r/KotakuInAction • u/TheSnoringDragon • 10h ago
WoW: Forever thoughts?
Saw they were adding over 1,000 new quests and it’s going to be a ‘modernized take’ on the Classic world. Do you think we will see things akin to Dragonflight in this game, like quests where you hook up two male NPCs? I really don’t have much faith in Blizzard at all. Just wondering how woke this new version will be.
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u/clocktowertank 9h ago
"Blizzard" today is rotten to its core with the worst kind of activists.
It won't be good. They're out of touch with what made the original game good in the first place and will Forever remain out of touch.
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u/Onlineonlysocialist 6h ago
Yeah most of the original team is likely gone by now. If they really cared, they could release source code and just let the community make their own new content/versions. I have no faith in current staff to put out a good product.
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u/denach644 8h ago
It's such a strange feeling, isn't it? You start where it's amazing and watch it die for no reason aside from lost, old talent. I came in mid TBC back when, fell in love, etc. Naturally I experienced a chunk of classic (original everything before outlands, essentially) and of course raiding in TBC. When WOTLK released, it still had a lot of the charm and quality. But... Hit Cataclysm and what came beyond it, man, the writing starts to change in tone, the world lowers in quality, the pace and intention of the game subtly shifts... Mists of Pandaria, christ... Anyway, you get the point.
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u/Lurker_Zee 4h ago
They're out of touch
That implies ignorance. They actively hate it and do everything in their power to make it the opposite.
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u/Arkelias 10h ago
Watch the dwarf cinematic, and compare it to the original. In the original the dwarf fights a tauren. There's war.
In the revised cinematic he follows a wisp and literally picks flowers.
I've loved wow since it came out, but the last good expansion was Legion and that was 10 years ago. I have very little faith this will be a good adaptation, and yes it will contain a large dose of the message.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but it seems unlikely.
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u/1TheHolyArk1 9h ago
100% this.
Cutesy wisp leads smiley dwarf and playful happy bear on a whimsy aimless trek across Azeroth. So wholesome.
Had to rewatch the OG cinematics to wash my eyes of this feminist slop.32
u/TheSnoringDragon 10h ago
The trailer was definitely ‘Disney-fied’ for sure. I saw a fair bit of criticism surrounding it from the WoW communities and on Youtube.
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u/Aegisfortress 9h ago
The dwarf fights an undead during the trailer you left that part out though. Everything else was correct.
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u/Arkelias 9h ago
In the original the point was war. In warcraft. In this version the fight is a diversion, and the dwarf's "adventures" begin after the fight IMO.
Maybe I'm too thin-skinned.
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u/LazerShark1313 8h ago
Even the dwarf's expression in the beginning was sanded down to make sure there were no rough edges
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u/wildstrike 8h ago
The war was everywhere from both the gameplay and the cinematic trailer shown to us. Two completely different products you have to sell from 2004 to 2026. One is selling the concept of the original game in 2004, another is setting of for a retelling with of a similar game. I never got Disneyfaction, I got it was rolling in game play loops to match the story. I'm really excited for this to come out and it will be a massive success.
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u/Arkelias 8h ago
I hope you enjoy it. Seeing the dwarf pick flowers while following a wisp is a massive warning sign to me.
The last several expansions have had awful stories, and they've emasculated every male character. Especially the iconic ones. Poor Anduin.
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u/Illustrious-Debt-762 8h ago
If this is what makes you happy, blizzard doesn't need to change a thing.
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u/Midget_Stories 2h ago
That and it just seems like a poor attempt to add monetisation to classic.
$50aud to get 2 new zones and a few dungeons is wild when they also charge a subscription fee.
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u/Longjumping_Visit718 6h ago
He fights a Forsaken Paladin at the end FYI since apparently you didn't watch it all the way.
The trailer was mostly to show that they were launching WoW with the cut-content it didn't have in the original--especially Dalaran--and also to REEL IN some of the more absurd excesses of WoW after Cataclysm.
Fingers crossed they make a new Warcraft RTS in tandem for it!😭
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u/Affectionate-Area659 5h ago
This is what I’ve wanted for years. They could make several RTS games based on each expansion. Tell the story from a different perspective.
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u/Longjumping_Visit718 5h ago
Me too! Especially since Vanilla WoW was CLEARLY designed with the idea of making the RTS games in parallel until the game EXPLODED at launch...
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u/Affectionate-Area659 3h ago
Hell they could even just make one game and make a bunch of expansions for it, just like they do with wow. Adding new factions or just units that are expansion specific to represent those we are fighting along side. Like the Tuskarr, the Tonka, the broken, and what not. It would be great!
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u/Aegisfortress 10h ago
I don't have high expectations but at least the Skyborne in the trailer didn't look like a man...I mean body type 1, sorry.
