Here are some things I have done in the 25 hours I have played of World of Warcraft: Forever so far:
- Spent roughly an hour trekking back and forth between continents to acquire a completely pointless torch item
- Spent another hour separately taking a friend to collect the exact same thing (sorry Sarah)
- Did a similar hike for another quest that I haven’t even finished yet, for which the reward is an almost entirely useless sleeping bag
- Another half-hour hiking through Mulgore, the Barrens, and Durotar just to sign a guild charter in the capital city
- Visited my class trainer multiple times, for which I have to return to Kalimdor from where I happen to be in Eastern Kingdoms, which means flying back to Undercity, getting on a zeppelin, finding the trainer in Orgrimmar, then doing the whole journey in reverse to get back to questing
- Fishing. Lots of fishing
- Lazily watched an Alliance paladin try to kill every NPC in Brill, one by one, by themselves, for seemingly no reason
- Died (and ran back to my body) roughly seven or eight times while trying to kill a bunch of mages too high-level for me to tackle
- Grouped up with a couple other people to kill worgen for an hour to obtain a total of six “Worgen Bits,” a quest item that you’d think would be commonplace on the dead bodies of these werewolf guys but turned out to be astoundingly rare
Sound awful? Well…maybe. When I think about how I could be spending that time finally weeding my garden, or doing all the real-life chores I keep putting off, yeah. Bit of a waste of time. Such a waste of time, in fact, that I have hardly even touched most of the new content in WoW: Forever. I did play the Skyborne in beta: their starting island is fine. A bit too modern-feeling for me, but fine. I’ve definitely encountered a few new quests mixed in here and there, and the aforementioned torch and sleeping bag missions were new as well (though I did the former in beta and the latter in Season of Discovery already). But I haven’t even touched the new dungeons. I’m months away (at my current pace) from the new raids. I’m not even a high enough level to check out the Riverlands yet. May as well be playing Classic, right?
But as I hike back and forth and up and down Azeroth, I tilt my camera around. That draw distance! I see Mt. Hyjal, misty, looming in the distance, waiting for me at max level. The sun rises and sets over plains and swamps. It filters through trees and fog. I /wave at the other travelers I meet on the road. I sit at campfires and chat with others who gather around. People buff me with their class’ spells when they see me, or resurrect me if they see my dead body so that I don’t have to struggle all the way back to it. One person yesterday finished a quest just as I was starting, and volunteered to stick around (wasting 20 more minutes of their own time) to help me finish too. Another time, the game’s layer system goofed while I was on a zeppelin and something like 200 of us all ran into Undercity at once, prompting humorous panic from the folks already inside. Today, myself and two others started an entire, lengthy conversation in our zone’s general chat while I was squeezing in some early morning fishing time, just by saying “Good morning” in hopes someone would say it back. It ended with someone telling us all silly, made-up stories about a warlock named Daniel.
Somehow, this time doesn’t feel like such a waste anymore. It’s…soothing, I think. The slowness, the friction. A lot of this was always present in WoW Classic, sure. But I think the little added touches in Forever—the extra quests for things like torches and sleeping bags, the campfires, the layering ensuring that my world is always packed with other people—are lending the experience some new magic that wasn’t there before. In the past, the slowness of Classic felt more like a product of the time we were in, because no one had streamlined MMORPGs to eliminate it yet. But Forever embraces that pace and leans into it as a design feature rather than a flaw, making those moments feel rewarding on purpose rather than on occasional accident. More often than ever, you’re put in positions where there’s nothing to do but say hello to other people and forge a brief connection, or to sit back and admire the way the new lighting plays on the ripples in the river. It’s WoW, but with mindfulness. And mindfulness is something I’ve been in desperate want of lately.
Given that, it’s been really, really hard for me to put World of Warcraft: Forever down, even in the face of another brilliant game launch happening simultaneously. In my brain, a task list has populated of things I want to do: a dozen or so quests, of course, plus that one extra quest I have to turn in on the other continent, and that sleeping bag scavenger hunt I’m in the middle of. I need to visit my class trainer back in Orgrimmar or Thunder Bluff here soon to learn some new skills, and also all the profession trainers, and also the bank. There are some dungeons I’d like to run soon. All of this backs up in my brain the same way my real-life chores list does, but with the distinguishing feature that I dread none of it. I am eager to take part in every aspect, even though over half of these will inevitably be time-consuming, even time-wasting affairs. I’ll get to level 60 eventually, but I’m in no hurry to do it. To my editors: I’m sorry I’m inevitably going to take so long with this review. But there are so many wonderful, pointless distractions between here and there, I can’t help but let myself be blissful and slightly bored for another 50 or more hours first.
