Is it racials? Datamined mounts? Minmaxers or just crying for the sake of it?

Every time new Forever assets get datamined, whether it’s a mount, armor set, or something else, it feels more and more like the impassioned presentation at BlizzCon about preserving the Classic art style as a core design pillar was just empty rhetoric. Between the use of retail character skeletons, SD models apparently not even being an initial consideration, blue elves, and the increasingly retail looking assets, it’s hard to feel like they’re taking that commitment seriously.

Classic’s distinctive art style is a fundamental part of its identity and one of the things players love most about it. Conversely, the shift in art direction over the years is one of the things many Classic players actively dislike about modern WoW. We want new content that looks and feels like it belongs in Classic, not retail visuals repackaged for Classic+.

The issue isn’t new assets. It’s that so much of what we’re seeing feels disconnected from Classic’s original visual identity.

Do Blizzard and Classic players just have fundamentally different ideas of what “preserving the Classic art style” actually means? Or was all that talk at BlizzCon just hype marketing while the actual plan was to reuse retail assets for efficiency?

Matt Heyman (Lead Environment Artist on WoWF) said they added Blizzards in Alterac Mountains, so I checked it out. He also said that the weather has a lot of variation in terms of density & intensity, so maybe it gets more intense than these screenshots.

Mages are now the only class that has a talent specialization with more spendable talent points, options, and modifiers to abilities than levels to spend them on.

Frost spec now has more than 51 talent points to spend. Holy cow, I don’t understand how mages get this much review, rework, improvements, and pandering to streamer outcry. I regret even bringing this up because I would bet Blizzard will see this and optimize it even further by turning 0/5 frost talents into 0/2 or 0/3.

Also how the hell do mages get a 2/2 tier 1 arcane talent that effectively doubles their dps at NO MANA COST in a ridiculously easy to hit proc? Compare missile barrage to literally ANY other tier 1 talent across ANY other class. This is so unbelievably overtuned for its position and cost in the talent tree.

Warlocks out there spending 5/5 talent points in 2026 to make a 2 second cast corruption DoT instant so it can do 65 after 18 seconds. Shaman spending 5/5 talents to do 5% more damage from a 65 damage shock at their level.

I’m beyond stumped at this point.

There we go, now people can stop dooming for a bit

I don't think the answer here is to nerf Mage, or to be upset they received some fantastic changes. I think we should be pushing for this level of detail in each class/spec. Elemental Shaman even after this rework looks so half baked in comparison.

I would argue a lot of specs/classes in the game are feeling pretty good, but if they could give them this level of tuning pass, they'd be perfect

I mean, hell, when you cried about specs, at least there was a realistic chance that one spec was really underperforming and stuff, but the racial stuff is just plain stupid.

Racial are flavor at best, and still we have people in here who seriously cry about 2% crit vs 2% crit damge, going like "You see, if your raid only has Dwarf Warriors instead of Human Warriors, you will clear Onyxia 4,7 seconds slower. Dwarfs are totally unplayable!"

Honestly? All you minmaxing spreadsheep humpers totally lost it and should really be sentenced to at least a week away from any social media, restriced to a grass field you have to touch at least five times per minute...

For the boomers and their grandkids

Disclaimer: The last time I posted the duel element of my census, some people really got agitated. So I want to make something clear this time, this is just a fun thing I'm doing because I love data and statistics. I do not claim this to be representative of anything and I'm sure I could present, and collect, the data better. If it still somehow offends you, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to do, you can just ignore this.

How to read the grid: read it left to right. The class on the left is the one the % is about. For example, Mage (left) vs Hunter (top) is 32%, so Mages beat Hunters 32% of the time.

The day before the big tournament, half the Horde was outside Org warming up, so I logged every duel I could see, spent almost the entire day on two accounts. That’s about 3000 Horde duels between almost 700 different players.

