Is WoW Forever worth playing? Beta impressions, player reviews and tips to get started

Leveling: slow, and that is why people like it

Almost everyone who played names the pace as the best part. TheoryWise, an MMO critic who left WoW for Old School RuneScape and put more than 50 hours into the beta, says the ordinary world makes you plan your route again instead of following a marker. A streamer who reached 30 and tried every activity puts it simply: there is no fast travel, you walk a lot and end up looking around, so the world pulls you in. According to Blizzard, beta players took 20.5 hours on average to reach level 20, and that streamer's first 14 levels took 3–5 hours.

The new quests fit into the old zones so neatly that they are hard to tell apart from vanilla ones. In Elwynn Forest and Westfall roughly a fifth of the quests are new, and you no longer need to visit another race’s starting zone to fill a level gap. You can also listen to quests while you travel: the Spoken addon voices quest dialogue and tells a zone’s story when you first arrive.

Mobs hit hard, especially when you pull extras, and casters often have to sit down and drink. Small Forever features speed things up: any cooked food gives +5% experience from kills, sitting at a camp gives buffs, a Leatherworking tent builds rested experience, and Legacy perks unlock from level 25. The exception is the Skyborne starting island: quests are packed closer and pay more money, so one critic who played the race complains that leveling is too easy. TheoryWise did not enjoy the island either, finding it dense and hand-holding, closer to a Cataclysm zone, although the flight from the island straight to Dalaran nearly made up for it.

Dungeons: once, with every quest

This was the most debated change of the beta. Blizzard cut experience from dungeon mobs and raised it for dungeon quests, then on 1 October halved the dungeon quest bonus and on 8 October gave mobs +20%. Developer Aggrend explained that clearing dungeons should not be the best way to 60: with perfect play it should roughly match good questing. The thread «Dungeon XP is still bad» collected 937 replies on the beta forum, more than any other player thread.

So the approach most creators recommend is simple: collect every quest for a dungeon in advance (the Dungeon Journal lists them), run it once and head back into the world. Dungeon quests still give far more than ordinary ones, and blue items from them last for many levels. Numbers and a leveling plan are in Quests or dungeons: which is faster?.

Groups form the old way. TheoryWise put together a Hall of Thanes run by asking people in Loch Modan and filling the rest through the group finder; the entrance is in the Ironforge throne room, and the final boss with two golems chained to it shreds the tank. The other new dungeons also went down well: Ruins of Lordaeron above the Undercity, Excavation Site: Wetlands and City of Dalaran. One Classic streamer ranked Ruins of Lordaeron as the best. In Excavation Site: Wetlands the group wades through giant reeds where you can barely see anything while raptors attack from stealth, and City of Dalaran plays more like modern WoW, with void zones to step out of and casts you must interrupt before mobs burn your mana.

Loot is more interesting than in Classic: a cloak with a bonus against humanoids helps in the Deadmines, and a Wailing Caverns set has a hidden effect that turns you into a snake. According to creators, the appearance of blue dungeon items unlocks for the whole group, not just the roll winner. TheoryWise’s only worry is that so many items come with perfectly matched stats that gear may start to feel the same.

Classes and talents: more choice, but not enough mana

The talent trees were rebuilt: dead talents were replaced with working ones, and hybrids finally make sense. Paladin gets the most praise. One streamer played it as a tank, a healer and a hybrid that hits with Holy Shock from range and heals when needed. TheoryWise likes that Judgement no longer consumes seals, but finds that normalized rage makes Warrior feel drier. Skeptics point out that at low levels classes feel almost like vanilla, and they have a point: the big differences show closer to 30.

Mana is the biggest complaint on the forum. Priests, Shamans, Mages and Hunters who drink after every pull left almost 1,900 replies across five threads. Blizzard made some spells cheaper and smoothed out spell ranks during the beta, with changes landing almost every week: 24 September and 1, 8 and 15 October. A tip from the beta: keep several ranks of your heals and damage spells on your bars and use the cheap ones whenever the fight allows.

Talents unlock at level 10, one point per level (a Legacy perk lets you start earlier), and dual specialization arrives at 40. Which class is easiest for new and solo players is covered in Which WoW Forever class should you choose?.

PvP: adrenaline in the world, ranged classes on the battleground

Creators call world PvP on PvP realms the best part of the beta. Combat is slow and cooldowns are long, so you have time to think about how to outplay your opponent. One streamer stumbled into a fight between several raids on each side at Tarren Mill, and nothing lagged.

