WoW: Forever's been a great time so far, partially because the old-school design of it has forced me to actually group up with strangers. But there's just one problem: My working memory is shot from being a very tired millennial, and I can't possibly remember all these names.

Enter Grayvves' "I Remember" AddOn, which has now been ported over to WoW Forever. This lets you assign a quick note and a smiley, neutral, or frowny face to anyone you meet. Not as commitall as a friend request, but robust enough to make you seem like an attentive person with a good memory.

What do you mean, "it looks like a social credit system." I don't know what you're talking about.

I've been very much enjoying the World of Warcraft: Forever beta—and I will be the first to cop to the fact I think it's recapturing a lot of the essence of an oldschool MMO that we lost. Tongue in my cheek, I'll even join in with the "reject modernity" crowd. But, crucially, I'll be doing so as a joke.

I've noticed, skimming my hand across the surface of the discourse, a propensity for folks to be getting up in arms about which version of their favorite MMO was better and to do so loudly, passionately, and obnoxiously. These factions stand divided:

My heart lies with the Coalition, sure. I think Forever is one of the most exciting things to happen in the MMO space in years. I have a fondness for the old tab-targeting techniques of older MMOs and a resentment for the dodge roll, and I much prefer the slow-paced explorative nature of Forever to something like Retail, which has, I admit, temporarily lost me with its seasonal structure.

But I am also a lover of variety. My favourite games range from hopecore science fiction RPGs like Citizen Sleeper to basically every Soulslike I can get my hands on. I adore silly "friendslop" games and the hope-crushing simulator that is a MOBA, which Deadlock has pulled me kicking and screaming back into. Point being: I think there's a space for everyone.

Rose-tinted Warpaint

I don't think the design of retail World of Warcraft is inherently bad, it's just different. I think Midnight has got a lot of things right—player housing is an absolute win, the game's increasing alt friendliness suits what it has become, the lack of mandatory borrowed power chores is nice, and I like being able to rinse through my Delves and Preys and zip around on my flying mount. It's frictionless, easy, keyboard-smashing fun.

Sometimes I'm in the mood to mindlessly do a bunch of low-stakes content. That mood hasn't taken me lately, but I'm not naive enough to believe it'll never take me at all.

Similarly, I also enjoy how Forever shrugs off those systems in favour of their design opposites: No overstimulating heaps of new patch-specific systems to partake in, no chore lists full of faction grinds, no dungeon finder. You log in, and you plod along with your playlist of choice in a world filled with players, and you do some quests. Maybe you find a group to clean out RFC with. You meet an undead paladin called Glinda Smlinda around a campfire. That's it, that's the game.

The issue I have is when this preference is put forward as a matter of moral imperative—the idea that modern WoW is somehow this corrupt, anti-gamer monolith that must be wrangled back to the way things were. I will say it plain: This shit sucks, it's annoying and it's subtractive and it's exhausting.

From a personal perspective, it's pretty unhealthy to make an actual identity and personhood out of a videogame you play, and it's certainly not subversive or impactful to make yourself a staunch defender of the old ways online. Because the truth is, Blizzard couldn't give a toss if we like modern WoW or not—it's all umbrella'd under the same price point, we're all pulling from the same buffet.

The community taglines the company incorporates ("putting the 'war' back in 'Warcraft', for example")? That's kayfabe, to get you to spend money. It's not part of a culture shift, Blizzard's just doing what it's proven profitable to do after years of safe success with Classic and Season of Discovery. And it'll keep running Retail WoW because guess what, that's also been very profitable too! Folks still play it.

From a pettier perspective, and this is just my personal exhaustion: It's console wars. We're doing console war stuff. Except, rather than doing them with blocks of hardware that can at least be attributed to different experiences on the whole, we're arguing about different versions of the same video game. Why?

More to the point, Forever itself is kind of a counterargument to the idea that these versions of WoW have nothing to learn from each other. What's made it interesting is how it's reinterpreting oldschool MMO design with just a few sprinkles of convenience. I do not blame people for being in love with the past, but we can't be trapped in it forever, but saber-rattling and name-calling over it? We shouldn't do that to ourselves, or each other. We should (and I know this is a vain hope) be normal on the internet.

Even though World of Warcraft: Forever is only in beta right now, players are able to explore a good amount of Azeroth to see what secrets Blizzard has tucked away for the full release.

Several secrets have been found, like a bunch of hidden books that reward powerful leveling items, but some of them have hints for what to expect when it launches in November. There are plenty of items that don't have a clear use yet that might become extremely valuable as time goes on.

A new NPC was recently found in the new Riverglades zone who sells a bunch of expensive crafting items. Theoretically, you should be able to get these items by playing the game normally, but many WoW: Forever players suspect he exists to prevent the auction house prices from skyrocketing due to their rarity.

Mister Graphed, the black market goblin merchant, sells items for 20+ gold—a hefty chunk of change in the Classic-era of WoW—that should prevent anyone from feeling obligated to buy them for more than that from other players. I'm sure it'll still happen because people love to sell items you can buy from vendors at a premium for the convenience of not having to travel around, but it will at least keep the prices from getting too ridiculous.

Notably, though, the vendor also sells new crafting materials called Fel Crystal and Stranglevine. Blizzard has done a big overhaul of professions in WoW: Forever, making them considerably more useful while you're leveling up. I was able to craft a nice set of gear before I was anywhere close to the beta's level cap of 20. These new items suggest there will be some really rare items to craft that never existed in previous versions of the MMO.

One item is available that isn't a crafting item at all: It's called the Gift of Galloping and it's a whopping 150 gold. This item says it gives you a 10% boost to your mounted movement speed for 15 days. Classic WoW never had anything like it, but I guess if you're rich you can pay a pricey subscription fee to go a little faster if you want.

It seems Blizzard is doing its best to prepare for WoW: Forever being a game that won't transition into new expansions. The level cap will permanently stay at 60, so there will have to be reasons for players to keep playing their characters or start new ones. It also means the economy will need things like that NPC in place so that the prices don't get out of control as players presumably get more powerful and the mysteries of the game get solved.

Uh-oh. The MMO no-life virus started coursing through me as soon as I jumped into WoW: Forever's beta, and it's refusing to let up. Which is a problem, considering I'm also housing the kind of sickness that makes me pump dozens of hours into Final Fantasy 14 every week like it's a goddamn full-time job. My body is a temple for poor time management afflictions.

My only prior experience with Blizzard's MMO is a level 13 Paladin I made a poor attempt at trying out around the release of Battle for Azeroth nearly a decade ago. This time it's sticking. I am absolutely loving WoW: Forever's stripped-back, old-school feel, complete with sprinklings of modernity that make it palatable for folks like me who lack those rose-tinted glasses.

The one thing I'm struggling to come around to, though? The music. Not that I think it's bad. The opposite, in fact—I've been loving the ominous tones of Durotar's overworld music, and venturing into Orgrimmar for the first time I was met with the perfect grand, foreboding sound that a city for the Horde deserves.

My problem is how little I seem to hear any of it. World of Warcraft likes for you to sit in these long, occasionally uncomfortable stretches of silence, instead letting the sounds of its world do the talking. Crunchy orc footsteps, the whispering of the wind, the squawk of an eagle. I am admittedly warming up to that deliberate choice of ambiance, but I also can't help but yearn for the thoroughly themed ways of Final Fantasy 14.

There's a song for just about anything in that game. Music for each zone during daytime hours. And another one for each zone during nighttime hours. Music for dungeons. And sub-bosses. And boss bosses. Hell, this expansion's raid series has a bespoke song for every single fight. And the final boss of each tier gets two of 'em! That's 15 whole ass songs just for one raid series.

Do some of its songs get relentlessly overused? Of course. I'm pretty sure most Warriors of Light suffer from some sort of Machinations-induced trauma at this point. But I'm convinced that for the most part Masayoshi Soken and the wider music team have, in fact, spoiled me rotten in this regard.

Tagging an enemy in WoW: Forever without being rewarded with some juicy combat music feels downright wrong, and it's the most unexpected way I've had to adapt from one MMO to another. I've become so used to that aural response that I've been feeling oddly lost without it. Hell, sometimes I'll be smacking away at an enemy while the serenity of the overworld music plays, which feels extra weird.

I kind of appreciate that World of Warcraft doesn't do it the way I expected it to, but I also certainly wouldn't say no to hearing more of what its composers have to offer. What I've heard so far has been downright fantastic, and I'm sure it won't be long before my brain starts getting all nostalgic and giddy when I hear the first few notes of Durotar's music flooding my ears as memories of my Troll Shaman saying "I need more range… cannot cast that yet… I need more mana… it is too far away…" will haunt/bless me once more.

One of the developers running the World of Warcraft: Forever beta has no patience for the people who think they can get away with naming their characters something inappropriate.

I was surprised at how many awful player names I've seen while playing the beta over the last week. WoW usually has a pretty strict filter that covers a lot of racist or disgusting names and all their permutations. But in the beta, I saw more than usual that felt like they should've been blocked at the character creation screen.

It turns out, this was a mistake on Blizzard's part, according to senior game producer Tom Ellis on X: "Our naming filter wasn’t ready to rock for dual names but we naively thought after twenty years folks knew what was and wasn’t OK and we’d be fine for a few weeks of beta till it came online."

Things were not fine from day one of the beta, which required Blizzard to manually run every name through their filter system and then double check them just in case, Ellis said.

A wave of bans went out alongside the beta's first major patch yesterday to revoke access for the worst names and force the iffy ones to be changed. This prompted some of those players to go on social media and Reddit to complain that they were wrongfully punished.

"A couple of us spent the evening reading through everything again and checked every Reddit post and Twitter and so far every one of them who's posted their three cheeky or just inappropriate names has had a 4th character they have accidentally omitted," he says.

Ellis says there isn't a new policy for WoW: Forever and that anyone with names like that "would have not been allowed in any variation of WoW at any time in its history and would have earned you a suspension."

"If you're genuinely confused, remember that it's our database, we can see every character you've created, not just the one you're playing," he says. "I read the list. No sympathy. Be a better human next time."

It was very brave of Blizzard to launch what was inevitably going to be a massive beta without a working name filter. I don't envy the poor developers who have to manually go through them all as a result, but I do appreciate that there's zero tolerance for players who are abusing it. For every "Jack MeHoff" or "Ligma Bowlz" sparking delight and joy from us all, there are far nastier malefactors who should know better.

