You can play the first several hours of World of Warcraft: Forever and miss a lot of the changes Blizzard slipped into the early leveling experience. There are new quests and NPCs, but they barely stand out if you don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of the MMO.
Now that players have had enough time to hit the beta’s level 20 cap, they’re starting to find what makes WoW: Forever different from a 1:1 remake of the old game. Items that break rules, like an axe that lets you mine ore without the mining skill, tease what’s in store when the full game is out on November 4.
That axe, for example, drops off of an enemy in the Deadmines dungeon. You can use it to mine materials 30 times before it presumably breaks. Loot multiple of them and you can circumvent the way professions are usually meant to work in WoW: Most people pick up a gathering profession and use the materials to make gear with a crafting profession. The new axe lets you run two crafting professions—a luxury almost nobody had in 2004.
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Players have also found a new sword that enables a playstyle for mages that was only a dream before. The Coldflame Saber—found in the Shadowfang Keep dungeon—has a unique bonus that causes melee attacks to deal fire damage to frozen targets. Normally mages want to be as far away from enemies as they can, but this sword enables a ‘battle mage’ playstyle that would’ve gotten you kicked from a group if you tried it in the past.
Coldflame Saber
from r/classicwow
The concept of adding items that turn the old MMO on its head isn’t technically new. Blizzard ran a limited-time mode called Season of Discovery where breaking the game was the entire point. Mages could stand in the frontlines and tank dungeons like a warrior in it. I don’t get the sense that WoW: Forever will be quite as absurd from the start, but some of the new items suggest Blizzard won’t be holding back the weird stuff just for max-level players.
There’s no doubt Season of Discovery was a major influence on WoW: Forever. A “Cozy Sleeping Bag” item from it was just recently found in WoW: Forever, in fact. Curling up for three minutes in it will give you a 3% XP buff that stacks with the 5% XP buff from cooking. WoW Classic purists would lose their minds at an 8% XP buff.
Blizzard intentionally hid many of WoW: Forever’s new items from dataminers so players could discover them organically. Earlier today, people realized there are a bunch of hidden books that reward you with extremely powerful rare items to juice your leveling journey. Assuming secrets like this will be snuck into the entire world, the November launch is going to be full of surprises as people uncover it all.
Even though Blizzard is committed to keeping some of the foundational aspects of WoW intact, I like that there are areas where nothing is sacred and things that you might’ve imagined as a kid might actually become real. I’ll be patiently waiting for an item that lets warlocks tame enemies as permanent minions like Path of Exile 2 just introduced in its recent update.
