This new race offers some new class combos such as druid and shaman for the alliance. Basically, what happened is right before the humans became afflicted with the curse of flesh from Tyr, there was a small offshoot of humans who were exiled for their use of aquatic magic. and they ended up settling with Neptulan and became worshippers of the tides. Over time, this turned their skin blue and they have been rediscovered on a mysterious island previously covered by a mysterious mist.

And now they are ready to join the Alliance.

Meet the Bluemens. They are allowed to play Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Shaman, Druid. Their racials include Gilborn, which allows them to swim faster. And they also have the Bloomin' Spirit, which gives them increased chance to collect additional Murloc Fins. and fish oil when killing Murlocs and Naga. Let me know what you think. Druid forms include a water bear, a sea lion as their cat form, and a really fast dolphin for their aquatic form. And their travel form is a really fast piranha.

This is likely something Metzen would approve of, given the fact that they worship one of the elemental lords in the pre established lore. Also, their starting area doesn't exist on either continent. Instead of floating above, it is submerged below and contains retail assets, so that way you know that we're dealing with a really cool new race concept here. Let me know what you guys think.

People need to just understand this, and everything makes sense.

Streamers...

• Donations of money even though they are already wealthy.
• Direct access to the devs.
• No need to play the game, they will be given what they want.
• Special perks, special rules and accommodations.
• Avoidance of accountability and consequences when breaking the rules.
• Provide nothing of value to people that play the game, only to those that own it. In fact, they often lower the quality of the game for other people. (Which megaservers make it impossible to avoid)
• Are not actually skilled at what makes them money.
• They even have ridiculous entertainment, like hosting a $100 000 duelling tournament in a level 30 beta. Its almost like having a fake flying car.

In WoW of course, so its not serious at all. Doesn't make it less true.

Thoughts?

Note: I don't give a shit about the addon and will happily pirate it on day one. I don't care how people choose to play and if they'd like to rush to 60 - I will too.

This is a community event. Yes, Blizzard is not officially hosting the tournament. They only supporting it with the custom duel area, they've discussed it and brought attention to it on their official podcasts and whether people want to acknowledge it or not, they obviously kept an eye on the 'meta' as it shapes perception of the game as well as worked as free advertisement for their product.

Would it be so unreasonable for Blizzard to expect their "partners" to not blatantly advertise an addon that is clearly exploiting a loophole in the TOS to make money? Even if you're the person who's about to explain (again) how it's technically a free addon, it goes completely against the spirit of the rule and against the spirit of their so-called pillars.

How has this community lowered their expectations to these depths? Why are people so afraid to expect more?

Yesterday I set up my camp and someone said 'thx'. My heart was pounding but I managed to type 'yw' once my hands stopped shaking so much. He layered before it was sent but I still think we're BFFs now. I'll probably be the best man at his WoW wedding.

Kudos to the devs for making Azeroth social again!

Hi there.

I've been seeing a lot of people wonder who the hell Tipsout is, and why he seems to be some sort of plant that came out of nowher...well yeah, he is a plant, but he's more. Just wanted to point out how scummy and shady he is so you people knew who you're dealing with. I’ve been around the wow scene for years, and i’ve watched tips out come and go. his recurring involvement feels opportunistic to me, and seeing him promoted again doesn’t erase the reasons people have distrusted him.

Here’s the history people keep referring to, with sources and accusations identified as accusations.

2019 : the construction-business allegations

Commenters accused him of involvement in false payment claims for unfinished work at a construction business associated with his family.

contemporary discussion

2019 : the tournament prize-money accusation

It's also alleged that tips out agreed on stream to increase a tournament prize pool following a donation, failed to pay the full increase, and banned them after they questioned him about it.

September 2019 : the layering-exploit controversy

Tons of players accused him of deliberately using a layering exploit, receiving loot, and then describing it as testing. The resulting argument also involved accusations of streamer favoritism over punishment.

blizzard thread

2020–2021 campaigns : otk and softgiving’s charity fundraising

This one goes beyond social media accusations. Jacob wolf and Hunter Cooke investigated softgiving using tax records, contracts, correspondence and archived fundraising pages.

They reported that roughly 42% of $6.2 million raised across its 2020-2021 campaigns went toward softgiving’s commissions and expenses, including influencer fees, and documented inadequate disclosures. that percentage covers multiple campaigns and creators, not just otk.

otk participated in fundraising through the company and, according to the investigation, did not respond to requests for comment. Softgiving disputed the reporting. the investigation doesn’t establish that tips out personally pocketed donations, but it raises substantial questions about oversight and transparency at an organization he helps lead.