If WoW: Forever's devs want to bring back old-school social interactions in the MMO, this is the moderation approach it needs. The best moments in the beta have been the times where I've grouped up with strangers for a quick quest or saved a fellow adventurer from being mauled by several enemies at once. The last thing I want is for WoW: Forever to be ruined for anyone hoping to experience the kind of social interactions that make MMOs feel alive.

If there's one thing that Blizzard nailed with World of Warcraft: Forever, it's the atmosphere. There's nothing quite like walking under the moonlight in Tirisfal Glades listening to distant howls and flapping wings on the way to your next quest. But many players familiar with the era of WoW it's based on felt like it was missing something.

"I miss running through Dun Morogh hearing the iconic music with a massive snowstorm lowering my view distance on my Dwarf hunter, picking up quests from the dwarf next to the fire [and] restoring my inventory," Reddit user Darthbobz wrote in a post pleading Blizzard to bring WoW's old weather effects to WoW: Forever.

It's not that it doesn't rain or snow in WoW: Forever, it's that it doesn't rain and snow enough. People like Darthbobz want to be blinded by the amount of weather on screen, not surrounded by the suggestion of a storm.

Blizzard even says the core pillars of WoW: Forever are that the world is the main character and that the journey is more important than the destination. For the most part that's true: Over half of the experience involves running around forests and deserts rather than flying across them on a mount like you do in the modern version of the MMO. But the diet weather effects in the beta clash with the rest of Blizzard's commitment to adding friction back into the MMO.

It turns out, Blizzard agrees, and will be cranking the weather effects up to 10 in "certain" WoW: Forever beta zones, according to a teaser video for the next patch. The video is an ASMR-style montage of a rainstorm in Elwynn Forest. The screen is so thick with rain and fog it's hard to see past the trees bordering the town of Goldshire. It's a real storm that makes you instinctively want to duck into the inn to stay dry.

The beta's level cap is 20, so when Blizzard says "certain" zones will have the increased weather effects I assume it's because most of the game isn't available yet. It also might mean that snowstorms and sandstorms aren't quite ready to go live, but we won't know until the patch notes are out later this week.

I honestly didn't expect intense weather effects to come back within the first few weeks of the beta. Blizzard's quick turnaround has me curious if we'll see more updates based on player feedback that are more substantial than some balance tweaks and bug fixes. WoW: Forever is already in a really good spot judging from the flood of praise people have given it in the last week. That's promising for a game that's going to be here in just a few months on November 4.

Despite its surprise announcement at BlizzCon earlier this month, Diablo 5 is a whole three years away. Blizzard's brief teaser trailer had zero gameplay in it, which means the action RPG sequel is still mostly a mystery.

But director Joe Shely helped paint a picture of what the real thing might look like during a recent group interview with PC Gamer.

One of the somewhat controversial aspects of the last couple Diablo games is how they handle monster difficulty. In Diablo 2, each area has a level range that determines how tough enemies will be compared to your character. Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 ditched this approach for a system that has monsters scale in difficulty as your character levels up.

In a genre all about the power fantasy of slowly becoming a demon-slaying god, this didn't go over so well with the many players who want those moments where your character feels considerably more powerful than their foes. While this still happens in the newer games, the gap between the strength of your character and the monsters is much smaller until you're decked out in high-level gear.

Level scaling seems to solve a lot of problems with maintaining a certain degree of challenge in the newer Diablo games, but it does diminish the spikes in power you can get from finding a particularly strong item or leveling up.

We already know Diablo 5 will return to procedurally-generating areas so that every dungeon, or open world zone, will look different every time you visit them—a crucial part of Diablo 2 that suggests Blizzard is interested in bringing back core elements from the series' history.

Shely said level scaling in Diablo 5 isn't something the team has fully discussed yet, but acknowledged how important your character's power level is to the experience.

"Diablo is a game that, in many ways, is about your character getting stronger and when the monsters get stronger at the same time, especially outside of your control… You've filled the experience bar, you get stronger, you should feel awesome now, a wave of light pulses out from you, a bunch of monsters die," he explained. "That's wonderful, but then you're going to go hit some more monsters and you should feel powerful. And sometimes automatic scaling can get in the way of that feeling, which is so core to it, and that's why this is a really important question. And so, we're going to take a somewhat different approach to that in Diablo 5."

As someone who has never been a huge fan of level scaling in RPGs, it's nice to hear that Blizzard is willing to rethink a major component of the recent Diablo games. Newer action RPGs, like Path of Exile 2, are great examples of how friction, like running into monsters way too powerful for you, can make the grind for better and better loot more meaningful when there are actual risks.

Diablo 5 is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the demon lord has won. Finding a new sword that lets you crush the monsters who humiliated you a few levels earlier should emphasize the progress you've made on your journey to save Sanctuary from Hell's army. Blizzard says regular updates about the game's development will begin next year and that it will incorporate feedback along the way. I'll be curious to see exactly how level scaling—or the lack of it—will work and how far the dev team is willing to go to recreate the classic Diablo experience.

You can play the first several hours of World of Warcraft: Forever and miss a lot of the changes Blizzard slipped into the early leveling experience. There are new quests and NPCs, but they barely stand out if you don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the MMO.

Now that players have had enough time to hit the beta's level 20 cap, they're starting to find what makes WoW: Forever different from a 1:1 remake of the old game. Items that break rules, like an axe that lets you mine ore without the mining skill, tease what's in store when the full game is out on November 4.

That axe, for example, drops off of an enemy in the Deadmines dungeon. You can use it to mine materials 30 times before it presumably breaks. Loot multiple of them and you can circumvent the way professions are usually meant to work in WoW: Most people pick up a gathering profession and use the materials to make gear with a crafting profession. The new axe lets you run two crafting professions—a luxury almost nobody had in 2004.

Players have also found a new sword that enables a playstyle for mages that was only a dream before. The Coldflame Saber—found in the Shadowfang Keep dungeon—has a unique bonus that causes melee attacks to deal fire damage to frozen targets. Normally mages want to be as far away from enemies as they can, but this sword enables a 'battle mage' playstyle that would've gotten you kicked from a group if you tried it in the past.

The concept of adding items that turn the old MMO on its head isn't technically new. Blizzard ran a limited-time mode called Season of Discovery where breaking the game was the entire point. Mages could stand in the frontlines and tank dungeons like a warrior in it. I don't get the sense that WoW: Forever will be quite as absurd from the start, but some of the new items suggest Blizzard won't be holding back the weird stuff just for max-level players.

There's no doubt Season of Discovery was a major influence on WoW: Forever. A "Cozy Sleeping Bag" item from it was just recently found in WoW: Forever, in fact. Curling up for three minutes in it will give you a 3% XP buff that stacks with the 5% XP buff from cooking. WoW Classic purists would lose their minds at an 8% XP buff.

Blizzard intentionally hid many of WoW: Forever's new items from dataminers so players could discover them organically. Earlier today, people realized there are a bunch of hidden books that reward you with extremely powerful rare items to juice your leveling journey. Assuming secrets like this will be snuck into the entire world, the November launch is going to be full of surprises as people uncover it all.

Even though Blizzard is committed to keeping some of the foundational aspects of WoW intact, I like that there are areas where nothing is sacred and things that you might've imagined as a kid might actually become real. I'll be patiently waiting for an item that lets warlocks tame enemies as permanent minions like Path of Exile 2 just introduced in its recent update.

Alright, here's the problem—I'm not sure this really works for its intended purpose.

World of Warcraft has traditionally had roleplay servers, yes, and those servers do traditionally have people acting out their gameplay in-character: But there's a perception, which is being applied here by Blizzard, that this is their—our—main deal.

In my experience, most RP communities do have players who are still interested in… well, playing the game. Very few people log on exclusively for the purpose of writing with each other. They'll also do dungeons, raids, and so on—with a clear split between their in-character actions and game time. Basically, nobody's RP-walking in a dungeon on Argent Dawn EU. We're doing the damn dungeon.

I won't gripe about the "strict naming conventions and behaviour rules" because there's every chance they're reasonable, although the word "strict" does give me cause for alarm. Roleplay servers tend to work on informal manners without one real "one size fits all" model of in-character/out of character conduct.

What gives me actual pause are these clarifications by Blizzard:

• "Cross-ruleset grouping is not supported, so characters in different spaces will not be able to group together for those activities."
• "Players cannot freely hop between rulesets; to play under a different one, they’ll need to create a new character in that ruleset."

This seems like an overkill requirement for roleplayers—who, again, very rarely act in-character while they're doing dungeon runs and raids. While I can see separating "normal" ruleset players and roleplayer ruleset players out in the open world, where RP is likely to take place, there's no real reason to split them off from the rest of the community outside of that.

Roleplay servers in the retail game are where we congregate, sure—but they're actually populated by a lot of folks who don't roleplay, or just like to watch people RP. And I see no reason why, in Forever, we should be siloing off those groups from each other in all content.

A clear split between the other rulesets makes sense, but to a roleplay ruleset, I think a semi-permeable membrane would make sense. That way, I can still play with my non-RPer mates—something I do all the time in other MMOs of choice without having to make a separate character.

A common early World of Warcraft experience was to stumble into a series of corpses lying on the ground that, when looked at from the right angle, spelled out a URL for a site where you can pay real money for in-game gold.

Gold was scarce back then, which spawned an entire market for buying it instead of grinding for it. Even if you never touched one of those sites, it was impossible to not see ads online or splayed out in front of you in a popular city.

Blizzard has taken a light touch in the past when it comes to punishing people who willingly violate the MMO's EULA with real-money trading (RMT), but promises that won't be the case for World of Warcraft: Forever.

In a recent Q&A, senior game designer Josh Greenfield addressed concerns about guilds letting players bid on items with gold (known as "gold dragon kill points" or GDKP) and the risks of RMT in WoW: Forever. He emphasized that Blizzard will "very aggressively punish gold buyers," to prevent the in-game trading economy from getting out of hand.

"Being frank, we've been probably too lenient on gold buyers and it's been a little bit easy to get around some of our actions before and we are taking it very seriously," Greenfield added. "As someone who's got a 22-year-old World of Warcraft account I can tell you it's not worth losing it permanently, it's not worth losing any of your accounts permanently, so I would very strongly recommend [you] don't do it, it's not worth it."

Greenfield doesn't say it outright, but is implying that anyone who breaks the rules with RMT will have their account banned rather than temporarily suspended. Whenever I see discussions about RMT, people will always say that it would help if Blizzard didn't slap offenders on the wrist and actually took away their access completely. Whether or not that will be how it's handled in the full release remains to be seen—nobody cares about becoming rich in the beta—but it's at least promising to hear that it's a high priority for the studio.

