World of Warcraft: Forever looks—well, pretty interesting, all told. Rather than just being a Season of Discovery-style reimagining of Classic, Forever promises to be a full-on remake of classic-era WoW. Reimagined class trees, new raids, and $30 elves. Don't think about the $30 elves too hard.
But it does beg the question, why is Blizzard doing this rather than, say, developing WoW 2? It worked out swimmingly for ArenaNet's Guild Wars series, after all. Speaking to IGN, Forever's principal designer Kris Zierhut says: "I think one of the things that's singularly great about WoW is we have this game and this world and this design that has been continuously developed for the last 25 years.
"And we keep making it better. We made the graphics better, we made the rendering better, we made the lighting better; all that new stuff we showed on stage today."
That is, in fairness, true—and true of retail, as well. Part of the reason why Classic works as a concept is because modern WoW is almost straight-up a different game—new models, animations, completely reimagined class designs, and a visual aesthetic that still holds up. Forever looks to be taking full advantage of retail's steady march of progress.
Zierhut says as much: "We've also made the way the engine draws things move more efficiently. The way the server runs, handling players and moving them around, and all the things that handle spells and combat, all of that's been made more efficient and better over the years. We have this incredible engine and server infrastructure driving the game that is second to none. Why would you throw that away and start over?"
I maintain that a WoW 2 wouldn't be superfluous. With all of that progress comes a lot of technical debt (see: player housing getting borked by fixing an elevator in a 13-year old raid), as well as a ton of design choices. A direct sequel's a chance to start over and challenge basic assumptions about the game's design—the Guild Wars series becoming an increasingly action-focused game, for instance.
There's also a second argument—and this, I feel more torn on—that Forever is trying to re-capture an outdated design. On the one hand, the cynic in me understands that modern MMOs are a hell of a lot different for good reason. We datamine new information about new patches weeks ahead of when they come out, we optimise everything down to the last, minute detail. We hug these games so hard that we wring all mystery out of them.
On the other hand, there has been a yearning, a rumbling. Our own Lincoln Carpenter said as much in our MMO column: "It's hard to argue that the MMOs of today aren't better designed than their older iterations. And yet, it's the moments when I step off the treadmill where they still feel the most magical." If Forever offers an alt-history not just of WoW, but of modern MMO design in general? Then I'm on board.
