A new map-viewing tool of the WoW: Forever client has just dropped, and this thing is so gosh darn nifty. It's not perfect, and it can take a while for textures to stream in, but as long as you have the files on your computer, this map viewer lets you zip around Azeroth with your mouse wheel like an omniscient god. Please enjoy me marvelling at this fact.

RuneScape developer Jagex descended upon Birmingham (the British one, not the Alabama one) over the weekend with its annual RuneFest. As part of its RuneScape keynote, it showed off a trailer for its upcoming Dragon Slayer 2 quest which, er, featured a player character with six fingers and a bizarre sneaker-like sole on their very not-sneaker armoured shoes.

It didn't take long for posts on social media to point out what was undeniably generative AI, and an incident which, unfortunately for Jagex, came very swiftly after another genAI controversy surrounding its clothing collaboration with 100 Thieves just days before.

Despite the trailer being for RS3, Old School RuneScape's Alec 'Mod Sween' Sween took the lead on releasing a statement on the 2007scape subreddit addressing the situation. "We're aware of the concerns raised about the Dragon Slayer 2 trailer and have taken it down, while we investigate this urgently," he wrote. "This trailer was produced by a trusted external partner who had explicitly confirmed that GenAI would not be used. But, among other things, there's a sixth finger and, well, that's pretty hard to explain away. For that we apologise."

Similar to his statement after the 100 Thieves incident, Sween reiterated Jagex's stance. "Our position is clear at Jagex: we don't use GenAI to create our games, artwork or creative assets, and will not knowingly allow it to be used on our behalf. This is the second time in quick succession that concerns about generative AI have arisen through partners we trusted, and for us that highlights an issue with our own processes which we must address."

Sween said that the developer is "overhauling" the review process, and in the meantime will "work with and commission creators from the community to make sure that the story of Dragon Slayer 2 is told to the standard befitting of such an update."

I can't help but feel a little surprised that a video this blatantly riddled with generative AI slipped through the cracks—the six fingers are clear as day, even if you manage to miss everything else—and in a response Sween said that the team "should have caught these things," adding: "We didn't do well enough and can't simply place the blame elsewhere."

For Jagex's sake, I hope the phrase "bad things come in threes" does not also apply to generative AI videogame controversies.

Despite the immense volume of similarities between Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft, the team working on the upcoming collab rulebook knows that you can't translate everything 1:1. Half of the MMO is about fighting the same bosses over and over until you finally get a good piece of loot. The grind isn't made for tabletop players.

During a recent presentation attended by PC Gamer, principal game designer and project lead James Wyatt says D&D: WoW is more about "paraphrasing" the MMO within the framework of the tabletop game rather than trying to emulate its mechanics. The entire world of Azeroth and the MMO's many expansions (up to Midnight) are fair game for players—the book opens with a big temporal hand-wave from time dragon Chromie—but the smallest details have been shuffled around to fit the format.

Popular dungeons from WoW's past, like the Deadmines, are mostly intact, save for a few alternate routes to accommodate parties who might want to sneak around bosses or skip some altogether. You're still in for the kinds of adventures through deep caverns and ancient cities that WoW players reminisce about today. Some dungeons are lifted right from WoW's earliest era, while others mix in their revised layouts (and loot) from later expansions.

I was delighted to hear that you can still take on the challenge of avoiding every boss in Dire Maul for the bonus rewards after you slay the king, otherwise known as a "tribute run" to WoW veterans. D&D: WoW is built to capture the spirit of exploring the MMO's dungeons for the first time, before the age of datamined loot tables and YouTube guides, while also letting you relive their most iconic moments at the table.

The team calls dungeons a toolbox for DMs to tell the stories of WoW's world without the trial-and-error of the MMO's combat or the tension of deciding who the blue dagger drop should go to. Enemy encounters are curated and there are no restrictions on taking a rest or leaving and coming back later—although the dangers can grow while you're away.

Climactic battles with WoW's biggest names are in there, too, including the Lich King, Illidan, Jaina Proudmoore, and more. They're also where you'll see some of the biggest changes from the MMO. Jaina, for example, doesn't gradually chill your party during the fight, but freezes a player and strikes them with an ice lance if you don't find a way to thaw them out fast enough (the devs recommend using fire, if you've got it) instead.

On the way to the dungeons, you'll have opportunities to prepare your party through WoW's gathering and crafting professions. D&D's crafting rules didn't require a ton of changes to make this work, the team says. You'll be able to do a wisdom check for supplies or ore to mine as you explore. You can take that ore and craft items from a list of recipes, provided you're proficient with the right tools. Powerful items, like armor, will be gated by your proficiency bonus, so there's a real incentive to keep improving your skills as you go along.

