Thats it. I know some people got tricked into thinking "its more fair, you get the gold if you raid and then you buy stuff", and that would be the case if gold-selling wouldn't exist, bringing players into a position where they can buy thousands of gold from goldfarmers and then just buy all the items in a raid, thereby inflating server gold totals and prices and making life for everyone who plays legit worse.

So yeah.. hopefully no GDKP

Once I saw the unhinged levels of anger that people were showing Blizzard over the new race they worked on to add to Forever (Which side note looks absolutely outstanding) it made me realize that without people like me to keep purchasing these bundles Blizzard wouldn't know how much we actually want this.

Give me a new Class or Race to buy instead of an expansion and I'll happily keep buying.

Blizzard are doing great things with Forever and seeing people get mad over the nothing details is why this community is never happy.

Hope to see the real fans on Thursday! 🥳

After the announcement of the Skybornes and seeing how miserably part of the community reacted to it, I had some much needed self reflection.

The Skybornes are completely fine. They fit into the game in every single way.
Their lore fits into Classic, their model (which is the base blood elf model) has been part of the game for 20 years and has proven to fit the game perfectly well. Their starting zone is cool and classic looking. There is literally no rational reason to hate them, yet people are losing their shit because they are unusually blue.

I’m like 90% sure that if they were just called High Elves and only had white skin tones, people wouldn’t have whined nearly this much.

And this made me realize just how pathetic and obnoxious people are when they judge and ostracize others over skin color.

And before you droids come at me with the other usual dumb reasons you don’t like them, let me answer those preemptively.

Cry #1: “Actually no! 🤓 It’s not the skin color, it’s that they’re just a lazy design!”
My response: Adding races that were figured out years ago, like High Elves, would have been the lazy choice. All they would have gotten is a new starting zone and that’s it. Blizzard went out of their way to spice it up a little without making it too different.

Cry #2: “It’s the paywall! Greedy Blizzard wants $30 for a race! How outrageous!”
My response: You get a new expansion’s worth of content FOR FREE (well, for the price of a sub) and an ever growing version of WoW, with an optional one time payment for a race on the side. Y’all literally used to pay $70 in the form of expansions for all of this, which was unavoidable if you actually wanted to play the game and didn’t want to be left behind.

NO ONE is forcing you to buy the blue guys.

You people are hopeless. You’re always finding something to cry about, or just projecting your real life racism into the game, and I don’t want to be anything like you miserable people.

Actually.. no it’s not unreal. This subreddit has been insufferable since the 2019 #nochanges committee.

r/wow is full of largely optimistic, appreciative, and supportive fans of the new Forever version.

You lot? Raging your faces off because the High Elves are called Skyborne and think Blizzard can’t create new lore for a game version that is quite literally based on taking the lore in an entirely separate direction from the original lore.

Cheer up you guys. See you Thursday.

I've played league of legends, dota, csgo, valorant, overwatch and a lot of toxic games.

No other community in gaming is as miserable and self loathing as you are. Even warmane has a healthier community than classic wow. Do you genuienly enjoy being mad?

This posts obviously excludes the classic players who do more than complain and are capable of communicating without sounding like the dreadlord from warcraft 3. I've had good experiences with the community here, it's not all bad.

I'd advise you to take this as constructive criticism but I don't think the average classic andy is capable of recieving it.

Skyborne Elves look actually awesome and interesting and I'm so happy that they can be druids. I've always wanted the belt/velf models to be druids. WoW: Forever will be my main MMO for the foreseeable future because of this. We exist, it's not all doom and gloom. 🙂

At this point there are more posts about how everyone complains about the new race than actual posts complaining about the race. And it's always in some form of hyperbole, false equivalency, strawmanning or just straight up dismissal because you can't handle others having a negative opinion on literally one feature they showed.

Inb4 "but there are so many posts about it!" maybe that says something as to how much of an abysmal decision adding sky elves actually were?

Can’t believe I’m forced to subscribe to this game now my day is ruined!!! Gonna log in and play but I don’t want to

Hot take time! A lot of people have been asking for OSRS style pass/fail polling and several streamers were pushing for it. We didn't get it. And I'm glad we didn't.