In an MMO where the level cap will never be raised and updates will introduce new things to characters of all levels, the last thing you want is for severe inflation to kill the value of trading with other players and therefore the value of learning a tradeskill altogether. Greenfield stressed that the sanctity of the economy is an important part of the experience and that Blizzard has tuning knobs for controlling supply and demand to balance things out.

The more I've gotten into Path of Exile 2, an action RPG built around player trading for rare drops, the more I've witnessed how quickly things can go haywire. An exploit that lasts two hours can have devastating effects on the price of items, so I hope Blizzard is also prepared to handle whatever crops up organically, too.

When the gates opened on the World of Warcraft: Forever beta, it was a free-for-all. Everyone fought to be the first to "tag" enemies with their attacks so they would count for their quests—a problem that is essentially obsolete in modern WoW.

My memories of doing this in the real classic WoW came flooding back as I frantically tried to claim enemies before someone else did. But that old frustration also prompted old solutions: Whenever I came across a quest to kill seven wolves or whatever, I invited other players into my group so that everyone got credit.

This, according to senior game designer Josh Greenfield on X, is exactly what Blizzard wants to see.

Greenfield responded to a conversation about whether or not shared enemy kill credit should be a thing in WoW: Forever to say pretty firmly that it's not going to change.

"This is one of those things that we simply must hold the line on," he wrote. "I think there are other things we can do to help alleviate some frustration here but shared tagging is not it."

"It's hard to see the value in something like this when you are frustrated in the moment," he added, "but it is extremely important to our social pillar to maintain some of this friction."

The chaos of the beta launch is a limited-time thing. It'll happen again on November 4 when WoW: Forever fully drops, but eventually it's not going to be as much of a problem as the population of players spreads out across Azeroth.

From that point-of-view, I like the firm stance Blizzard has on this. It requires almost no effort to invite someone to your group for the 5 minutes it takes to finish a quest, and in that short amount of time there's the possibility for a longer-lasting friendship to grow. I've certainly met friends this way before and it would be neat to have it happen again.

But at the same time, I hope Blizzard is prepared for what will probably be an overwhelmingly popular launch week. Hundreds of players squeezed into a small field with 30 wolves is only going to cause frustration if there's no solutions for things like slow enemy and item respawns. Beta players have already posted screenshots of people lining up to interact with a quest object that only shows up every few minutes. That's the kind of friction nobody wants when they only have a few hours to play.

World of Warcraft: Forever has a nice little toggle that lets you switch between Classic's old-school models and Retail's newer, shinier ones. But which one are you using?

Personally, I'm sporting the HD models. The big braided mohawk style on trolls just looks so much better. You can see a little comparison of my current Forever Shaman up in the ol' header image; peep how she looks in each style and let me know which one you like more!

I swore I'd never become this evil

Anyway, this beta is not designed to be a competitive experience. For those not in the know, Blizzard will be wiping all of the WoW: Forever progress when the game launches in November.

But I am going to be treating it like one, because all of my morals have crumpled into a hole with a sign that says: "I want to be 3 levels higher than everybody in October for like two hours." I'm especially (on paper) against the idea of min-maxing in a beta, where your progress means absolutely nothing. And yet. And yet.

Here's the issue—I am currently an inch away from level 19. I have a bunch of quests I'd like to do, including finishing the new Ruins of Lordaeron dungeon. I am not doing this, however, because Blizzard will at some point be increasing the cap from level 20 to level 30.

But I also have a massive problem: I don't want to stop playing my Warrior. I'm hitting some absolutely meaty crits. So what is a lad to do? Well, while you can still do quests in the beta, there's nothing to say you actually have to turn them in, especially because Blizzard has increased your journal limit from 20 to 40.

If you're picking up what I'm putting down: I will be continuing to quest in level-appropriate zones through this new Azeroth, I just won't be turning anything in. I am going to, like some kind of maniac, flood my questing journal with 40 batches of EXP, then get the biggest dopamine hit of my life when that level cap is raised sometime next month.

Why am I doing this to myself? That's a very good question, and one I'm too busy grinding to answer.

WoW Forever is basically my first time experiencing Blizzard's MMO for a significant amount of time—that level 13 Paladin rotting away on my retail account for the last eight years doesn't count—and you know what? Even as someone who isn't rocking around Azeroth in rose-tinted glasses, I'm having a pretty sweet time.

I even surprised myself by how endeared I am to all its old-schoolness. I like that there's no globally shared tagging, even if that means you party with a handful of randoms for 10 seconds and never speak to them again. I've even been fine with its archaic gathering quests, where all of its nodes are server-side instead of client-side. Want to go and pick that cactus fruit, but some other player beats you to it? Well, it's gone now. Go and pick another one.

Well, I was fine with it anyway. That is until I arrived in Orgrimmar, the Horde's capital city. My initial arrival was dizzying, bearing witness to its densely-populated streets and rapid-fire global chat where recruitment messages are quickly buried by folks talking about how many rolls of toilet paper they go through each day. Yeah, I dunno either.

I was having a lovely little time exploring, picking up just about every quest I could find. And then it happened. I innocently scooped up a quest called Rocks to Rest, tucked around the back of a building where a group of troll children are gathered.

Go and get some rocks so we can have chairs and tables, I'm ordered. Okay, easy enough. Right? WRONG.

Turns out that whimsical server-side gathering nodes become significantly less so when there are at least 10 of you vying for sporadically-spawning rocks. And you have to collect eight of the damn things. I scooped up my first one with relative ease, before the rest of my quest devolved into the chaos of rapidly swinging my camera around waiting for one to spawn, before watching everybody (me included) dash off in its direction for the hopes of being the chosen one who gets to loot it a millisecond before everybody else.

Now I've seen queues and orderly lines form for some of these quests, but Rocks to Rest? It's the wild west, baby. You snooze, you lose. I made the mistake of rotating my camera away from a rock that spawned directly behind me, and before I even had the chance to swing it back around and begin looting, I was beaten to the punch.

I was expecting a raid boss to be the thing that broke me. Maybe dying one too many times to a quest mob, or trying to navigate the game's multitude of systems as someone who has barely set foot in this world before. But no, it was a freaking boulder.

World of Warcraft: Forever has a new two-name system, given it'll be taking place on one big megaserver—which has a few advantages, like making sure you can typically get your chosen first name without the sheer volume of players snapping it out from under you.

Naturally, being a bunch of silly geezers, WoW players have been using it to mercilessly run bits. Here's a quick list of some of my favourites that myself and my colleagues have seen, plus a gallery of images to reassure you that they are, in fact, real:

• Rotten Nutz
• Skonch Prime
• Minion Cuck
• Lancedalot Nowimdead (notably, an undead paladin).
• Huge Bulge
• Take Meds
• Zugzug Workwork
• Gotta Poo
• Girlwho Suggestsyaoi
• Ballbag Billy
• Po Tayto
• Supplement Bottle
• Looks Maxxer
• Floorpov Povfloor
• John Warcrimes

But beware: If you wish to join the ranks of these absurdly-named heroes, Blizzard has confirmed it'll be removing beta access from people who name themselves something terribly rude: "Character names must adhere to our naming policies, including in Beta. If you violate those policies that may result in the removal of beta access."

World of Warcraft: Forever's beta has been utterly rammed with server issues—issues that I'm pleased to say were fixed in relatively short order, and one I certainly don't resent anybody for. What does jump my eyebrows up my head is the fact that its developers are shocked that the game's popular.

For those not in the know, Forever's essentially Classic+. A version of the game as it was back in 2004, but with a bunch of changes made not to modernise it, but to make that old school vision better. Over 1,000 extra quests, new zones, redesigned talented trees, new racial abilities, and some major improvements to lighting.

It's pure, distilled liquid nostalgia. A fat, juicy worm for shmucks (like me) to chomp onto and be shocked when there's a hook in our mouth—a fact that apparently completely disarmed the beta's development team: "AHMAGERD, this game is 20 years old, how do you still suck at this!?!" Rhetorically asks Tom Ellis, senior game producer, on X:

"Heh, fair enough, short answer is, this is our BETA PTR environment stack, it's not a production stack by a long, long, long, long, long, long shot. Betas for WoW aren't usually huge meter movers so this environment just isn't that powerful. This led to the first problem you saw today."

From the dev's end, nothing was amiss when players were being booted out after a long queue time: "We were hitting the BGS metering system that protects their services from falling over under extreme load. Our tiny little REGIONAL [server] with its two connections that were trying to login A LOT of users, even though it was nowhere near capped on CPU, was completely screwing the math that system was using. We scaled that 2 to an 8 and immediately the flood gates opened once again."

Ellis adds that this is completely unprecedented: "First time anyone's seen it kick in when there wasn't an obvious CPU issue to go along with it. 20 years, always something new."

You can read the full post for the technical mumbo jumbo, but the point is, it's all working better now: "Right now things are incredibly smooth for the first few hours of a public beta, Classic teams watching and fixing anything blocking that comes up but we're otherwise pretty much done for the night, enjoy!"

Josh Greenfield, also a senior game designer, commented: "The craziest numbers I've seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost eight years on classic. We've got something really special here."

And you know what, I'm inclined to agree. Forever has me in a chokehold. I've both had rose-tinted goggles forcibly drilled into my face, and I've been genuinely impressed by the changes made already. Forever crawled out of an alternate universe where the modern MMO was never invented, and all the inconvenience and friction of the past was conserved, but not entirely left to burn you.

"Anyone want help on anything." That's the title of the oldest post I could dig up on The Helper's Warcraft 3 world editor help forum, posted by Neo_HoJo all the way back in July 2002. It's one of over 100,000 similar threads, collectively containing approximately 859,700 comments. It seems to be the biggest forum on the site by far. But just as Warcraft 3 grapples once again for a new lease on life, The Helper is turning in.

The announcement came in the form of a post from an admin also called The Helper. "Wow, it's been a ride," the post reads. "Over 27 years of this site from a personal homepage, to a Blizzard [games] tech support site, a world editor help site, and then a community of helpers from then until now.

"[For many years] I was a lost soul floating around the dark side of the Internet, skimming the edges and really just not having any kind of focus. That has changed. I am no longer a lost soul. I am now on Team Jesus and unfortunately my path moving forward does not include having this site competing for my time … The site will be archived. The content will be available for people if they want it. It just will not be advertised or out there in any forum that bots or search engines will get it."

