Dear Classic players;

WoW: Forever WoW: Forever General Discussion
1
Disclaimer: I like Classic. I’ve given Hardcore a good few goes, I get the appeal of the mode, I understand why it’s liked even twenty years since it’s release and I’m not here to speak badly about the either the game you’ve enjoyed for so long or the game you’re now beta testing. With that being said;

Forever does not “belong” to you. Just because you’ve spent time on Classic, or Anniversary Realms, or Hardcore or even the private servers that pre-date Blizzards own server does not give you any sort of gatekeeping authority when it comes to this new mode.

Yes, Forever uses Classic as a template. Yes, Forever tries to adhere to the design philosophies of Classic WoW and yes, it does resemble Classic much more than it does Retail but it is not Classic and it is not trying to be.

The new additions to the game - the new zones, dungeons and race - these aren’t a fault of Forever, I’d argue they’re the entire point of it. It will play differently, and because of that it will attract the interest of people outside of those who played Classic or SoD.

The sooner you accept that you’re going to be sharing this space with people who have a different perspective on WoW, the sooner we can all start to enjoy the New Game+ thst Blizz has been cooking.

68 Likes
2

Hopefully not. Currently it really doesn’t. Small things, very small, but not really.

More content != playing differently.

I am sick of people trying to blur that line.

31 Likes
3

Sad trombone (often described as “wah-wah-wah-wah” or “womp womp”). new does not equal good - if it is implemented in a vanilla way the odds of it beeing a good addition is high, if retailified its high chance of bad

19 Likes
4

Sharing a space is fine.

What isn’t fine is retailers making endless posts asking for this to be removed, that to be removed, this to be made more convenient, that to be made faster and more streamlined - basically asking for Forever to be made into a clone of retail.

Because it cuts both ways you know.

Forever does not ‘belong’ to you either, and just because you spent time on retail does not give you any kind of right to demand that this game be turned into a retail facsimile.

It uses a classic template because it IS an expanded version of Classic.

66 Likes
5

Exactly.

This retail crowd took WoW from us once with all their terrible suggestions that ruined the game and developers who didn’t understand it.

It’s now back, and I will be damned if I say nothing while these same people suggest the same bad ideas and get them, losing me the game yet again.

The reception to this version is hugely positive. The Twitch viewership compared to TWW release is 3 times higher. Most people don’t want retail; it’s not WoW. It doesn’t play like WoW, it doesn’t feel like WoW, and there are millions and millions of people who were pissed beyond all reason.

And here they are, ready to give it another chance and reconnect. Don’t much it up for us, I BEG YOU. You have your retail, go play it.

I played it because I got dragged there through the friends I made back then. But I wasn’t truly happy with it.

38 Likes
6

I’ve not made any demands of the mode personally- all I want to see is some acknowledgement from folk that the game is going to differ. It feels like from my perspective the classic crowd don’t want anything changed - which to me is kinda silly considering the whole premise of Forever.

5 Likes
7

Okay, let me make it so simple so anyone can understand it:

It is the difference between making a StarCraft 2 map and releasing a 4th race and increasing the unit cap to 300 and adding squads for every map.

Get it?

1 Like
8

Classic is everything that dont forces us to go through a Portal and enter outerspace.

TBC ruined WOW this way.

8 Likes
9

They aint gonna muck it up don’t worry.

Blizzard ignore the EU forums. I’d be surprised if they even remembered they exist.

So a few retail tourists who are demanding that Forever be ‘retail-ized’ are never going to have any influence. The dev Q&A made their stance quite clear.

Not that we can become complacent of course. I still worry that a bunch grey, visionless Microsoft money men with an accountancy mindset who have never played a videogame in their entire lives put a mandate through to monetise this, monetise that - put Tokens, boosts and all that garbage into the game.

That remains to be seen. Hopefully not.

5 Likes
10

I mean, maybe? I’ve never much liked TBC personally but it’s also nearly as old as Classic itself at this point.

But the Dark Portal is on Forever’s map so we’ll see how much of Outland remains… well, out.

1 Like
11

It’s not just being posted here. Aggrend has fortunately put his foot down on Twitter several times already.

He seems to be very strong-willed and he knows what he wants.

Retail lovers are welcome to be here, just respect it for what it is: It is an evolution of Classic that rejects the changes that happened to retail WoW and takes a different path. Therefore, it is the design goals of vanilla that count, and anything that comes after it needs serious scrutiny. Players have to stop trying to shoehorn retail into it with bad suggestions. It’s infuriating.

