THE STORIES BEHIND THE GAME
Good reads for your next queue.
Guides, big moments, and the people behind them.
World of Warcraft: Forever rebuilds every talent tree, drops realms, adds nine dungeons and a thousand quests, and keeps level 60. We went through every change against Classic, and we kept the collection we wrote before the reveal.
On launch night capitals looked empty and Blizzard promised to make areas feel more lively. By Saturday the US and EU forums were full of players waiting 10 to 50 minutes for quest mobs in packed zones. What Blizzard said, what changed, what is still unconfirmed, and how to level around it.
Five players led by Jokerd hit level 60 together about 52 hours after WoW Forever launched, with a Paladin pulling huge packs and three Mages AoEing them down in the open world. How they did it, the solo race still going, the layer and respawn questions some players are raising, and why the record reopened the dungeon XP fight.
WoW Forever went live on November 4 with 10-minute queues, then hit faction creation locks on PvP, over-split layers that left capitals almost empty, boats and zeppelins lost at sea, and an Invite-a-Friend bug. What happened, what Blizzard said, and what's still open.
The last WoW Forever podcast before launch was the tech episode. Blizzard's engineers said the zone-border vanishing from the beta is fixed for November 4, that group invites will no longer move you without asking, that Oceanic servers could run on Australian time if players accept a sudden sky change when grouping with Americans, and that bigger-than-40 groups are being discussed. What was said, who said it, and what is still open.
The WoW Forever beta closes at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 23 after a 24-hour farewell event in the starting zones. In the End of Beta podcast, Blizzard said why it ran a beta at all, why there's a two-week gap, how the language setting replaces language realms, that campfire damage is being looked at, and teased raid bosses, a revamped Molten Core and future homes.
Two days before the beta ends, layering is back at the top of the WoW Forever forums. What triggers a layer change, how players use zone borders and group invites to escape world PvP, the October 15 combat fix, what the developers have promised, and how Classic handled the same problem in 2019.
Josh Greenfield says shared mob tagging is something Blizzard 'simply must hold the line on' in WoW Forever. Why testers asked for it, what the beta's starting zones look like with layering and a realmless megaserver, what Blizzard says it will do instead, and how to level through the crowd right now. Updated October 5 with why testers now say grouping slows them down.