The site is a listed affiliate of Hive Workshop, a popular Warcraft 3 modding community prominent members of which recently collaborated with Blizzard directly on the new official Forsaken Kingdom campaign. It has other forums for Atari, world news, AI, and even Nuon.

"Some might say this is the end of an era," The Helper's closure announcement post reads. "I like to think of it as more of a beginning. At least for me."

I've been having a jolly old time with World of Warcraft: Forever—for the most part, it really does just feel like an alternate universe where the Cataclysm world revamp never happened and, instead, Blizzard simply funnelled more quests into the old world. There's still plenty here that's familiar, but there's just enough new stuff to do to smooth over the levelling and questing experience.

A questing experience that is otherwise unchanged. If anything, the oldschool-ness of it is actually elevated by the changes, reflecting some of WoW's best questing areas. It's as though every single zone has become The Barrens, flooded with lots of little tasks for your dopamine-starved brain nugget.

And let me tell you, I've been staggered at how much fun I'm having. Not just in a "nostalgic oldschool rose-tinted goggles" sort of way (although I'll concede that is part of it) but from a genuine perspective of someone playing a modern videogame. Because the quest design that captured an entire generation of MMO players back in the early 2000s? It holds up.

Not in terms of the "collect five bear arses" thing, but in terms of how it's all structured. See, in the good ol' days, WoW had questing hubs wherein you'd flood your journal with anywhere from five to fifteen tasks, some of which had their own branching storylines and quest chains.

You were then faced with a map and a decision of how to complete them—okay, clarification time, the quest markers on a map ARE new, but it's not like we didn't have quest helper AddOns back in the day. Anyway, keeping that decision-making interesting are what I'm gonna call the three layers of questing friction: Ordering, travel, and level variety.

'Ordering' is the most straightforward—simply put, the player has to decide what the most efficient way to do these quests is with limited information. Sometimes, you might finish your batch of quests, only to discover that if you'd turned in a different one first, you'd be able to be far more efficient. Womp womp.

'Travel' is the idea that quests shouldn't be within a convenient distance of each other all of the time. Sometimes, you should put a quest just far enough out of the way that the player is encouraged to go: Ugh, I might as well. The journey to these quests is often just as interesting as doing them, and you can put even more quests on the other side of that journey to make them feel worth it in a surprising way.

'Level variety' is the fact that quests should have a small variation in both enemy level and location—Zalazane in Durotar's a good example of this. He's a couple levels higher than everyone else (level 10, compared to level 8) and is a bit of a pain in the arse to kill. You either need to group up with folks, come back when you're a higher level, or develop some kind of cheese strat to make things easier. Or hey, maybe you're just a class that has an easier time soloing and you're fine. That's good too.

You'll notice that retail WoW has cast all three of these things aside entirely. Modern WoW questlines are often delivered in batches of two to three quests which are turned in as small parcels, usually while following a character through a linear narrative, so no ordering required. Travel is nixed because you have a flying mount—one that's become far faster with Skyriding. And level variety isn't a thing anymore because everything scales.

There is a reason why this approach was adopted, don't get me wrong—it's smooth, a nice little breadcrumb trail of dopamine shots to keep you blissed out in a "numbers go up" loop. But it's trading ease and comfort for satisfaction, because… I mean, look at this.

I think I speak for us all when I say: God. God yes. Ugh, that's the stuff.

What makes Forever so delicious to me is that it eases up on the friction a little bit by giving you more to do, but it still keeps that core satisfaction of coming up with your own routes. In my recent quests through Tirisfal Glades, I had one quest send me way far afield, up a mountain, and across a lake. And I still chose to do it, because I was already halfway there and my hearthstone was almost off cooldown.

The level variety thing also encourages you to group up more often, too—sure, you could come back and knock Zalazane over later. Or you could ask if anyone wants to kill the guy now. Grouping in this case isn't a strict requirement, like in the case of an "elite" quest, but it saves you time in the long run.

Vanilla WoW was by no means perfect—sometimes all that friction gave you ropeburn, feeling more accidental than deliberate. But that's kind of the exercise that Forever's attempting, here. Rather than tearing out the old world entirely in favour of more modern quest design, there's been a considered effort to polish out the friction just a smidge. Plugging holes and gaps in a zone's quest design while keeping the overall structure the same.

And in the same vein as my love of tab-target MMOs, I think it's nice to see this oldschool technique be given a second swing. You can improve an old formula to bring it up to date without ruining what made it special, and gosh, I think Blizzard really might be achieving that here.

I've been getting stuck into World of Warcraft: Forever's beta—though I'm a little less levelled up than I'd like to be. Initially, I just chalked this up to launch-day queue problems, but as it turns out, there's a little more to it than that.

See, I live in the UK, and Blizzard rarely does beta testing with EU-region players in mind. Forever's no different, the servers appear to be located solely in the US. Which isn't too much trouble, mind, I can deal with playing on 100+ ping for a beta test. What I can't deal with is logging in, having 300 ping, suddenly spiking to 2000 world MS, and then disconnecting.

The solution? A VPN. The moment I set my VPN to a US region, I received a cosy 100 ping and zero disconnection issues. As I quested through Durotar during EU times, I was able to corroborate the fix with plenty of other EU players who were experiencing the exact same thing with the exact same solution.

The EU WoW Forever beta forums are on fire with (understandable, though perhaps overexpressed) outrage: "We shouldn’t need a VPN service just to get a playable connection to a game we already paid €60 for," writes one player. "Can confirm VPN fixes it, I have <100ms ping on VPN and basically don’t feel lag. But obviously, [I] shouldn’t have to do that," adds another.

If this were, say, simply a closed-invite beta, I wouldn't even blink at this issue. But the fact of the matter is that Blizzard has used the beta to sell the Skyborne Epic Pack, it's pretty rough. Here's the store page for the EU: While the pack is keen to mention beta access, I can't find any mention of the beta's server locations on the page—just a notification of the dates it's taking place.

On the other hand, this is clearly some sort of network issue that Blizzard will doubtless fix. VPNs aren't magic, they can't make the internet go faster. What they can do is reroute your internet connection in a way that can skip routing issues—as is the case with me, and other EU-based players.

From what I can see, these connection problems aren't a known issue on the forums. As such, I've reached out to Blizzard for comment, and will update this article if I receive a response.

WoW: Forever, Blizzard's modernized twist on WoW Classic, launched a beta today, but most people have only experienced a login screen so far.

Following a live Q&A, Blizzard turned the WoW: Forever beta servers on. The queue times weren't too bad to start: I had about a nine-minute wait when I first logged in. But once it finished, I was disconnected and kicked to the back of the line for another, even longer queue.

It appears I'm not the only one who has made it past the queue only to be disconnected and prompted to start the whole process over again. Players and streamers are all reporting similar issues, although some people have successfully made it in.

Blizzard acknowledged the issues on X: "We're working through some final issues, and we expect the doors to open soon."

There doesn't seem to be any trick to the queue. You just need to wait it out and pray that it lets you past the initial login screen.

WoW: Forever is the first version of WoW that doesn't use realms, or servers, in the same way as the others. Instead of picking a realm, you pick a ruleset (normal, PvP, or Roleplay) and join the same server as everyone else. Blizzard did it this way to help preserve the social aspect of the original MMO. This might also be why the queue times are so rough.

Wowhead and others have been busy datamining the game's files for new details. You can already go through all the new class talent trees and peek at some of the reworked armor sets. It might be worth taking a look while you wait to get in, or, if you're like me and don't want to spoil everything, cross your fingers and hope you can play a little before the risk of long queues gets even worse on the weekend.

There will be plenty of time to play the WoW: Forever beta, however. It'll stick around until October 21 before Blizzard fixes it up for its November 4 launch.

Diablo 4's current Season of Hell's Legacy is focused on celebrating the 30th anniversary of the series, which debuted all the way back in 1997. As part of that effort, Blizzard has been reaching back into the past to bring back iconic characters and enemies like Deckard Cain, Baal, Mephisto, and of course the Big D himself.

The recent discovery of Rune word recipes from Diablo 2 had players wondering if maybe Blizzard has any other blasts from the past stashed away in the new season, and as discovered by redditor JT99-FirstBallot, the answer is a very big yes.

Tristram, of course, is the village that serves as the home base of the original Diablo, where players go to buy and sell items, and interact with a range of sadly doomed NPCs like Griswold, Ogden, Pepin, and Wirt. But it's more than just that: As the hub of what is arguably gaming's most influential action RPG, Tristram is a seminal piece of digital landscape, burned into the memories of old-time Diablo fans—and its destruction sometime prior to the events of Diablo 2 (sorry, mild spoiler there) was a genuine bummer.

What's particularly impressive here is how faithful this recreation of Tristram is. The visuals are obviously dramatically improved (although it looks just as I remember it—isn't the human mind a wonderful thing?) but the layout is spot on, and all the characters are there, doing what they do. What really lands for me, though, is the audio: I'm not a Diablo fan by any stretch these days (I haven't touched the series since Diablo 2) but that Tristram guitar riff hits like a truck, and Griswold's voice, well—that's Griswold's voice!

But the attention to detail runs even deeper. As YouTuber MacroBioBoi explains, this Tristram can be turned into Uber Tristram, a special zone previously only accessible during the Pandemonium Event from the Diablo 2 expansion Lord of Destruction. Uber Tristram is basically a copy of the destroyed village seen in the first act of Diablo 2, with one big expansion: You have to fight Baal, Mephisto, and Diablo at the same time. The payoff for kicking all that Prime Evil ass is the Hellfire Torch, an extremely powerful charm—and yes, the Hellfire Torch reward is waiting for you in Diablo 4 now, too.

Blizzard is clearly going hard to recapture the magic of Diablo's glory days for the 30th anniversary, and going deep too. Which naturally leads to the question: What else is in there? It certainly seems like there's more up the sleeve: The Uber Tristram bosses also drop a new item that players are still trying to figure out what to do with.

Now that Diablo 5 is coming—though not until 2029—there are no more expansions planned for Diablo 4, and seasons will be the focus. Blizzard says we can expect more storytelling though. Namely, it needs to bring about the apocalyptic return of Diablo to set up the events of the sequel, which will take place after Sanctuary has fallen to the forces of evil.

World of Warcraft: Forever's beta arrives today, but the dataminers are way ahead of us, having ferreted out all sorts of new details. WoW Forever's still around a month and a half from launch day, so this should be considered a work in progress, but it's still interesting.