12 Likes
12

People that don’t want anything changed play Era (although iirc some changes were made even there). Your perception is likely due to the fact that different people oppose different changes. The whole idea of Classic plus was build on the premise that there would be additions/changes to vanilla world, so people that advocated for it aren’t opposed to changes in general.

4 Likes
13

You may have not personally done so - but below this post are a bunch of others asking for ammo to be removed, instant teleportation to dungeons, classes homogenised and a whole lot more.

I fully acknowledge that the game is going to differ, because that is objectively self-evident. But the fact that I might accept existing changes does not mean that I will accept suggestions for further changes which aim to add convenience and instant gratification.

There’s a line!

See that line? I don’t want it to be crossed.

4 Likes
14

I think that’s fair! It’s just been a little annoying seeing retail players blamed for the alterations and differences with Forever when the reality is that no player input has likely been taken on board yet (outside of bugs/glitches etc)

2 Likes
15

the thing about classic is that it already received new content.

its called The Burning Crusade.

in order for new content to be added without disturbing the classic gameplay, there will have to be made significant changes. which will very like change classic gameplay from Forever.

16

I wouldn’t want any of those changes either, with maybe the exception of cleaning up Hunter’s deadzone where neither melee nor ranged attacks hit, and maybe some small QoL stuff like area looting - but big sweeping convenience, nah.

But then there’s the alternative perspective where I’ve seen folk complaining about the inclusion of quest markers, the increased quest limit and the removal of Skyborne - like you said, it goes both ways. It’s just frustrating to largely see the blame pushed onto retail players, that’s really where most of this is coming from with me.

3 Likes
17

Hey. I don’t think Forever “belongs” to “us”. But I do think there’s some history here that is worth understanding and going back to. Listen.

A lot of “us” have already been on the other side of this argument. We were there when LFD was introduced. We were there for LFR, increasingly streamlined levelling, faster gearing, more convenience, more teleports, less travelling, less dependence on other players. And whenever some of us said that something important was being lost along the way, the answer was basically: the game has moved on. Adapt or leave.

When people asked for old-school servers, we were told for years that nobody really wanted them. That it was nostalgia. That we thought we did, but we didn’t.

And then… yeah!! Classic happened.

So yes, “we” are very much aware that there are people who prefer a different kind of WoW. Retail exists, and plenty of people genuinely prefer it. That’s fine.

But see… this is probably why some of “us” get nervous when the discussion around Forever immediately starts filling up with requests for things like LFD, faster levelling, easier travel, reduced downtime, streamlined systems and other conveniences that WoW accumulated over the years. We’ve seen that road before. If only I didn’t remember it all so well.

And the irony is that Classic exists in the first place because enough people eventually realised that all those little inconveniences weren’t necessarily bad design. Some of them were part of what made the world work. Even Blizzard said that in the panels. You even have the videos in these forums.

Some of the points:

Having to travel somewhere makes the world feel big.

Having to find people for a dungeon makes other players matter. It takes time, yeah, but the world isn’t going anywhere in this version.

Having downtime makes preparation matter etc

Levelling slowly makes places that aren’t the current endgame also matter.

Not being constantly funnelled towards the next piece of content means you can simply exist in Azeroth. That’s the part I would really like people coming from Retail to give a chance before asking for it to be changed. You guys barely seen what this all is about. I’ve played Era for years and I still only have two level 60 characters. Neither has even entered Naxxramas. And strangely enough, I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.

Because there is NOTHING I need to catch up with. You won’t have either. That is why is it called FOREVER. The very philosophy is in the name.

The raid isn’t going anywhere. The world isn’t going anywhere. I can spend an evening fishing, helping somebody with an elite quest, levelling an alt, travelling somewhere completely inefficiently or doing absolutely nothing productive, and that evening wasn’t “wasted”

So… no, Forever doesn’t belong to Classic players. New people are absolutely welcome. In fact, I hope Forever brings in lots of people who never understood the appeal of Classic before. But perhaps come in with a little curiosity about why this strange, slow, inconvenient twenty-year-old game still has people playing it. Before asking for another version of Retail.

Cheers

33 Likes
18

Well those people are evidently pushing too far in the other direction. There’s a line but there’s also a balance.

1 Like
19

Can we please just stop with the division?

11 Likes
20

That was admittedly what I was trying to do, maybe I could’ve phrased the title better or found some other means of formatting the post, but ultimately I’m just kind of tired of retail players taking the blame for design decisions put into a game that quite literally none of us knew about until this past month.

5 Likes