Ever since it first came out in 2004, World of Warcraft has gone through so many sweeping changes that the modern-day version – currently in the midst of its Midnight expansion – would be unrecognizable for those who only experienced that original version of the MMORPG.
The modern version of World of Warcraft has been refined over the years through several quality-of-life features, an emphasis on endgame content, and the complete devaluing of the general leveling experience, and as a result, many players have yearned for a return to an older version of the game.
“The early-game quests in World of Warcraft: Forever are in the vein of other classic MMORPGs of the era”
Blizzard first tried to appease this fan base with the 2019 release of World of Warcraft Classic, and while it was successful for a time, it ultimately fell victim to the fact that it was essentially a “solved” game. There weren’t any mysteries left to solve, secrets left to discover, strategies left to devise, and builds left to craft. Seven years later, Blizzard has taken another stab at the concept of what fans have called “World of Warcraft Classic Plus” – essentially a game that would follow the design principles of the original World of Warcraft, but with a host of new content to experience and secrets to discover – with World of Warcraft: Forever.
Reviewing the MMORPG in its entirety is currently borderline impossible, since endgame content like raids aren’t even out at the time of publishing. Rather, we decided to take a look at the leveling experience and see if Forever has brought about any meaningful changes over what we last saw with Classic, and I’m happy to say that in this regard, Blizzard has a genuine success in its hands. The main mantra behind World of Warcraft: Forever is that “it’s about the journey, not the destination”, and the relatively slow leveling speed and quest design really hammer this home.
The early-game quests in World of Warcraft: Forever are in the vein of other classic MMORPGs of the era – you’ll be told to kill a certain amount of mobs, or gather a few materials. In exchange, you’ll get experience and sometimes some gear as a reward. Sprinkled amongst these are some of the over one thousand new quests that Blizzard has created specially for Forever which not only provide their own rewards, but also help to make the leveling curve generally smoother.
Recalling memories of my first ever World of Warcraft character – a Forsaken Warlock – taking me a couple of days to get to level 10, I was happy to see that I was able to hit the same level on a new Forsaken Warrior in Forever in just a couple of hours. Sure, my decades of experience with the MMORPG has certainly played a role in this, but the adjustments Forever have made to not only the general questing experience, but also class design, has certainly had a big impact.
For some examples of great changes to class design, Warriors now have more of a reason to choose Protection as their main specialization of choice during the leveling process. The class used to be heavily starved of its primary resource – Rage – if it wasn’t dishing out constant damage, which used to make Arms the specialization of choice thanks to its emphasis on big 2-handed weapons that can dish out massive damage with slow swings.
Protection now has talents that reward the Warrior with Rage every time they block, parry, or dodge an attack, making the general idea of tanking viable at even lower levels. Shamans similarly have seen some excellent new additions; making use of the Enhancement tree – traditionally a melee DPS specialization – I have successfully been able to tank entire dungeons as a Shaman, facing little issue when it comes to incoming damage thanks to my plethora of supporting totems as well as the great healers playing through the game.
“The title absolutely nails the feeling Blizzard described during its announcement of looking “how you remember World of Warcraft looking”.”
As for classes I haven’t yet tried out, it has been quite fun seeing players settling into roles that were less common in Classic. A big example of this has been the Paladin. The Classic version of the class was best known for healing in raids. With Forever, however, I’ve seen plenty of them running around with damage dealing Retribution builds, as well as tanking Protection builds. Druids have also gone through similar changes, with Balance and Feral becoming much more viable alongside Restoration.
It has also been quite enjoyable to go back to slowly unlocking your core class abilities over the course of the leveling journey. This also means that a Warrior doesn’t simply get things like Defensive Stance or Berserker Stance by default. Long journeys have to be made by all of the classes every ten levels or so to unlock new abilities or get unique class-exclusive gear. As a Shaman, for instance, I had to make a trip from The Barrens – where I was leveling at the time – all the way to zones in the other continent as part of my quest to get access to Water Totems.
Along with making the world itself feel bigger and letting your leveling experience feel like more of a journey, this also has the side effect of getting you excited to complete these quests. Classic has always had this, with the Warrior’s Whirlwind Axe at around level 40 being a notable reward, but to experience these quests once more in Forever is a treat due to how gorgeous the world looks.
Speaking of which, Blizzard has introduced some fancy new graphics technology to World of Warcraft to make the game look generally more moody and atmospheric. While the world itself still looks like it used to in 2004, new lighting techniques, volumetric fog, water rendering, and the increased view distance have gone a long way to make Forever feel like a genuinely modern game. The title absolutely nails the feeling Blizzard described during its announcement of looking “how you remember World of Warcraft looking”.
This new technology certainly has its costs, as can be noticed by anyone who takes a look at the new system requirements for Forever. Running the title on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800XT GPU, however, has been painless so far. I’ve been playing it at 2560×1440 and every graphics setting maxed out and have been enjoying frame rates that average out at around 110 FPS.
On a similar technical note, I also have to praise Blizzard for the relatively smooth launch-day experience. Aside from a few initial hiccups in the first moments of the servers going live, playing World of Warcraft: Forever has been an absolute joy, and even lag hasn’t really been a problem on the European servers.
“The camping system has been the absolute highlight for me.”
Speaking of some of the new content that has come along in Forever, the camping system has been the absolute highlight for me. Players with the cooking profession can put down campfires, and everyone can chip in by adding their own profession-exclusive items to this camp. Each item provides a few useful buffs.
While some of these might be class-dependent – I found the bonus to mana regeneration quite useless as a Warrior who uses rage – others like the Fish bowl, which provides an 8 percent boost to all stats, are universal buffs that can be useful to just about anyone. Not only does this system encourage players to level up their professions by exploring the world, it also encourages more socializing, since just about anyone can sit down at a camp for a minute to gain the buffs. And as it turns out, one minute is just the right amount of time to strike up conversations about random subjects, and potentially finding new allies that might help you out with a particularly difficult quest or want to do the same dungeon that you’ve been wanting to do for some time.
On the subject of dungeons, they are something of a mixed bag in Forever. In an attempt to discourage grinding, Blizzard has tuned experience gained from killing things in dungeons to be to be lower than in Classic Era. A post-launch hotfix raised dungeon kill XP from 40% to 60% of Classic Era values. Rather, the company has added a host of new quests for all dungeons, with these quests serving as the main experience reward.
This means that, aside from trying to get more loot or helping out friends, you have less incentive to run a dungeon more than once. While I personally don’t mind this change, since I only ever like doing low-leveled dungeons once anyway, the lower dungeon kill XP has certainly been met with plenty of complaints. I’ve only gotten the chance to do one of Forever’s new dungeons so far – the Ruins of Lordaeron – and I found it to be an excellent time thanks to its simple yet fun boss encounters, secrets to discover, and generally-quick runtime that shouldn’t take an experienced group more than around 20 minutes to wrap up.
The leveling journey of World of Warcraft: Forever definitely has more going for it than just nostalgia for a game released in 2004. Thanks to all of the new content that has been added to the game, Blizzard has managed to once more introduce a sense of mystery and adventure to an experience that had at one point become “solved”, and as a result, quite stale. In its current state, I plan to continue spending countless more hours with the title, and it’s an easy game to recommend to anyone else who likes the feeling of being a simple adventurer in a massive world rather than a hero that has to deal with universe-ending threats on a monthly basis.
We’ll be back with our full review in December, once we’ve had time with the first raids and can see how Forever’s endgame holds up.
This game was reviewed on PC.
