Warcraft Forever

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, before they put up the list of possible classes, I wrote that I thought they should bring in the rest of the Warcraft III heroes as classes and not to bring in the retail ones.

I am horrified that someone inside Blizzard might think that death knights (without Arthas), monks (without Pandaria) or demon hunters (without Illidan) are somehow a good idea. Retail is right there, people. Go play it if you want a demon hunter.

If Warcraft Forever is a good idea (and I go back and forth on it), it needs to have its own identity and do its own thing. Adding new vanilla-style dungeons is a great idea and seems like the perfect way for them to go. Shoehorning in retail stuff because they can't commit to the bit feels like they don't really have a vision for where to go with this, and given that millions of dollars, maybe tens of millions of dollars, are involved here, that's a huge red flag.

The tinker class -- a Warcraft III hero -- has been kicked around for a while, but the implementation they describe in the survey is great and it's easy to see how it'd work. (I do think it'd be odd to have without playable goblins, but they're a pretty obvious new race to include, maybe even as a neutral race that can join either the Horde or Alliance.) The necromancer is also a great one, straight from Warcraft III lore and with an obvious starting point in Warcraft Forever's version of the Plaguelands.

Bards, as much as I love them generally, don't really seem to fit in Azeroth, where I don't think we've seen a single NPC playing music ever. It took until the Shadowlands for players to get playable musical instruments, and that's just among the Night Fae.

Similarly, their version of the witch seems pretty cool, minus them wearing leather armor and wielding a short sword, which feels like someone looking at a spreadsheet and saying "we need more spellcasters in leather," but they're not an archetype we've ever seen in Azeroth outside of Drustvar and, there, they were mostly people possessed by Drust spirits.

 

[Aldarc]

I am horrified that someone inside Blizzard might think that death knights (without Arthas), monks (without Pandaria) or demon hunters (without Illidan) are somehow a good idea. Retail is right there, people. Go play it if you want a demon hunter.

I mostly feel the same. I don't like hero classes in WoW. Also, I never liked that your death knights were all undead. So that killed (no pun intended) a lot of my desire to play one, since it forces a narrative on your character that they are undead, including the odd re-resurrected Forsaken death knights.

The tinker class -- a Warcraft III hero -- has been kicked around for a while, but the implementation they describe in the survey is great and it's easy to see how it'd work. (I do think it'd be odd to have without playable goblins, but they're a pretty obvious new race to include, maybe even as a neutral race that can join either the Horde or Alliance.)

Yeah, if we got a Tinker class, then I would want goblins. Even if we didn't get a Tinker class, I would want goblins. They always should have been the fourth race for the Horde.

The necromancer is also a great one, straight from Warcraft III lore and with an obvious starting point in Warcraft Forever's version of the Plaguelands.

However, I wish that they would also add a healing spec to the Necromancer. It should not just be three different DPS specializations. Manipulate life and death to heal.

Bards, as much as I love them generally, don't really seem to fit in Azeroth, where I don't think we've seen a single NPC playing music ever. It took until the Shadowlands for players to get playable musical instruments, and that's just among the Night Fae.

IMHO, it would probably be easier and better to add Musician as a Secondary Profession, which would work well with the new campfire system. Players could collect new game music to play from dungeons, raids, and special quests.

Similarly, their version of the witch seems pretty cool, minus them wearing leather armor and wielding a short sword, which feels like someone looking at a spreadsheet and saying "we need more spellcasters in leather," but they're not an archetype we've ever seen in Azeroth outside of Drustvar and, there, they were mostly people possessed by Drust spirits.

We have also seen the Harvest-Witches in Gilneas, but these were associated with rudimentary druidism. There are also the Troll witch-doctors. But I'm not sure if witches are strong enough of an archetype with enough POP! or WOW! factor to get people playing them.

 

[Staffan]

Bards, as much as I love them generally, don't really seem to fit in Azeroth, where I don't think we've seen a single NPC playing music ever. It took until the Shadowlands for players to get playable musical instruments, and that's just among the Night Fae.

