WoW Forever

[Fibonacci]

Saw it, laughed, logged in to Octo. Because those guys (and the devs on Turtle) understand the spirit of classic. Didn't expect much from Blizzard's Classic+ and wasn't disappointed. By far!

[Mauden]

glowing blue elves. lmao.

[Beardalf]

What id add to the Skyborne discussion is the fact that they are adding a race and starting zone behind a paywall. Yes I dislike the actual thing as much as you guys but I think the paywall is the more telling / ominous. Remember they are doing this at the same time as they said: the world is again the main character...make absolutely no sense in my mind.

[Mario]

This is obviously just Retail wearing a Classic skinsuit. The tone of the cinematic is off, it has the same twee flavor to it that is the kiss of death for every other fantasy project. Yes I watched the whole thing, no I am not reacting to a ragebait screenshot from Twitter or Reddit. Something else that really strikes me about it is how flat and generic the sound direction is. Compare to the original Vanilla cinematic, which is iconic. Plus the AAA-slop photorealism over style. But whatever, the cinematic isn't everything.

And I'm not just an unrepentant hater like a lot of people on here are. I saw Dalaran and thought that was cool, and I'm receptive to the idea of Classic+ and might have given it a try. But the reality that I think is sinking in for a lot of people now is that there can't ever BE a Classic+ because the guys who made the original WoW are gone, and Blizzard only knows how to make Retail. There are plenty of signs present in this project. The invention of yet another contrived, fuckass elf race is textbook Retail, as is sticking them onto the Horde so that there's a "non-ugly" race option for them. In general, everything about the Skyborne has a very Retail feel to it, both in how they are presented and how out-of-place they feel. UwU we are wholesome chungus hippie elves you've never heard of before living in the sky and we are SOOOO in touch with the elementals! Like, who gives a fuck man, what does that have to do with the setting? There are soo many established races deserving of their own Classic treatment, like High or Blood Elves, Goblins, Ogres. Fuck it, shoehorn the sexy Avatar aliens into the setting. Christ they're even fucking blue like them, too. It is kind of hilarious that after all this time, even with a clean slate, they will do ANYTHING but put High Elves in the Alliance. I don't know whether to laugh or be outraged at the new elves being paywalled. That, combined with Horde paladin and Alliance shaman is not a good indicator for faction integrity.

I really do not trust these people at all to deliver a good take on Classic+. Part of the problem seems to be that a decent amount of the developers do not actually like WoW and don't share any of the aesthetic preferences that led to its creation, or, perhaps worse, some of them like it too much. There have been compelling theories posited that plenty of the newer stuff in Retail feels like a different game because it is in fact the skeletons of other game stories that were brought over to WoW, which to be fair was what the original devs were doing to an extent. Conversely, when you get fans graduating into working on an IP, the setting can lose some or all of the restraint that keeps it good in the first place as they have their particular theories about what the true essence of the IP is and the power to canonize their own fantasy. Supposedly, Undead paladin is Executive Producer Holly Longdale's wish fulfillment. I've seen people pedantically defending it by pointing to Sir Zeliek in Naxx, overlooking the fact that what makes him interesting is what an exception he is to what is otherwise a rule of the setting: Undead are *forsaken* by the Light. Mark my words, even if it seems like petty nitpicking it is an EXTREMELY bad sign that they are already showing a disregard for design discipline.

TL;DR I haven't seen anything to be excited about other than the idea of Classic+ itself, and Blizzard Presents: Classic+ is not an inherently exciting premise. Moreover, I have seen quite a bit to be disappointed by. I will take Wrath Classic again instead, please and thank you. For everything else there's private servers.

I like reading a well articulated hate on Blizz. And of course I agree mostly.

I don't think it's retail with a classic skin. But I do think it's Turtle with a modern blizzard skin. They literally took EVERYTHING that was on turtle and then made it their own way - aka worse.
Why have normal, already established and loved High Elves when you can invent a new completely bullshit race straight outta your ass?
Why have normal sane new class race combos when you can have stupid ones like undead paladin?
Why have X when you can have shitty X?

The cinematic is the exact same lame ass gay narration style, paired with the disney aesthetic. And while I don't mind the disney part that much, the first thing infuriates me. Just load any old cinematic like the Wrathgate for example. It's night and day. The slow "emotional" talking thing that every character does now is so pussy-coded and diametrically opposed to WARcraft.

Completely agree that Blizzard does not have the ability to make anything good now. They probably don't even have the people for it (because every old-school normal guy either left or got fired so they can hire more LGBT fat activists). And even those clowns they parade as old-school (the people who did the reveal) are also probably LARPing hard which is so cringey. Another thing here is that even though they practically stole everything that Turtle did, they can not under any circumstance admit that they were wrong and that somebody else did it better. Their arrogance wouldn't let them live it down.

The horde shaman and alliance paladin split doesn't matter that much to me if I'm being honest. But I can see it as a quirk of vanilla that can be kept for flavor. That's probably because I don't play either. But I do see that as something that can be "compromised" on because the upside is worth a lot.
What I can never agree with (and I don't know whether they're doing it, but it's connected) is horde-ally "friendship" aka cross-faction play. I can understand it on some low-pop private servers, but in any normal circumstance it should never happen.

One more thing worth mentioning is not the things that they have done but rather the things they HAVEN'T. They didn't really do anything new that we haven't seen before. At least not something worth talking about.

[Uggerbugger]

Looks awesome, hoping the gameplay is as great as it looks.

[Cuaited]

Utter infamy

[Kenikky]

Lol, skyborn.....

Anything but High Elves....

Blizzard hates you

[Fairfax]

What id add to the Skyborne discussion is the fact that they are adding a race and starting zone behind a paywall. Yes I dislike the actual thing as much as you guys but I think the paywall is the more telling / ominous. Remember they are doing this at the same time as they said: the world is again the main character...make absolutely no sense in my mind.

It's The Force Awakens for Warcraft. A remake that's trying very, VERY hard to appear as safe to fans as possible by being aggressively conservative in its approach, while still being fundamentally wrong because the creative environment that it's trying to maintain continuity with is gone and the underlying assumptions informing design decisions are all different. Just like TFA had tons of X-wings and stormtroopers and all the other classic iconography, and paid deference to fan ideas like the prequels being over reliant on CGI, Forever pays lip service to ideas that have been circulating for a while like THE WORLD and has endless callbacks to DALARAN and ARCHIMONDE, all wrapped around design decisions that are unmistakably Retail in nature, like the retarded blue OC elves.

[Dwarfwarrior]

Dumb lore breaking blue elves, boring class/racial changes, class combos like dwarf shaman or undead paladin that work lore wise but break the spirit of classic, barely any new zones at launch, very few new raids/dungeons, cash shop+subscription, and some of the ugliest Disney graphics they’ve done.

[Kjsharp]

Why have normal sane new class race combos when you can have stupid ones like undead paladin?

I would rather have Undead Paladins and Dwarf Shamans with no cross-faction grouping than what we have now.