WoW Forever beta: my review after level 30

I reached level 30 on the WoW Forever beta after several battlegrounds, a good dose of wild open-world PvP and most of the dungeons, new ones included. What I took away from it is all in my video, and this article covers the essentials so you can read it at your own pace.

Beyond this first test phase, I look ahead to the rest of the game to give you my opinion on the WoW Forever beta and the game behind it. Is it worth playing long term? I decide based on what I saw in game, class by class and activity by activity.

The WoW Forever beta: a Classic that finally dares to change the rules

Before I get to level 30 on the WoW Forever beta, let me set the stage, because Blizzard’s launcher has become a real mess. If you have never touched WoW, you will find several versions of the game in there, and sometimes versions inside versions. First there is Retail, the direct continuation of every expansion released up to today. Then there is Classic, a refresh of the game as it was back then, relaunched several times in different forms.

WoW Forever was announced at the last BlizzCon. The idea: launch a new WoW as if starting again from the original game, but with different rules. The lore changes. How the classes work changes too, which is why the poll on the new classes got so much attention. Blizzard wants to keep the best of what later expansions brought, even though those expansions will not exist in this world.

The game also gets a graphical facelift that keeps the vanilla spirit: visual effects, depth of field, view distance. Some well-lit regions offer a very open view, and the light depends on the time of day. When I filmed, it was 5 a.m. on the US servers. The sun was not lighting everything yet, but the reflections were already superb.

You can turn this whole module off in the options. I keep it on: the overhaul is light, you notice it, and it is very pleasing to the eye.

Netcode finally makes mass PvP playable

The clearest improvement I saw on the WoW Forever beta is the netcode, meaning the way the game handles latency between different players’ actions. For mass PvP, the impact is huge.

I got to watch videos of 500 versus 500 battles that actually ran. There were still small slowdowns, but this kind of battle was impossible back then. Even on WoW Classic it was out of the question: as soon as 200 or 300 people ended up in the same zone, the game became unplayable. I had already written about how hundreds of players with no lag change wild PvP, and level 30 confirms it.

I think WoW Forever will be the first MMO to offer battles with this many people on screen and this kind of performance. The engine behind the WoW Forever beta is old and very well optimized. I estimate you can go past 60 frames per second in big battles with a high-end setup, with almost no spell delay. For anyone who has dreamed of huge battles forever, it is in my opinion the best version ever made at this scale.

The WoW Forever beta brings a new story, rewritten sets and a big patch every week

The classes have been redone, and there are rumors of new classes too. I devoted a video to it a few days ago. In my opinion they will come, because Blizzard draws heavily on private servers and does not even hide it. Ascension introduced 21 brand-new classes, and the poll Blizzard launched looks a lot like some of them. I read in it the return of old classes from past expansions, and maybe classes created from scratch. That is only a prediction. Even with the current classes, the game already holds up.

Everything has been reinvented. The story changes, with new raids, new bosses, hidden quests here and there and a crowd of items nobody had seen. The sets have been rewritten, and their bonuses bring very interesting effects. I spent time on them, and you can find the result on the sets page.

Those who follow my stream already know: in game, I was able to turn into a snake while in Forme de félin, thanks to a set that drops in Wailing Caverns. The WoW Forever beta hides details like this everywhere.

I get the feeling the developers have freed themselves from their processes and are finally doing what they want. You feel it in the gameplay, and in the very regular patches: almost one big patch a week since the WoW Forever beta opened. The October 1 patch is the most recent example, and it even touches the talent system. We are no longer talking about percentages tweaked at the margins. Sometimes it is a complete overhaul, sometimes the removal of a spell Blizzard decides it does not want to keep after all.

So my first impression is that the work is real. I see a change of philosophy, and maybe a long-term goal at Blizzard. Instead of a Classic that keeps players busy for a few months before running out of steam, they seem to be telling themselves this small team deserves its shot. Maybe a new flagship title, a new golden age of World of Warcraft, with the resources that come with it. That is the feeling this version gives me, more than anything done so far in Classic.

