With well over 5,000 hours clocked in Final Fantasy 14 and a good few hundred in The Elder Scrolls Online, I'm certainly no stranger to the MMO genre. I've endured many a dungeon, healed through various hardcore raids and trials, and witnessed just about all the cringe-y cat girl roleplaying one could stomach – but somehow, some way, I've not so much as touched World of Warcraft – before WoW: Forever came into the picture, that is.
For years, I resisted Azeroth's allure, as much as I yearned to take up the staff as a Night Elf and experience all the wild chaos Druid had to offer. It all boiled down to FOMO, you see… I was just four years old when World of Warcraft launched, after all, and a plethora of expansions, world changes, and updates (and, ahem, lots of missed pets and mounts I'd have liked to collect) followed, leaving me in the dust.
We set out for Azeroth in our World of Warcraft: Forever Big Preview this month, but not quite as we know it. With dev access and hands-on play, we dig into this third game that will sit besides vanilla and Classic.
Or, at least, feeling like I was. I felt the same way about World of Warcraft Classic – as though I had missed a train that I simply had never been ready to board. World of Warcraft: Forever promised to remedy that, introducing me to Blizzard's genre-defining universe as it would perhaps feel if it launched today rather than in 2004 while still maintaining everything that made it such a beloved name in the MMO space in the first place.
And, it's done just that. I've happily been hooked on the WoW: Forever Beta for a month now, learning the ropes as a shameless Skyborne Druid who has never set foot in Azeroth in all her two-plus decades of gaming before… and, guys, I'm loving it so far. The janky 2000s-coded combat, the punny dialogue, the cartoonish animations, and the old-school whimsy of it all. I'm finally sold on the magic that Blizzard's boasted for decades.
It's never too late
Lore implications be damned, I'm doing it all as one of the controversial Skyborne, Blizzard's new elf race (that, yes, will set you back at least $30). Character creation is simple but charming, the sort of experience I'd expect out of an "old" roleplaying game. I choose a periwinkle-blue shade for my skin and a pale pink hair color, tweak my ridiculously luscious eyebrows a bit, and set off into Azeroth as Wisteria, my pointy-eared Druid.
And, I'm confused. Everything is new to me, and there's certainly not the amount of direction and hand-holding I'm used to as a veteran of Final Fantasy 14's Eorzea. Menus are dated, I have to mess about with the interface to get my HUD how I want it to be, and boy, is the sound loud in here. When I finish adjusting things and getting a hang of it all, however, I realize I actually sort of… like it? It scratches this weird nostalgia-induced itch I can't quite put my finger on.
Sure, I never played World of Warcraft, but I remember spending hours on my blocky white PC in Wizard101 – a magical little MMO in its own right – and somehow, WoW: Forever is sending me right back into the shoes of that enamored little girl (very) slowly casting spells over and over again. The visuals help here, too, perfectly capturing the cozy vibes of every ol' enchanting adventure game and RPG I grew up with.
As for the gameplay itself, there's a whole lot of exploring, questing, and, sigh, floating back over to my body as a defeated ghost. It's rewarding in such a simple way, though – one that manages to keep me grinding. Seeing the world alive with other players is just the cherry on top of the cake, even if you don't always get anything out of helping others out.
I enjoy partying up and tackling challenges with my pals, too, thanking the Light that quest drops are a bit more fair and evenly distributed than I've heard they were for OG players back in the day. I also don't feel overwhelmed at all by the leveling up or spell-learning, as it's spaced well enough that I'm able to get the hang of how to deal damage and heal more efficiently (the mana management is admittedly a bit brutal, though).
I'm officially locked into World of Warcraft's tight grips now thanks to Forever, with the whimsical throwback to simpler times that it offers, and I can finally say that I get it – I get why Blizzard's managed to amass such a dedicated decades-old player base, and I'm fully convinced it'll only grow come World of Warcraft: Forever's November 4 release if my experience with the Beta serves as any proof. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some post-questing junk to sell.
Check out our best open world games, best RPGs rankings, and our games like World of Warcraft recommendations for more to play now, and keep an eye on our upcoming RPGs calendar for what's on the horizon!
