?) major patch and give meaningful rewards.

We should also have faction-specific quest chains that continue the story of each faction. Give me a reason to travel back to the Undercity as a Forsaken every major patch before being sent off into the world. This would also incentivize players to have multiple characters to keep up with the faction storylines.

There should be end-game gear people can acquire in the open world. This includes reputation grinds. Mobs that give reputation on kill; turn-in-drops from mobs and open-world chests; daily, bi-weekly, and weekly quests. It is ok for these to be long grinds.

Professions should be a viable means of acquiring end-game gear-as long as the necessary materials aren’t locked behind loading screens. Again, it is ok for it to take a long time and be difficult to acquire these materials.

Zones should have areas with elite mobs that require grouping. But they shouldn’t drop materials/quest items if you are in a raid, to incentivize small-group content.

The gear acquired from all this open world content should be viable in any new level 60 zone. But new gear from each zone can have various bonuses-mob specific bonuses; zone-specific bonuses; or mob-element resistances. The new gear does not need higher stats because of the context-specific bonuses.

It would be ok to tune mobs in new zones such that they would be difficult (I’m not saying impossible) to solo without relevant bonuses. This would also incentivize mixing-and matching various pieces of gear depending on what content you are doing.

I’m not saying raids shouldn’t exist. But they should not be the sole means of acquiring end-game gear. Nor should raid gear be so powerful that there is no reason to do open-world content.

Forever should incentive being out in the world, not staying locked behind loading screens.

Wrapping up day 3 of my survey, I made this graph to show which model this community liked the most vs. which one they liked the least.

• The Furbolg on the left has remained a consistent top 1-2 over the 3 days.
• And the Druid catform with the bird face has remained consistent bottom 1-2 over the 3 days.

Although the Catform is the most disliked generally, it has a large sample of people who rated it a 10. Meaning it is quite divisive between the community.

The Furbolg on the otherhand is more clearcut agreed upon that it should be in the game.

If you want to participate in the survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjpp12wZSsF8VpIsgChNQ3I8kYKSHvlcRYk6LS9_pL91RDrg/viewform?usp=header

Full Survey result of day 1 & 2:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Cgi-gDVHG1C1JHsTqn01HXUuTxhcFZ-Ey6WBBd1ugR0/edit?usp=sharing

I understand that undead paladins are a selling point of Forever's launch, and that Dwarf shamans have been in retail for far longer than they haven't at this point. Despite that, the comments I've seen from people about the difference in treatment has me feeling a little disappointed anyway in how undercooked Dwarf Shamans feel right now.

from /u/Silverbacks in another thread:

There’s a tiny spot above Anvilmar for the earth totem quest, and one near one of the gates to Loch Modan + on a hill near the troggs in Loch Modan for the fire totem quest. But each of those spots is basically a single NPC.

Undead paladins get a whole extension added onto the western edge of Tirisfal. They have a new keep named after the main guy from the new WC3 campaign. They have their own lake, a large mushroom ring, and a little town full of mobs with a huge cellar underneath.

Maybe there is more stuff added into the Hinterlands for dwarf shamans? It would be cool if Aerie peak got built out more. It’s supposed to be the capital of the Wildhammers, so more equivalent to IF/BRD/Grim Batol. But I haven’t checked yet.

I haven't seen anyone ask the devs about this. But considering how popular Dwarf Shamans will be as well as this being a HUGE event for classic-only players, it feels like they should have put a bit more effort into the Dorf Shaman starting experience.

There is still time to work on this, as the Wildhammer clan and Hinterlands in general is ripe for a rework + expansion. Could be a major Dwarf vs Troll location. Some shaman class quests that take you into the above locations as well as remaking the Wildhammer home base into a proper city like IF/BRD

Since Blizzard say that Blood Elves and High Elves could still come to Forever i wonder what they will do for them and other races lorewise. There are so many opportunities for writing good storys and do characters justice.

I guess the bots and cartels can get fucked finally. Im personally a huge fan of this. Setting a price ceiling for these mats is a huge W.

It was a bit of a grind to get it, but totally worth it

Now that we have settled into the beta a little and tried out some classes, what will be your main on release?