The investigation in question

September 2023 : the creator league blockchain controversy

otk was also involved in creator league, whose paid community passes used blockchain technology that wasn’t disclosed in the initial promotion. Tipsout said otk had been told there was no nft/crypto component.

The organizer acknowledged inadequate disclosure, disputed that the passes were nfts, postponed the league and offered refunds. another business partnership where the audience wasn’t initially given the full picture...and another reason to question the due diligence behind these promotions.

reporting and tips out’s response

The current forever tournament : accusations of protecting streamers over gold buying

Now commenters are questioning whether his tournament will actually enforce its gold-buying rules against prominent streamers. his announcement promises disqualification and lifetime bans for explicitly confirmed gold buying; critics argue that the wording leaves room for selective enforcement. one commenter also alleged that he was joking about gold buying with payo shortly before issuing the announcement.

The announcement and criticism

these incidents have different levels of evidence, but “people just randomly hate him” is a lazy dismissal of the history. Personally, i’m tired of the promotion and the expectation that another event should automatically earn him goodwill. organizing something for classic doesn’t put his conduct, partnerships or business judgment above scrutiny.

I genuinely believe the guy is an absolute POS, so beware of that guy.

Early talk of quantum sharding and AI managed layering dissolving immersion emerge as focal point for community discussion.

GJ blizz

Eeeeerm acdually this is forever not classic, and a 2021 BMW 5 Series 530i is inline with warcraft lore, havent you seen the latest xolatath WoW cinematic?

The SD models in Forever use the HD skeletons from Retail. On most races this is fine and the difference is hardly noticeable, but on others it's really obvious - male Tauren (pictured), male Nelf and male Undead in particular.

The Tauren's arms now flare outward from the body, rather than parallel to it. I think they're also slightly longer. This creates the illusion of narrower shoulders and a less imposing stature on Tauren - who are meant to be the most physically imposing of all races.

The idle animation doesn't help either. Their breathing is more exaggerated, giving that bouncier 'retail' feel. The same can be said of male Nelves and their weird side-to-side swaying.

Blizzard actually already have made small adjustments, like fixing the neck position that male Nelves have in Retail (which I think has gone down unanimously well with male Nelf players) So a couple more tweaks would go even further <3

I hope that Blizz's animators will do some adjustments to the skeletons here and there in the future. IMO Tauren and Nelves just don't look as cool as they used to.

(Obligatory note to say I love Forever and I'm mega excited for launch. This is just constructive feedback that people have made before, but I wanted to lend another voice to).

Edit: I know Blizz already re-made the Classic running animations on these models, and they look great. Just goes further to show they can & are willing to make adjustments, so it's useful to provide this feedback.

srsly every zone you get to a horde city and its like 1 inn 2 huts 1 tower surrounded palisade walls

look at riverglades alliance x horde cities comparisson

Wow Forever kind of killed my desire to play TBC and my guilds desire to raid. I had never done BT or Sunwell before so a bit bummed that I probably won't now. But I didn't want to pug it. Just seemed way more stressful than it was worth.

I know its sounds stupid, but I really didn't want to leave my character just stood by the mailbox in Shattrath for the rest of time. I Played this character more than maybe any of my previous characters (apart from maybe my WotLK mage). In total I put 15 days, 4 hours, 43 mins into it, which isn't that much compared to other players, but is pretty much all the free gaming time I have.

So decided I would find a nice place to leave him. Went to a peak in Nagrand, figured it was the kind of place you could sit and rest for a while.

See you all in Forever.

Just wanted to share some feedback in the hopes that someone at Blizzard is lurking and taking notes. They've updated the UI a few times now but I think we're still missing the mark.

What a great day of duels! Definitely some upsets on individual performances but the results by class I think are also surprising. Much of the chatter around the classes had Hunter, Priest and Warlock as top contenders, with Shamans closer to a wildcard based on how well they could connect and RNG. Warrior was considered the worst, and that was reflected in only 80 (of 1380) players competing as Warrior.

What we saw was Priest and Hunter substantially underperforming expectations and Paladins exceeding them, with Warlocks as strong as expected. The vast majority of the 6-0 players were Warlocks and Pallys, with Warriors having zero 6-0 players.

This table is counting the number of wins each player ended with by class. This includes up to and including round 6, not any of the tiebreakers or additional qualifiers.

I took this data and the duel level results and made a few plots. First is the win rate for each class, averaging over all of its class matchups. This also showed Pally and Warlock ahead of the pack, priest behind them and slightly above mages, and a cluster of the other classes, with warrior trailing.