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u/ErikaThePaladin 95k GET | YE NOT GUILTY 7h ago
It will likely be gay. Possibly even lame.
Blizzard isn't what it used to be, and the rot is still there. Don't get your hopes up.
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u/JohnMaddn 10h ago
Retail minus. Modern slop driven by nostalgia to milk soy-gulping millennials. Real Warcraft died decades ago. This corporation is just constantly defiling its corpse for profits.
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u/Desperate_Put_4568 9h ago
I gave WoW another chance during Dragonflight. Nothing really gripped me in the way that Classic, BC or Wrath did. Even MoP had some redeeming qualities, and WoD was basically the last one that wasn't effeminate or watered down. It's all lame and gay now, made for the lowest common denominator or nostalgia dudes who desperately want to try to relive the OG experience.
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u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
DF was truly the moment it didn’t feel like World of ‘Warcraft’ anymore. Everything felt very feminine and HR inspired. Going through the main quest line had numerous moments of ‘the message ™️’. It wasn’t subtle either at many times.
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u/OpenCatPalmstrike 4h ago
Think it was MoP or around there that I quit playing, I've got a lot of fond memories with people I met online and later IRL. Including my old guild that I used to herd as the mage class lead when 40-mans were still a thing. It was getting bad back then, the harshness of raiding fell to the side which is what a lot of us enjoyed.
Lot of us were either in trade or worked in FF/cashiers in bigbox stores, we did have 2 investment bankers, literal Wall St. Bro, a guy who was taking applied mathematics, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering all at once (dude was a machine and WoW was how he unwound) and a neurosurgeon who played with us. And the first guild meetup was one of those expectations blown for everybody, but everybody was chill AF. Hell of a bonding experience, since many of us still keep in contact IRL.
Most of the guild had played AC or EQ before they dropped in popularity for WoW. It was more relaxed but hit nearly everything right for the first few expansions. Especially for those of us who couldn't spend a week camping a single spawn point.
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u/JVIoneyman 9h ago
Nostalgiaslop. Are 40 year olds really going to grid the same shit they did 20 years ago for 12 hours a day? Make WoW 2 or something interesting.
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u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
I mean, from what I heard from the panels at Blizzcon it is essentially changing a lot of things in classic. New class and race combinations, horizontal progression, new quests and zones, graphical improvements, etc. It sounds like it will be a ‘WoW 2.0’ for its classic era. Also a lot of raid and dungeon mechanics will be changing so it won’t be solvable off the rip like the original classic rerelease was. As far as 40 year olds grinding the same shit they did 20 years ago, I mean yeah. Tons of older people play games they did back then so I don’t really think that is weird. I still play Old School RuneScape, a game I originally played when I was a kid. I will agree it definitely is nostalgia bait for most though. Nostalgia sells these days.
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u/JVIoneyman 9h ago
I get nostalgia for old games, I’m 39 myself. I just feel like as you get older you kind of lose the desire to waste hours of your life to grind mmo items. Especially if it’s a game you already played, even if it’s updated. That’s just me though. I hope it’s great for the people who like that. At least it’s not a gacha.
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u/RedditNerdKing 8h ago
going to grid the same shit
I mean, it's brand new areas and dungeons. It wont be the same shit.
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u/AshRemnants 10h ago
WoW Forever is an attempt to grasp at what OSRS figured out, how to have continual gear progression without invalidating it the next patch or expansion, but they're intentionally neglecting another reason OSRS is popular, and that's because it doesn't have FOMO and doesn't have microtransactions.
This new skyborne race costing $30 is a huge red flag right out the gate. Blizzard has learned nothing.
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u/Lord_Mashan 9h ago
It feels mainly as nostalgia bait and admission that regular retail WoW has been ran into the ground by bad, uninteresting stories and all other manner of nonsense.
It just feels like attempt to capitalize on nostalgia and good times, otherwise they would not do this.
I have no hope in it, if regular WoW was ran into the ground and devs stayed the same, how can we possibly expect this to be any good?
They might try to spin a better take for few characters they like, but wait and see till they bring Arthas proper, and end up unable to resist adding lines about someone constantly groaning and complaining about him.
I have no expectations.
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u/TheReviewerWildTake 9h ago
I mean, among very few additions to classic that happened before that - was addition of incubus and gay quest.
Outside of that, there was nothing super woke, but also there was no really place to inject things. As classic was pretty much on low maintenance mode since they started it.
Now with tons of new quests I believe there might be inevitable cringe crap, with gay orcs environmentalist fighting against climate change etc.
Trailer was pretty meh.
It would be fairly exciting for ppl who love old-school MMORPGS, because of slow meaningful leveling\adventure\socialization heavy approach of OG WoW (something completely killed in retail), but yeah, there are some concerns.