A word on graphics. You have probably seen videos about DLSS, a graphics card technology that recalculates a game’s image to display it in better quality. In a year or two, older games will be able to show graphics close to very recent titles by switching on a simple option. On WoW, that would be possible while keeping today’s gameplay, which remains in my eyes the real strength of the game.

Blizzard also added a lot of quests and items, and new battlegrounds are coming. On PvP, we have very little information. I do not know what Blizzard’s philosophy will be, and it may not develop it, which I would regret, because it could be a huge strength. Season of Discovery had PvP zones, which would suit this version better, since latency is handled far better here.

Druid leveling: ten painful levels before the fix

The launch of the WoW Forever beta was a disaster. Servers were swamped by the number of players and the queues were monstrous. I waited an hour or two, then went to bed. The next day, everything more or less worked, even though it kept lagging until noon.

Launches that lag for more than ten hours are rare. We saw it at the release of Classic Vanilla, but for a beta, I think it is a first. Blizzard admitted it was surprised to see so many people log in.

I was then able to start leveling my druid. First problem, it had stayed in its original version. It dealt very little damage and the first ten levels were painful. Along with the warrior, I think it was the worst possible leveling experience.

Blizzard course-corrected by increasing the damage of Colère. To those who blamed me for complaining about the druid, my answer is that the problem was real, even if it was limited to the first ten levels. This boost was well judged. It softens the start and gets you to the first talent points faster, which already make things easier.

Wrath is not the only change: you can find all the druid’s changed spells on the site, with new and changed talents flagged by color.

Professions have been strengthened too, and that is the point I remember most. From the very first levels, you can craft interesting items. Do it, because there is almost no low-level loot. Even quest rewards are not very useful items.

So level your professions from the start. You will earn bonuses and items, and the ones you get at low level are very powerful, with spell power in particular. In this version, Forever’s professions become central again and weigh heavily on progression.

The fastest leveling goes through quests

Until now, the leveling meta revolved around dungeons. I am talking about optimization, it is the theme of my channel, and I know the topic is not for everyone. On the channel, there will be videos on gold farming, raid optimization and boss guides.

To level fast on the WoW Forever beta, the meta is to start with quests, using an addon like RestedXP. To be clear, it is the channel’s number 1 partner and I am sponsored, meaning paid, by RestedXP. I was already using it on all my levelings before this partnership, and for me it is the best addon of its kind. I have tried pretty much everything out there, and I explain it in my test of the RestedXP guide.

It will soon be available in French. As for quests, you will not find a faster route. On WoW Forever, quests become one of the best ways to level up, maybe the best.

Dungeons: XP melts away, loot makes the difference

Blizzard touched dungeons, and the word “nerf” deserves its quotation marks. In Classic, you built optimized groups and ran the same dungeon twenty times, because it was the best XP source. That era is over. Monsters now give very little: from what I measured, a whole dungeon is worth about 5% of a level. It no longer pays for an evening of farming.

Dungeon quests, on the other hand, stay very rewarding. A few days before recording, some gave up to a level and a half, a score that neither outdoor quests nor monster farming came close to. The latest WoW Forever beta build trimmed that bonus, as reported by Wowhead. Watch the nuance: PC Gamer points out that Blizzard halved the XP bonus specific to Forever on these quests, not the total XP. The Deviate Hides quest in Wailing Caverns gave 1,600 XP in Classic, about 4,650 before the fix and about 3,100 after.

The real gain from a dungeon is gear. While leveling, you have almost nothing in the way of quest items. You can craft a few good pieces with your professions, but as soon as you enter a dungeon, the items you pick up crush everything else. The blue items from dungeon quests, close to the boss level, double or triple your stats. You deal far more damage, you kill outdoor monsters two to three times faster depending on your class, and it carries over to your whole leveling. My plan is simple: pick up the quests, then go run the matching dungeons.

