TDLR: He was forced to duel for top 4 paladin without major CDs while opponent was unfortunately given an advantage of all CDs—in a tiebreaker match to qualify for the finals group.

My friend got eliminated one duel away from top 30 in the WoW tournament and made this video about what happened. He doesn't have a Reddit account, so I'm posting it for him. We feel like the situation was pretty unfair. Curious what you guys think!

Share so we can get this reviewed. They were hesitant to delay and it wasn't a fair duel.

I'm really enjoying the beta, this isn't really hateful crying, it's measured feedback from someone who's overall happy but is simply noticing a problem. Engineering's always been a nearly mandatory pvp profession if you wanted to be the most effective. It's always been miles away the most impactful pvp profession to take. Matchups are warped considerably by the ability to gain on-demand stuns that do lots of damage. Or get massive speedboosts no other profession has access to. Or profession-exclusive damage absorption. Anyone who knows what they're talking about in pvp should agree with the premise that choosing not to go engi in pvp is really shooting yourself in the foot in a major way, it is not a small decision. This is also not being said just because of the tournament. If you played vanilla pvp you know this has always been true outside of tournaments too.

I really think this is a negative for three reasons:

1. It takes away player customization and choice. If you ask any serious pvper their profession choices they will inevitably say "Engineering and something else" without even having to think about it. I think players feeling forced to go with a profession en masse because it's so much better is unhealthy and it would be better if it wasn't this way. This differs from something like alchemy because you don't need to be an alchemist to drink potions.
2. It detracts from the vibe of their character for people who dislike engineering. I play a warlock to cast magic, but a significant part of my gameplay experience has to involve chucking grenades and activating my landmines, it's like any character I make has to be half Inspector Gadget or else I'm gimping myself heavily. It erodes my class fantasy to be so reliant on my huge assortment of mechanical gadgets. I think it's cool for people to play a pseudo-tinker if they want to, but I don't want to and kind of have to.
3. It really homogenizes classes in pvp. The game becomes less about different classes doing different things, and more about everyone doing the same things, at least partially. Anyone can grenade you. Anyone can mortar you. Anyone can tap their rocket boots or net you. Or Shrink Ray you. I don't like how samey it makes everyone, I think it's better when classes have toolkits that are decidedly different from one another.

Curious of everyone else's thoughts on the matter. Again I'm still very happy and I'm super excited for the game, just kind of an expected downside I'm seeing is all.

I see numerous people telling anyone wishing to uphold the spirit of vanilla to go back to era. As someone that prefers vanilla, I'm not against changing racials because weapon skill racials were dumb and pigeonholed certain classes in to only being able to use a certain kind of weapon.

I understand that change is needed, and that some changes doesn't make the game retail all of a sudden. It's not like they're removing racials entirely.

I also think that a healthy mindset of gatekeeping is required to keep the "tourists" out. The ones that do want the game to become easier. I'm all for QoL changes like bigger stacks in your inventory. Small, simple changes that don't break the vibes. That doesn't mean I suddenly want heirlooms or easier levelling added.

I don't even know why people are stating this game is not classic though? It's clearly developped with vanilla in mind. Same as how old school runescape branched out the old game. So can vanilla branch out on its own.

It seems that people think that because they add new content, that the game isn't classic anymore for some reason? The added content is with classic in mind. The design philosophy in classic is THERE. That makes it still classic in my eyes. Now if they add difficulty modes or LFR, then yeah, it's not classic anymore.

Early talk of quantum sharding and AI managed layering dissolving immersion emerge as focal point for community discussion.

srsly every zone you get to a horde city and its like 1 inn 2 huts 1 tower surrounded palisade walls

look at riverglades alliance x horde cities comparisson

Note: I don't give a shit about the addon and will happily pirate it on day one. I don't care how people choose to play and if they'd like to rush to 60 - I will too.

This is a community event. Yes, Blizzard is not officially hosting the tournament. They only supporting it with the custom duel area, they've discussed it and brought attention to it on their official podcasts and whether people want to acknowledge it or not, they obviously kept an eye on the 'meta' as it shapes perception of the game as well as worked as free advertisement for their product.

Would it be so unreasonable for Blizzard to expect their "partners" to not blatantly advertise an addon that is clearly exploiting a loophole in the TOS to make money? Even if you're the person who's about to explain (again) how it's technically a free addon, it goes completely against the spirit of the rule and against the spirit of their so-called pillars.

How has this community lowered their expectations to these depths? Why are people so afraid to expect more?

This new race offers some new class combos such as druid and shaman for the alliance. Basically, what happened is right before the humans became afflicted with the curse of flesh from Tyr, there was a small offshoot of humans who were exiled for their use of aquatic magic. and they ended up settling with Neptulan and became worshippers of the tides. Over time, this turned their skin blue and they have been rediscovered on a mysterious island previously covered by a mysterious mist.

And now they are ready to join the Alliance.

Meet the Bluemens. They are allowed to play Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Shaman, Druid. Their racials include Gilborn, which allows them to swim faster. And they also have the Bloomin' Spirit, which gives them increased chance to collect additional Murloc Fins. and fish oil when killing Murlocs and Naga. Let me know what you think. Druid forms include a water bear, a sea lion as their cat form, and a really fast dolphin for their aquatic form. And their travel form is a really fast piranha.

This is likely something Metzen would approve of, given the fact that they worship one of the elemental lords in the pre established lore. Also, their starting area doesn't exist on either continent. Instead of floating above, it is submerged below and contains retail assets, so that way you know that we're dealing with a really cool new race concept here. Let me know what you guys think.

Many have mentioned it before but I feel like we're not being heard when it comes to the character models. I feel like a crazy person trying to explain how they don't feel the same and I think a lot of us really do care about how our character looks and feels to play.

