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.
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.
Blizzard's WoW Forever raid overview confirms three raids for December 9: the Barrow Deeps (10 players, 8 bosses), Hyjal Summit (20 players, 13 bosses) and a 40-player Onyxia's Lair that still needs the Drakefire Amulet. Where each raid is, the full Alliance and Horde attunement chains, why the new raids have no attunement, and why players are now asking for a 10-player version of every raid.
Clay Stone says 'horizontal' means expanding the world, not freezing gear. Each new raid tier will be a small power step up, old best-in-slot items should last a long time, and three forum threads passed 80 replies in a day arguing about it. Here is exactly what was said and what it means for your gear.
Every answer from the September 17 WoW Forever developer Q&A with Josh Greenfield, Nora Mills and Tim Jones: GDKP, addons, raid sizes, single difficulty, Oceanic servers, surnames, PvP, transmog, the Skyborne, and what they skipped.
Where the 1,000 new quests live. Four new zones, nine new dungeons with level ranges, the December raid wave, the Darkspear Islands battleground, and who the Skyborne elves actually are.