As datamined by WoWHead, Forever will be bringing all sorts of unique set bonuses to the game as an incentive to actually go out and farm. The Postmaster set, a level 56 kit, now nets owners Return to Sender, which gives you a free spell reflect after falling to 25% health. The Necropile's Raiment, meanwhile, has a chance to steal life from spellcasting, and the Bloodmail's Regalia can bleed enemies that attack you.

Even low-level armor sets have cool bonuses now, like the Defias Leather set, which, at four pieces, has a chance to make your melee attacks bleed the target on a 5% proc chance. The Embrace of the Viper five-set bonus seems wild, too, giving you a chance to just outright stun your targets for 1 second.

I think it's neat as heck and a good sign that Blizzard intends to keep up this whole horizontal development thing. The fact that even lower-level gear is being treated as more than just a stop-gap makes me more excited for the entire exercise.

The max level dungeon sets are interesting as well—like the Warlock's Dread/Deathmist raiments, which have a chance to fear attackers when they strike you on a 60 second cooldown. Raid sets, which should come from the new raids added to Forever and have bespoke set bonuses, are also cool.

For example, the feral tanking set, Grovekeeper's Rage, lets you cast Rebirth while in bear form. And a lot of these sets provide damage bonuses against certain creature types, like a rogue set that adds attack power versus humanoids, or the warlock's Demonheart Raiment, which gives spellpower against demons.

And while not all of these datamined sets are made equal, they're also not made finished, so I anticipate a few of them getting a heck of a lot more interesting when the full game comes out in November.

World of Warcraft: Forever is a new branch of the MMO that's making its debut this week in a month-long beta before the whole thing drops in November. It will be the first opportunity to experience some of the new quests, dungeons, and class abilities that Blizzard has added to a version of the MMO that will never move on past the original game.

Here's everything you need to know about the WoW: Forever beta, how to get access, and what's available in it.

When does the World of Warcraft: Forever beta start?

The WoW: Forever beta begins on Thursday, September 17 on PC. Anyone who has preordered the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection will have access as soon as it opens.

Blizzard says the WoW: Forever beta will go live after the live Q&A at 10:30 am PT. It's unclear how long the stream will go, but I'd expect it to last around 30 minutes.

Here are the stream times across regions on September 17:

• 10:30 am PDT (Los Angeles)
• 1:30 pm EDT (New York)
• 6:30 pm BST (London)
• 7:30 pm CEST (Berlin)
• 3:30 am August 29 AEST (Sydney)
• 5:30 am August 29 NZST (Auckland)

You'll have about a month to try the game out before the beta ends on October 21.

How to access the World of Warcraft: Forever beta

There are two ways to get into the WoW: Forever beta. The first requires purchasing one of the two premium versions of the game from Blizzard's store. Both the Skyborne Epic Pack ($59.99) and the Warcraft Forever Collection ($79.99) will grant you beta access. Alternatively, you can leave it to chance and sign up for it on the WoW: Forever website by clicking the "Beta Opt-in" button at the top of the page.

You can check if you have access to the WoW: Forever beta by opening the Battle.net launcher dropdown menu under World of Warcraft and selecting "World of Warcraft: Forever".

What is available in the World of Warcraft: Forever beta?

The WoW: Forever beta will be split into two phases. At the start, you won't be able to go past level 20. Then, after two weeks, the level cap will be raised to level 30 and will stay there until the beta ends.

Every race and class will be available to play, including the new Skyborne elves (if you preorder).

Here's how each phase will work:

Phase 1 (September 17)

• Level 20 cap
• New class abilities and talents
• New Profession items
• New dungeons: Hall of Thanes, Ruins of Lordaeron
• Legacy system

Phase 2 (~October 8)

• Level 30 cap
• New class abilities and talents
• New Profession items
• New dungeon: Excavation Site: Wetlands
• Legacy system

World of Warcraft: Forever's an interesting pitch—instead of no changes, it's an all-changes version of vanilla WoW. Updated talent trees, new quests, essentially an envisioning of the OG game where, save for the new sky elves, all of the fresh additions are horizontal. New dungeons and raids all packaged within that original level 60 cap in good ol' Azeroth.

But given Blizzard just did Season of Discovery, at least one question was brewing in my mind—would the developer add some of the wilder class designs, like healing mages and shaman tanks, as optional skill trees or playstyles?

Sadly not, says senior game designer Josh Greenfield in a recent GameSpot interview: "[Season of Discovery] was always meant to be ephemeral, and it allowed us to take some risks that we probably wouldn't really take in a 'forever' game. A lot of the changes, I think, in spirit—a lot of the lessons we learned—are carried over. But some of the more out there things that weren't originally in original WoW, we toned them back a little bit."

I already had a feeling, given a lot of the preemptively put together talent calculators—but these were assembled from a beta version of the game, gathered together in snippets at Blizzcon. By no means were its prophesied talents final. However, what I did see had me leaning in the way of playing it safe.

Aside from a few very cool additions and redesigned specs, a lot of the changes were simply bringing class design elements from modern WoW back into its vanilla age. Take combat rogues, for instance, which enjoy an equivalent of the outlaw rogue's central trick, lowering all of their cooldowns by a few seconds when they use a finishing more.

That's not to say that there's no experimentation in Forever's future, mind. Greenfield continues: "It's one of those things—it's in the name, it's forever, we can do a lot of things over years, but we wanted to start from a place where the soul of the class is very coded and original WoW-centric.

"But there's still meaningful changes and really exciting ways to play your class … But some of the Warlock tank, Shaman tank, not quite yet? But never say never, y'know." It's a bit of a shame, given Forever is sort of meant to be Blizzard's replacement for a WoW 2, but I can at least understand why the studio's starting off a little less experimental than it could've. And that's not to say the boat isn't being rocked at all.

Overwatch has over 40 heroes at this point, each with their own legion of fans. Blizzard can't make everyone happy when it comes to releasing new skins, but its most recent skins have fans convinced it's playing favorites.

Heroes who have already been swimming in skins, like Kiriko and Genji, keep getting more and more while other heroes are left with scraps.

Blizzard has started to drop Mythic skins for heroes who already have them, upsetting those who've waited years to see their favorite heroes get their first one. These fancy skins have customizable parts and change the visual effects on abilities. They're also the most expensive skins in the game at around $70, or 80 Mythic Prisms, a currency acquired by completing tiers on the battle pass or purchasing directly from the shop.

Only two Mythic skins come out every season, which is why many players are frustrated seeing some heroes get more while others have none. The ire around repeat Mythics comes up every time another one comes out, but has grown more intense as the trend continues. The recent Mythic Void Widowmaker skin—her second Mythic—saw an overwhelmingly negative response because it arrived in the same season Genji got his second Mythic skin.

In an interview with PC Gamer, art director Dion Rogers said the team never intentionally leaves out certain heroes from Mythic discussions. "It's just more of what the team is excited about in the moment, or the very cool ideas sitting in front of us basically," he said. Some heroes are easier to get to than others, he added.

But Rogers said the team has seen the feedback about repeat Mythics and is going to work on spreading them out better in the future. Specifically, he said it'll be "the number one thing" the team will start to conceptualize next.

"We've done recently a big blue-sky sketch, like hit as many as these guys as possible and see if something jumps out," he said.

Skins presumably take a while to come together, so I wouldn't expect to see a wider variety of Mythics for several months, but it's promising to hear that some of the less conventional heroes might finally get their own time to shine soon.

While server issues stalled the start of Diablo 4's new season for many players, a few were able to get in and discover something Blizzard carefully left out from official materials.

The focus for Diablo 4's Season of Hell's Legacy is celebrating the series' 30th anniversary. Blizzard went back to Diablo 2 and brought back Deckard Cain (in a dream) and three of its most iconic bosses: Diablo, Baal, and Mephisto. Each of them have updated versions of their old models and attacks, too.

Blizzard didn't indicate that it would be doing more than just a nostalgic storyline for season 15—but it is. Diablo 4 streamer Dioxide was able to squeeze past the login issues and found a number of new Runes available. Normally, these slot into your gear and give you passive bonuses, but Dioxide discovered there's more to them than that.

When he dropped two specific runes and a low-quality chestpiece into Diablo 4's crafting table, the Horadric Cube, it showed "???" as the recipe instead of one of the many listed on the side of the interface. When he clicked the transmute button, out popped the Stealth chestpiece, a Unique item from Diablo 2.

It turns out Blizzard added some of the Rune word item recipes from Diablo 2 without telling anyone. The Stealth armor is created exactly as people did more than two decades ago. It has different stats than the original, but carries the same relative power in Diablo 4 because it has two more stats than a normal Unique.

Now everyone is eager to see what other recipes are available and what other things Blizzard has hidden in the new season. The recent trailer has a pretty obvious hint for Diablo 3's rainbow-colored Whimsyshire level near the end with a creepy teddy bear: It isn't clear how to access it, but I'm sure someone will figure it out before the end of the day.

Ever since the release of the Lord of Hatred expansion for Diablo 4, Blizzard has been intentionally leaving stuff for players to find on their own. Nobody knew they would actually add the cow level, for example. I think it's a great approach when so many previous seasons felt kind of solved before they even began, and it maintains some of the mystery that the older games always had.

It's been a meme for eight years—where's the sword, Blizzard? At the end of World of Warcraft: Legion, the big bad Sargeras tried to punch a big, corruptive sword into the heart of Azeroth. For years—eight years and nine months, to be exact—it's been a big, hanging question mark over the game's lore.

Especially given that, up until the Worldsoul Saga, Blizzard has been a little scattershot with its expansion ideas. The current trilogy is the company's first real, proper attempt at a multi-expansion storyline, à la Final Fantasy 14's 10-year epic that carried it from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker.

Which is why I'm a little bummed out, man. In an interview with WoWHead, associate game director Paul Kubit says that in the Midnight: What's Next recap, a screenshot of Azeroth's worldsoul with a jagged spike pointed towards it? Yeah, that's the sword. No—really, Kubit said "Yeah, yeah. That's the sword." Look:

"Yeah, yeah. That's the Sword. Eagle-eyed viewers have identified that, and yeah, we've been thinking about the Sword and it should become very apparent to people as you play through Eclipse that we haven't forgotten about the Sword. This is not something that is going away. Also, how tragically close it came to the Worldsoul is a testament to how close he came, but also maybe the power of the Worldsoul herself."

