World of Warcraft: Forever

This was recently shown off at Blizzcon and is the official name for WoW Classic Plus.

WoW classic was born out of the desire to be able to play the original vision of the game again, and by now has progressed through several expansions and left that original vision behind. The idea behind Forever is to create a game version that does not progress into the future and instead gives the player new things to do in the original world without outright replacing anything.

The original game as notorious for having unfilled locations that players always dreamt about one day exploring, and those areas will now be (gradually) filled.


Anyway, it launches November 4th and will be free for anyone with a subscription. Here is what is included as part of its launch.

A New Race - The Skyborne. Can be warrior, rogue, hunter, and druid. This is a neutral race split into two factions, with Alliance being able to additionally pick mage and Horde being able to pick shaman.

This is controversial and I'll discuss it later. Note that the rest of the content is free, but you have to pay $30 for the new race. I sort of feel like this is subsidizing the new content for everyone that gets the new zones for free.


Four new zones -

• Zephras Isle - New starting zone for the new race.
• Riverglades - A new zone in the Eastern Kingdoms meant to address the leveling content drought from the 30s and 40s.
• Shen'Dralas - A new zone near Desolace that expands on current content with the centaur clans and Dire Maul.
• Mount Hyjal - End game zone. Focuses on the aftermath of Warcraft 3, rather than the events of Cataclysm.

Nine new dungeons -

• Hall of Thanes (Level 13-18)
• Ruins of Lordaeron (Level 15-20)
• Excavation Site (Level 24-29)
• City of Dalaran (Level 28-33)
• The Drowned City (Level 35-40)
• Krol'Dok Stronghold (Level 40-45)
• Alcaz Island Prison (Level 48-53)
• Blackmaw Hold (Level 55-60)
• Shaper's Terrace (Level 58-60)

Two new raids -

• The Barrow Deeps (10-player)
• Hyjal Summit (20-player)

One new battleground -

• Darkspear Islands - 15 vs 15

The idea (for the most part) is to fill in the unfinished parts of the world map and smooth out the experience. They are also adding new quests as a result. They want the content to feel like things that could have been present in Vanilla, rather than entirely new things. It also sort of serves as a what-if.

Everything isn't staying the same though. They want the combat focus to stay the same, but they are going to try and make all classes viable in ways they weren't in the original release. They are reworking talent trees and adding tools that weren't present until later expansions, or making some tools baseline to prevent cookie cutter meta builds. For example, fear ward is no longer exclusive to dwarf priests. Racial abilities in general are also being reworked. Itemization is being reworked.

New Race/Class Combinations -

Undead Paladin
Orc Mage
Troll Warlock

Dwarf Shaman
Human Hunter
Gnome Priest

New graphics - Expanded view distance, new lighting system, updated fog and water effects.

Assorted gameplay tweaks - optional transmog, realmless servers, campsite system to increase player interaction, account wide buffs, etc


After seeing the developers talk about the game, I get the feeling that the team is made up of people that actually care about classic warcraft. At the same time, I feel like marketing still has a hand in some of their decisions. I had a bit of a negative impression before I read all the details. The name, for example, is stupid. The trailer is nice looking, but also Disney-fied to heck and back. And the new race is pulled completely out of thin air.

The Skyborne are a race of sky elves that have never once been present in the series or hinted at in any way. It's just a half assed way to not give Alliance players what they have been asking for for years (High Elves) and to give Horde players a "pretty" race to balance out population numbers as was done in The Burning Crusade. I feel like their presence in the introduction trailer really dampened the spirit of Forever being a game about the Vanilla WoW timeline.

https://youtu.be/xXaXYxcbA6A?si=gToMpiiosU6PglUr

https://youtu.be/uQuKE0KDgiM?si=HUdoygDkehQWT1cE

https://youtu.be/nQPS_QSOYCU?si=0s-GzshaoX_yR41i