The only occasion I can think of where music even had a lore-relevant role was in Burning Crusade, in the Blood Elf starting zone. Well, technically the music part is in Undercity, but during the course of the Blood Elf intro experience you find a necklace that used to belong to Sylvanas Windrunner and which starts a quest to return it to her. When you do, she has a bit of a moment.

In Warlords of Draenor, you could also add a jukebox to your garrison and find music rolls to play different music in your base. But that's more of a fun collector thing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

However, I wish that they would also add a healing spec to the Necromancer. It should not just be three different DPS specializations. Manipulate life and death to heal.

Given that death coil, etc., have been in the franchise even before WoW, moving health around, either from enemies or party members, to heal, seems like a natural fit.

From Blizzard's perspective, though, adding new healers or tank specs doesn't ever create a significant number of new healers or tanks -- it mostly just moves existing healers and tanks around to new classes. So it may not be worth a lot of design time.

Still, it would be cool.

IMHO, it would probably be easier and better to add Musician as a Secondary Profession, which would work well with the new campfire system. Players could collect new game music to play from dungeons, raids, and special quests.

That would be really fun and a good way to flesh out that system.

 

[Distracted DM]

Yeah, before they put up the list of possible classes, I wrote that I thought they should bring in the rest of the Warcraft III heroes as classes and not to bring in the retail ones.

I am horrified that someone inside Blizzard might think that death knights (without Arthas), monks (without Pandaria) or demon hunters (without Illidan) are somehow a good idea. Retail is right there, people. Go play it if you want a demon hunter.

If Warcraft Forever is a good idea (and I go back and forth on it), it needs to have its own identity and do its own thing. Adding new vanilla-style dungeons is a great idea and seems like the perfect way for them to go. Shoehorning in retail stuff because they can't commit to the bit feels like they don't really have a vision for where to go with this, and given that millions of dollars, maybe tens of millions of dollars, are involved here, that's a huge red flag.

The tinker class -- a Warcraft III hero -- has been kicked around for a while, but the implementation they describe in the survey is great and it's easy to see how it'd work. (I do think it'd be odd to have without playable goblins, but they're a pretty obvious new race to include, maybe even as a neutral race that can join either the Horde or Alliance.) The necromancer is also a great one, straight from Warcraft III lore and with an obvious starting point in Warcraft Forever's version of the Plaguelands.

Bards, as much as I love them generally, don't really seem to fit in Azeroth, where I don't think we've seen a single NPC playing music ever. It took until the Shadowlands for players to get playable musical instruments, and that's just among the Night Fae.

Similarly, their version of the witch seems pretty cool, minus them wearing leather armor and wielding a short sword, which feels like someone looking at a spreadsheet and saying "we need more spellcasters in leather," but they're not an archetype we've ever seen in Azeroth outside of Drustvar and, there, they were mostly people possessed by Drust spirits.

I pointed them to the Warcraft 3 heroes and ALSO to the DnD3e Warcraft TTRPG, which they actually already drew on a lot lore-wise in later xpacs. There was some lore that was written for the ttrpg which later was adopted into canon, for example IIRC it helped shape a lot of the troll loa stuff later on.



But to the point of new classes, I'm mixed. They already added the new race as a paid option, obvious to me that new classes would require purchase as well. But compared to $15/mo sub, what's a $20 class worth when only a portion of your subscribers are gonna buy it? But I guess... IDK, we'll have to see.

It's true that Classic will be there if for some reason they bunk up Forever, but a lot of Classic players were basically just hoping for the new quest content and class talent fixes/balances, obviously you can't "go to Classic" for that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But to the point of new classes, I'm mixed. They already added the new race as a paid option, obvious to me that new classes would require purchase as well. But compared to $15/mo sub, what's a $20 class worth when only a portion of your subscribers are gonna buy it? But I guess... IDK, we'll have to see.

I have friends who've worked on a lot of MMOs, including WoW, Rifts and Guild Wars, and apparently subscription revenue mostly pays to keep the servers online and maintenance, but you need "box sales" in the form of expansions or something comparable, to pay for the development of new content.

So there will be content packs in addition to the subscription. Whether those are expansions (Quel'Thalas and Zul'Aman seem like an obvious first one) or just smaller content packs remains to be seen.

