WoW Forever: First Official Podcast Announcements

Blizzard just launched its first official podcast dedicated to WoW Forever, streamed on the official World of Warcraft channel. This first episode lands in the middle of the beta and brings together Josh Corbett, creator of Countdown to Classic, as host, Tim Jones and Aggrend from the development team, and streamer Xaryu as guest.

The discussion covers the state of the beta, the new Skyborn race, layering, the leveling pace, and the interface. Every announcement is broken down below, organized by topic.

The WoW Forever beta, explained

The WoW Forever beta has been running for several weeks, and the developers are using it to test the limits of their infrastructure.

• The beta is open for several weeks, specifically to stress-test servers and hardware ahead of launch.
• A single global server hosts the entire beta, which causes performance issues, especially for European players. This setup does not reflect the architecture planned for launch.
• A development meeting is held every morning at 9am, with fixes deployed continuously, weekends included.
• A performance bug was identified: toggling certain graphics settings while in a group tanks the framerate in cities. A hotfix has already improved the situation.
• System requirements and the framerate needed are higher than expected, and the team is actively fixing the issue.

The Skyborn, the new race that’s dividing players

This new playable race is at the center of most beta debates, between narrative choices and visual style.

Faction and classes

• The Skyborn are blue elves presented as a variant of the High Elves, the Highborne.
• Their starting zone wraps up around level 12: no raid or materials to farm in a loop there afterward.
• Faction choice depends on the character’s magical philosophy: Skyborn drawn to arcane magic join the Alliance, tied to the Kirin Tor in Dalaran.
• More naturalist or shamanic Skyborn join the Horde, tied to the Earthen Ring in Mulgore.
• Playable classes are restricted based on the chosen faction, a first for WoW according to Tim Jones: splitting a race and limiting its classes by side.
• This choice also helps flesh out underdeveloped factions like the Earthen Ring and the Kirin Tor, with quests and reputations, and opens up possibilities for future patches.

The lore

• WoW Forever’s narrative decisions won’t affect mainline WoW: no retcon of Warcraft 3 or the current game.
• The story draws on lore books hidden throughout the world and characters tied to other versions of Warcraft.
• Blizzcon panels have already dug into the topic, with original artwork from Chris Metzen, who explicitly pushed the team to not play it safe.
• The team plans to wrap up pieces of story left hanging in the original WoW, citing Thunderfury and the Windseeker.

Visual feedback

• Community feedback is controversial, somewhat like when the Draenei were introduced back in the day.
• First point of friction: the Skyborn’s blue color, which reminds some players of the Kyrian and the Shadowlands.
• Second point of friction: high-definition models placed in a world that has stayed at standard definition.
• The developers stand by this choice: they’d rather have passionate players, for or against, than indifferent ones. The rejection fades once players actually play through the zone.
• Skyborn Druid forms are seen as too detailed for the standard-definition world and have already been simplified several times. Work on the geometry continues, with no official announcement for now.
• The Skyborn were among the very first assets created for WoW Forever, so they’re more detailed than the fidelity target refined since then. Upcoming content will stick closer to the Classic style, a deliberate challenge since the era’s original tools no longer exist.
• A Skyborn Priest is not planned: the race is narratively atheist, tied to the Aleth cult. Aggrend admits this choice may have been a mistake, without ruling anything out going forward. The Horde, for its part, is asking for a new priest option.

The new layering, the real technical revolution

Layering, the system that splits players across world layers, remains the topic that gets WoW Forever’s developers the most excited.

• A « familiar faces » feature keeps putting the same players from your social circle on your layer, to recapture the feel of a real community server despite a single mega-server. Players already grouped with you show up in light blue on the list.
• Streamers organized a world PvP battle in Ashenvale that brought together hundreds of players from both factions. Lag stayed nearly nonexistent despite the crowd, and Arcane Explosion fired off instantly. Tim Jones and Aggrend call this moment the best mass battle of any WoW version. The Horde ended up winning.
• The maximum number of players per layer depends on each zone, its size, and its potential for PvP conflict. A new layer is created as soon as a player threshold is exceeded.
• A bug sometimes makes a rare mob disappear after a layer switch while grouping up, which discourages players from grouping. A fix is in the works.
• In world PvP, an opponent can appear or disappear from one layer to another. The team is taking the issue seriously and looking for solutions.

Leveling and loot, reworked

The numbers shown during the show contradict the perception of accelerated leveling.

• A good chunk of kill experience has been redirected to dungeon quests, to encourage running each dungeon at least once without rewarding endless farming.
• According to that same day’s analytics, leveling from 1 to 20 takes an average of 20.4 hours on Era versus 20.5 hours on Forever, an almost identical pace despite players’ opposite perception.
• Xaryu compared his level 14 gnome mage across both versions, at the same spot in Westfall: about 8:42 on Era versus 8:47 on Forever, and mana consumption barely higher for an identical pull of four monsters.
• Spell power now shows up much more on low-level gear, especially gear craftable through tailoring. All abilities have been rebalanced accordingly, making every weapon upgrade highly impactful for spellcasters.
• Nine new dungeons are available from level 1 to 60, each with its own quests, loot, and experience.
• Too many blue items drop too early, sometimes several on a single dungeon run, which breaks the white-green-blue progression. Starting with the next build, some quests will only grant experience and gold, and others will be redistributed to hand out just one blue instead of four.

The bronze interface, a deliberate choice

WoW Forever’s interface takes on a visual identity of its own, even if it frustrates some players used to Classic.

• The interface sports a weathered bronze theme, with new action bars and a new minimap, designed to be recognizable at a glance next to Classic Era and modern WoW.
• No toggle back to the Classic interface is planned, a request Xaryu voices openly during the discussion.
• The official solution is add-ons, which let players customize unit frames, the minimap, and the spellbook.
• Xaryu notes that his only real complaints, the unit frames and cast bar feeling too close to retail, could be adapted to the bronze theme, but he’s satisfied handling it through add-ons. The developers remain open to feedback.

What’s coming next

The team has already set a date for the next podcast episode and relays several requests from the community.

• The next podcast episode will welcome other developers to talk about classes.
• A designer will come on later to detail the changes made to experience gain.
• The community is asking for a free respec for the entire duration of the beta to make testing easier, as well as a higher character limit for bug reports, currently capped at 255 characters.
• Social systems are already working well: players use campsites to pick up their buffs before a dungeon, with sharpening stones placed on the ground. Small spontaneous communities are forming in Goldshire. This beta’s scale can also be measured by its audience.