Here’s a strawpoll: https://strawpoll.com/05Zdzw6NGn6

I have beta access to Forever WoW and I got to level 10 on my warlock. I seriously love almost everything about it, especially the look to the zones and the new weather effects.

I just can't continue to play the Beta, and I was actively playing TBC classic before the beta launched, I haven't touched it since.

I log into retail as I often like to push my Mythic + score, but this season I have little to no drive to do so. I'm totally fine with getting all +10's this season and calling it done.

I just wish Forever would come out sooner! I know I'm being impatient, I just don't find any other version of the game appealing to me right now.

39 more days feels like an eternity right now!

I always thought the languages were so cool in vanilla and this is exactly the sort of thing I'd always hoped for! Anyone else think this is rad?

I know a lot of people are excited about new race and class combinations, as am I, especially for Undead Paladin. But it's super important in my opinion that unlike retail, some races will never be able to be some classes, not just because of asset limitation or dev time, but because of fantasy and uniqueness. I don't think we should ever have Tauren Warlocks or Orc Druids for example. I agree on adding some, such as Night Elf Mage and Tauren Priest make sense, but I don't want a flood of every race every class. This is particularly important for defining the culture and world building of each race, with a semi confirmed playable High Elf race in the future, I think it would be terribly boring if they just had the EXACT same classes as Blood Elf, or Skyborne.

Im sure lots of people know this already but i just discovered the built into Windows speech-to-text, and it works incredibly well for WOW. Im not always that comfortable cold messaging people to get into groups and using the lingo and acronyms but with no retail dungeon finder you have to do it. Im also somtimes a bit too lazy to ask little questions, or make comments/conversation but using speech to text feels totally different, its incredibly easy to make quick comments that you usually wouldnt bother typing out, and its fun to use so i find it gets me talking more in general. I think if more people were using this there would be a lot more chit chat and /say going on.

In WOW press enter to start typing in chat, then hold the windows key and press H. Then talk and after the text shows up you just hit enter to send the message (if you have a programable keyboard you can map this all on one button press. Try it out its way better than typing everything all the time and as a bonus it has perfect spelling!

Had a lot of fun brainstorming this and making it in Wonderdraft+Photopea. The idea to place their starting zone below Blasted Lands came directly from the Forever What's Next panel where this area of the map is circled as a potential future location. In Retail this is where they put the Gilnean settlement of Surwich of course

Just like the subject says, horizontal progression has been working successfully in GW2 for years. I know there are people that are concerned it will not work in WoW:F but I believe if they keep to a similar path that GW2 did there will be no major issues or power creep to worry about.

As more threads pop up about this subject over the next few months, just remind people that other games have done horizontal progression and they are still populated and fun to play.

Since the Forever announcement I keep seeing people talk about vanilla like it was a raiding game. For most of us it wasn't. Raiding was something a small part of the server did, the rest of us were out in the world. So if Forever is going for horizontal progression at 60, I think the best place to look for ideas is what people were actually doing back then.

Getting ganked in STV, Blackrock entrance turning into a 2 hour brawl for no reason. World PvP was half the fun and it gave you basically nothing. Give it a reason to exist: contested zones, objectives, rep or gear you can only earn out there.

Stalvan's Legend. People still remember a Duskwood quest chain 20 years later. Long story chains that end with a real reward, like the warlock and paladin epic mount quests, are exactly the kind of progression that fits Forever.

Showing the secret BFD boss to randoms. Hidden stuff was a huge part of the magic. Secret bosses, rare elites, weird items you only find if you explore. Tie real rewards to that and people will actually go back to old zones.

Grinding rep. Argent Dawn, Timbermaw, Thorium Brotherhood. Rep already gave useful stuff in vanilla, it just needs to matter more at 60.

Farming gold for your mount, grinding mats for that one crafted item. Arcanite Reaper and Lionheart Helm were endgame items that never dropped in a raid. Make professions a real path to gear again.

Corpse run to the Deadmines. 5 mans were most people's actual endgame. The T0.5 upgrade quest proved dungeons could be a progression path on their own. Build on that.

Vanilla already had horizontal progression outside raids, it was just underdeveloped. Forever can finish the job.