I'm bothered, somewhat, because on paper this is a super cool detail—look at that thing. It came literally feet away from punching into the centre of the world, which would've corrupted the entire planet with fel magic. Per WoW cosmology, it would've also stopped the void lords from turning it into a Dark Titan, which was kind of Sargeras' whole deal. But it also would've killed everybody, so—too many eggs for that omelette.

I'm imagining a world in which I dropped into this zone for the first time, saw that sword-tip inches away from Azeroth's soul, and went: Oh, crap. We were this close to the end of the world.

I'll keep things vague for spoiler reasons, but Final Fantasy 14—which keeps story elements under wraps before the patch or expansion they're due comes out—is really good at this. At several points in its winding 10-year story, a vista or an environment pulls double duty as part of the narrative: Like an impossible glimmering city under the ocean, or a heartachingly gorgeous faery landscape in a dying world.

But WoW doesn't do this. It tests patches for weeks on the PTR with preview cutscenes and, as mentioned above, it reveals huge overarching narrative beats during interviews and press conferences—which robs Blizzard of a pretty solid tool in its arsenal: Letting the environment show you the story.

Rather than having an "oh, shit!" moment when I saw this sword while in Midnight's final raid, and slowly piecing it together, I have instead been told in a quote by a director that I will, in a handful of months, see exactly what he said I'd see. And, listen—even though I've been impressed by some elements of Midnight's story, it's not exactly gripped my heart like FF14's did. And as long as we live in a world where big reveals like this aren't treated with much sanctity, it's probably gonna stay that way.

No one knows how to haunt the narrative quite like Overwatch's two misfits, Roadhog and Sombra. When these heroes are strong the game sucks for everyone else, but when they're nerfed for the sake of everyone else there's almost no reason to play them. This has meant that both characters are in a perpetual state of buff/nerf; it's tough out here to be a hog.

So it comes as absolutely no surprise that the two characters picked to undergo yet another redesign over at Blizzcon were the dynamic duo Hog and Sombra. But it wouldn't be an Overwatch balance change without at least a little bit of upset.

Hog's new look seems sound enough—especially with the much-needed addition of Trash Compactor which works as a de facto shield. But Sombra's change to the Support role has players up in arms.

Much of Sombra's previous kit has stayed the same, with her primary fire, EMP ult, and translocator ability all left intact. But she also has two new abilities and passives:

• Hotfix heals an alley for a set amount of health over time and lets her freely hack health packs.
• Cyberspace is just a biotic grenade mimic.
• The Conspirator passive means that Sombra can now see whenever enemy ultimates are fully-charged.
• The Tactician support subrole means she can store excess ult charge and beef it up.

Change can be difficult, but I actually like this new look.

Sure it's annoying that Sombra can't hack heroes out of their ult, but she still has EMP for that. And it'll be frustrating for flanker DPS mains that they now have one less hero to use against Widowmaker, but Tracer can get that job done. If used correctly, I think this can turn Sombra from an outlier to a standard pick.

There's only one issue: Overwatch players are stubborn as all hell.. First up, Overwatch players don't like playing against Sombra, and her ban rates in competitive are ingrained into the psyche of some players, so I don't think this restyle will help change her public image all that much at first.

Then there's the fact that in all likelihood a great deal of players will play Sombra in her old fashion as a flanker, instead of a support who's new role is to stick with her team and tank. If there's one thing that pisses me off it's support players who justify DPS joyrides as another way to support their team.

If you're not in Masters or above then that just isn't true. While healing isn't the whole role of a support, there's facilitating engagement and boosting ally's kill-potential, the main goal of a support should always be self and team sustain. So having one support off on the other side of the map spawn camping the enemy team's Mercy will probably be a commonly frustrating experience.

But these issues are just growing pains. I'm sure overtime Sombra's new role will settle itself into the muscle memory of players. I have a feeling she'll become a valued member of her new role much like Doomfist and Symmetra.

World of Warcraft: Forever, in case you missed the wild news that came out of BlizzCon over the weekend, is essentially Classic+. A reimagining of vanilla WoW with updated talent trees, new raids and dungeons, more horizontal progression, and some shiny, glossic graphics thrown over the top of the whole thing.

Given it's aping a more friction-filled time in history, you might be wondering if it'll be offering a Hardcore mode: The answer, per the "What's Next" panel, is a resounding yes. Production director Clayton Stone, who was the associate production director on Classic itself, took to the stage to profess his love of the hardcore mode:

"Hardcore represented a turning point for us as a team. We had tried a few things before it, and as [Ian Hazzikostas] covered, we have absolutely tried new things since. But hardcore represented the moment when Blizzard and the community came together, and showed not only why World of Warcraft is one of the greatest games ever made, but why that original adventure still holds so much promise for where we could go in the future.

"Which," he continues, "Is why I am also so proud to announce that Hardcore will be coming to WoW Forever as well."

While this isn't all too surprising on the face of it—Classic Hardcore proved to be incredibly popular—it will be interesting. One of the reasons why Hardocre mode became so popular was because, well, Classic is a "solved" game at this point. Chances are if you're going for a hardcore run, you already know every nook and cranny of Azeroth, which is 20 years old at this point. And if you don't, you can open a guide somewhere to maximise your chances.

But Forever will be adding new dungeons and raids, new quests—surprise encounters around every corner that could kill a Hardcore run deader than dirt. Which is likely why it's not coming out on the game's launch this November—instead reserved for the winter season.

That'll give more time for Hardcore aficionados to map out every inch of Forever's alternate-reality Azeroth and plan the best strats. And we know how WoW players love their min-maxing.

The last time an Overwatch hero captured my heart like this, I ended up maining an old sniper for almost a decade, so I think I'll be seeing a hell of a lot of Overwatch's newest hero: Doctrine.

Unveiled at Blizzcon over the weekend, Doctrine is the newest addition to the Support roster (alongside Sombra), but he's unlike anything we've seen before. He's got some usual mechanics like a shift similar to Moira or Anran's—with a Sandevistan twist—a primary fire that can heal and damage, and an AOE ultimate which heals allies and reduces the health capacity of enemies. That's all standard stuff, and not particularly exciting—the juice of Doctrine's build comes from his second ability and right click.

Doctrine's second ability, Invigorating Drones, attaches to an ally and boosts their attack speed and healing. It is a nasty ability to tag onto a hitscan hero like Soldier: 76, Sojourn, or Sierra, especially if a Kiriko ult is in the mix.

As a support main, I'm always looking to support my team in more ways than just healing (although that should always be the priority), and helping teammates with an attack boost is something I didn't know I needed. I had so much fun over the weekend treating all DPS heroes as if they were pawns who I could buff just at the right time to instigate some impressive enemy team wipes. But even this isn't the star of Doctrine's kit.

The real hero is his right click, Infuse. This adds powerful effects onto whatever piece of kit he uses next:

• He moves faster when shifting and has vertical reach with the added benefit of Fly.
• Invigorating Drones can be used on himself buffing his attack speed and passive healing.
• Primary fire changes to a charged hit which deals more healing and damage.

It doesn't seem like a lot, but this one mechanic raises up Doctrine's skill ceiling dramatically by giving him so many options to support his team in both healing and damage and provide great engagement and disengagement possibilities.

Doctrine is testimony to just how creative and innovative Team 4 continues to be. Since the rework earlier this year, they've been on something of a generational run when it comes to its new heroes. Each one has felt exciting in new ways, and offers up different approaches to the FPS, but Doctrine is the best I've seen so far.

World of Warcraft has a long-standing tradition of datamining and min-maxing. So it should come as no surprise that, despite only just being shown at Blizzcon, World of Warcraft: Forever now already has online talent calculators available, assembled from a delightful tapestry of streams and ravenous info-gatherers.

There's the old reliable that is WoWHead, but I want to shout out Reddit user Baldwinbuilds for their version, which not only collects all of the currently-known info about the Classic revamp's talents, but also has a handy button that tells you exactly how they were changed. It's a tremendous bit of work.

I've had a skim through, and assembled a list of some of the wildest additions—now, keep in mind, WoW Forever's not coming until November, so all of these are likely to change between now and its debut. But it still gives you an idea of the sorts of design philosophies that Blizzard's gearing up to apply:

• Arms warriors get a new ability called Searing Strike, which does an 80% extra damage against Giants, Dragonkin, and mounted targets—knocking them off their steed to boot.
• Retribution paladins have an interesting talent called Holy Twist. This debuffs an enemy whenever you replace your current seal on them with an echo, which then re-triggers it on your next melee attack. Basically, you'll be cycling through your seals.
• Survival hunters seem to be dual wielders now with Predator's Edge, which increases your offhand damage by 10% per point, along with a bunch of new abilities that make your Mongoose Bite more effective.
• Combat rogues borrow some tricks from retail's outlaw with Relentless Blades, which reduces their cooldowns whenever they use a finisher. This is a pretty big change, given it changes the flow of combat rogues completely.
• Shamans get Totemic Projection, a huge quality of life buff, letting them take their totems with them on the move—as well as Call of the Elements, which lets you drop a full set of totems in one cast.

Other than that, it's a lot of popular snags from retail. Mages, for instance, get talents like Hot Streak, Arcane Blast, and Ice Lance, destruction warlocks get immolation, restoration shamans get Water Shield and druid healers get Wild Growth, and so on. Honestly, while it's early days, I'm surprised Blizzard hasn't gotten weirder.

But the Blizzcon demos only went up to level 38, and these are by no means finished. Searing Strike, in particular, feels like a stand-out to me, given how weirdly niche it is. And given how Blizzard's already bragged about Forever's unique, hyper-specific gear items, I'm looking forward to seeing how the studio experiments.

World of Warcraft: Forever looks—well, pretty interesting, all told. Rather than just being a Season of Discovery-style reimagining of Classic, Forever promises to be a full-on remake of classic-era WoW. Reimagined class trees, new raids, and $30 elves. Don't think about the $30 elves too hard.

But it does beg the question, why is Blizzard doing this rather than, say, developing WoW 2? It worked out swimmingly for ArenaNet's Guild Wars series, after all. Speaking to IGN, Forever's principal designer Kris Zierhut says: "I think one of the things that's singularly great about WoW is we have this game and this world and this design that has been continuously developed for the last 25 years.

"And we keep making it better. We made the graphics better, we made the rendering better, we made the lighting better; all that new stuff we showed on stage today."

That is, in fairness, true—and true of retail, as well. Part of the reason why Classic works as a concept is because modern WoW is almost straight-up a different game—new models, animations, completely reimagined class designs, and a visual aesthetic that still holds up. Forever looks to be taking full advantage of retail's steady march of progress.

