Image: WowheadBlizzCon has ended, and it's always sad to say goodbye to the friends we meet on these weekends. Those friendships stick around, though, just like all the information we've gotten about upcoming Blizzard reveals, releases, and projects!.
Today was a day with significantly fewer big reveals - instead, panels focused on behind-the-scenes information to give us more insight on how things are made, what's up next for some IPs, and even more information on Classic+. We've had tons of liveblogs, coverage, and great Blizzard surprises, but BlizzCon has too much information for everyone to know everything. We're rounding up the info about what you might've missed while you're at the con, or at home enjoying things virtually!.
Classic+ Coverage Continued.
Today's focus was less on Retail announcements and more on the world of Forever. From a deep dive first thing in the morning, to a technically impressive display by MSI showcasing graphical updates, to explanations of game design philosophy on how Blizzard wants the world of Forever to truly feel, these teasers gave us enough to think about that we can't wait for the beta to start in a few short days.
There’s still more adventure waiting in the world where it all began. During the World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive, Associate Production Director Clay Stone, Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield, Lead Software Engineer Ana Resendez, and Principal Game Designer Kris Zierhut shared how this full new World of Warcraft game set in a reimagined original Azeroth is being shaped around the moments that make the world feel alive.
Building Deeper into Azeroth.
World of Warcraft: Forever begins with a familiar promise: Azeroth is still a place worth getting lost in. Here, Azeroth is the main character, and every road, campfire, dungeon, and familiar name along the way is part of the story. A core foundation of World of Warcraft: Forever is serendipitous interactions: the kind of chance encounters that can turn another player on the road from competition for an herb node, mining node, or enemy tag into someone worth stopping for.
Camping builds on that foundation by reimagining the simple Cooking Fire as a Basic Campfire, creating campsites where players can rest, sit for a moment, gain useful benefits, and contribute crafted objects that make a roadside meeting feel useful, social, and worth remembering. That promise carries through the everyday parts of the adventure, from stopping at a campfire in the wild to leveling another character, finding value in professions, choosing how and where to play, and recognizing familiar names out in the world.
Systems That Bring Azeroth to Life.
Several systems come into focus in World of Warcraft: Forever, beginning with Camping. The system expands the simple Cooking Fire from the Cooking profession into a Basic Campfire, giving players a reason to pause together in the world before heading back into adventure. Professions are also gaining more depth, with over 600 new recipes across professions and level ranges, adjusted crafted food that can grant a small experience bonus and stat boosts, and advanced Blueprint recipes from dungeon bosses.
Camping and Professions.
The Basic Campfire turns those roadside pauses into something players can build together. Placing a campfire creates a campsite where players can rest and gain access to useful benefits such as vendors, repairs, profession workspaces, and one-hour buffs. To gain those buffs, players will need to slow down, sit by the campfire for a few moments, and get rested before heading back into adventure. It is also a natural place to refresh food buffs, which have received a major update in World of Warcraft: Forever.
Choose your campsite carefully, though—some parts of Azeroth are better suited for a quiet rest than others.
A Basic Campfire allows up to three special crafted objects to be added by nearby players. Each player can contribute one object, and those objects share a one-hour cooldown. Every profession has three different objects learned at different skill levels, and each profession provides its own buff or utility no matter which object is placed.
Blacksmiths, for example, can place a Sharpening Wheel that increases Attack Power, Tailors can place a Faction Banner that increases Spirit, and Herbalists can place an Incense Candle that increases Intellect. These effects are variants of, and do not stack with, buffs normally provided by specific classes.
The first campsite objects are learned once a profession reaches skill level 20, either from special nonplayer characters (NPCs) who introduce players to camping or from profession trainers, while more advanced objects come from Blueprint recipes that drop from specific dungeon bosses.
Alchemists can learn to place an Alchemy Lab, Leatherworkers can place a Tanning Rack required for more advanced Leatherworking recipes, and Cooks can learn upgraded Campfires that allow five or 10 objects to be placed at a camp. Together, these additions give professions more depth, purpose, and visibility throughout the world.
The Legacy System: Rewarding Every Journey.
The Legacy System grew out of one of the team’s favorite parts of Hardcore: seeing so many players constantly leveling and making the world feel active, lively, and full of possibility. For World of Warcraft: Forever, the team wanted to capture more of that energy in a way that rewards players for beginning the journey again without asking them to face Hardcore’s deadly consequences. The result is a system designed to make leveling alternate characters (alts) more exciting, emphasize the journey over the destination, and give players new challenges that reward progress across all their characters.
Players earn Legacy Points by completing Legacy Challenges across several categories, with examples including leveling a specific class or reaching a particular skill milestone. These challenges are not meant to force players into strange tasks disconnected from the game. Instead, they are designed to complement the existing journey, reward the ways players already enjoy adventuring through Azeroth, and add new goals that make each repeat journey feel more meaningful.
Legacy Points can be spent in Legacy Trees, beginning with Professions, Adventure, and Resourcefulness. As players earn points, they can shape each character’s path through these trees based on the playstyle that fits that character best.
In the Adventure tree, players can find the “Well Rested” talent to increase rested experience gains and raise the rested experience cap, making it especially useful for leveling alts. In Professions, players can find the legacy talent “Bountiful Harvest” to increase the materials gathered from mining, herbalism, or skinning.
Deeper in Resourcefulness, powerful perks such as Reagent Economy can remove reagent requirements from class abilities, making buffing easier while still asking players to make meaningful choices about where to spend their limited points.
What makes the system especially flexible is that Legacy Points are shared across all alts, while each character spends those points separately in their own trees. Players who want to create many alts can earn points across a wider selection of legacy challenges, taking on new goals such as leveling a different class, while players who want to focus on maximizing a particular character can dive deeper into the categories and complete more complex challenges. Players can also do both, engaging with the system in the way that feels best for their journey through Azeroth.
At launch, each character can spend up to 16 points in their Legacy Trees. The cap is intended to keep players from feeling pressured to do everything at once and to help new players avoid feeling too far behind. Players can still continue completing challenges beyond that spending limit and earn up to 65 Legacy Points at the start.
Those additional accomplishments contribute to the Legacy Reward Track, where accumulating points over time unlocks special cosmetic or prestige rewards, such as the Spectral Bear Cub, without providing a competitive gameplay advantage. World of Warcraft: Forever is also adopting the Burning Crusade-style mount-cost approach, shifting the up-front mount cost into training and granting a mount when players learn the riding skill.
The Legacy System is also built to grow. Over time, the team expects to add new challenges, new perks, additional ways to spend points, expanded spending caps, new columns within existing trees, and potentially entirely new trees. Whether players want to build an army of alts, focus deeply on one character, or discover a new path through Azeroth each time, the system is meant to keep the journey feeling rewarding long after the first trip to maximum level.
Playing Together in a Realmless Azeroth.
World of Warcraft: Forever is also taking a new approach to how players choose where they play. For many players, that first realm choice has always carried a lot of weight: pick the right one and you can adventure with your friends, join the right community, and find groups more easily; pick a different one and you might discover too late that the people you wanted to play with are somewhere else entirely.
Instead of asking players to make that decision before creating a character, World of Warcraft: Forever is going realmless, making it easier to connect with friends while still preserving the community feel that has always made realms memorable.
Source: Wowhead ↗