Interesting observations:

• Priests simply dominate Rogues: 65 - 13
• Paladins seem to be the most consistent class, favourites to a degree against every other class
• Warriors managed to actually hold their own, and even come out on top, against Mages.
• Hunters did equally well against all classes as Paladins or even better, except against.. Paladins.
• Priests, originally the expected favourite, seem to vary a lot depending on the opponent, good against some, worse against others.
• Trolls and Orcs seem to slightly be the favourites, followed by Undead. Taurens fall a bit behind and Skyborne even further so.

All the data is on https://lifeonazeroth.com/#duels (filter by Horde). You can hover a player to see how they did against each class.

On the site’s rankings: “Best record” isn’t raw win %. It rewards a strong record over a short lucky one, so 31–1 beats 7–0 (Wilson score, if you’re curious). Far from perfect, but it’s the best I can do in the time my toddler is asleep.

Human:
2% extra crit for swords sounds a bit OP
Result: Make all weapons have 2% crit

Orc:
Extra crit for axe sounds a bit OP
Result: Make all weapons have crit

Troll:
Passive hp regen, sounds nice
Result: Twice the value

Dwarf:
Getting one extra bread or cheese per treasure chest

Skyborne:
Lets triple the haste passive and reduce their cds?

Undead:
4x the proc rate
25x the cooldown
Only passive dmg cd (which equals to less than 1%), no dmg cd

Yes, Im joking around here, but also its true to a certain extent.
Undead is severely lacking dps wise now with Totg 25x cd increase in addition to not having any offensive cds
Compared to:
Orcs which have offensive cd, passive crit, defensive cleanse cd and stun reduction.
Humans having pvp trinket for stuns, which is the most used cc, 2%!!! passive crit and stealth detect cd.

I had plans rolling as undead warrior for the first time, but that plan went straight to the grave, literally

The Skyborne's permanent Dalaran portal has been removed from the Beta.

A lot of people are complaining, but this is a good change.

Part of the philosophy of Classic involves travel time, allowing you to fast travel to different zones invalidates the world and what they set out to do in Forever.

Instead of homogenizing all of the races, give the players more choice WITHIN the race.

Concept

• When creating a character, you can BUILD your race a little.
• You can pick one power per row.
• You make all of these selections on creation.
• You can respec by visiting your racial leader.
  • Important for noob protection. Should have a 30d cooldown.

Pros

• You can pick things that fit your class better while still playing the race you think is coolest.
• More player agency and racial fantasy without resorting to homogenization.
  • Example: You could customize your Orc Mage to be more spiritual so that it can be just as viable as a Troll mage. Another Orc might choose melee racials instead. Choice circumvents homogenization while maintaining the spirit of vanilla racials.
• Races can have multiple OP racials to choose from, but only one active at a time.
• Potential for unlocking extra choices through reputation grinds (buzzword: horizontal prog).
• Infrastructure for expanding race options without bloating race selection.
  • Example: Mag'Har Orc could be added into the base Orc by adding extra cosmetics and a third row of powers. Because you can only pick one power per row, this doesn't cause race-bloat or powercreep. For other races, you could even add more body types.
• The racial leader as the respeccing service will result in players of that race diagetically hanging out around their respective leader. Yummy RP flavor.

Cons

• Might be overwhelming for new players.
• This would take work to create/balance.
• Potential for an unchecked row to resort in an ufun obligation to constantly respec.
• Tell me more cons in the comments

There will always be meta options UNLESS all racials are purely cosmetic/homogenized. No matter your thoughts on meta-picking your race-class-combos, or if you think all racials should be cosmetic/fun only, I think we call all agree that the homogenization of racials is by far the most boring "solution" and is anything but the spirit of classic or RPGs in general.

I strongly believe that adding more agency WITHIN the races themselves would solve almost all of the current issues the dev team and playerbase is facing regarding racials.

I wanna see how this is the worst thing ever and blizzard is ruining the game. kgo

Stop importing retail models. You already have what you seek within.

Doesn't this go against the core pillar of "Protect and nurture social experiences"?

+5% hp from stamina and +1% hit

This spectral wolf from Cataclysm is already there for Blizzard to use. It looks better than the datamined spectral wolf being posted around imo. The "spectral" effect looks and blends in better than the new one. Thoughts?