If dungeons lose you, I built the Dungeons and Raids section of the site for that. Each instance, old or new, has its location on the map, its bosses and their loot table, added this week. I am still missing screenshots: if you want to send me some on Discord, I will pick them up and format them. To know which level to run each dungeon at, I also have a dedicated page.

Quests are listed at the bottom of each page, and they are split by faction. Some dungeons have Horde-only quests, and others, for the Alliance, are picked up inside the instance itself. When I know where the quest giver is, a click on the map shows you where to find them.

I do not know yet whether Blizzard will raise dungeon XP a bit or tighten it further. For now, I find the compromise good. It pushes you to form groups and run dungeons for their loot, without keeping you stuck there, then sends you back to quests, several of which are new.

How long to reach level 60

That is the question that comes up the most, and the worriers are in both camps. Some want slow leveling, like in Vanilla. Others want it more affordable, otherwise they feel they are missing the endgame. WoW Forever looks for a compromise. Talents have been reworked and most of them strengthened, in damage as well as accessibility. Spells hit harder and you find more gear. Each level needs more XP than the previous one, so it slows down as you climb, but it is more accessible than back then.

Do not expect lightning-fast leveling, though. My own estimate: about ten days to reach 60, with time off taken for the occasion and entire days of play and streaming, since that is also my job. For someone who plays in the evening, one to two hours at most, I would not be surprised if it took three weeks to a month. These are my estimates, not official figures.

The biggest difference comes from the design. Blizzard announced that level 60 would be the end of this version: no expansion forcing you to climb to 70 or 80 and redo a leveling path. Endgame content will arrive from level 60. Rerolls benefit thanks to the Legacy tree, which gives account-wide talent points. They make later level-ups easier: the more time you invest in your account, the stronger your rerolls become.

I get the feeling Blizzard is aiming for the sensations of the WoW Vanilla era, and I think that can work. All the content has been redone, everything is to be rediscovered, and that is what makes you want to go through the leveling, revisit the old dungeons and enter the new ones. It can make up for fairly long leveling.

I also really liked the overhaul of travel. Boats now make several stops. From Auberdine, for example, you can reach Stormwind or Menethil Harbor, and another boat then leaves from Menethil Harbor. Before, you crossed mountains on foot for hours to join your friends. The transport network is much simpler, even without a mount. The warlock’s teleport will still remain the most efficient way to cross the map.

The new dungeons I tested are very good. They respect the WoW Classic tradition: if they had come out back then, I would not have seen the difference. My only complaint comes from my time on Ascension, where private servers managed to create boss mechanics. I am not talking about retail complexity, but small mechanics with nice animations, which would lift a fight where the boss just stuns or knocks you back. Today, with enough damage and mana, you beat Forever’s bosses no matter what.

Campfires, French servers and language choice

What I also like in Forever is the social side. The game made a lot of noise, and several friends who had not come back to WoW Classic jumped in. I found playing companions I had not seen in almost 20 years. You recognize each other right away, and you realize you have changed little. For that alone, Forever is worth it to me.

I know the WoW community stays toxic in places: the very competitive players, the meta, those who hate all that. It exists and there is nothing to be done. Blizzard is trying to bend things anyway with the campfire system, which lets you sit for a while with other players. I did not expect much from it, and the idea turns out to be good: you sit for two seconds, sometimes you chat.

On the WoW Forever beta, people settle in and do not say much. Asian players, from my impression, almost never talk in game. They use emotes and ask you things without typing a word. On French-only servers, exchanges will be far more numerous. You have to move around, communicate, form your own groups, with no automatic search. On this point, Blizzard’s bet looks successful to me.

To find French-speaking players, you can already browse the guild directory. In game, language choice is made in the new interface, where you set the text language and the audio language. Today, this setting is used by the group finder, which sorts players by language. Eventually, it will only be used for the interface and sound.

When you choose French, the game shows a one-day delay before you can switch back. You then move to another panel of servers, locked by language. If you fear being overrun by Asmongold, I think he will stay on the English-speaking servers, unless he changes language with all his guilds, which is not impossible. You will see French guilds and those that organize events in France.