Zierhut says as much: "We've also made the way the engine draws things move more efficiently. The way the server runs, handling players and moving them around, and all the things that handle spells and combat, all of that's been made more efficient and better over the years. We have this incredible engine and server infrastructure driving the game that is second to none. Why would you throw that away and start over?"

I maintain that a WoW 2 wouldn't be superfluous. With all of that progress comes a lot of technical debt (see: player housing getting borked by fixing an elevator in a 13-year old raid), as well as a ton of design choices. A direct sequel's a chance to start over and challenge basic assumptions about the game's design—the Guild Wars series becoming an increasingly action-focused game, for instance.

There's also a second argument—and this, I feel more torn on—that Forever is trying to re-capture an outdated design. On the one hand, the cynic in me understands that modern MMOs are a hell of a lot different for good reason. We datamine new information about new patches weeks ahead of when they come out, we optimise everything down to the last, minute detail. We hug these games so hard that we wring all mystery out of them.

On the other hand, there has been a yearning, a rumbling. Our own Lincoln Carpenter said as much in our MMO column: "It's hard to argue that the MMOs of today aren't better designed than their older iterations. And yet, it's the moments when I step off the treadmill where they still feel the most magical." If Forever offers an alt-history not just of WoW, but of modern MMO design in general? Then I'm on board.

Diablo 5 may be set in a lonely world ravaged by a demon lord, but you'll still be able to team up with your friends like in previous Diablo games.

Senior game director Joe Shely confirmed that Diablo 5 will fully support multiplayer in a group interview with PC Gamer: "Like Diablo 4, it is a game that you can play solo or multiplayer, however you please, and you should be able to play all of the content with your friends."

Specific details about multiplayer, like if you can run into other players in the open world like you can in Diablo 4's endgame, weren't mentioned. Blizzard said that information will have to wait until we're closer to its 2029 release.

One of the biggest changes that differentiates Diablo 5 from Diablo 4 is its return to having a procedurally-generated overworld and dungeons. This is supposed to convey the shifting nature of the world as you travel across the continent with your caravan cleansing it of Diablo's corruption. It's possible that this might dramatically change how you'll interact with other players once you're finished with the campaign, especially if everyone experiences their own version of Sanctuary.

Running into a bunch of other players might ruin the illusion that you're a lone hero fighting back against the forces of Hell. Blizzard says Diablo 5 will incorporate a lot of things it learned from Diablo 4, but it's unclear if that will include things like world events and bosses. Diablo 4 is also overflowing with skins and cosmetics that, if carried forward, would suggest there must be some way of showing off your fit to the other heroes of Sanctuary.

It doesn't seem like we're going to get any concrete answers about this for a while, though. Next year, Blizzard will start to post regular updates about the game's development to see how fans feel about it. Maybe one of them will shed some light on the scope of multiplayer in Diablo 5 and whether or not it'll continue what Diablo 4 started.

World of Warcraft Forever might be stuck in the first year of the MMO for the foreseeable future, but it's going to draw from future iterations of it to freshen up the experience.

Blizzard held a panel at BlizzCon today where WoW Forever developers dug into the crucial design changes that will differentiate it from the WoW Classic we already have. This version of the MMO doesn't sound like it'll be as much of a grind as the OG with its revised classes, talent trees, and all-new mechanics for pulling strangers together in the open world.

Many of the changes seem to fill in the gaps of the original WoW experience so that there's several things to chase as you explore Azeroth. Developers broke down how the MMO will bring players together, how the new "Legacy" progression system works, and how new and old items will influence combat.

Here are the big takeaways from the WoW Forever panel:

• You pick a ruleset (e.g. normal, PvP, hardcore)—not a realm—to play on, which means you'll run into a lot more players on your journey than the other versions of WoW
• Changing the appearance of your gear to look like other gear (transmog) is now a global setting you can turn on or off for you and other players
• Looting most gear will grant everyone the transmog appearance automatically
• Everyone can set up a campfire where other players can craft or rest for exclusive buffs via their professions
• Each profession has over 600 new recipes across all level ranges
• New race/class combinations include: Gnome priests, Human hunters, Dwarf shamans, Orc mages, Troll warlocks, and Undead paladins—and more are coming in the future
• As you progress, you'll earn Legacy points to unlock various perks that alter how certain mechanics work, like removing the materials you need to cast major buffs, and obtain cosmetics
• Most items in the game have been reworked (or new ones have been added) so that they're useful to all classes and roles
• All bosses have better loot overall
• The unique racial abilities for every playable race have been improved, and new ones have been added as well

There are a lot more details, especially for how popular abilities will work, explained in the panel. Part of the goal, Blizzard said, was to "unsolve" the game and give players a reason to experiment again.

It won't be a long wait to see how it all comes together. WoW Forever will launch on November 4 and will be playable under the same subscription as regular WoW. A beta will go live on Thursday, September 17, which you can access by purchasing the game early.

Warcraft 3: Reforged got a hefty 3.0 patch alongside its new Forsaken Kingdom expansion, but not all of the changes are for the better. Amid bugfixes and new features, Reforged now requires an internet connection to play, even in singleplayer, and it also removed the game's local area network (LAN) functionality. Blizzard did not provide a reason for these changes in the patch notes.

Blizzard does mention that LAN support and offline play are still offered by the legacy Warcraft 3 client included with purchase of Reforged. The company has a Battle.net support page with instructions on how to install this legacy client.

But it's still a frustrating, confounding change: Reforged was an embattled remaster that had to claw back support from the fanbase. The Forsaken Kingdom expansion and 3.0 patch were the perfect opportunity to complete a redemption arc and lock in Reforged as the definitive version of the 2002 RTS. But as much as things have improved, it's taken a stumble in its victory lap.

Always-online requirements have been a sore spot in gaming since they first started cropping up in the 2010s, and depending on where you live, reliable high-speed internet isn't always a guarantee. Even in the big city, outages aren't unheard of, and always-online requirements for singleplayer games remain an odious imposition on players.

The LAN removal makes even less sense to me: LAN party and tournament play have always struck me as an essential part of Warcraft 3's legacy. Why concede this ground to the original game when the remaster's reputation has been so contested since its release? You can check out the full Warcraft 3: Reforged patch notes over on the Blizzard forums. More positive changes include a new graphics mode and a doubling of the unit selection cap from 12 to 24.

As noted by MMORPG.com, World of Warcraft: Forever is coming with a peculiar economic proposition: Most of the new fork of the MMO is included in your normal WoW subscription (rad), but the new Skyborne Elf race (and its corresponding starter zone experience) is gated behind a separate, $30 purchase (sad).

While "$30 elf" might be a somewhat uncharitable characterization, there's not much else that really lights my fire in the $29.99 "Skyborne Hero Pack." In addition to the titular elves, it comes with a mount, cosmetics, housing decorations, and early name reservation.

Compared to the bleeding edge of Overwatch, League of Legends, and Diablo premium cosmetic pricing, this is just keeping pace. But with many of the best new games on Steam coming in at $20 or less, I'm feeling sticker shock.

$30, for my money, is the cost of an expansion pack under normal economic conditions, though WoW's most recent retailed for $50 MSRP. Speaking to my WoW consultant and on-the-ground BlizzCon contact, PCG contributor Tyler Colp, he wagered that any new classes coming down the line in Forever will likely be similarly monetized, and argued that this sort of monetization is less in the spirit of classic WoW than the rest of the Forever project.

Looking at it from the outside, getting so much of the rest of Forever with a normal WoW subscription strikes me as an excellent bargain, but it only throws the $30 elf into even sharper relief as a consequence. Personally, I'd be more amenable to a $15 elf as a matter of principle, but I've been out of the MMO/live service game for some time. Do you think this is a fair market value for an elf? Sound off in the comments.

Reactions to the StarCraft trailer shown at BlizzCon this year seem pretty universal. Initial excitement, immediately deflated when the words "STARCRAFT RETURNS 2030" appeared at the end. (The fact it's going to be an "open world shooter" didn't help.) The surprise announcement of Diablo 5 coming in 2029 seems odd too. There were 11 years between Diablo 3 and Diablo 4, but the gap between that and Diablo 5 will only be six.

Announcing videogames more than a couple of years ahead of release feels like a relic of the past. Everyone assumes games will get delayed anyway, and viewers are adding "at the earliest" as a footnote. Saying something is just around the corner earns goodwill, while saying it's three or four years away tells us to gear up for a hype cycle we'll be tired of before the actual game materializes—if it ever does.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries spoke to Bloomberg ahead of BlizzCon. "We want to convey confidence in some of our biggest bets coming forward," she said on this topic. "We're a Blizzard that's going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time, and all hands on deck to set those projects up for success."

Blizzard has so far managed to avoid being hit by Microsoft's recent layoffs, but more are coming next year. It's a good time to make sure everyone knows you've got loads of exciting projects in the works and you need as many staff as possible to make them a reality.

While Faries didn't discuss the possibility of job losses, she did say she wanted BlizzCon to be "a sort of oasis, a moment for real joy" for both Blizzard's staff and its fans, and that she was "completely focused on creating as healthy a Blizzard as possible".

"Preserving that has been my ultimate focus," Faries said. "The unique special sauce that is Blizzard both culturally and creatively. And to the extent that we can perform well for Microsoft, I think that should be seen as a mutual win."

The rumored game known to World of Warcraft fans as "Classic Plus" is real, and it has a proper name now—World of Warcraft: Forever is a new branch of the MMO that once again resets the clock to 2004, the year WoW first launched.

But unlike WoW: Classic, the goal of WoW: Forever isn't just to take a trip back to the MMO's origins to relive those heady early years. WoW: Forever will explore new parts of Azeroth, telling stories that weren't told during the MMO's original progression.

PC Gamer was briefed on the announcement before the reveal at the BlizzCon Opening Ceremony. Here are the biggest takeaways:

• WoW: Forever will be set in the first year of WoW with a level cap of 60 "for the foreseeable future"
• New stuff won't just be for max level players; it will span all levels
• Three new zones
• "Several" existing zones overhauled, "filling in the blank spaces of the vanilla map"
• Nine new dungeons
• Two new raids
• New race: Skyborne Elves
• New race/class combos: The trailer seems to show a Forsaken paladin, dwarf shaman, and orc mage

It's a strategy reminiscent of Old School RuneScape, which treats the 2006 version of the MMO as a jumping-off point rather than a specimen to be preserved. It's worked out well for Jagex: OSRS is bigger now than it was during the original run.