D&D's renown system also isn't that far off from WoW's faction reputation system, so the team kept it fairly straightforward: You earn rewards as you climb up the ranks of trust. Becoming exalted with the Earthen Ring can unlock a charm that lets you summon a big Elemental minion or a portal to teleport across the world. The dragon aspects, WoW's oldest and most powerful factions, will even grant you the equivalent of a Wish spell if they like you enough. Rival factions, where raising your reputation with one might damage the other, can show up, too.

Everything here sounds like a smart way to handle a collab that could've barely felt like a collab at all. WoW has so much overlap with D&D already that I can imagine a version of this book that just swaps some names around and calls it a day. Instead, you can tell this was created by people who know exactly what to pull out of Blizzard's world and what to leave behind.

We were told a lot more will be revealed in the lead up to the November 12 release, particularly the way classes from WoW map onto the tabletop format. Wyatt—who spent most of the presentation eagerly answering questions from chat—had to stop himself from spoiling things too early. He also says he's already thinking of all the leftover things that could fit into a follow-up book, but wants to see how this one goes before diving back into Azeroth.

It's very easy to look at RuneScape Reignited's announcement blog or fancy trailer and assume it's a new upgraded version of the classic game—it certainly walks and talks like one, not dissimilar to the upcoming World of Warcraft: Forever. "Begin the journey anew with a year of restoration changes paving your path," et cetera. But it's actually a new character type in the existing RS3, and existing players aren't all convinced it'll be good for the MMO.

In fact, some of them have wheeled out the dragon-headed cannons for one of those Falador riots. People have gotten their yuks in: on X, PhosaniNex posted, "All 100 RS3 players in attendance for the final riot to end all riots, what a sight."

So, what is a Reignited character? Well, they'll all begin play with no progress and share an isolated economy, but they'll be able to play on existing worlds or new, Reignited-exclusive ones. Reignited and regular players can hang out together and form a clan, but they can't fight the same bosses or trade with one another. A dev blog states there will be no new updates exclusive to these new characters, and once you've selected a character type you can't switch.

In other words, it's sort of like creating an Ironman character, but not quite as lonely. While the announcement page promises the chance to play without unpopular systems like Treasure Hunter, that move away from microtransactions was actually announced at the start of this year. Rather than an overhaul unto itself, this seems more like a push to get new people trying RS3 without the fear of being 20 years behind on everything.

But for those who never left the game for OSRS, Dragonwilds, or even one of those non-RuneScape games, it feels like something that could split up the playerbase more—and while Jagex stated in the above dev blog that neither veteran or Reignited characters will be favored, some aren't convinced their progress will matter the same way anymore.

"What does everyone that has spent 1000s of hours gain by making a new account? Does this make all previous progress worthless," Reddit user RiquaaLz posted on the game's subreddit. "It's already very hard to find enough players to do group content, this is just going to fragment the player base even more." That thread has around 1,500 upvotes currently. "I am not starting over bruh this game is waaaay too grindy for that," reads a comment from Last-Horror9563.

The response is interesting to behold, personally, as someone who hasn't spent much time in the true, original RuneScape since it looked like the game people now call Old School RuneScape on Miniclip. A fresh start certainly sounds appealing to me, though I'm not sure the state of the leaderboards or the Grand Exchange are what have kept me from trying RS3 all these years. Whether this gambit will resuscitate RS3 as RS4 looms and OSRS continues to pile on new features, time will tell.

As reported by MMORPG.com, developer Jagex has announced a new MMO follow-up to RuneScape with the working title "RuneScape 4." The announcement came as part of Jagex's yearly RuneFest convention being held this weekend.

The announcement was accompanied by a brief teaser trailer showcasing the game's art style, which builds on the recently-released Dragonwilds survival game: It's like a hybrid of the latest Jagex MMO, Runescape 3, and the ascendant Old School RuneScape based on the series' 2000s heyday.

In the trailer, we see a real Dragon Quest-looking medieval town in a verdant valley under floating islands. An adventurer riding a dragon comes under attack by a three-headed dragon while a wizard watches from below. The trailer ends with the wizard welcoming a new adventurer to the city.

MMORPG.com has more details: RuneScape 4 apparently emerged out of a planned expansion for Dragonwilds. A Jagex developer said that playtesters kept asking for a more traditional, MMO take on the survival game's setting and aesthetic. Other than that, we know RuneScape 4 is being built on Unreal Engine (unclear if we're talking version 5 or the upcoming 6), and that the MMO's original, Dragonwilds expansion version was targeting release in 2027. Scaling up to being a full, new game has almost assuredly pushed that back.

If you're wondering where the "4" comes from, here's how Jagex maps RuneScape's numbered releases:

• RuneScape, 2001: The Reason for the Season.
• RuneScape 2, 2004: Introduced full 3D rendering. Old School is based on RS2 circa 2007.
• RuneScape 3, 2013: Overhauled the art and systems, the current main fork of the game.

Stay tuned for more coverage from this year's RuneFest from PCG features producer Mollie Taylor, who is on the ground at the event.

