The announcement of World of Warcraft Forever has filled me with mixed feelings. I’m excited to play in the beta and taking off work to wait in que. But I also wonder if they can actually make a decent MMO anymore as modern retail WoW is trash.
The Good: I love to hear that the main focus will be on the world as the main character and we’re just adventurers in the story. I’ve always hated when MMO’s like Guild Wars 2 and retail WoW start calling your character Hero, Champion, Commander and all sorts of accolades. I want to be the lowly adventurer in a big world aka the small fish in a big pond. I don’t want my journey to end so I want the world to continue to expand as I play, not my titles. Also having them say from the stage that they are putting the War back in Warcraft means they heard players disgust for their previous statements saying otherwise. No war, no conflict means no reason to play. Without there being battles to fight and conflicts between groups then all you have is a cozy game that will quickly die. The new zones, dungeons, raids and content is looking pretty good but I won’t know for sure until I get to experience it. The idea that the world expands and not a layered mess of expansions is nice to hear as well.
The Bad: Skybornes - yet another reskinned Blood Elf model. Though I can appreciate adding elves to the game but why not High Elves and give us a taste of the conflict between them and the Alliance? They could have gone with High Elf, Goblins or Ogres! And adding their weird Island in the Sky starting zone hits too close to feeling like modern retail trash. I’m also not a fan of making a grounded Dalaran City (awesome idea) just a dungeon and not a…well city. Dalaran is my favorite city in Wow and it would be cool to revisit it as a hub. And this leads me to my biggest concern for this project and that is…this becomes infected with modern retail WoW taint. Some call it the Disneyfication of Warcraft or the crapification of the classic game we love. The biggest question is “Can they actually make a good Classic +?” After shutting down amazing Classic + servers from TurtleWoW to Ascension can they make something better? I doubt it but we shall see. I’ll at least give them a chance and if they fail the WoW private server scene is still alive and well including the rebirth of TurtleWoW as OctoWoW.
The Ugly: I’m just using this as a play on words because I did like the fact that they are putting in toggle to change the graphics between SD (the ugly) and HD. And a toggle between seeing transmog and turning that off (important for pvp). Those two things have always been a point of contention in the community so I think that is a great compromise. Sometimes I just want the OG SD graphics to make the game feel familiar and nostalgic. And times I want to see something fresh so it’s nice to have a that choice.
The big question is will this hood Classic players Forever or will this be just another dead server in a long line of failed Blizzard slop? Only play time will tell…
Great video on the subject…