The downsides are clear too. Classes with speed, such as a Hunter with Aspect of the Cheetah, a Shaman in Ghost Wolf or a Druid in Travel Form, easily escape melee players, so a Swiftness Potion at about 60 silver on the beta auction house was nearly mandatory for them. The gear gap is huge: a character geared from dungeons had around 1,000 health at the same level where questers had 400–500.

The Darkspear Islands battleground opens at level 30 with 15 players per side. There is little cover, ranged classes dominate, and a Paladin has the most fun there as a healer and support. The biggest thread on the general Forever forum asks for RP-PvP realms (2,298 replies), and the Horde clearly outnumbered the Alliance on the beta. Pick your ruleset as if it were permanent: on PvP realms one account plays only one faction per region, and the developers have no plans for transfers or faction changes. World PvP and battlegrounds are covered in the PvP guide.

Graphics and conveniences: the old world in a new light

The new lighting is praised by 14 of the 16 creators, critics included, and TheoryWise calls the new rendering the best change of all because it strengthens the original art style instead of replacing it. Shadows from several light sources, fog, thunderstorms and rain on rooftops, reflections in the water and a draw distance that lets you see Hyjal from Durotar change familiar zones throughout the day. Classic sounds stayed, down to the bowstring and footsteps on wooden planks. There are rough spots: Stormwind looks washed out at noon, water does not always match the old textures, and HD character models next to the old world are not to everyone’s taste. On a weak PC, or if you want the old look, you can lower the settings almost to vanilla.

The client comes from current WoW: a retail-style auction house, Edit Mode, a sell-junk button, quest objectives on the map, coordinates, markers and pings, a built-in damage meter and controller support. Purists dislike that there is no classic interface mode, and TheoryWise calls the new unit frames corporate and soulless. Questie is not built in: quest objectives show on the map without it, and the addon still misses many new quests. What to install instead is in the addons guide.

The worst of the beta: layering and phasing

Forever has no realms: each ruleset in a region is one megaserver, and every zone splits players into layers. The game tries to keep your guild, friends and recent group members together and warns you 5 minutes before a «world refresh» moves you. On the beta it worked worse than promised, and nearly everyone who played for weeks calls layering the main unsolved problem.

• Leaving a group moves both you and the leader to another layer. The mob the group was fighting disappears along with its loot.
• Zone borders switch layers. In PvP an enemy simply vanishes after crossing into the next zone, and one streamer escaped more than one fight that way.
• Layer swaps mid-fight. Players described being dropped into an uncleared camp next to a quest boss, and one streamer once landed in the middle of five Alliance players.
• Empty and overloaded layers. In one you cannot finish a quest because there are not enough mobs, in another everything lags until you relog.

What almost everyone liked

The first thing everyone mentions is the new lighting. Even the harshest critics admit that familiar zones look different: Westfall by day and Duskwood by night look perfect, the Undead starting zone gets genuinely creepy after dark, and players gather in Stormwind Harbor just to watch the sunset.

The second is the feeling that the world is big again. You walk to the Crossroads on foot, rescue strangers on the way and get rescued in turn, and an eight-slot bag feels like luxury. One streamer who has played since vanilla noticed that for the first time since Wrath of the Lich King friends from the «Classic» and «retail» camps have ended up in the same game. New quests, by common agreement, are indistinguishable from the old ones, and loot got more interesting: items with bonuses against certain enemies, hidden effects, dungeon sets.

Camps get their own praise. A minute at someone else’s campfire gives an hour-long buff, so people naturally gather around the fire. TheoryWise first thought camps were a forced mechanic and ended up calling them the second favourite addition after the lighting.

What annoyed people

The most common complaints are about the beta itself: crashes, lag, disappearing quest items. One Classic veteran could not even launch the client and got a refund. These are beta problems, but they make people nervous before launch.

Of the things that will stay in the game, Skyborne draws the most criticism: the race costs extra, many see it as recoloured blood elves, and for now it only exists in HD. Monetization in general worries people too, from paid beta access to fears that new classes will also be sold separately. And those who played for weeks call layering the main unsolved problem: enemies vanish at zone borders, and leaving a group makes the mob you were all hitting disappear.

What creators argue about

The main argument is about difficulty. A critic who has played Classic Era and private servers for years is convinced Forever is too easy: levels fly by and there are too many blue items and too much gold. Newcomers and streamers remember the opposite: wipes in Ragefire Chasm and Shadowfang Keep, mobs that hit hard, and no money for bags. A lot of it comes down to the starting zone: the Skyborne island, where the critic began, is noticeably more generous than the others.