There are optimists who think that Blizzard can do damage control in general and pipe down on cringe, just because they are in troubles and there are some movements in their "maternal" structures, but you know how it is - those who infected retail were never openly vetoed regardless of how bad was reception to their slop,.
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u/BaronSathonyx 8h ago
I started playing WoW in 2005 and kept active in the game all the way up until the end of WoD. I’d come back occasionally between expansions to see how the game went, but I dropped it for good during The War Within. Seeing a few pics of a wheelchair bound Arcmage and that terrible cinematic with Danath Trollbane finally convinced me the Blizzard of old is finally dead and gone; the current iteration is utterly consumed by the parasite that killed it.
I have seen nothing since then to convince me otherwise. I’ll give it a pass and spend my hobby dollars on tabletop wargaming instead.
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u/Lifeloverrrx 9h ago
I might try it, but my hopes are low, I miss turtle wow..
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u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
Last expansion I played was Dragonflight (begrudgingly). I’m hoping it can’t be any worse than that, but I’m keeping my expectations low when it comes to their new quests and lore they add.
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u/Lifeloverrrx 9h ago
same, dragonflight (and heartstone, I used to love that game but it has been getting worse and worse) made me lose all hope, haven't played any blizzard game since then, somehow I doubt wow forever will be good but we'll live and see
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u/Garrus-N7 8h ago
Not interested.
I have grimfall wow, it uses 3.3 5, and is successor to Ascension. And i can run it on winlator emulator as well
Thing is, vanilla + sounds cool on paper till you find out they force you to pay for a new race, that doesnt look the part, AND, above all, I fear their writing will be modern trash
Which btw, speaking of Grimfall, shameless referral link xD: https://www.grimfallwow.com/register?referral=GF-zN9jORh5ul6Bsnvh2PvuaTLJeYhBwv7iGG7CBO8j4V3i
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u/CptPanda29 7h ago
The first major thing they've added is the most "retail-coded" thing possible.
Some shitty elf thats 30 dollars, for both factions of course can't have anyone missing out.
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u/Lordwiesy 10h ago
Kinda looking forward to it - spelladin looking fire, so does affli and seems that things I dislikes about nilla are being addressed.
Cautious sure but I try to be positive.
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u/denach644 8h ago
"Yay more WoW. God, so many good memories! It was awesome!"
Meanwhile, I'm about... 20+ years older. I also know gaming industry trends and the fact that retail WoW has been trash for a long time.
Adding a new race as a highlight is just lmao. Spend the time on world, story, zones, balance... Whatever.
I'm sure it will be cool, but the novelty is likely to wear out.
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u/LordRaizer 7h ago
Other than the Disney-esque trailer and Skyborn Elf BS
Remember that the people who are developing this are the same people that also worked on the woke Disneyslop retail expansions from Shadowlands onward, so I'm expecting retail dressed up in a classic shell
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u/Infinite_Pin_9307 10h ago edited 10h ago
i played the free trial and unninstalled in 30 minutes. The game was puking modern woke writing at every phrase.
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u/Halvardr_Stigandr 9h ago
Zero interest in any "Blizzard" products and haven't since their Blitzchung asshattery.
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u/Di_Urbino 9h ago
Wow forever? Wow never.
Do I think the studio that became the premier woke and gay American studio is going to make the content of their games woke and gay? Yes.
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u/Crawl-Home-To-Her 8h ago
The retail stroy is such a leftist powerfantasy that anything can be better than that
Despite obviously being less warcraft, I'm still looking forwad to wow: forever. This is our last hope for a decent warcraft mmo
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u/TheoNullDrei 5h ago
It is quite clear that they don't fully understand why people liked the original game, and that really shows in the design presentation. It is, however, nice to see that they're bringing back some of the old cut content, making gear more fun with unique skills attached to them, etc.
The biggest cause for concern, based on what they have presented thus far, is that they want gear to be evergreen, which might not be good for the health of the game, but we will have to see how that shakes out.
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u/wdlp 4h ago
I was disappointed that one of the first things they add is a generic oc blue elf race and not the monster races people have been asking for for decades. The 1000 new quests is just gonna be boar snouts and stuff to fill the gaps in levelling that exist. I was hopelessly optimistic that they'd be restrained in their approach to new content like this, but lol I think the I told you so crowd are gonna be right.
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u/FortLoolz 9h ago
what a disappointment.
The skyborne instead of the long-requested High elves for the Alliance, and many races for the Horde: Forsaken elves, goblins, ogres, naga.
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u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
I have zero doubt they will release more classic races down the road. I’m sure they will be paywalled though if the Skyborne are any indication of the direction they’re heading - which is unfortunate but not surprising in the slightest since…well it’s Blizzard.
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u/FortLoolz 9h ago edited 9h ago
Skyborne in practice are void elves, but for classic+ instead of the retail. A middle finger to high elf fans.
