I’m all in on the hype for this one. I bought into the Beta from day one and have been tinkering around a bit to see how the changes play out. I play both Retail and version of Classic, but have been aching for a version that I dont have to re-level my toons every time I jump back in. I’ve also wanted something a bit more social than what Retail has become. So far, this seems to be what I was looking for. Now I just pray that the playerbase doesnt screw it all up.
In the (I feel so ancient!) 20 years since WoW started, my friends and I have always acknowledged the barrier for newer players to enter. If you haven’t played since the beginning, there is so much lore, so many characters that you have NO idea why something in the story is important, or why you should care. Which was actually a problem even in OG WoW to a degree - if you hadn’t played Warcraft, you had to pick up a lot of “who/what are these races, why do they live XYZ, why are they fighting” but there were enough lore dumps and quests to get an idea at least.
Heck, if anything it’s gotten worse in the last 10+ years where to know a lot of the story you need to have read many of the novels!
So having it all consolidated into the old/new evolution should make that a LOT less daunting to new players, and to me and some of my friends, a lot less stressful when thinking about all the damn inconsistent retconning BS that retail has done over and over and over (The efforts in this expansion to “explain” Shadowlands is… 
)…
Well. Cutting off that rant short.
Shadowlands was so bad it made me quit playing entirely. I only came back to the game for Classic Anniversary, and I’ve been progression raiding through TBC Anniversary… pretty darn excited for Forever.
My commentary since day 1 has been “Shadowlands was so bad Blizzard has to reboot the entire lore to erase it.”
I had Nope’d out of Retail long before that with Cataclysm. It just wasnt my jam and I was playing other genres then. Glad I missed it. I came back for TTW and really enjoyed that one. Midnight has been ‘meh’ for me.
Eh, I’m -slightly- more charitable about Shadowlands, though I’m not praising it.
To me it was more like Shadowlands tried to take things in a new direction and retcon everything else to make it about the New Big Bad.
Which absolutely invalidated everything the players had done up to that point, and left them with a dead-end boring, faceless uber villain who no one cared about.
So they first tried to ignore it (Dragonflight), hint that it was something else (The War Within), and have been expanding on that hint in Midnight.
All that minor defense aside, I liked some of the factions in Shadowlands but hated the Lore, the end game bonus zones, and the ever expanding “Dream/For The Trees” bullshit that once again pushed the (arguable) uber-class Druid line further over the top.
Saying this as someone who has had multiple druids over man expansions, including at least one max level for the last three.
Back to the topic though, Forever seems to be doing it right by not trying to “fix” things for consistency, but give us a “Remastered” version of the OG, adding in two decades of learning from some of the old lessons. Flying was probably always a bit of a mistake, and one which Dragonriding did a credible job of making a bit more nuanced as well as finally bringing back a lot of class identity away from Retail’s ultimate madness of one-button management.
I gave up in WOW because the PVE game became way too easy in favor of PVP and massive raiding. Can they bring back a challenging PVE single game experience?
The Delve system that came in with The War Within was supposed to be our Solo challenge. I do enjoy them, and on some classes/specs they can be a challenge. However, I swapped to a Prot Pally for Midnight and found them to be a walk in the park. Still fun though.
Yeah, exactly.
The magic of WoW (or really any MMO) when it first came out was everyone starting out on roughly equal footing and progressing through the challenge and mystique together. It’s fine if you’re a few weeks or months apart.
But 20 years later, it’s just such an overwhelming game that it’s really hard to get into (or even return to). Classic and its numerous timelines doesn’t make it much better.
There’s an entire new generation or two of gamers who never really experienced MMOs in their heyday, only after their rise and fall. Between that and millennial nostalgia, I think there is a great opportunity for a remake here.
It’s not just WoW, either — many MMOs do this, and many non-MMOs are trying to capitalize on the “dad gamers” who played early favorites in the 2000s and might now want to revisit them, but with modern quality-of-life.
I’m beyond excited for this, if only to show my friends who’ve never tried early WoW.
Of course, we’ll probably sub for a month and then get bored of it shortly thereafter…
Regarding the conversation of using WoW: Forever to attract new players for any length, I don’t think that would be workable.
The WoW model of you paying $50-90 for an expansion, generally lasting 2-3 years, while also paying $13-15 a month to keep playing is a positively ancient formula which has largely died out for anything NOT WoW.
Sure, microtransactions are a big thing, but a monthly sub + full price game? I don’t think that would fly for new players.
Ongoing retail or “Gamer Dads” coming back after a break, we’re conditioned to accept it as normal. Which says a lot about us! 
Fortunately, WoW Forever has no base cost; as long as you have an active subscription you can play it. I assume expansions will have a cost though.
IF you want to unlock/use the new Skybourne race, it’ll cost a one-time ~$23
If you’re new to or coming back to the game you still need to have a current edition of retail (so say $50 the most basic if you don’t intend to play retail at all) with the $13-15 a month. Forever, like the classic variants, is a +1 to a retail sub.
At least I haven’t seen anything where you could “buy” forever independent of retail. Apparently, those of us who bought any of the Forever packs will get some recruit a friend codes close to launch that might be useful for @Reply and others who want to come back but aren’t going to commit to a longer sub period that might cover the launch or a month of the sub prices.
I’m sure they can ask here (hint hint).
Sure; there are multiple microtransaction tiers but aren’t needed.
That contradicts multiple sources I see online and is not a requirement on Blizzard’s site. So I don’t think that’s true.
https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-forever#optLogin=true
A subscription or game time is required to play World of Warcraft®: Forever. Access to World of Warcraft®: Forever is included with your active World of Warcraft subscription or game time.
All you need is a subscription.
That’s not how I read it since a subscription normally requires a copy of retail (Starter edition, the F2P model only allowing up to level 20), but there is plenty of room for interpretation. I guess we’ll find out more.
Yup! Right now you need to pay for a pack to play in beta so all we know 100% is that requirement for now.
You only need to own any version of WoW to access Forever (with a sub.) I can access it and I only bought the original release decades ago and none of the expansions. It’s the same as Classic basically.
My daughter and her friends have all been playing classic anniversary (and the forever beta) with me for ~2 years now; no cost outside of the subscription.
So if I understand @palooka’s comment, they needed to have had (returning players) any version of the game, though not the most current option.
As for @kron, did your daughter and friends have to buy a prior version of retail at some point or just start up a sub and they got the classic/forever beta options? Or just the monthly sub.
If it’s “any version of retail at some point” they’re making a very low bar for returning players, but a slightly higher bar to brand new players.
Of course, I fully concede getting a monthly $13-15 sub is a huge boon to Micro-Acti-Blizz whether or not there’s the additional upfront cost.
The newest of the players only needed a sub to play anniversary; she had never played any mmo of any kind before (in fact, she was strictly a console gamer until we talked her into joining us). My daughter has had an account for many years, so would have had an old version of retail at some point.
No, not a bar at all.
You can play Retail (the flagship version of the game) at zero purchase price, with access to all content from expansions prior to the current. The $50 everyone talks about buys you into the current expansion, which typically lasts 1.5-2 years.
Even without shelling out for the current expansion, you qualify to play any flavor of Classic, and now Forever, for nothing more than the cost of active game time (the < $15 per month ongoing cost).