Nothing stops you either from going, one evening, to do PvP against the Germans or the Italians. You switch language and only meet players from that country. It is handy for an event, or if a foreign guild challenges you.

Interface: retail’s edit mode and graphics settings to tune

The interface of the WoW Forever beta carries over everything added to the retail version, including the edit mode that lets you move every element. To me, this is excellent news: it saves me from installing a pile of addons, though nothing stops you from adding some.

A DPS meter is built in by default. It does the job for basic use. Many players will prefer Details, handier in some respects, but you are no longer forced to use it to know where you stand.

The extra health and resource bars can be recovered too, but they sometimes appear greyed out. Just go to the menu where they are listed to enable them. I am often asked how I display the mana bar in Cat Form. It is a simple line to tick in that same menu.

On the addon side, Blizzard set limits, notably on those that give too much information in raids. All of that is disabled to simplify fights. Raids will become a bit harder, but everyone will be on the same level, with or without addons. In my opinion, most addons useful day to day will keep working, especially those that change the interface.

There are many graphics settings and they are fairly advanced. Some weigh heavily on performance.

• Secondary lighting at maximum drops frames per second for some players. If you lag without knowing why, look there first and turn it down.
• You can also lower the overall quality, which clearly improves your frames per second.
• High contrast changes the visual effects a lot. I like to put in quite a bit, so test which light-effect rendering suits you.

PvP: a rank 14 per season and an overpowered hunter

First point that bothers me: to sign up for a battleground, you have to go to a city, or ask someone to do it. I understand Blizzard keeping dungeons without an automatic finder. For battlegrounds, I would rather be able to sign up from anywhere while I farm. When you want to do PvP, you cannot do anything else, and that is a real handicap.

PvP does not earn gold either. I looked at the PvP sets, and I present them on the site. In my opinion, for PvP play they will be far less powerful than the PvE sets for many classes, even those from T0 or crafting.

The announced system is seasonal. According to Icy Veins, honor climbs up to rank 14 and resets to zero every season, ranks no longer decay and rank points are capped each week. That gives a simplified rank 14, where you progress at your own pace by accumulating wins. I estimate it will take between one and three months of regular play to reach it, over a season I imagine lasts about four months. That is my estimate, not official data.

Items are capped at the current tier. If the first raid is Zul’Gurub, PvP gear will be at that tier’s level and no higher. No PvP weapons equivalent to Blackwing Lair or Ahn’Qiraj like at rank 14 back then, which created so many problems with the mafias. You can find the details in the Grand Marshal rank datamine.

As for balance, it is hard to judge the WoW Forever beta at level 30. We do not have access to all spells or to the ultimate talents Blizzard added. So I am giving my impressions of the moment.

The hunter looks way too strong to me. Played well, with Flèche de dispersion and the Piège givrant set mid-fight, its crowd control, its range and its instant spells, it keeps most classes at a distance and becomes almost untouchable. I do not see it staying as is. The mage got nerfed, and I do not know whether it will be as effective as before. I imagine more aggressive builds, with less control, maybe fire or arcane. Some will be happy, since it dominated Vanilla PvP for a very long time.

The shaman looks very solid to me, especially in Enhancement. It benefits from the totem additions, its self-heals and the Loup fantôme from level 20, which gives immediate mobility. I have already seen impressive things with the procs of the Arme Furie-des-vents, the ones that kill in one hit. I like the druid too, feral in particular, and I see huge PvP potential in it.

Level 40 spells are still missing, and level 60 will perhaps bring new spells. I will give a precise tier list at level 60, after battlegrounds and mass PvP. Until then, my advice is to play the class you like best: I think all of them will have their place depending on the format.

What I have enjoyed most so far is wild PvP. No more latency problems, lots of people, and the world feels alive. Last night, off stream, I was with a friend at the smugglers’ area. The two of us faced about forty players, hiding in the buildings. When it is two against ten, you end up dying, but we had a lot of fun and we are even planning a PvP event there this week. On the battleground side, the Darkspear Islands open from level 30 to level 60.

