Warcraft Forever

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I still think they could probably manage most or all of these goals inside retail. New players already get to pick what sort of starting experience they have -- getting marooned on Exile's Reach or going through their racial starting area -- and then heading to Chromie who picks which expansion they level through. Add another option about leveling speed for the folks who want to enjoy the ride. (And include an ability to set a level cap to automatically stop leveling at.)

Updating the existing zones with the WoW Forever one, either as a rollback to a remastered vanilla experience or as a post-post-Cataclysm update, and done.

That wouldn't recapture Classic players, though, so it makes sense this has to be its own thing.

It's a shame, though, since it means the old world in retail WoW is mostly only going to be updated when it's relevant to a new expansion. So we get a wonderfully rebuilt Silvermoon but Loch Modan, the dam and the Wetlands are still a ruin, a decade after Cataclysm officially hit.

I'm sure they'll eventually get around to updating all the zones, but it's likely to be a very, very long time unless they have some very big reveals coming for The Last Titan or the expansion after that.

 

[Staffan]

Add another option about leveling speed for the folks who want to enjoy the ride.

I remember heirloom items being added back in Wrath: bind-on-account items you could send to your alts that adjusted their bonuses to the user's level (IIRC, being approximately as good as on-level blue items but usually with better itemization) as well as granting XP bonuses. They made leveling up quite a bit faster, but at the cost of making pretty much all quest rewards irrelevant as well as having you out-level zones before you could finish off their quest lines.

I think some tuning of the vanilla leveling experience would be good (I recall at some points running out of level-appropriate quests in the zone I was in and having to go to another zone intended for the same levels), but heirlooms are pretty much the poster child for optimizing the fun out of things. Adding more quests would be a better solution, I think – at least as long as they aren't "get me 10 hooves"-type quests.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They retooled the heirloom items a bunch after Shadowlands, I think, but I can't remember what they did. I do think Blizzard agrees they were (are?) a problem.

And yeah, more content rather than being forced to grind or go some place random is a much better choice. I love that Forever wants everyone to do a dungeon once and then go enjoy the gobs of new quests to do instead.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If I'm understanding correctly, they aren't doing mutliple servers by region. Meaning everyone in the US will be in the same server. If that's the case, they will need to address the spawning issue. I played two toons to level 20 so far, and the issue is in all regions.

There are so many people, that mobs spawn again after a few seconds, which means you can't work your way through an area. If you kill one mob and move to the next, the first respawns immediately and you quickly find yourself surrounded by mobs. This is especially bad when someone is running out of the area and bringing a trail of mobs along with them.

Resource quests are a pain too. So many people are competing to get those same dried branches that you're lucky if you can do it in half an hour. They shouldn't despawn a resource item once someone gets it, they should just make that person unable to get it gain until after a certain time passes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If I'm understanding correctly, they aren't doing mutliple servers by region. Meaning everyone in the US will be in the same server. If that's the case, they will need to address the spawning issue. I played two toons to level 20 so far, and the issue is in all regions.

There are so many people, that mobs spawn again after a few seconds, which means you can't work your way through an area. If you kill one mob and move to the next, the first respawns immediately and you quickly find yourself surrounded by mobs. This is especially bad when someone is running out of the area and bringing a trail of mobs along with them.

Resource quests are a pain too. So many people are competing to get those same dried branches that you're lucky if you can do it in half an hour. They shouldn't despawn a resource item once someone gets it, they should just make that person unable to get it gain until after a certain time passes.

This is a beta issue every time in retail. There's a dial they set for dynamic spawning per shard and it always takes them a bit to get the balance right. I trust it'll be good in November.

 

[Autumnal]

I think some tuning of the vanilla leveling experience would be good (I recall at some points running out of level-appropriate quests in the zone I was in and having to go to another zone intended for the same levels), but heirlooms are pretty much the poster child for optimizing the fun out of things. Adding more quests would be a better solution, I think – at least as long as they aren't "get me 10 hooves"-type quests.

This is one of the first things they talked about. There are several hundred new quests spread across the zones to close all the grind gaps.

 

[Distracted DM]

This is one of the first things they talked about. There are several hundred new quests spread across the zones to close all the grind gaps.

Yup. They added over 1000 quests with Forever, and for context Classic had 4-5k quests- so that's a significant number. And I think a lot of them cover some gaps or close out some storylines that were left undone.

