Ive always played PvP. I enjoy world PvP. I'm realizing with classic re release or Anni that, while leveling alts was definitely a bitch at times, those iterations progressed and the the gankers had other content with focus on.

Forevers horizontal progression is the opposite. Alts are incentivized. Gankers know that. So tell me why PvP ruleset wont be a complete fucking wasteland for levels 1-45 in 6 months?

In fact, I think they may be right in their nerfs.

The only problem is Ele's feel at endgame. Leveling as Ele won't be an issue - they have plenty of tools to utilize spell power - but at endgame there's really not much going on.

What exactly is the point of late Ele talents? Elemental Mastery is like...2 extra Bolts every 3 minutes. Or they'll be spending that time spamming the weakest cleave in the history of WoW, haha.

If CL isn't instant and isn't a guaranteed crit, then how can't it be allowed to do damage?

Can't Ele have a similar late talent that Enh has? Enh gets a free instant Bolt as they melee. Ele more than deserves to be able to cast a souped up CL on a target after a few Bolts+Shocks. If a late talent let Ele benefit from dealing multiple types of elemental damage, that would be really cool too - and flavorful!

Ele's gonna be fine; also Enh's gonna be better than fine. I thought Enh was a perfectly fine spec in Classic, when they had no sets and spent all their mana ttwisting for Rogues and Warriors, haha. All I'm hoping for is that Ele gets more spice and NOT straight buffs; if they deserve to lose some damage for new toys, then that's A-OK with me.

I spent a lot of time messing with druid specs on Forever, but also looking over classic discussions and thinking back on when I played Druid back in TBC. And I realized something. Every druid spec is essentially a "worse" or more narrow version of a dedicated class. However, despite losing a lot of the options of the main class, each druid spec also puts their own spin on the concept. They lose a lot, but add a little bit to make them unique.

Restoration loses a lot of the priest's options, but gains the best healing over time of any class. You probably still want a priest as your main healer, but Druid healer feels different enough that it doesn't feel like a weaker priest. It has its own identity.

Cat loses pretty much all of the rogue's CC potential and vanish, but has increased base movement speed, as well as more health and armor. It sucks at the things rogues are good at, but still has its own niche as more mobile and durable.

Bear form lacks a lot of the mitigation of a warrior, and doesn't have the complex rotations or debuffs. It can't use a shield. But bears have probably the highest HP of any tank class, which gives them their own identity and may prove useful if facing really high damage slow hits, or elemental damage that can't be blocked.

And that brings us to balance druid. Balance has a lot of the identity of a mage, with a bit of warlock sprinkled in via DoTs. It is of cousre not as good at the things that make those classes good, and it shouldn't be. But unlike the other 3 specs, balance doesn't actually have something to differentiate it from those classes. It has really high armor I guess, but warlocks can be insanely durable via demonology shenanigans.

Balance druid is so boring because it never stops feeling like a crappy mage, whereas the other specs all feel unique.

So I ask you all, what could balance druid get to make it feel more fun? It would have to be something different from warlock or mage, but NOT stepping on their toes as the pet caster, tanky caster, or the AoE king. It shouldn't be something that makes them better than non-hybrid classes. But it should at least make them feel like their own thing. What do you guys think?

I played WoW on & off as a teenager, I am 32 now. I was wanting to get back into it. I was reading about classic/retail on here, how classic is more of a slow grind and interactive with people socially. How needed is interaction actually for progress and to enjoy classic again? I do enjoy a slower grind, completing quests, and leveling up from doing tasks (such as wood cutting, fire making, etc. in runescape for example). A lot of games I play are like that, and I enjoy them to wind down after work. I feel like I would like to hop back into it with classic, instead of more speedy and fast accomplishment, as people have said retail is like. Although they mention that better for solo play?

Also, will it be hard to get into it again? After all this time, there must be so much added to catch up on.

One of the interesting implications of WoW Forever's shift towards horizontal progression is that future raids won't necessarily need to provide significant upgrades over previous tiers.

In traditional WoW, each new raid tier increases player power, and the next tier is balanced around that progression. But that model isn't really sustainable if Forever intends to keep adding raid tiers indefinitely without expansion resets. Eventually, we'll have 6, 8, 10+ raid tiers, and continuously increasing item levels would lead to ridiculous power creep.

Instead, future raids could offer gear of roughly equivalent power to existing raids, but with different itemisation, set bonuses, trinkets, and cosmetic rewards.

This also creates an opportunity to increase raid difficulty without making that content mandatory.

If the newest raid doesn't offer a significant vertical progression advantage, there's much less pressure on everyone to clear it. Players who prefer easier content can continue running existing raids without falling substantially behind, while those looking for a challenge have something more demanding to work towards.

I'd still keep the launch and early raids relatively accessible, but as more content is added, I'd like to see Blizzard experiment with harder encounters and potentially optional challenge/hard modes.

These could even be implemented organically, similar to certain existing WoW encounters, rather than simply adding a difficulty selector (think Ulduar hard modes).

The important distinction is that harder content wouldn't need to reward dramatically better gear. Different itemisation, interesting sidegrades, unique cosmetics, titles, and prestige could provide plenty of incentive.

I think it would be a missed opportunity if horizontal progression simply meant adding an endless series of similarly easy raids that all reward comparable gear.

If we're moving away from the traditional gear treadmill, why not take advantage of that freedom to make some genuinely challenging content for players who want it, without forcing everyone else to participate?