My verdict on the WoW Forever beta: yes, I will play it

While I was recording, the sun rose on the WoW Forever beta. The graphics remain those of the original version, with slightly sharper characters, but the lighting effects give them a second life. For a nostalgic player, it is a huge addition: it feels like finding the game as you remembered it.

So, will I play it? Yes, obviously. I think it will be one of the best versions of WoW we have seen in a very long time, at least on the Classic side. Blizzard has finally broken the “no changes” rule. I announced it as early as phase 2 of Classic: we knew PvP would suffer, that ratios were a problem and that faction balance would be one too. All of it had been discussed and nobody wanted to deal with it.

These flaws are no longer in Forever. Factions are limited and all the ratios have been redone. I am preparing videos on each class’s changes, with the ratios every time, on my channel. The faction choice in PvP is more balanced, to the point that I find the Alliance slightly favored, but we are much closer to balance than back then.

I cannot wait to play my real character again, since WoW Forever beta characters will not be kept. I loved leveling my feral druid, and it leaves me with lots of questions. I plan to restart as a spell-power feral, unless Blizzard nerfs it by then. I have dozens of leads to test, sets to discover and theorycrafting to do in every direction.

This version will please a lot of people, especially if Blizzard adds new classes. Taking the ideas from private servers that worked well was an excellent decision. On my side, my guild is growing: we are building a big structure with sub-rosters, like in Season of Discovery. We already have five, and I think we will reach twenty.

The WoW Forever tools I added to the site

I am growing kami-labs.fr alongside the WoW Forever beta, and several tools are already usable. The sets are part of it: I pulled them from the game data and sort them by class, from PvP sets to the first raid sets by way of T0, with heavily modified bonuses. Some are very powerful for certain classes, and the sets page, online since October 6, tells you which ones to aim for.

If you are looking for a guild, the guild search already gathers many listings, and ours stays in first position. Each guild can declare sub-rosters, which shows what each group is recruiting. This week I added an optional mood gauge that tells you at a glance whether the guild is more chill or more tryhard. You can register yours, tick the classes you are interested in, and players then filter by specialization.

On the spell side, the Grimoire gathers all the classes with the changes and spells added by Forever. Right next to it, I opened a tab of ready-to-use macros for each class.

The calendar is mainly for our guild. Players register their characters there, and roster leads build their groups with the real characters. You can also create your own event, a PvP outing or a dungeon for example, visible to all site visitors. Patch notes are summarized by class, buffs in green and nerfs in red.

Builds are coming too. For PvE, I will pull them from Warcraft Logs: I will take the top 10 or 20 players of a specialization, average their talent points and derive the typical tree, with its sources, as I did for Ascension. For PvP, the build shown was sent to me by a player, and those who have proven themselves can send me theirs.

To prepare your character, the talent calculator lets you chain the milestones together. I made my leveling plan up to level 10 in it, then the level 40 build, and I switch from one to the other in one click. Respeccing is expensive, so plan your path so you do not waste your gold early on.

Same idea on the raid side with the raid composition planner. You place 20 players, your tanks, your healers and your DPS, and the tool tells you which buffs you are missing and which classes bring them. You save and share your composition.

The site stays free. With a Twitch Prime subscription, the procedure in the video description removes ads while supporting me. Thanks to the Tipeee donors and Twitch subscribers, and to RestedXP, which sponsors the project and announces guides dedicated to Legacy points.

Last tool, the Legacy tree. It is not complete yet and I update it as Blizzard adds things. Its bonuses are unlocked through in-game achievements, and one of the most powerful in my opinion is Thrill of Adventure. For every worthwhile enemy killed, it restores 1% of your maximum health and mana per rank over 10 seconds, over 5 ranks, so 5% in total. It does not work in dungeons, raids or battlegrounds, but outside you can have it almost permanently.

The other bonus to know is called Talented. It does not add 5 talent points in total, it gives them to you earlier: your first points arrive from level 5, which clearly speeds up the start of leveling.