WoW: Forever's had me nostalgic for a bygone era of MMOs that seems to be enjoying a touch of a resurgence—the idea of a lived-in immersive world, versus the daily task theme park of modern MMO design. Not that I have anything against the latter, mind. Theme parks are neat and roller coasters are fun.

But I have, true to the point, been grouping up with strangers more often in a slower-burn world, partially for convenience, but also partially because the slower pace has me less hungry for rampant progress and time saving. I've gotta hike for six minutes to get to this quest anyway, why wouldn't I stop and help someone in trouble?

When I get all sappy and soft-hearted like this, I also think of The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, a documentary about a WoW player Mats Steen, who sadly died in 2014 of Duchenne muscular dystrophy—a man whose closest online friends travelled from across the world to attend his funeral.

Steen had a massive impact that I wouldn't presume to match, but in my 16 years playing MMOs (and roleplaying in them, like some kind of nerd), I've also met a lot of people who have changed my life. My first girlfriend, for instance—but I've also made a lot of friends who've become part of my social makeup, as much as any of my "real" pals.

I won't name them for privacy's sake, but one of these people—though I've only heard their voice for the better half of a decade we've known each other, for reasons I cannot share—has been a constant force of good in my life, and I hers. We've pulled each other out of some real mental swamps in the time we've known each other, and I've even met her sister in the real world through sheer accident.

Hopping from City of Heroes: Homecoming to Final Fantasy 14, we've told countless stories together in both MMOs. We know plenty about each other—she knows I write for this very website—but it's all been in the tiny, cosy window of Discord. It would not be going too far to call this person one of my best friends, and while I have a more regular balance of "real world" mates and digital friendships, the latter ones have never stopped being vital.

Ultimately, the friendships are what make these games—beyond any trick of design, art asset, raid, or loot system—special. As such, I'm carving out this week's Terminally Online to ask you all about the folks you've met in MMOs who've changed your life for the better: Please share in the comments below!

Final Fantasy 14's free trial is massive—so massive, in fact, that it's become a bit of a copy/pasted meme over the years. The sentence "have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14" is burned into our brains.

And, to be fair, it's a bloody huge one, currently letting you play for free for as long as you want right until the end of Shadowbringers (with some big limitations, mind). Still, it's a few hundred hours without a single monthly sub payment. Well, Final Fantasy 11's gonna be following in those footsteps, per the FF11 site:

The site also mentions that previously-created trial characters will also be able to once again play the game, so if you started a free trial and ran out of game time, you can hop back in.

That's a pretty huge bump—especially since it also lets players do some of the "Limit Break" quests. For context, while FF11 technically caps out at level 50, players can up that to a maximum of 99 by doing a certain questline every few levels. And they'll have all the time in the world to do it in, hooray!

Honestly, this now makes two of Square's premier MMOs very generous—and as a fan of the genre writ large, I'm happy to see genuine efforts made to keep old dogs like FF11, which is doing pleasantly well, alive and kicking. There's a dearth of new MMOs out there, so I'm just glad to see efforts to maintain the old ones.

To great effect, mind. Back in March, FF11 was getting so many new players it had to pause character creation on its busiest server for a while and, checking this auction house database, the game still has around 88,000 active players.

The blue elves might not be the only wholly original addition to World of Warcraft: Forever. Blizzard started surveying players about a list of new classes, some of which have been requested by fans for years.

Last week, a survey popped up on Blizzard's Battle.net launcher to gauge interest in future additions to WoW: Forever. Participants were told not to publicly share anything from the surveys, but, well, you know how well people listen to warnings on the internet.

The full survey was posted online by some brave soul, and in it you can see several proposed classes: Monk, Demon Hunter, Tinker, Illusionist, San'layn, Necromancer, Rune Knight, Bard, Warden, Witch and Death Knight. Each one has a short description, their role in a group, the kind of gear they'd wear, and a breakdown of some example abilities.

The Witch class, for example, is a ranged damage-dealer and support that wears cloth armor. A cauldron ability that buffs anyone who drinks from it as well as a ranged attack called "Voidbolt" that drains the caster's own life are two of their example abilities.

Bard and Tinker are two classes I always see come up whenever anyone talks about potential new classes. Blizzard's suggested version of them sounds like they'd fit right in with the rest of the roster. The Tinker description says they'd climb into their own mech to fight; Bards would perform songs to heal and buff their allies.

Returning classes, like Demon Hunter and Monk, sound pretty close to the versions that exist in other versions of WoW today. The survey specifically calls out familiar abilities that they wouldn't have in WoW: Forever, and clarifies that Demon Hunters would start at level one, rather than level eight as they do in WoW's Midnight expansion.

Even though these class outlines are pretty short, they feel considered in a way that makes me think this is something Blizzard is almost certainly going to do eventually, if not shortly after the MMO launches in November.

