WoW: Forever's Beta Was Pure Magic. No One Knows What Happens Next

Published Nov 3, 2026, 4:01 PM EST Blizzard's retro MMO is about to sail into uncharted waters, but right now, it's clearly something special Image: Blizzard Entertainment The first thing I did in the World of Warcraft: Forever beta was roll a Troll. It was an instinctive response; my original WoW character, all the way back in 2005, was a Troll, and the sun-baked plains and dustbowls of Durotar and The Barrens will always be my Azerothian homeland. Naturally, the first thing I wanted to see in WoW: Forever's reimagining of classic WoW was how these environs look in the game's gorgeous new rendering. I only took the character to level 6, however. I realized that this was the character I'd want to play and the path I'd want to follow in the live game when it launches this week, on Nov. 4, and I didn't want to spoil that experience. At the same time, I felt a professional obligation to check out Forever's brand-new race, the Skyborne elves, and their flying-island starting zone, Zephras Isle. So I started again, with a Skyborne Druid. I had a nice time. I experimented with the official gamepad support and found it very useful, if not a natural fit for every facet of WoW's complex interface. I marveled at the developers' ability to write quests and build landscapes in the classic WoW style, effectively unlearning two decades' worth of evolving game design. Here is an MMO that is simultaneously tougher and more relaxing than the modern game. It's less directed and has a much slower pace. It's dangerous to battle more than two everyday monsters at a time, and you will sometimes dip below 80% health while questing (unthinkable in modern WoW). This is a game that forces you to take your time, sweat the details, cover ground slowly, and live in the moment. But still, something felt off. I didn't quite buy the Skyborne, and their free-floating home felt like a cop-out to me. It's an illustration of the difficulty Blizzard will have finding ways to expand this old world without stepping on its iconic status, or on the 20 years of accumulated lore that follows it. (WoW: Forever does not exist in a parallel universe; it's set in the main WoW timeline during the same period as original WoW, and therefore can't contradict anything that happened later.) Also, while I was enjoying the game, I found it easy to set aside; I wasn't as gripped by it as I was in 2005, or during the Wrath of the Lich King or Legion expansions. Image: Blizzard Entertainment Then I departed Zephras Isle and sailed down to Azeroth proper, and everything clicked into place. I was, suddenly, as enveloped as I had ever been by WoW, which is as enveloped as I have ever been by any game ever made. One cause of this delayed reaction is baked into the design of classic WoW. Below level 10, it's a simple grind that just gets you situated in the world. It's between levels 10 and 20 that the game really comes alive and sinks its teeth into you. The vistas expand; the opportunities for adventure branch and multiply in every direction. You enter the hubbub of capital cities and start participating in the world's economy. You unlock air taxis (fast travel is extremely restricted in WoW) that unfurl the massive continents beneath you. You choose a class specialization and start to develop more involved combat routines. You enter your first dungeons alongside other players. You begin to get an inkling of the staggering scale of the world Blizzard built back in the early 2000s. It's still one of the most thrilling gear-changes I've ever experienced in a game. WoW: Forever's development team has captured the experience perfectly and smoothed out its bumps expertly — without sacrificing the original game's spirit, which is what is attracting so many nostalgic lapsed players (and a good proportion of new players) to Forever. The classes feel distinctive yet tuned, the leveling is well-paced and devoid of ugly troughs, there's always more than enough to do. The game is absolutely humming. This is WoW, not as it was, but as it was meant to be. Image: Blizzard Entertainment In the beta, I ran a few dungeons: Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, the new Ruins of Lordaeron. There's a new looking-for-group system that's something like an organized want-ad board; it seems clumsy compared to modern WoW's instant matchmaking, but in reality I found groups pretty quickly. You can flag your playstyle as "learning," "relaxed," or "competitive." The point of the system is to encourage communication between players, and it works. Every "relaxed" group I entered was just that: polite, friendly, willing to talk and be flexible, and not in the wordless, impatient rush that characterizes dungeon-running in modern WoW. There was real camaraderie between players who didn't know each other. I realized how sorely I'd missed this. WoW: Forever is also unexpectedly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. I've never seen a remaster quite like this. The original textures and art assets (though you can opt to use more detailed "HD" character models), in all their chunky, rough-hewn charm, are bathed in cutting-edge lighting, with dramatic fog and weather effects and beautiful water. These work with WoW's real-time, 24-hour diurnal cycle to create an incredibly strong sense of place, stronger than so many more graphically rich game worlds. Image: Blizzard Entertainment It is not shallow to say this is, perhaps, the best reason to play WoW: Forever — certainly if, like me, you have a longstanding affection for Azeroth. The first of the development teams' four guiding principles is "the world is the main character," and Forever revives one of the all-time great game worlds in a way that's simultaneously dazzling and 100% authentic. Exploring this world, you can sense the passion of the Forever development team. They have set themselves the task of expanding on classic WoW without ever raising the level cap past 60 and turning it into the content treadmill it became. This sounds difficult; I'm not sure if it's even possible. But, in the short term, and based on my experience of the beta, they've created something truly magical, with a reason to exist that goes beyond pure nostalgia. WoW: Forever cracks one of the most influential and brilliant games of all time out of the amber that WoW Classic preserves it in, along with everything that made it special, and gives it room to live and breathe.