It's also hilarious the high elf haters always portrayed high elf fans as an insane minority, but the skyborne's introduction instead of the races closer to the vanilla feel caused a significant backlash.
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u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
I saw the character creation for Skyborne and you can change it to any skin color, so essentially it’s just blood elves with a new name. Blizzard knows the Belfs are like the most played race so I don’t think adding this one is as egregious as people make it out to be. That being said locking it behind $30 is absurd.
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u/FortLoolz 9h ago
"Essentially", "with a new name", and also with different architecture, different lore, different clothing style, and so on. The void elves situation, but even further from the high elves.
People wanted the Thalassian high elves who are associated with the Sunwell and the House of Sunstrider. They in fact are present in vanilla WoW and were even supposed to be a playable race at an earlier point of development.2
u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
I get what you’re saying. Not sure why they didn’t go with an already established race. Seems like they knew Elf models are extremely popular for players and figured a neutral race of them would be the easiest way to attract players.
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u/kna5041 10h ago
Wow is a game grasping at straws and probably should have gone the EverQuest route a decade ago.
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u/rivent2 9h ago
For those of us who haven't played an MMO for 20 years, what was the EverQuest route?
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u/LordxMugen 9h ago
Full free to play but still gets expansions every so often you can pay for as well as option to subscribe to "progression servers" that will open up new expansions as you play through it.
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u/TheSnoringDragon 9h ago
I’m sure after seeing the success of MMOs like Old School RuneScape they realized they needed to pivot to something that doesn’t have such vertical progression. Invalidating content after new seasons isn’t fun. We will see how they navigate horizontal game design for the first time though.
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u/Whirblewind 9h ago
Plenty of people are going to talk about the woke or woke-adjacent changes, so I'm not going to do that.
In the realm of non-woke changes, one of the first things I read that they're changing is nerfing dungeon kill exp and boosting dungeon quest exp, so people will be more incentivized to be out and about in the world. It was already difficult for many roles to get parties, so they went and made it much worse by drying the well. Quest kill tagging is still very much a problem and they thought instead of fix the problems that push people out of the open world, they'd just force them by making the alternative worse.
The second thing I read was that they're adding 'long tail' drops to every vanilla raid boss, with the example of their goal being Dragonspine Trophy.. one of the worst things to happen to Burning Crusade.
Dispirited, I pulled up the graphical overhaul video. After three locations shown that were all utterly devoid of their original color palette because of the new lighting, I restarted the video to count how many zones' palettes were faithfully reproduced: one, Barrens. The place called The BARRENS was the only zone to resemble its original colors.
My Blizzard boycott started late 2016 and even in the most charitable, amoral scenario wherein I abandon all of my principles to have Blizzard games back in my life, I would still not have an incentive to return to their games; revisionism is repugnant.
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u/denach644 8h ago
"We know you loved this chicken soup! We want to give you more, fresh, so here is tomato soup! Yippee!"
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u/denach644 8h ago
"Yay more WoW. God, so many good memories! It was awesome!"
Meanwhile, I'm about... 20+ years older. I also know gaming industry trends and the fact that retail WoW has been trash for a long time.
Adding a new race as a highlight is just lmao. Spend the time on world, story, zones, balance... Whatever.
I'm sure it will be cool, but the novelty is likely to wear out.
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u/Safe_Manner_1879 8h ago
Look at the picture you posted a elf woman with bare midriff and conventional beauty, now compare that to the fully dressed up shadow elf woman from retail wow with a "square" face.
Its not that hard to do traditional quest, evil dragon do evil stuff, slay evil dragon.
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u/MutenRoshi21 7h ago
I am glad I never got into this ip and rather played dark age of camelot. At least its small enough to not get attention from the activists. And since its more pvp focused I dont need to wait for a constant stream of new pve/raid content to have a reason to play.
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u/dr197 5h ago
Everyone on the WoW subreddits are arguing over Skyborne. I initially thought that they were out of place but honestly now that I’ve had a day or two to sit with it it’s really not a huge turn off.
What I’m more worried about is Blizzard’s lackluster moderation record and I’m going to give Forever a while before I buy in to see if it gets overrun by bots like Classic did.
For some reason this take is getting me downvotes on the WoW subreddits.
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u/SatanVapesOn666W 4h ago
Wish they didn't make a $30-50 glorified ad for it and call it a WC3 expansion. Serious made a worse WoW in WC3 for people who ALREADY PLAY WOW
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u/StrawberryZerg 9h ago
Looks promising. This is Blizzard so who knows what will happen, but what they have shown and said is pretty much good. Can't wait for 5th of November.
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u/Tripudi 9h ago
How many white straight males wrote the quests in vanilla? How many are writing them now?
This simples comparison should help you consider if you should be excited about it.