The existence of three different Worlds of Warcraft might risk diluting the playerbase, but if any MMO is big enough to sustain three official forks—and if any studio has the resources to support them—it's probably WoW and Blizzard.

WoW: Forever will be playable at BlizzCon this weekend, and a beta starts this Thursday. The full launch isn't far away either: Forever is set to release on November 4. World of Warcraft: Forever is covered by the pre-existing WoW subscription, but upgrade packs with features like the Skyborne race are available on Battle.net starting at $30.

As was revealed in today's Blizzcon opening ceremony, Overwatch's newest hero is on the way: Doctrine, a vampire with a cyborg arm and mechanical bats. He was debuted via a story trailer that reveals a connection to Doomfist, the game's resident punch man.

A hero trial is active now, in case you want to try him out, and it will remain live through the weekend. While his exact release date has not been announced, the game is keeping up a rapid pace for the addition of new heroes—D. Mon released just last month on August 11.

That's not all Blizzard teased, though. Reworks are on the way for two of the game's prickliest characters, Sombra and Roadhog, both of whom have already received countless tweaks since they joined the game. Precise details weren't shared during the opening ceremony, but Sombra's going to become a support and Roadhog should be less "frustrating" to deal with.

The new act of the game's year-long story will bring a new map as well—Grímsvötn—and the next Overwatch Spotlight teasing what's to follow is scheduled for Feb. 2027. The last time one of those happened, five heroes were revealed and released all in one go. Time will tell if something that huge is set to happen again.

You can keep up with the rest of today's Blizzcon news via our live blog.

For the first time since its Frozen Throne expansion in 2003, Warcraft 3 is getting a new campaign. Or got one, more accurately: Blizzard just announced at BlizzCon that it's dropping the expansion today.

In a pre-brief before BlizzCon's opening ceremony, we learned that Warcraft 3: Forsaken Kingdom is a two-part campaign for Warcraft 3: Reforged, the 2020 remaster of the 2002 RTS. It begins with a prologue covering the story of Arthas, the primary antagonist in World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

The main portion of the campaign following that prologue regards the Undercity, the capital of the undead Forsaken Kingdom, where we'll find the likes of Sylvanas, Putress, and the Scarlet Crusade.

Alongside the new expansion, Warcraft 3 Reforged is getting a free 3.0 update. Forsaken Kingdom is available now for $30 on Battle.net.

Reforged was not a popular remaster of Warcraft 3 when it first launched in 2020, but a new update and surprise expansion could go a long way toward rehabilitating the project. 2026 is now firmly the year of the surprise expansion to an old game: Forsaken Kingdom joins Thief Remastered: The Tarnished Mirror, Quake: Dawn of the Machine, and The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past in this strange new category.

At today's Blizzcon opening ceremony, it was announced that Hearthstone will receive a third post-launch class—the game's first since the Death Knight released in 2022. It's none other than the Monk, a class with origins you can trace all the way back to Warcraft 3's pandaren brewmaster.

Represented by the playable Chen Stormstout, the Monk will get a full reveal next year. While not World of Warcraft's most popular class, it is perhaps its silliest, which fits Hearthstone's cartoonish sensibilities to a T. After this point, the Evoker will be the only class from Blizzard's titan MMO that isn't represented in card game form (unless you count the Night Elf Mohawk).

The expansion coming in the meantime, Reign of the Black Empire, is another old god-themed extravaganza, complete with bouncy electronic grooves all over the trailer. No goofy lyrics this time around, but what can you do?

It also comes with a new keyword, "assemble," which allows players to merge cards for ludicrous combos. It sounds like the sort of shenanigan-magnet Hearthstone is known for.

Reign of the Black Empire will land on Oct. 10, with the Monk class arriving March 2027. Follow the rest of today's Blizzcon news on our liveblog.

The biggest surprise of BlizzCon might be Diablo 5, which Blizzard announced will release in spring 2029, six years after the 2023 launch of Diablo 4.

The sequel will take place about a century after the events of Diablo 4. Sanctuary is no longer on the verge of apocalypse in Diablo 5: It's been fully apolcalpyted. The Lord of Terror—aka Diablo himself, absent in Diablo 4—is back, and he won.

"The heroes are gone, Sanctuary has fallen, and Diablo has won," declared Diablo 4 director Joe Shely. "For the first time, you won't be fighting to stop Diablo from taking Sanctuary. You'll enter a world where he already has. There are no towns or safe places waiting to protect you."

There's not a ton to go on in the trailer, but it is, fittingly, dark and grim: Everything's on fire, grubby peasant guys proselytize on behalf of the victorious demons, and angels are getting crucified. After the title drop, we get a brief view of the titular Diablo himself, out of focus and wreathed in fire.

2029 is still a ways off, but it's nevertheless surprising to hear news of a new numbered Diablo sequel. Given Diablo 4's live servicey shape, I expected another expansion roadmap rather than a full-blown sequel.

For comparison, there was a 12 year wait between Diablos 2 and 3, and an 11-year gap between the initial launches of 3 and 4, both about double the projected wait between 4 and 5.

Development times have been trending longer in the industry, not shorter, and I'm curious how Diablo players will respond to what would usually be regarded as pretty great news—do you think Blizzard should have stuck with D4 as a platform instead of already starting on a sequel? Sound off in the comments.

Regarding Diablo 4, Blizzard did announce that the Amazon class is coming, and talked about the next season, an anniversary celebration looking back at Diablo's past, but didn't announce a new expansion.

At BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard president Johanna Faries took to the stage to announce that a Diablo animated series is in production with Netflix.

The announcement was light on details, and did not come with a trailer or release window, but Faries did note "great discussions being had" regarding adaptations of Overwatch and Warcraft. Faries also allowed that Blizzard's other properties could see similar treatments.

“After decades of bringing entire universes to life through our games, we’re partnering with some creative powerhouses to tell even more stories beyond gaming across new screens," Blizzard wrote in a press release about the project. "A new animated series set in the world of ‘Diablo’ is in development with Netflix. More details will be shared in the future, but this is only the beginning, with even more taking shape across our universes.”

It feels like the early 2020s gold rush of streaming TV videogame adaptations is cooling down—RIP, Halo show. But we also know what's worked really well. Netflix's animated adaptations of Cyberpunk and League of Legends, Edgerunners and Arkane respectively, are huge and much-beloved, with reaches well beyond their respective playerbases.

An animated adaptation from the same outfit behind these other hit gaming adaptations strikes me as a slam dunk. We'll have to wait and see if the goliath partnership is able to land the plane.

The rumors were true: A new StarCraft game is incoming. It's just called "StarCraft," it's an open world shooter, and Blizzard doesn't plan to release it until 2030.

The game was revealed at BlizzCon with a cinematic trailer, but no gameplay was shown, which isn't surprising given how far off it is.

The trailer showcases the training and gearing up of a Terran Dominion Space Marine, with an inspirational speech about killing Zerg over the montage. It ends with our anonymous hero doing battle with the Zerg, then a cut to his broken and bloody armor getting cleaned and repaired without him back on a Dominion ship.

This isn't the first time Blizzard has attempted an action-forward StarCraft spinoff. StarCraft Ghost was a legendary, Duke Nukem Forever-tier bit of vaporware that Blizzard teased, demoed, and reworked for much of the 2000s. Its titular Ghost, Nova, eventually got the consolation prize of being a secondary character in StarCraft 2 and the protagonist of a few tie-in novels. This new shooter appears to borrow little, if anything, from that earlier effort by Blizzard.

There was some speculation before the show that Blizzard might announce a new StarCraft RTS, but there's no sign of such a project, if it exists. It'll be interesting to see how fans react, as well as the esports scene. Excited for new StarCraft anything? Disappointed that it's not an RTS?

It's rare that a MOBA comes out, rarer that it manages to stick around, and perhaps rarest of all that it surges back to life after years on the backburner. While Heroes of the Storm never quite had its lights turned off, the constant downpour of new stuff you'd expect in a live service game did wind down. Until now.

At today's Blizzcon opening ceremony, it was announced that Xal'atath, the Harbinger of the Void, will be arriving in the long-dormant MOBA as a new hero—its first since Hogger was released all the way back in 2020. It's the first truly substantial update since 2022, as the game has only received light-touch balance passes and bug fixes since Blizzard announced a shift to maintenance mode.

If you're unfamiliar, Xal'atath is a character from World of Warcraft's Legion expansion who started as a gnawing voice tucked away in the weapon slots of Shadow Priest players. More recently, she's become the villainous face of the current Midnight expansion.

It was also announced that another new hero would be revealed at some point in the future.

Xal'atath will arrive on the game's PTR this Monday, with a full release scheduled for Sep. 28. Follow the rest of today's Blizzcon news on our liveblog.

I don't envy the position of being a game developer—especially not an encounter designer in something as complicated as an MMO. You might have an idea of how a mechanic's gonna go, but there's just absolutely no way it survives contact with 40 motivated, mid-2000s era hardcore WoW players.

Former game director at Blizzard Wyatt Cheng, whose delightful TikTok channel has been giving free wisdom and anecdotes for some time now, says that exact agony happened to him around 20 years ago with the release of Ahn'Qiraj. Particularly with The Prophet Skeram boss, which splits into illusions at 75%, 50%, and 25% health.

"There's one part I never got right," says Cheng. "I really wanted the only way to tell the difference between the real Skeram and the copies to be that the copies have half the health. So under even DPS rates, the illusions would drop in health faster."

"I pictured raids spreading their DPS and calling it out on [Ventrilo]: Which two are going down quicker?" The idea being, if you didn't kill the illusions first, you'd knock the main Skeram over into his next health threshold and take on additional copies before you're ready: "Now there are five Skerams, and you wipe."

Alas, "that is not how it went. There were so many easy ways to spot the real Skeram. My first version literally had 'Pet of Skeram' written under the copies' names. Oops! In testing, we found more, like UI mods reading creature IDs, or mismatched localisation strings."

While Cheng doesn't remember the exact play-by-play, what followed was an arms race where he was "constantly trying to describe the real Skeram." However, "looking at guides online now, I see sending a hunter pet after Skeram before the split results in the pet staying locked into the real one. Or some people mana-burn him, because the copies spawn with full mana, and he doesn't! Ugh! All that work, and there was still an instant tell."

Still, he's humble about it, saying that while "if it's a real bug or an exploit, sure, we'll fix it. But players outsmarting the designer? That's just one for the history books."