Here are some things I did in the 25 hours I played World of Warcraft: Forever so far:
- I spent about an hour traveling back and forth between continents to acquire a completely useless torch item.
- Spent another hour separately taking a friend to pick up the exact same thing (sorry Sarah)
- I did a similar hike for another quest that I haven’t even completed yet, for which the reward is an almost entirely useless sleeping bag.
- Another half hour hike through Mulgore, the Barrens and Durotar just to sign a guild charter in the capital
- I’ve visited my class trainer several times, for which I have to return to Kalimdor from where I am in the Eastern Kingdoms, which means returning to Undercity, getting on a zeppelin, finding the trainer in Orgrimmar, then traveling all the way back to get back to the quests.
- Fishing. Lots of fishing
- I idly watched as an Alliance Paladin tried to kill all of Glint’s NPCs, one by one, by themselves, seemingly for no reason.
- I died (and ran back to my body) about seven or eight times trying to kill a group of mages too high level for me to face.
- Grouped up with a few other people to kill worgen for an hour to obtain a total of six “Worgen Bits”, a quest item that one would think would be common on the corpses of these werewolves, but turned out to be incredibly rare.
Does that sound horrible? Well…maybe. When I think about how I could finally spend that time weeding my garden or doing all the real-life tasks I keep putting off, yes. A bit of a waste of time. Such a waste of time, in fact, that I’ve barely touched most of the new content in WoW: forever. I played Skyborne in beta: their starting island is good. A little too modern for me, but good. I definitely encountered a few new quests mixed in here and there, and the aforementioned torch and sleeping bag missions were new as well (although I already did the first in beta and the second in Season of Discovery). But I haven’t even touched the new dungeons. I’m a few months away (at my current pace) from new raids. I’m not even high enough to explore the Riverlands yet. Might as well play ClassicRIGHT?
But as I go back and forth and up and down Azeroth, I tilt my camera. This draw distance! I see Mount Hyjal, misty, looming in the distance, expecting the maximum level. The sun rises and sets over the plains and swamps. It filters through the trees and the fog. I wave to the other travelers I meet on the road. I sit around the campfires and chat with the others who gather. People buff me with their class’s spells when they see me, or resurrect me if they see my corpse so I don’t have to struggle to get back to it. Yesterday, a person completed a quest just as I was starting and volunteered to stay (wasting an extra 20 minutes of their time) to help me complete it as well. Another time, the game’s layer system glitched while I was on a zeppelin and about 200 of us all came upon Undercity at the same time, causing a humorous panic from the people already inside. Today myself and two others started a long, drawn out conversation in our area’s general chat while I was out fishing early in the morning, simply saying “Hello” in the hopes that someone would respond. It ended with someone telling us silly, made-up stories about a wizard named Daniel.
Somehow this time no longer seems like such a waste. It’s… calming, I think. The slowness, the friction. Much of this has always been present in WoW ClassicOf course. But I think the little added touches Forever– the extra quests for things like torches and sleeping bags, the campfires, the layering ensuring my world is always filled with other people – give the experience a new magic that wasn’t there before. In the past, the slowness of Classic It felt more like a product of the times we were in, as no one had yet streamlined MMORPGs to eliminate it. But Forever adopts this rhythm and leans on it as a design feature rather than a flaw, making these moments rewarding on purpose rather than by casual accident. More often than ever, you find yourself in situations where there is nothing to do but say hello to other people and make a brief connection, or sit and admire the way the new lighting plays on the ripples of the river. It is Wowbut with full awareness. And mindfulness is something I desperately need these days.
Given this, it was really very difficult for me to put World of Warcraft: Forever down, even in the face of another brilliant game launch happening simultaneously. In my brain, a to-do list is filled with things I want to do: a dozen quests, of course, plus this extra quest I have to turn in on the other continent, and this sleeping bag scavenger hunt I’m in the middle of. I have to visit my class trainer in Orgrimmar or Thunder Bluff here soon to learn new skills, as well as all the profession trainers, as well as the bank. There are some dungeons I’d like to run soon. All of this is saved in my brain in the same way as my actual to-do list, but with the twist that I don’t dread any of it. I look forward to participating in all aspects, although more than half of them will inevitably be time-consuming, even time-consuming affairs. I’ll get to level 60 eventually, but I’m in no rush to do so. To my editors: I’m sorry I’m inevitably going to take so long with this review. But there are so many wonderful and unnecessary distractions between here and there that I can’t help but indulge in bliss and mild boredom for another 50 hours or so.
Gn tech
