World of Warcraft Forever has already been massively successful, but it’s widened the divide that’s always been there between the Retail and Classic versions of the game. And, it seems like some of the folks at Blizzard are standing firm on one side of that line.
Earlier this week, Blizzard world builder Matthew Armstrong discussed his mindset when building the world of Forever via a lengthy post on X/Twitter. “I am making WoW forever for the classic gamer,” Armstrong began, “and for the millions of people who have had their accounts lapse over the years because they were not satisfied with changes that were made to the game.”
That stance isn’t too surprising, earlier in the week another WoW Forever developer stood by Blizzard’s decision not to include shared tagging as something “we simply must hold the line on.” It sounds like Blizzard is trying its hardest to provide new content for Classic players without succumbing to the temptation of adding the modern quality-of-life features that some WoW players find so divisive.
Armstong continued: “I could have taken it easy and just kept doing things like I had done for the past 8 years on retail… because I was much more familiar with it and it actually takes a lot less time to do (height maps on textures do a ton of heavy lifting). Because the reality is that the majority of retail players wouldn’t care and would probably actually prefer it. But I felt I had a duty to uphold an artistic vision and integrity that millions of people expect from us.”
The reason this entire debate is even happening is because, of course, World of Warcraft Forever is the shiny new version of World of Warcraft and brings some improvements that Retail players would surely love in the modern version of the game. I for one, prefer retail for the more robust endgame pillars, but even I look at Forever’s improved lighting, controller support, and Undead Paladins, and yearn for them in Midnight – even if the latter will be coming in the Eclipse update in patch 12.2. Forever is even getting heavy rain effects!
Of course, Armstrong’s statement has sown some division among the WoW community. The responses to his post range from user MesciuSandman tagging Blizzard and asking “is it normal that one of your employees candidly states that the game that you are about to release was not created for a certain segment of your customer base?” Meanwhile BanKsEsports posted: “I just want to say THANK YOU. Jan 2021 was the last active sub I held, I had been playing constantly since day 1 release… then I just felt like it was an endless grind loop and too far away from something worth investing so much time into.”
This battle over the identity of WoW Forever is taking place during a beta where you can only play until level 20, mind you. Only a fraction of the content that’ll be in the full game is available now, and we’ll have to wait until November 4 to really see how the community will coalesce. In the meantime, Blizzard is trying to crack down on offensive character names, though it seems like some outright silly ones have been caught in the crossfire.