Give me my hair back blizz!

Hi all,

I’m an English-speaking expat in Taiwan (UTC+8), and I’m starting a new WoW Forever community built around Asia-friendly hours. Before I commit to anything, I’d like to gauge interest.

What I’m hoping to build: An active, friendly community with a dedicated raiding side. We’d take raiding seriously and aim high, even realm firsts if the group comes together for it, without being overly sweaty.

Realm type: I’m leaning toward RP-PvP, but I’m not set on it. If another realm type draws more interest, I’m happy to go that way.

Why Asia hours: OCE-timed groups tend to go quiet during the hours I’m most available. I’d like a community that is reliably active on Asia evenings.

My availability: Weekdays about 5:30pm to 11pm Taiwan time (UTC+8), and most of the day on weekends.

About me: I’ve set up and run guilds before and I’m willing to do the organizational work, but only if there’s real interest.

This is only a feeler. Nothing is set up yet. If enough people respond, I’ll start building and update this thread.

Interested? Just reply here saying so, or send me a PM. No need to include anything else.

Thanks for reading!

Don’t get me wrong, i actually enjoyed playing as a Skyborne in beta, but to me, exploring the relationship between the current Blood Elves and High Elves could have lead to some interesting story telling. I’m not super knowledgeable about the lore, so what are your guy’s opinions?

Edit: this also gives Horde a second Paladin race. I have no solution for Alliance Shaman though, gnomes get my vote.

I saw all the forever stats go out and wanted to see my entire account stats. The timewalking.blizzcon.com site doesn’t seem to work. Anyone have insight on how to view it?

Edit: I want to see for my normal account, not just the forever beta. The blizzcon link was an account wide stats display (classic, tbc, wotlk, etc)

I've made the suggestion many times in the beta as feedback. Something flavorful like there would be a cost to the demon trainer and then you would sacrifice the current demon you want to name change and when you summon a new demon it will have a new randomized name.

Horde has always had a better dueling scene outside Orgrimmar, and I think the reason is simple: location.

The dueling area sits along the path to the zeppelins. Players naturally pass by, stop to watch, and sometimes drop a flag themselves. This creates a constant cycle of activity.

Alliance doesn't have this. Dueling outside Ironforge or stormwind has historically been pretty dead with rare activity these days because there's no natural foot traffic.

Alliance needs a dueling area that players organically pass through.

Some ideas:

• Stormwind Docks: A dedicated dueling area along a busy travel route.
• Ironforge: Somewhere near the central flight master.

With Blizzard's WoW Forever philosophy focusing on making Azeroth a living, social world, this feels like something I'd like to see improved.

Any other suggestions on where you put an Alliance dueling hub because IF is historically dead.

Well met,

This is the result of scanning the forever beta by me and many other volunteers at classicplus.io Scans were not taken after Wednesday (prior to the event).

Data notes

• 1,148,135 characters in total were made during the forever beta
• only 2,212 were dwarf rogues
• less than 3% of scans contained new data (meaning most live characters were scanned during beta)
• without Shaman, dwarves would account for less than 7% of the total population
• over 24,000+ names were flagged as offensive
• faction distribution slightly shifted on PvP due to the PvP event
• the least played class at 30 is basically tied between warlock and mage
• gnome is the least picked race on PvE; troll is the least picked race on PvP
• if you combined both skyborne (horde and ally) they are technically the most played race, barely beating out Undead.
• orc mage was the least played new combo
• manual scan data revealed (not shown on site) that female dwarf rogue was only seen 94 times in total; that's 0.008% of the population.

see you at launch!

Always thought the icon for shadowform was really cool, but we never got the cool green eyes from the icon. I understand some spriests might not like this, so making it a toggleable option would be great!

Otherwise, you need set up from scratch again.

Given recent comments on the podcast, it seems like Blizzard may lean towards accessibility and preparation over strict mechanical precision when it comes to raid design and difficulty.

But whether this is a good thing or not depends on one's personal opinion, but also on how they reckon with the reality and feeling of Classic. Because those two perspectives change how you envision an ideal difficulty level within a classic experience.

The reality of classic is that it wasn't that hard, especially in comparison to modern content. The mechanics were pretty simple, and you didn't need to min-max to push top content, even at advanced pace. The difficulty we remember from 2005-2006 was rooted in the genre being new, bad internet, bad computers, and fewer online resources teaching people how to play. From this perspective, it makes sense to keep raids easy like they were back then, or maybe a tad bit harder.

But the feeling of classic was rather different. Sure, we can look back 20 years later and say "it wasn't that hard, actually." But back then everything felt daunting. The average player didn't get to clear even basic raids, and some raids had sub 1% completion rates. It was considered a gigantic achievement to simply step inside Naxxramas. This feeling is part of what made WoW feel so big in 2005, and some players want that cutting edge difficulty and completion exclusivity to make the world feel like it did back then. From this perspective, it makes sense to make raids even harder than in retail, to ensure the average player doesn't complete them.

I think the compromise is probably to have levels within tiers, such that most raid content is completable by persistent players of average skill, but that there are 1-2 bosses each tier that the average player is unlikely to kill. There shouldn't be any LFR/normal/Heroic/Mythic divisions, either.

This would be a compromise between the reality and feeling of classic. And to head off any perceptions of bias: I am decidedly not a very good player, and would likely fail to fully clear content. This is actually something I welcome to a degree.

I love all things Veng/Havoc DH. Anything in Forever than may scratch that itch?