Plenty of people shelled out the money to play the new elves in the beta judging from how many I see running around every time I log in. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard starts selling classes, too. Ideally there would be a way to unlock them for free by playing the game, but I have my doubts about the kinds of things Blizzard would give away these days if they'd likely prove lucrative. The survey already has some players worried that any additional classes might come out considerably more powerful than the others and ruin the throwback experience. They could be right, but it's still unclear how far WoW: Forever will veer away from the oldest version of the MMO. The full release on November 4 will hopefully provide some insight into what the future holds for Blizzard's retro spinoff.

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.

The Elder Scrolls Online's developers have had a rough couple of years, starting with the scrapping of Project Blackbird in July 2025, which also led to 62 employees being laid off. Then, in July of this year, Xbox's reset tore into the studio's numbers, with a whopping 213 employees laid off from Zenimax Online. Overall, Zenimax Online's dev team dropped by roughly 60% in one year.

Which is a terrible blow, given I spoke to its development team back in January and was told it had rallied—and things were, for a while, really looking up. Refreshes to animations, a new seasonal structure, and a heaping help of experimental gameplay. Which made the aforementioned 2026 bloodbath both confusing and deeply disheartening.

I spoke with a few developers from the game to check in on how they were doing: "It is challenging," says game director Nick Giacomini, "something like this, it affects us. It affects all of us and the developers at a personal level. So we can't just pretend like it didn't happen and that it hasn't impacted us. We're human.

"At the same time, we still love this game. We love our players, and we love contributing to this and continuing to make it exciting, giving players something to look forward to. We're committed to doing so."

Giacomini himself dropped a letter to the community back in July, which echoed a lot of that same resolution—while also making the difficult choice to postpone a lot of the game's updates to 2027. "With what happened," Giacomini tells me, "That required us to take a look at schedules, see what's possible, and things needed to shift. And one of the underlying principles with that was that we didn't want to rush to just hit a date, right?

"We want [the] player experience to be as rewarding as possible to continue to surprise players and get them excited. And had we rushed it, would have put that at risk. So we wanted to give the team the space to be able to do it right, which necessarily meant pushing dates out for some things."

Giacomini says that, despite everything, the studio's not just in damage control mode: "I was just in a meeting earlier today about our plans for the end of 2027 and early 2028. So we're not just trying to figure out what to do now. We very much have an eye toward the future and how to continue to grow and excite players in this game."

Loremaster Michael Zenke views it as a means of honoring his colleagues who put in a ton of hard work already to getting ESO back on its feet: "Because ESO is here to stay, because it's not going anywhere, I personally feel like indebted to the people that we worked with, and want to make sure that the vision that they had goes out in the world and lands really successfully with the people that we love and appreciate on the community, and that's that's our long term thing that we're looking at right now."

Fortunately, Giacomini says the team has been buoyed by the community's support—and while some have been disappointed by the delays, no real ire's been directed at Zenimax Online itself: "I think our community is certainly one of the best—perhaps I'm a little bit biased—but it's one of the reasons that I love this game … We've had people reach out, we've had people post.

"We had a book that was made by our community, and it's now sitting in the office on a desk open right in the middle where everybody can see it … They wrote about what makes Elder Scrolls Online special to them, things that have stood out, and it is extraordinarily heartwarming. And it's just really it's been really incredible how they've supported us through this."

Looking forward

Mercifully, it's not like ESO's going to be completely dry before these delays—come September 28, the game'll be getting three new bits of content: The Nowhere Vault, an experimental set of puzzles, mazes, and jumping challenges put in a randomised order, The High Seas of Tamriel, an event that'll see you battling on ships and underwater, and perhaps the most interesting one: rumours.

A rumour is a special type of quest that's essentially a scavenger hunt—no quest markers, just hints. Associate game director Jason Barnes says it's designed to pull players out of a streamlined questing experience and into something a touch more immersive:

"We all have grown and up in MMOs, and I know probably [for] everyone here, our our time has changed dramatically over the years, but there was this sense of discovery and exploration [back then], and coming across something interesting where you don't really know the answer, no one's pointing to a direction and saying you have to go here or anything like that."

That's what rumours aim to do, as Barnes puts it: "You're not playing the UI; you're playing the actual game itself. Early testing and feedback has been very positive. Matter of fact, we've gotten feedback saying 'you need to make them harder, you need to make them more obscure'. So we're like, OK, cool, acknowledged."

A lot of these are hold-overs that were in the works before the layoffs of July this year, but still—it's nice to see ESO properly trying to experiment, something Giacomini is pretty key to the game's future. And those experiments have, in his mind, been successful:

"Night market is a great example … at first, players didn't quite know what to make of it. They came in and just got steamrolled right away. It was hard content, and so there were a lot of calls for like, 'Oh my god, this is so overtuned. What have you done!' But as time went by they started grouping up and they started enjoying it more … It's one of the few examples that I can think of where we didn't have to go to the drawing board."