The next is what % of players for that class achieved each count of wins. Warlock and Pally have a substantially higher rate of 6-0, 5-0, and 5-1 results compared to all other classes, again with Warrior trailing. Following that is a heatmap for the same data.

The last is the matchups for each class combination read as the row vs the column. For example Mages won 25% of its 63 games against warlocks. From this we can see Pally only has trouble with mages on average, and Warlocks have no unfavorable matchups. Priest had bad matchups against Pal, Warlock and Shamans, were even with Druid and favorable against the rest. Pal, Warlock and Shamans making up a substantial amount of the competitor pool contributes to their lack of 6-0 results.

Hopefully this was interesting to you as well! It still is anyone's game tomorrow, Pally especially will have less access to their CDs per duel with the best of 3 format.

for real though, what do we have to do to get the original skeleton back?

https://raider.io/events/the-forever-open/swiss/standings

Here's the class matchup grid from the Forever Open qualifiers so far, built from the Raider.IO results. That's 2,000 of roughly 4,900 matches, so it will still move. Read it across: the class on the left against the class on top. The last column is each class against everyone.

Live version, updated every 15 minutes: lifeonazeroth.com (Forever Open tab). It also has spec win rates, winning talents, the talent trees everyone entered with, the current top 4 of each class, and every player with their record, spec and match history, searchable.

Some things that stand out:

• Warlocks are on top at 63%, just ahead of Paladins at 62%. That's not what the open-world duels I posted earlier showed: there, Hunters and Paladins had the best records and Warlocks were at 54%. But that same data showed Warlocks were the class that beat the top duelists most often, and that matches what's happening here.
• Hunters dropped the most, from 63% of the open-world duels I saw to 46% here.
• Druids went the other way, from 37% to 51%.
• Demonology is the best spec at 67%. 89% of Warlocks play it, and three out of four Warlocks entered with the exact same build, 5/21/0.

My guess at why: Paladins and Hunters are easier to play consistently, so they win a lot of everyday duels. Warlocks are harder but have a higher ceiling, and a tournament is full of players who can reach it.

Note: I'll make another post with the final grid once the qualifiers are over, unless I've fallen asleep by then. Either way the site will have the final numbers. Posting it now because there is a good chance I might fall asleep, toddler parenting is great but drains you.

Update: Just as I finished writing this post I see that the updated grid now has Paladins on top, a fierce race.

I've been roaming around Elwynn Forest pretty much since launch.

Back in the day I was feared. I used to cause absolute mayhem. People would literally bring their friends just to stand a chance against me.

Nowadays?
Paladins and Priests are SOLOING me. Mages just freeze me in place while I helplessly watch my health disappear.

I've had the same abilities for 22 years. No buffs, no reworks, nothing. Meanwhile, everyone else keeps getting stronger with every patch.

They're theorycrafting every little detail, using addons and all kinds of new tech to squeeze out every possible advantage.

And what do I get? Nothing.

Same abilities, same rotation, same miserable existence.

Does Blizzard even playtest this game from my perspective? Do they care at all how this feels?

I'm seriously considering just not spawning anymore.

- Hogger, Elwynn Forest

I originally created AutoBiographer in 2019 and have used it to track my all my characters' adventures over the past 7 years, and I have updated it for WoW Forever with some exciting new features. You can track and replay your journeys and see your characters' progressions, view detailed stats and events, make notes & reminders, share your milestones with others, and more!

Download link: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/autobiographer

I would really appreciate anyone with beta access to test and report any issues or feedback. Thanks!

Major features include:

• Adventure journal: Keep a searchable history of your character’s achievements and experiences.
• Statistics and summaries: Explore combat, progression, economy, social, travel, and class-specific statistics.
• Map replay: Watch your recorded journey unfold on a map and see how your character's appearance has evolved throughout that journey.
• Gear history and snapshots: Revisit your equipment changes and character builds.
• Notes and player ratings: Keep account-wide notes about players, creatures, items, and quests, with note previews and player ratings in tooltips.
• Tasks and reminders: Create a personal checklist with inventory-based and location-based reminders.
• Milestones and storytelling: Celebrate milestones as they happen, and share stories about your accomplishments while resting at campfires.
• Automatic screenshots: Capture level-ups, boss kills, and achievements.
• Forever content indicators: Identify items and creatures added in WoW Forever through their tooltips.
• Unit history tooltips: See your recorded kill count for enemies, or your duel record and time grouped with friendly players.

I started leveling a Tauren on forever and I noticed the char fells different than usual. Can anyone tell me what is going on here?

One looks Gigachad, the other one looks like he needs to take a shit asap! Plus look at the weapon size.