I'm not mad at it, though. The big stuff for retail is $50 every two years or so, which isn't exactly a huge amount of money, bolstered by optional cosmetic purchases. A similar model for WoW Forever wouldn't be a shock, although if one of the points of Forever is to try new things, I could see them making more smaller content packs instead.

It's true that Classic will be there if for some reason they bunk up Forever, but a lot of Classic players were basically just hoping for the new quest content and class talent fixes/balances, obviously you can't "go to Classic" for that.

Oh, for sure. I think it's worrying that Blizzard didn't say anything about what's next for Classic at Blizzcon. They gave out relatively little for retail compared to past conventions, but nothing at all for Classic.

 

[Distracted DM]

I have friends who've worked on a lot of MMOs, including WoW, Rifts and Guild Wars, and apparently subscription revenue mostly pays to keep the servers online and maintenance, but you need "box sales" in the form of expansions or something comparable, to pay for the development of new content.

Oh, for sure. I think it's worrying that Blizzard didn't say anything about what's next for Classic at Blizzcon. They gave out relatively little for retail compared to past conventions, but nothing at all for Classic.

I'm astounded that WoW subscriptions would only serve to keep the servers going, considering their numbers. If we figure WoW has 10 million players (that's somewhat conservative based on their posted numbers), that's 150mil/month. I guess I have no idea what server maintenance overhead is lol

 

[Staffan]

I'm astounded that WoW subscriptions would only serve to keep the servers going, considering their numbers. If we figure WoW has 10 million players (that's somewhat conservative based on their posted numbers), that's 150mil/month. I guess I have no idea what server maintenance overhead is lol

Presumably, server costs would scale pretty closely to subscription revenue albeit with some lag: more users = more server costs. Now, I'm pretty sure Blizzard isn't running a charity so there's some profit included with those sub costs, but that's for the shareholders and not for development.

Also, 10M is overestimating it by quite a bit. A quick googling shows that the latest estimate is 7-9M, with the peak being 12M back in the Wrath of the Lich King days. Blizzard doesn't provide subscriber numbers publicly and haven't done so for a decade, though there was apparently a leak from a conference that showed just over 7M in early 2024.

 

[Distracted DM]

Presumably, server costs would scale pretty closely to subscription revenue albeit with some lag: more users = more server costs. Now, I'm pretty sure Blizzard isn't running a charity so there's some profit included with those sub costs, but that's for the shareholders and not for development.

Also, 10M is overestimating it by quite a bit. A quick googling shows that the latest estimate is 7-9M, with the peak being 12M back in the Wrath of the Lich King days. Blizzard doesn't provide subscriber numbers publicly and haven't done so for a decade, though there was apparently a leak from a conference that showed just over 7M in early 2024.

I'm not sure how your numbers square up when Blizzard has announced that Midnight had their highest subscriber count ever, which one would assume beats Lich King, and again their numbers surged to a new high with the Forever beta.

 

[Aldarc]

From Blizzard's perspective, though, adding new healers or tank specs doesn't ever create a significant number of new healers or tanks -- it mostly just moves existing healers and tanks around to new classes. So it may not be worth a lot of design time.

Still, it would be cool.

If that were simply the case, then none of the classes that Blizzard proposed in the survey would be anything other than DPS specs. I would just personally prefer a little more variety from a class with at least two roles than a class that just has one. It's one thing that kept me from really enjoying classes like hunters, warlocks, and mages. And considering that warlocks and mages are already have three DPS specs, I would like to see Blizz flex a little creativity by designing healer Necros. It may be a personal bias, but I enjoy my Necromancers to be masters of Life and Death. [insert my usual complaints about D&D necromancers here]

It's true that Classic will be there if for some reason they bunk up Forever, but a lot of Classic players were basically just hoping for the new quest content and class talent fixes/balances, obviously you can't "go to Classic" for that.

There were also Classic players and Classic+ players who also called for more new classes but in Classic style. I recall the Classic+ community doing a vote about which classes should be added, with Necromancer winning out on top.

Some of these classes on the survey were originally planned for the release of Vanilla before being cut.