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.
How the WoW Forever library book quest works, where all 40 books are with coordinates, which ones you can get at level 20, the neck and ring rewards for 10 and 20 books, and the Mage-only Research profession. With a checklist you can tick off as you go.
The items and systems WoW Forever beta testers found that Blizzard never announced. Rockslicer's 30-charge mining effect, the Coldflame Saber for melee Mages, the new Embrace of the Viper set bonuses, the Cozy Sleeping Bag, the library book rewards, guaranteed dungeon blues, mailed loot, a doubled bank and more, with exact tooltip numbers from Wowhead's Forever database.
Blizzard's September 23 Legacy deep dive in plain terms. How Legacy Points are earned, why one character can reach 29 of them without an alt, all 21 perks across the Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness trees with their demo ranks, the Spectral Bear rewards, the Hardcore rules, and the 16 points we would spend first.
Merchant's Favor is WoW Forever's new profession currency. You earn it by filling Waylaid Crates with gathered and crafted goods and handing them in at Three Corners or the Crossroads. Every crate type, the turn-in NPCs, how much Favor you get, the 300-plus recipes it buys, and what beta testers think of the drop rate.
The WoW Forever beta client leaks memory. Frame rate slides from 120 to 30 over an hour, VRAM climbs until it spills, and logging out to character select resets it. The measured leak rates, every affected platform, what Blizzard has and has not said, and the workarounds ranked.
Bloodthirst 45% to 35% AP. Stormstrike 20 seconds to 8. Lightning Bolt 3.0 to 2.5. Edgemaster's +7 to +1. The base-spell and item changes hiding under the talent rework, with sources.
The $29.99 Heroic Pack does not include the beta. The $59.99 Epic Pack does. What each of the three packs and the physical Collector's Edition actually grants, when, and what carries to Modern WoW or Classic.
Gnome Priest, Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock and Undead Paladin. What each combo actually gets from its racials, which ones are upgrades, and which are just new.
People are searching for a WoW Forever server list that will never exist. Forever is realmless: you pick a ruleset, and a matchmaking system called Familiar Faces keeps you near the people you know.
There is no official WoW Forever system requirements page. The Battle.net shop lists 128 GB of SSD space and 8 GB of VRAM. Everything more precise than that is unsourced.
One class had all three of its 31-point talents rebuilt, had its mana problem fixed five different ways, and gears every role off a single stat. Roll a Horde Orc Shaman on November 4.
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.