Despite everything, there's some genuine excitement to be found still among Zenimax's developers: "I'm just really excited," says Zenke, "in general, that we are trying things. We've been making the game now for a very long time, and the way that we made the game and the best practices we developed are all really good … [But] I'm very excited about taking a hard look at like, 'Why do we do this this way? Why is this set up this way?'"

I'm not going to sit here and tell you, in this harsh and chaotic industry, that The Elder Scrolls Online is immune to future hardship—almost nothing surprises me anymore. But while it's clear that the one-two suckerpunch of layoffs and restructurings have hobbled Zenimax Online, it's still trying to keep ESO going. And in a genre that's on the ropes, I certainly hope this game can get back on solid ground without further earthquakes.

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.

My first MMO character was...

Sakura-Lola

Born: 2004? Maybe?

Game: RuneScape

As a child who was not willing to try to convince their parents to send money to a strange company on a monthly basis, I had resigned myself to looking at MMOs like Final Fantasy XI longingly from afar. After being introduced by my best friend, the browser-based RuneScape was it for me…well, at least until we got a bit older and began devoting all of our time to Gaia Online.

My recollection is hazy, but I distinctly remember selecting flowing golden locks for my avatar, sticking her in a pink polygonal crop top, and setting out on a quest for cuter clothes. A rando gave me a ring and asked if I'd like to be their internet girlfriend. After that, I saw off randos by pretending I didn't speak English (if memory serves, I was obsessed with Final Fantasy X at the time and 'Suteki Da Ne?' was my go-to conversation-killing phrase—it was incredibly effective).

Somehow, some way I ventured into either a high-level area or player versus player zone and promptly lost everything. Many such cases—but perhaps it's time I pay a visit to the ol' RuneScape account.

(Read the full article here)

My first MMO character was...

Rennyfuu, Archer

Born: ~2002-2006

Game: Priston Tale

I spent time poking around in RuneScape and Graal Online as a kid, but they didn't stick. It wasn't until my failed campaign to persuade my mom into giving me her credit card for Final Fantasy 11 that I found my true MMO gateway: Priston Tale.

The western release was in beta for years, and I spent most of that time lagging to death on a 4MB integrated GPU as the game's worst archer. I have fond memories of arguing with grown adults twice my age about winning strategies in Survive or Die—the game's big arena brawl against waves of monsters—and distinctly remember a thread on an old fan forum dedicated to complaining about me. I was a menace.

I made multiple characters before Priston Tale eventually died out and was sold to Suba Games, where I'm fairly certain it remains active. I'm sure Rennyfuu is long gone by now, but sometimes I toy with the idea of going back for a visit.

(Read the full article here)

The World of Warcraft: Forever beta has gotten less stingy about talent costs. It was a little strange that it was stingy in the first place, given the fact you probably do want to let your players test out your refreshed talent system, but hey, here we are.

Resetting your talent now costs one silver, per the WoW Forever beta development notes on the official forums: "If you have not recently changed your talents, the cost is now 1 silver to re-spec. This is temporary for the Beta only. After your first talent reset, the subsequent cost will be much higher, but it will drop to 1 silver after 1 hour has passed."

My first MMO character was...

Zarwulf, Orc Hunter

Born: 2004

Game: World of Warcraft

Zarwulf was not my first MMO character, but I'm far too addled to remember anything about playing Ultima Online in 1998, or pretty much anything about my childhood. I do remember a wee bit about what I was doing at university, though, and that was mostly playing World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies and Guild Wars.

My buddy Zarwulf had a big sword, an impressive grimace, and probably a pet wolf. And he still exists, frozen in time—a situation I'm not going to remedy by playing him again. Better to leave the past in the past. In a way, he lives on in Guild Wars 2, where I sometimes muck around as a Daredevil with the same name.

(Read the full article here)

I grew up in the 2000s with a PC but not a whole lot of money. That's the kind of combination that gets you bargain-bin Sold Out Software games from Poundland or, more so in my case, an absurd number of free-to-play online and browser-based games that were utterly pervasive across the internet.

My childhood was a never-ending revolving door of these mid-tier Flash and Java games. Some have long left my memory, a fleeting experience. But some continue to rattle around in my brain, reminding me of simpler times where I didn't have to pay taxes or subject myself to at least one hour of screen-free time before bed lest I wake up with a headache the next morning.

But where are these weird and wonderful games now? Are they still scattered across the internet? Are they in their original forms, practically untouched, or have they evolved into far deeper and darker games than they once were?

Well, as I continue to march into my 30s against my will, I've been thinking back to the games I would play as a child and asking myself just that question. So why don't we go and check in on a couple of them?

Where the hell is Puzzle Pirates now?

Puzzle Pirates is, if you haven't already guessed, an MMO where you are a pirate and you do puzzles. Every component of a ship's operation is done through different puzzles—bilging is a Bejeweled-inspired match three, sailing is a buccaneering Doctor Mario, patching the sails is incredibly similar to Pipe Dream. You get the drill.

