The world can completely change in the span of a week — especially if that world is Azeroth. In seven days, we got the jaw-dropping announcement of World of Warcraft Forever at BlizzCon, several panels, numerous interviews, two trailers, a developer Q&A, and the start of betamining. We’ve gone from drinking from the trickles of studio hints to the torrent of official news.
It’s a whole lot to take in, and there’s so much to talk about and cover for this new version of World of Warcraft that’s right around the corner. However, as I absorbed the news and ruminated on the announcement, the thought that this marks a much-needed do-over for this MMO franchise bubbled up. I think this is what we need to talk about the most, because it feels as though we’re on the threshold of a significant shift — one that might see the decline of a mighty presence and the ascension of another.
In their own ways, both pre-established branches of the World of Warcraft tree have been struggling with problems that can’t be easily solved. Retail WoW — or “Modern WoW,” as Blizzard is now calling it — changed and mutated so much over the years that it became a completely different product than its 2004 incarnation. It’s not a bad MMO at all, and I do applaud Blizzard’s attempt to embrace evergreen features in recent years, but it’s an MMO that’s all about the endgame, an overblown storyline, constantly resetting treadmills, and convenience with as little friction as possible. That’s alienated some players who can’t relate to what this game’s become.
Then you have WoW Classic, which has been stuck in the past. Whether it’s been frozen in the Classic Era time period or stuck repeating expansion rollouts, it hasn’t been able to forge a new path or identity. It’s leftovers; tasty, delicious, but totally reheated and served for a second, third, or fourth time. It’s, at best, an echo of the greatness of what was, and the community rightly saw that there’s no real future in that.
The answer may just come in the form of a hybrid that takes the foundation and design of Classic with the smarter improvements of retail and then grab a machete, jump off the road, and carve out a new path. That’s what WoW Forever hopes to do when it launches in November.
It’s a do-over, in other words. A really big one. And a much-needed one.
It’s a “what if?” with a big budget and a full dev team behind it. What if the vanilla version of World of Warcraft never went through the Dark Portal? What if we never left Azeroth, never got flying mounts, and never got infested by pandas?
That’s why this project is so breathtaking when you actually realize what it’s trying to do. This isn’t WoW Classic with a few more quests and zones, as we once assumed Classic Plus would be. This is Blizzard slamming its hand down on a reset button and then allowing the dev team to take this MMO into an alternate future.
It’s a project that’s looking at what made Classic so appealing to us, including the world as character, the meaningful leveling journey, the tactical combat, and the friction that we’d feel and overcome — and then building a modern MMO on that foundation. That’s a scary prospect! Make it too modern, give it too many sky elves or whatever, and then it loses its soul. But careful and thoughtful construction can make a game that’s ready to go the distance.
That’s what I feelWoW Forever is building: An MMORPG for the long-term, not for a short blast of nostalgia or subscription bumps. It’s the developers looking back at the 2004 game with the benefit of historical perspective and making better choices on top of the many good ones already there.
There’s the snarky saying that the only game that could kill World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft. That could be true, just not in the way that people originally thought. WoW players are slowly waking up to the fact that Forever truly is coming for Retail’s throne. Classic’s been huge for a good chunk of a decade now, and this is the missing piece to make it permanent and persistent. Before you accuse me of hyperbolic language, let me point out how Old School RuneScape absolutely shoved modern RuneScape aside to become the top MMO at Jagex by making similar moves.
No matter how all of this plays out, I fully agree with the notion thatWoW needs a do-over like this. We missed the old game that used to be but also want to move forward with that game. That’s what the Classic Plus movement was agitating.
It’s heartening to see that Blizzard isn’t doing this halfway or even bare minimum. It could’ve, you know. The studio’s taking a risk on pushing this to the forefront of its announcements and fall schedule, and I bet you anything that it’s got a whole lot of internal metrics and surveys that indicate this could explode into something huge. Heck, beta’s already been a monster — just wait until launch day.
I love seeing that this dev team’s pushing ideas that are smart, adhere to vision, and are occasionally based on community feedback. Compromises in transmog, visuals, and realm structure are being made to lower barriers between staunch camps of players in order to bring them all together for the sake of having fun.
Getting a do-over is a rare opportunity when it comes along, and it’s vital that every effort be made to take advantage of it and do it right this time. It’s too early to tell for sure that this is happening withForever — but I sense it is. What do you think?
Stepping back into the MMO time machine of WoW Classic, Justin Olivetti offers up observations and ground-level analysis as a Gnome with a view. Casually Classic is a more laid-back look at this legacy ruleset for those of us who’ve never stepped into a raid or seen more than 200 gold to our names.