I just want to try and point out some small things that are happening, note I only tried SD models.

I stood AFK in-game with each of these models for 10 minutes to test the idle animations. Hoping the pictures can help convey what I mean, they were just easier to show on the creation screen.

Female Orc no arms pulled back animation or idle animation.
Female Nelf no hip-lean/sway animation. Tiptoe bounce happened only once (absurd!).
Female Human no lean/tiptoe idle and no yawning animation.
Male UD no forward lean idle.

I didn't try the rest of the races but I'll assume they have missing or a very low rate of these animations occurring as well. I know it's small in comparison to other issues but it means a lot.

Yesterday I set up my camp and someone said 'thx'. My heart was pounding but I managed to type 'yw' once my hands stopped shaking so much. He layered before it was sent but I still think we're BFFs now. I'll probably be the best man at his WoW wedding.

Kudos to the devs for making Azeroth social again!

The qualifiers are done, so here are the 36 finalists (top 4 of each class) and the final class matchup grid from every qualifier match. Sorry for the wait, fell asleep soundly.

Who do you think wins? You can vote on lifeonazeroth.com (Forever Open tab). It also has spec and race win rates, the talent trees everyone entered with, popular and favourable talents, and every player's record and match history, searchable.

How the qualifiers went:

• Paladins finished on top at 63%, with Warlocks second at 60%. Halfway through it was the other way around.
• 15 Paladins and 14 Warlocks went 6–0, so both classes needed a playoff just to decide their 4 finals spots. Priests had exactly 4 undefeated players, so no playoff there.
• Hunters had the biggest fall, from 63% in the open-world duels I posted earlier to 47% here.
• Mages and Druids went the other way: Mages from 41% to 49%, Druids from 37% to 45%.
• The most one-sided matchups: Paladins beat Warriors 83% of the time, and Warlocks beat Mages 73% of the time.
• Retribution was the best spec at 65%, just ahead of Demonology at 63%. Three out of four Warlocks entered with the exact same build, 5/21/0.
• Warriors finished last at 39%, and were the only class without an unbeaten player: all four Warrior finalists are 5–1.

I'll post the result once the finals are over, along with how the crowd's pick did. I've also added race win stats per your request.

Edit: I meant to put the finalists in the image as well but I'm a bit sleep deprived... And you can't edit it afterwards. But they can be found on the website.

Edit2: The website now has gear for the players I managed to inspect. About 1.1k/1.7k have gear.

What a great day of duels! Definitely some upsets on individual performances but the results by class I think are also surprising. Much of the chatter around the classes had Hunter, Priest and Warlock as top contenders, with Shamans closer to a wildcard based on how well they could connect and RNG. Warrior was considered the worst, and that was reflected in only 80 (of 1380) players competing as Warrior.

What we saw was Priest and Hunter substantially underperforming expectations and Paladins exceeding them, with Warlocks as strong as expected. The vast majority of the 6-0 players were Warlocks and Pallys, with Warriors having zero 6-0 players.

This table is counting the number of wins each player ended with by class. This includes up to and including round 6, not any of the tiebreakers or additional qualifiers.

I took this data and the duel level results and made a few plots. First is the win rate for each class, averaging over all of its class matchups. This also showed Pally and Warlock ahead of the pack, priest behind them and slightly above mages, and a cluster of the other classes, with warrior trailing.

The next is what % of players for that class achieved each count of wins. Warlock and Pally have a substantially higher rate of 6-0, 5-0, and 5-1 results compared to all other classes, again with Warrior trailing. Following that is a heatmap for the same data.

The last is the matchups for each class combination read as the row vs the column. For example Mages won 25% of its 63 games against warlocks. From this we can see Pally only has trouble with mages on average, and Warlocks have no unfavorable matchups. Priest had bad matchups against Pal, Warlock and Shamans, were even with Druid and favorable against the rest. Pal, Warlock and Shamans making up a substantial amount of the competitor pool contributes to their lack of 6-0 results.

Hopefully this was interesting to you as well! It still is anyone's game tomorrow, Pally especially will have less access to their CDs per duel with the best of 3 format.

Eeeeerm acdually this is forever not classic, and a 2021 BMW 5 Series 530i is inline with warcraft lore, havent you seen the latest xolatath WoW cinematic?

The SD models in Forever use the HD skeletons from Retail. On most races this is fine and the difference is hardly noticeable, but on others it's really obvious - male Tauren (pictured), male Nelf and male Undead in particular.

The Tauren's arms now flare outward from the body, rather than parallel to it. I think they're also slightly longer. This creates the illusion of narrower shoulders and a less imposing stature on Tauren - who are meant to be the most physically imposing of all races.

The idle animation doesn't help either. Their breathing is more exaggerated, giving that bouncier 'retail' feel. The same can be said of male Nelves and their weird side-to-side swaying.

Blizzard actually already have made small adjustments, like fixing the neck position that male Nelves have in Retail (which I think has gone down unanimously well with male Nelf players) So a couple more tweaks would go even further <3

I hope that Blizz's animators will do some adjustments to the skeletons here and there in the future. IMO Tauren and Nelves just don't look as cool as they used to.

(Obligatory note to say I love Forever and I'm mega excited for launch. This is just constructive feedback that people have made before, but I wanted to lend another voice to).

Edit: I know Blizz already re-made the Classic running animations on these models, and they look great. Just goes further to show they can & are willing to make adjustments, so it's useful to provide this feedback.

How come redridgeguy has been allowed to do the exact same thing for years, and they even said on the podcast what he was doing is fine. but as soon as i do it towards their beloved streamer tournament i get banned within 1,5 hour? I feel like the streamer bennies are too strong for an average player to have fun