It's an incredible niche premise, one I expected to have long sunk. Except… it hasn't? As I popped on the internet to see if the game was still kicking around, I was shocked to discover that it was. Hell, it's on Steam. Still official and everything! No private, fan-run server to be seen! A couple seconds and a mere 85mb download later and my ears were being thoroughly blasted with jaunty pirate tunes. A search through my ancient childhood email inbox revealed that my original account was unfortunately deleted in 2012, so I made a brand-new pirate called Johnpcgamer (pirates are a singular-named folk, it seems) and dove right in.

And, well, aside from being told how to purchase premium currency within the first 60 seconds of being born, it's exactly how I remembered it. There are a lot less mateys milling around these days—most of them seemed to be the real for-lifers, ones with more trophies and gold and puzzle proficiency than most of the server combines—so I dove into a few tutorial voyages with some friendly bot pirates.

As a child I mostly stuck to bilging—as far as I could remember it was one of the easiest, and it was also one of the main duties assigned to scrubs like myself. I made a start with that one, before moving on to carpentry and rigging. And the minigames still hold up surprisingly well today, unsurprising considering most of them are inspired by iconic, already-established puzzles.

The occasional mid-voyage reports were informing me that I was, unfortunately, doing a little bit shit. The puzzles are good, but they require a level of speed, foresight, and cleverness that I clearly do not possess. At least there were no real-player captains there to yell at me about it.

After sailing the high seas for a little while, I went for a quick stroll around the town of the island my ship had arrived at. It was stuffed to the brim with tailors—every business in Puzzle Pirates is player-owned, and as with all MMOs I assume fashion is the endgame—with a single inn wedged between them all.

I nipped in, hoping to partake in drinking games with some NPCs. Unfortunately, they all massively outclassed me and in a display of pirate honour, politely refused to go toe-to-toe with me in a drinking contest lest I end up in some sort of hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby scenario.

Unfortunately, much of Puzzle Pirates seems to be gated off to swabs like me. Everything is too expensive (even buying doubloons, the game's premium currency), a good handful of the minigames are paywalled behind a subscription, along with many of its systems. But that's exactly how I remember it, so I'm taking a weird sort of comfort in this deja vu.

It's strange seeing this relic of my childhood stand the test of time. A niche MMO that I'd be surprised if it was drawing even triple-digit numbers these days, still drifting along the ocean slowly but surely. I doubt I'll be going back anytime soon, but I'm happy I even have the option to in the first place.

My first MMO character was...

Maldirr, Orc Warrior

Born: ~2005

Game: World of Warcraft

Technically, my very first MMO characters were in a RuneScape account (that was later hacked during years of inactivity) and a Trandoshan force-sensitive in Star Wars Galaxies, that I only played long enough to realize the New Game Enhancements were bad.

After enough hours of watching cinematic raid clear videos on WarcraftMovies.com and daydreaming about the legendary weapon names I saw after Googling my way to Thottbot, I convinced my parents to foot the bill for a WoW subscription. My intention was to make an Orc hunter.

I misclicked. I only realized I was playing a warrior after noticing my new character didn't have a bow.

But I rolled with it, and Maldirr remained my WoW main for years, Mortal Striking his way through casual Arms DPS rotations across somewhere in the neighborhood of four expansions. Eventually, however, the thrill of big Execute numbers gave way to other curiosities, and I started putting more time into my Worgen rogue. Then my undead mage. Then my dwarf shaman, who gets the most attention during the couple times a year I pay for a month of subscription time.

When I get those resurgent bouts of the WoW bug, I still try to put a few levels into Maldirr for old times' sake. At some point, I changed his hair color from brown to gray—but he's still wearing the same old Stone Guard tabard I'd earned from too many hours in Alterac Valley, when there was nowhere I'd rather be spending my time.

(Read the full article here)

Here are those 74 seconds of scorpion-clubbing ASMR you wanted, boss. You may not like it, but this is what peak MMO gaming looks like.

World of Warcraft: Forever has a lot of clever little surprises in it that players are digging up during the beta, including this one: A hidden druid shapeshift form that activates if you're wearing the five-piece Embrace of the Viper from the Wailing Caverns dungeon.

This is, in my estimation, sick as hell, and I'm glad that Blizzard's continuing to sneak hidden mechanics and rule-breaking items into its reimagined Azeroth.

My first MMO character was...

Ovidlords, Night-elf Druid

Born: ~2006

Game: World of Warcraft

After a friend bought me a video game bundle that included Diablo 2 and WoW, I jumped into Diablo and thought the Druid seemed like the coolest thing I’d ever seen. When I made the jump to paying a monthly sub for WoW, I was ecstatic to find I could also roll a shape-shifting Druid, so Ovidlords was born.

