Well, there’s one word on my mind today and that word is FOREVER.
First, there’s the video I recorded. (Let’s ignore the fact that I had a pounding sinus headache and recorded it at like 4:30am on Saturday night.) It’s about 30 minutes long and talks about what we see on the WoW Forever site and a few things I heard in the talks about it and such.
If you watch the video, you’ll know I purchased the Epic Edition, primarily for Beta access. But also because elves. (You’ll also know I spent the gold for the tokens, and Blizzard still hasn’t gotten one penny from my wallet or credit card since they ate much of the contents of my guild bank.)
So I’m excited for Thursday and to see what Beta holds for us. I won’t do All The Things because look, I’ve already done the various starting zones a dozen times on actual realms, and I’m sure I’ll be doing them again at least a few times for Forever, so I may just do a few things here and there and look at talents and the like. What do you want to see from Beta?
I’m looking forward to seeing the full talent trees for paladins and giving my two cents on what a holy paladin should do. Probably also for MM hunters, although I’ve never theorycrafted for my hunter the way I have for my paladin.
I’m also really looking forward to the new graphics. I’m probably going to stick with Classic character models and animations, but I can’t wait to be on my hunter out in Riverglades and other new zones, exploring things.
So far, the plan is: one night elf hunter, one human paladin, one dwarven shaman, and then either a Skyborne mage or druid. I’m not sure I want a druid, though — a lot of the joy I get from my druid on retail is flight form and farming.
Professions: Hunter gets skinning/LW, pally gets herbalism/alchemy, shaman may depend on if dual gathering is “supported” in the sense that nodes for both mining and herbalism are visible at once. If not, shammy gets mining and … engineering??? I have no idea, frankly. It’s kind of wild to think about old-school WoW, without jewelcrafting or inscription. (I’m not complaining.)
The racials are wild. They’ve been amped UP, dudes.
Look at the gnomes, for crying out loud:
EUREKA! Reduced cost at 10% increased damage or healing on next 3 spells or abilities
AND
Expansive Mind: Maximum Mana, Rage, or Energy increased by 5%
Almost enough to want to roll a gnome. Almost.
And Undead get basically a free Lifestealing enchant, built-in!
Touch of the Grave: Sometimes drain health with your attacks
Speaking of Undead, I think it’s wild that we’re getting Undead Paladins in both Forever and Retail. UNDEAD PALADINS. WHAT. They look super cool, I’m not gonna lie, but what the heck. I have mixed feelings.
Now, my biggest thing here is… I hate people. 😂 So how is this open-world hanging out going to affect me? I can be nice enough in-game, but most of the time I just want to chill by myself or play with my brother (or other friends). We’ll see how that goes. I guess having a campsite thingy to chat and chill and get buffs will be helpful. And I do like providing buffs for others, sooooo I guess I’ll be doing that a fair bit?
Also, no servers? Should be … interesting.
I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of days, about everything to do with Forever. And my original experiences with WoW. It still astonishes me that so much of my life has been shaped by what server I chose to play on when I first loaded up World of Warcraft in October of 2005.
I literally looked at the list of servers.
I found one that was PVE (that was never going to be in question) and one that was also based in Eastern Time. I could have picked Dalaran or Khadgar or Stormrage. But I saw the name Eldre’Thalas and thought “hey, it has an apostrophe! That’s pretty darn cool.”
So I selected it and began my time playing.
Within hours, I was on the phone with my brother telling him he HAD to buy this game.
When he installed it, he asked me what server I was on, so he created Thefog on Eldre’Thalas, a night elf druid. (Hilariously, throughout all of BlizzCon, they kept talking about Fog and The Fog and I’m like “what about my brother???? Ohhhhhhhhhh. The WEATHER.”)
My brother has always been the extroverted one. I’m the introvert. I like to sit and read a book or play a video game versus going out to hang with people. So I wasn’t particularly surprised when he made sort of friends with people. This eventually led to him getting invited to a guild called Fated Heroes. And then I eventually joined, too. (And then Fog abandoned us for Tempest because they were raiding MC and then, possibly out of pure spite, I worked my ass off to get Fated Heroes ready for raiding. And Fog eventually came back to us anyway.)
So how was that life-changing? Well, without Eldre’Thalas, we wouldn’t have joined Fated Heroes. And without Fated Heroes, I wouldn’t still be good friends with people like Majik and Toga and Kam and Tia and Dar. Like I have met (most of) these people! I was a bridesmaid at Majik’s wedding, where I met legit half my old guild in person, including Maj’s brothers and Dar! Then, a few years later, Majik, his wife, and I went to Toga and Kam’s wedding together, and Dar was there too! These people are still in my life, at least to an extent. All because I chose a realm name with an apostrophe in it. It truly breaks my brain a little bit.
Anyway, with all that said, there’s a lot to look forward to learning about WoW Forever, and I’m planning to help people better understand what’s new in that version of this game we all play.
What are you curious about in Forever? Let me know, I’ll try to find out the answer for you!