They also argue about whether it is Classic at all. To one Classic veteran it is «TBC-lite or retail-lite», a vanilla lore channel finds the tone brighter and friendlier than in 2004 yet says quests, dungeons and loot have never looked better, and TheoryWise, a Blizzard skeptic for nearly ten years, now says «yes» to playing at launch. Creators coming from retail notice the familiar conveniences and new graphics, veterans notice everything vanilla never had.

A Blizzard player meetup in Stockholm brought two important answers from the developers: create a PvP-realm character as if it were permanent, and do not expect purely horizontal progression, because PvP gear will grow along with raid tiers.

How different players see Forever

Classic veterans praise the old world with new quests, the slow pace, talking at campfires and the absence of a WoW Token or paid boosts. What worries them is the retail interface with no classic mode, HD models, nerfs «for balance» and layers instead of familiar realms. They argue among themselves: some say anyone who wants conveniences should play retail, others reply that three unchanged Classic versions already failed to hold on to their players.

Current WoW players enjoy the familiar interface, the auction house and the feeling of a real RPG where every new item makes your character noticeably stronger. They miss an automatic dungeon finder and teleports, and the early zones feel slow to them.

Newcomers were rare on the beta: in a ResetEra poll only 4% said Forever was their first WoW. Those who made videos praise the short, clear quests, the sound and strangers helping and buffing each other; one new player from Old School RuneScape gave the game 9–10 out of 10 and spent hours just exploring. What confuses them are the paid editions, rulesets and crowded starting zones, and toxic chat and offensive names scared off some of the friends that testers invited.

European players had it worst on the beta: all beta servers were in the US, so ping from Europe sat around 600–800 ms. At launch the Americas and Europe are separate regions, so agree with your friends on one before you start. PvP players everywhere lean towards the Horde, which is why Alliance players on PvP realms worry about being outnumbered.

Where to start: faction, class and ruleset

First pick a faction, the Alliance or the Horde. They cannot play together, so agree with your friends in advance. Then race and class: Hunter and Warlock are the easiest solo, more in Which WoW Forever class should you choose?. Skyborne are sold separately and spend their first 12 levels on their own island.

Choose a ruleset that suits you. If you play irregularly and do not want to be killed in the middle of a quest, pick Normal. On PvP realms you will be attacked in contested zones, and an account on that ruleset plays only one faction per region. How not to lose your friends is covered in How to play WoW Forever with friends.

Your first hours: what to understand right away

• Read the quests and check the rewards. One newcomer on the beta wandered off a quest chain, missed a quest with a weapon reward and struggled with the starter weapon until friends suggested going back.
• Pull mobs one at a time. Combat feels almost turn-based at first, but every extra mob is already a test. Eat and drink between fights: every caster runs out of mana, that is normal.
• Visit your trainer every two levels. That is where you learn new abilities and higher ranks, plus weapon skills: on the beta more than one player picked up an axe they could not use yet and kept fighting with a dagger.
• Talents unlock at level 10, one point per level. Read the descriptions and choose yourself, or open a ready build in the talent calculator.
• Take a gathering profession right away. The starting zone has a quest with a free profession book, and Mining, Herbalism and Skinning drop rare materials that sell well.
• Bag space is tight. Sell grey items to vendors and do not carry junk until you can buy bigger bags.
• Dungeons and elite quests need a group. Groups form through the meeting stone at the entrance (it opens the group finder rather than summoning), in zone chat, or with the ForeverLFG addon.
• Your first mount comes at level 40. Until then you walk, sail on ships and fly on gryphons or wyverns, and your Hearthstone has a one-hour cooldown.
• After you die your spirit appears at the nearest graveyard, and you have to run back to your body. Die in a dungeon and you run from the graveyard near its entrance.
• There is no shared tagging. If another player hits a mob first, it will not count for you. To kill quest mobs together, invite the other player to a group.

A newcomer’s glossary

What not to expect from Forever

• There is no one-click dungeon finder and no teleport to the entrance: you build the group and walk there yourself.
• Farming dungeons for experience is pointless, the mobs there give little.
• Forever is not free: it needs the regular WoW subscription, and the Skyborne race is sold separately from $29.99. There is no WoW Token and no paid level boost.
• You will not reach 60 quickly: beta players spent 20.5 hours on average on the first 20 levels, and later levels take longer.
• Hardcore and RP-PvP realms will not be there at launch, and the first raids open on 9 December.