I was a Druid tank at a time when absolutely no one wanted that. I managed to MT Gruul in the Burning Crusade when I was told that was impossible. He also eventually ended up getting our server-first Ashes of Al’ar when we beat Kael-thas.

The account has since been deleted, but I’ll absolutely always remember my bear-y first MMO character.

(Read the full article here)

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.

Like many others who carry the spiritual stain of prior MMO contact, I've been spending some time in the WoW: Forever beta. After piloting a freshly-minted orc through the introductory quests in the Valley of Trials, I emerged into the wider Durotar scrubland where I soon entered into combat with a hostile scorpion that had strayed too close to the road I was following to Razor Hill.

For the next 38 consecutive seconds, I did nothing but watch my orc slowly bludgeon that scorpion to death with a wooden club. And reader, I say this with full sincerity: Those were 38 seconds of peak gaming.

I haven't just been playing Forever to sample Blizzard's distillation of year one WoW nostalgia. I've been testing a conviction that I recently forwarded after a week with Star Wars Galaxies: a belief that MMOs would be better off if they rediscovered their lost willingness to burn more of our time.

My half-minute and change of scorpid combat has left me feeling pretty confident in the hypothesis.

The notion that slower could be better might feel antithetical to current trends in game design, particularly in MMOs. Games have given themselves over to the pursuit of acceleration: the drive to win faster, kill more, and make the numbers bigger as soon as possible—to achieve the most gaming in the least amount of time.

Judging from the ecosystems of optimization guides and meta build videos, players seem very eager to indulge. But when the rhythm of retail WoW is tuned with the assumption that even low level characters should enjoy a frenzy of special attack animations, button presses, and near-instant kill times, a meditative arachnid clubbing is a reminder of what's been lost in the exchange.

Namely, a chance to appreciate the rest of the videogame.

When I've been acclimated to years of high-speed flying mounts and an abundance of off-cooldown abilities, the contemplative pace of my orc's club-swinging opened up so much room for admiring the surrounding space—room I hadn't realized I'd been missing so badly. I could savor the way the in-game sunrise spilled over the Horde heartland's redstone crags, or the interplay of ambient wind samples and the soundtrack's intermittent war drumming.

And crucially, unlike when an MMO is doing everything in its power to propel me along a highway of reptilian brain chemicals, those 38 seconds give me time to think: about what spells I might unlock over my next few levels, which zone I might want to quest in next, or what business that troll warlock is running towards in the distance. It's time to wonder, weigh options, and linger in the concepts and possibility spaces that WoW proposes.

Knowing how WoW—and games like it—have gradually become a blur of constant doing, Forever's massive popularity is validating how much satisfaction there can be in slowing MMOs down. Maybe this time it'll stick.

My first character was...

Leetman, Human Rogue

Born: ~2004-2006

Game: World of Warcraft

My first ever character was in World of Warcraft, after—as my bio states—I pretty much begged my parents to give me a WoW subscription, and was rewarded for my articulation with a proper WoW account and a life-changingly debilitating enthusiasm for videogames. And while I did technically have a Runescape character before this, I can't remember 'em, so Leetman is here.

I was not a good rogue. In my defense, I was 10 years old—but I didn't level my poisons, I didn't reach level cap, and the height of my career was spent futzing around Un'Goro Crater. I did, however, manage to get the gold for a mount, which made me feel pretty swanky. That was a big deal back in the day.

Leetman would eventually be traded out for the troll shaman Earthborn when The Burning Crusade rolled around, but I shall remember him fondly. Perhaps his reticence to use poison was merely a question of honour—but he's deleted, now, so we shall never know.

(Read the full article here)

World of Warcraft: Forever's got me feeling nostalgic. In case you've been under a rock this week, Blizzard's released the beta for its reimagining of "Classic"—or, if you're at least 30 years old like me, "Vanilla"—World of Warcraft. It's a trip and a half, seeing these old zones touched up with just the right amount of modernisation.

I've been feeling so nostalgic, in fact, that I decided to ask my fellow writers who their first MMO character was. Or, at least, the first one they could remember. In doing so, I have discovered two things: First, we're all a bunch of mid-2000s kids. This much should not surprise you.

Secondly: It's amazing how many details we can drum up about these games, especially from 20+ years ago. You always remember your first—and if you feel the warm rose-tinted fuzzies, I encourage you to share your own first MMO character in the comments down below.

One day, I just stopped playing. You don't realise it's the last time you'll play, but it was—at least for a very long time. I always kept my account details, though. Not too long ago, in 2025, I decided to log back in after God knows how many years. I'm 34 now, but I was 33 then. I must've been 10 or under when I was playing RuneScape.