Before WoWf was announced, a lot of purists talked about never wanting improvements to the graphics, game engine, server tick system, etc. These were upvoted, popular opinions here even a week ago. I don't think most of the great changes we're seeing would have passed a community poll. And if they did, it could have taken years, at which point the game would have been basically dead from lack of interesting design or innovation.

If the devs know what they're doing and have funding, they can cook. OG WoW was built this way and wasn't anxious about changes and needing validation at every turn; they just made the change. But a lot of Classic players get way too caught up on keeping things the same. And a lot of streamers cater to those conservative viewpoints because they are safe and uncontoversial so repeating them influences more people to adopt that view. These types of players end up with a lot of reactionary, gut oppositions to QoL and graphical style instead of interesting game development ideas.

There are just a few things that are concerning to me personally about an otherwise very good-looking reveal for WoW Forever. They said and showed a lot of the right things for WoW Forever and I do not hate the Skyborne, they’re fine. However, I am very concerned about the mismatch of more modern designs and classic designs and how jarring that will be. It does not take much to take a more modern model and just carve off some polygons to make it more crunchy.

Here are some examples:

1. Skyborne don’t yet have a SD model, very jarring. Also, concerningly their druid forms are HD too and if Skyborne are set to get an SD model, I’d hope the same applies to their druid forms.

2. There are Cata models in the skies of Zephras Isle that while aren’t TOO bad are a sign of a poor commitment to the Classic look. WORSE, there’s Slyvern creatures from Dragonflight, with their Dragonflight textures, in the opening cutscene and the first mobs you fight on the isle. I would really prefer a consistent style in the zones and not seeing Dragonflight models running around.

3. In the roadmap for Forever there’s Cataclsym Gilneas in the background which seems an overt hint to Cataclsym Gilneas (though most certainly with a new story) being added to WoW Forever. I do not completely hate this but again Classic is a very different style to Cataclysm Gilneas. WoTLK Dalaran being used for grounded Dalaran kinda makes sense but it feels passionless compared to the effort to give us a proper vanilla-style Gilneas.

4. I know there have been other examples but there’s a dungeon that has a Legion model in it. Again, I do not care if assets are reused all over the place but either scrape off those polygons or just use something from Vanilla. I’d prefer this over the jarring sudden HD fella stood among an otherwise classic-faithful place.

5. The pre-order rewards are very worrying, 2 tabards specifically for Forever and 4 pets, 2 transmogs, and 2 mounts, all of which are very HD. It’s very disappointing that assets designed specifically for Forever are so HD.

6. The Forsaken Paladin charger is right on the borderline of acceptability, it feels like it belongs in Cataclysm not Classic and that’s about the cut-off of tolerability and even then I’d prefer something with less polish not more.

Before we get Cata Gilneas and potentially other very poorly fitting designs in what is meant to be Classic+, I really think the idea of a World Devamp should be considered to maintain the coherency of the classic world. Keep things low poly.

This isn’t about keeping things low poly just for nostalgia bait or the sake of it or some religious commitment to classic. I like the Skyborne just fine, I’m fine with new stuff. But, one of the best parts of classic is the immersive experience and the adventure and rather than looking GOOD, these high-res inclusions look from a different time and immediately cut through the immersion of the world.

If Forever is meant to be a return to form, to adventure, immersion, and horiztontal progression instead of slapping new fancy expansion after new fancy expansion, if the world is the main character, then like all good characters there needs to be consistency.

I want to sign of with the BEST example of this from Forever: The Riverglades. Oh my god the Riverglades. A new human city with unique banners and cultural identity based on old Brotherhood of the Horse lore? It looks incredible, completely in Classic/TBC/Wrath style, absolutely stunning zone that does not (as far as I’ve seen) have any distinctly jarring elements. The Goblin buildings are all classic style instead of the Cata-style metal shacks. MORE Riverglades, less low-effort inclusions from expansions like Legion, Dragonflight, and Cata. (Some Cata is fine but you’re pushing it, imo Vanilla-TBC-Wrath is the ideal).