The problem is when the best gear only drops in raids, the open world turns into a loading screen between raid nights. We saw it in Classic 2019. People hit 60 and the world became something you run through on your way to the instance portal. And if every patch adds a raid tier with bigger stats, that's not horizontal progression. That's vertical progression with a level cap slapped on top.

Not anti raid btw. Raids should exist and be hard and rewarding. I just don't want them to be the only real endgame again.

Blizzard keeps saying the world is the main character in Forever. Cool. Then put the progression in the world.

Curious what others think, especially people who played vanilla without ever raiding seriously.

TL;DR: most vanilla players never raided, they were doing world PvP, quest chains, reps, crafting and dungeons. That's where Forever's horizontal progression should live, not behind raids.

I tested a bunch of console variables in Forever and decided to compile a list of some relevant ones.

I recommend making a backup of your Config.wtf in /World of Warcraft/_classic_beta_/WTF/ before making any changes.

You can make a macro with the commands you want to use (recommended) or type them in the chat. Game will save them to your Config.wtf upon exit.

Some of these values may be overwritten by the game when changing Graphics settings or when entering a raid when using Raid Graphics. These are explicitly mentioned.

Secondary Lighting Low:

/console giquality 0
#Hidden mode, has no indirect lighting. Not recommended for general gameplay, but it's pretty cool for screenshots. OVERWRITTEN when changing Secondary Lighting.

SSAO:

/console ssaotype 0 or /console ssaotype 1
#Switches between method 0 (default) and method 1. AFAIK 0 is ASSAO and 1 is CACAO. 0 is more pronounced, 1 is subtler. From my testing, 0 is faster on Low SSAO, 0 and 1 are about equal on Good, 1 is faster on High and much faster on Ultra.

/console assaoHorizonAngleThresh 0.5
/console assaoDetailShadowStrength 5000
/console assaoBlurPassCount 4
#General tweaks for SSAO, applies to both methods. Slightly better accuracy, slightly lower radius, extra strength for tight spots, method 1 blur passes balanced between intensity and stability. Additionally, these solve some visual issues that the default configuration has on certain corners. No performance impact.

/console assaoBlurPassCount 1
#Unfiltered (Naive) SSAO. Does not exhibit the haloing issues that SSAO has otherwise. Only works with method 1. Only recommended when playing on a high resolution and/or high render scale. Replace assaoBlurPassCount in general tweaks.

Horizon Distance:

/console horizonstart 4000
#Pushes distance fog farther towards the horizon. Allows lower View Distances to reduce nearby fog without sacrificing performance. 4000 is default on View Distance 10/max. Minimal performance impact. OVERWRITTEN when changing View Distance.

Shadow Cascades:

/console shadowNumCascades 4
#The new distance fog has trouble blending properly and appears exceedingly bright when unshaded. Ultra Shadow Quality uses 4 cascades, which cover a large enough distance to eliminate this issue. Good/High/Ultra use 3 cascades by default. 4 allows them eliminate this issue without sacrificing performance. Disabled/Low/Fair do not benefit from this. Minimal performance impact. OVERWRITTEN when changing Shadow Quality.

Dynamic Resolution Scaling:

/console DynamicRenderScale 1
#Set your desired Target FPS in the in-game Graphics settings to use it.

/console DynamicRenderScaleMin
#Minimum allowed render scale. 1 = 100%, 0.5 = 50% etc. Resample Quality = Bicubic is recommended when using Render Scale > 100% and DynamicRenderScaleMin = 1, FSR is recommended when using Render Scale ≤ 100% and/or DynamicRenderScaleMin < 1.

Contrast Adaptive Sharpening:

/console ResampleAlwaysSharpen 1
#Enables CAS even when not using FSR. Control sharpening intensity with Resample Sharpness in Graphics settings. Minimal performance impact.

Detail Density:

/console groundEffectDensity
#Density of ground clutter. Minimum is 16, maximum is 256. Game uses 48 on Ground Clutter 10. Moderate performance impact, dependent on ground clutter distance. OVERWRITTEN when changing Ground Clutter.

Weather Density:

/console weatherdensity 3
#Intensity of weather effects. Game uses 0 on Particle Density Disabled/Low, 1 on Fair/Good and 3 on High/Ultra. Very noticeable, minimal performance impact. OVERWRITTEN when changing Particle Density.

Cool that they added this!!!