 

[Campbell]

Yup. They added over 1000 quests with Forever, and for context Classic had 4-5k quests- so that's a significant number. And I think a lot of them cover some gaps or close out some storylines that were left undone.

The new quests for the undead starter zone are some of my favorite World of Warcraft quests. So hard to choose between Undead Paladin, Undead Priest or Orc Shaman. Been enjoying all three in beta.

 

[Aldarc]

I think there are a fair amount of people returning to game who believe that Wrath of the Lich King was peak Warcraft. They likely want more friction (and a less competitive endgame environment) than the modern game provides but also more of the modern conveniences and more dynamic gameplay than Classic. It will be interesting to see how the returning Wrath babies mix with Classic players.

Could be wrong, but I am seeing a lot of have not played since Wrath and/or Cataclysm people returning anecdotally.

I tend to agree.

In terms of my Warcraft play history, it was Warcraft: Orcs & Humans through World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, then I skipped Mists of Pandaria. Dabbled in Warlords of Draenor. Came back about halfway through Legion (chef's kiss). Dabbled in Battle for Azeroth, mostly played for the new Allied races (e.g., Dark Iron Dwarves, Nightborne Elves, Zandalari Trolls, etc.). Skipped Shadowlands and the War Within. I am playing again, mostly dabbling in the War Within and Midnight; however, it was WoW Forever that actually brought me back.

I personally don't think either Wrath or TBC were "peak" Warcraft from my own perspective. There were a lot of stupid decisions Blizzard made during these times that tend to get glossed over with rose-colored glasses and reminiscing about "the good 'ole days." But I think that Blizzard did not anticipate that WoW would last this long, so they already burned through Outland and the Lich King way too early.

Blizzard likely would have approached even Vanilla very differently with twenty-years of hindsight, and I don't think that such a product would look like either Retail or Classic. It would probably be designed with greater longevity and fewer headaches for Blizzard.

But I also know that my own "If I was in charge for WC3* and WoW Vanilla..." would look very different than what we got.

* Adding WC3 since both WC3 and WoW were being developed simultaneously in conjunction with each other.

I'm sure they'll eventually get around to updating all the zones, but it's likely to be a very, very long time unless they have some very big reveals coming for The Last Titan or the expansion after that.

If Blizzard said that the next expansion after the Last Titan would just be updating the old zones and focusing on the level 1 to 60 leveling progression through Azeroth with a time skip, then I would be all for it. Hopefully by then, they will have learned their lessons from Cataclysm and WoW Forever. However, I don't think that they can put the flying mount genie back in the bottle. I think that one of the things holding back Retail is simply 20+ years of accumulated baggage.

I know that sometimes one of the arguments make against people playing new MMOs is that they lack as much content as more established MMOs (e.g., WoW, GW2, FF14, etc.). But I also think that is why there are people interested in WoW Forever.

One of the stated reasons why I have seen people interested in WoW Forever, including from people who have not played WoW before, is the opportunity to have a "fresh start." Jumping into WoW Forever means not worrying about ELEVEN! expansions worth of content, lore, subsystems, reputations, mounts and skins, and currencies to sift through. It means no flying mounts. It means Thrall is still Warchief with Vol'jin and Cairne by his side. It means pretending that there is no Jailer or Shadowlands. It means the Lich King, Kil'jaeden, and Sargeras are still off-screen threats.

 

[Distracted DM]

One of the stated reasons why I have seen people interested in WoW Forever, including from people who have not played WoW before, is the opportunity to have a "fresh start." Jumping into WoW Forever means not worrying about ELEVEN! expansions worth of content, lore, subsystems, reputations, mounts and skins, and currencies to sift through. It means no flying mounts. It means Thrall is still Warchief with Vol'jin and Cairne by his side. It means pretending that there is no Jailer or Shadowlands. It means the Lich King, Kil'jaeden, and Sargeras are still off-screen threats.

Yup. It's probably why people asked for Classic for so long, and why it was quite popular when they released it and supported it at time went on. What's funny is when Classic was released I gave it a try but at the time I just really wasn't into any MMOs, so I probably played it for an hour before I said that was enough, why retread old ground etc.

And now I spent months playing Midnight when it releases, and am now a Classic Hardcore evangelist lol