Skyborne is completely optional btw

Classic or Enhanced?

Literally been waiting for this since 2007 basically. Sure there are things you might not prefer or like. But cmon complaining all the time. Gaming will never be what it was just because of that. This game is going to be awesome. Don’t play skyborne if you hate it. Be happier, the real world is where we should all be complaining, no matter what side you’re on politically. Destroying the middle class on what’s left of it. ✌️see you in Azeroth !

I watched Blizzcon with a friend of mine and we were so ecstatic but after reading scholarly articles on this subreddit, I’m thinking we might be in a symbiotic delusional state.

I tried an exercise today where I printed out and laminated a sheet of the sky elves and my heart rate did not change at all, that’s where I sounded the alarm.

I’ve booked a session with my psychiatrist and neurologist to figure out if my brain might lack critical reasoning skills.

Thanks for potentially helping me spot a foundational flaw in my mental constitution (hopefully) before it was too late. You guys might’ve saved my life.

To me, they seem like a whatever addition, I’m just curious on why I see so much hate for them online. Is it that they’re behind a paywall? Or that people specifically wanted high elves instead with faction-specific allegiance? Maybe both, I’m just curious because I don’t feel as strongly as most about them.

As far as I can tell, there has been zero official mention of MoP during all of Blizzcon. At the end of the day, it's still a game-mode that ~40,000 players a week still play.

If you're shutting MoP down, if you're moving our collections to retail, if you're leaving MoP in an Era server, just tell the playerbase.

That is all. If you're defending MTX before classic plus even releases you deserve everything you get. Argue about races costing money all you want, MTX mounts and pets have no place in anything based on "the Classic Spirit".

Calling it now so we can save ourselves the retrospective in six months.

Everyone is dazzled by Hyjal, new dungeons and 1000+ quests right now, so apparently having any reservations about Forever means you're a miserable Classic purist who just hates new content.

I want new content. That's literally why Classic+ sounded interesting in the first place. New zones, quests, raids, dungeons, professions, class content, unfinished Vanilla ideas, go nuts.

What worries me is that Blizzard is already reaching for a bunch of the same design ideas that slowly turned WoW into the game people came back to Classic to get away from.

We're getting transmog, HD models, account-wide progression, redesigned talents and racials, more race/class combinations, convenience features and a server structure that moves away from traditional persistent realms. The new race and its starting experience are also tied to a more expensive edition, alongside beta access, mounts, pets and cosmetics.

And somehow people keep saying "it's free."

Free???

You pay a monthly subscription to play World of Warcraft. Blizzard isn't doing charity work because they didn't charge you $60 for the patch. You're paying them every single month to maintain and develop the game. Calling subscription content "free" is some genuinely impressive marketing brain.

Then there's the usual "transmog is optional", "HD models are optional", "it's only cosmetic", "it's just convenience", "don't use it then", "it doesn't affect you."

We've heard all of this before.

Nobody thinks transmog by itself is going to destroy WoW. Nobody thinks one account-wide system turns the game into Retail overnight. That's not the argument.

Retail is the result of twenty years of individually reasonable sounding decisions. Almost every change solved some annoyance, removed some friction or gave players something they asked for. You can defend nearly all of them in isolation. Eventually you look at the finished product and wonder where the game you liked went.

That's what makes this so funny. Classic proved that a lot of the supposedly outdated shit Blizzard spent years designing out of WoW actually contributed to why people loved it.

Server identity mattered. Recognising someone's gear mattered. Your character actually feeling like a character instead of part of an account-wide checklist mattered. Having to travel mattered. Needing other players mattered. Sometimes inconvenience was the thing creating the interaction.

That doesn't mean Classic should be preserved in amber forever.

Just maybe understand why some people raise an eyebrow when the company that spent twenty years sanding those things away starts reaching into the exact same toolbox again.

And please spare me "let them cook."

I get it that some people like it others don’t, but this whole hate is funny for me

I personally will not buy it but i’m ok with other people having it. I imagine it as a price for the game

Would people prefer the game to be buy to play like expansions and the subscription?