I was banned. My account had been banned for years. Some clown had stolen it and used it to do nefarious things in my name. I don't know why, but I felt a real sadness for losing that account, even despite not logging in for years. So I sent Jagex an email. It read:

And, wouldn't you know, someone at Jagex un-banned me. So I'd like to take this moment to say thank you to 'Mod Frenzy' at Jagex support. I don't know if that's a specific mod or just some collective name for the support team at the bottom of every email. Either way, they saved probably my longest running character in any videogame from near-certain banishment. Legend.

I have made the choice to min-max in WoW: Forever, something which I am starting to regret, because oh no, my hubris. See, Blizzard will be raising the level cap sometime soon to 30, and I decided I'd complete a bunch of quests, but not turn them in. But I'd forgotten that a lot of Vanilla-era quests involve picking up quest items. And I only have eight-slot bags. Help me.

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.

Judging from player interest in the WoW: Forever beta, it seems like Blizzard's got a good start at channeling nostalgia into its retirement home for aging MMO millennials. But there's only one thing that'll determine if it's a successful rebottling of the old lightning, and that'll be whether or not I can find myself shuffled back into the same game of Alterac Valley that I'd logged out of 18 hours earlier, where nothing has changed except the number of times an orc has been cursed out in text chat for wasting effort by fighting over the wrong graveyard.

Nothing else matters.

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.

How come the future in videogames is, more often than not, dark and gloomy? Where's the hope? Where's the optimism? It's all in Loftia, an MMO life sim with a delightfully cheery, eco-friendly aesthetic. And, as was just revealed at the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct, you'll be able to get your hands on it November 3.

For those of you not in the know, Loftia is an eco-optimism life sim MMO that's been in development for the last four years. You and other players inhabiting the world will each get your own floating island to call home, and you've got a bunch of sustainable ways to decorate and power your slice of sanctuary.

You can grow crops in cute hydroponic shelves, rescue animals, and go on adventures with other people. These aren't focused on combat, and will instead feature puzzles and platforming challenges. There are also community projects that everyone can join in on, so you can live out your commune dreams.

"We wanted a relaxing online world we could escape to with our friends—a third space with a welcoming community, things to do, and a home we could keep on coming back to." said Michael Su, co-founder and studio director of Qloud Games.

In the new trailer, we see a lot of the customisation on offer in Loftia. From your avatar, to your pets, to your home in the clouds, you can decorate pretty much everything. It also hints at the main point of friction that will be driving you forwards. Some world-ending event is coming, causing literal cracks in the sky islands, and it'll be down to you and everyone else to come together and figure out how to save your community.

Loftia launches into early access November 3, 2026. You can wishlist it on Steam.

Check out our Steam page with all the games, updates, and DLC featured in the show. You can also read our roundup article which includes every announcement from the show in the order it aired.

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.

I've had a very good time with Final Fantasy 14's new Beastmaster, and I've very much enjoyed the Crucible of the Unbroken—but that doesn't mean there aren't problems. While the first few boards are a great time, problems start to pop up when you try to be competitive.

Those problems have grown so numerous, in fact, that Square Enix has postponed the first season of the Crucible of the Unbroken's ranking system, as posted on the game's official site: "Since the release of beastmaster, we've seen many players enjoying the new limited job and tackling its challenges.

"That said, we have also received considerable feedback on Beastmaster's combat balance, as well as reports of issues with certain gameplay mechanics, which we are working to address. If rankings were to begin under these conditions, it would be difficult to determine whether the results reflect the intended balance of the job and its mechanics, impacting the fairness of the ranking process."

As for what the problems are, it's a little complicated: In order to get on the leaderboards for the Crucible's ranking system, you need to beat a board on the "third degree", which is, to put it plainly, really hard. But required, if you want a Tourmaline Golem Mount, which would only be given to people who land in the top few hundred players (this varies based on region size) when the season ends.

This clashes up against the scoring system itself. In order to get more points, you need to get board bonuses.

Some of these bonuses make sense—things like not failing mechanics, taking damage, and the degree bonuses themselves. Others, though, are a bit of a headscratcher: You get more points if you use only three familiars (rather than the permitted 15), don't use campsites, feed, spend coins, or get gear, and stick to a single familiar type.

If you want to place on the leaderboard to get that mount, you have to basically not engage with the systems that make the mode interesting to begin with—that is, tailor-fitting a roster to each fight. This'd be a little like, if in World of Warcraft's Mythic+ system, you got more points by not using your talent trees.

As a result, players have been trying to figure out ways to cheese stuff: Harsh conditions are known to prompt min-maxing, after all. Which, given there's a mount with a little FOMO added, is a recipe for the kind of player dissatisfaction that sinks systems. Which I think would be a great shame!

Personally, I think the Crucible could do well to take some more pages out of existing roguelike's books—like Hades's Heat system, for instance, where players get to pick and choose what modifiers they need to play under, rather than systematically mandating that players drop a bunch of interesting mechanics to chase a high score. Scrapping the reward being tied to landing on the leaderboard (something which would force players to min-max even if they don't want to) seems smart, as well.

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.