Ramblings of a Guild Leader: World of Warcraft Forever

Okay… I am beyond fucking hyped for World of Warcraft: Forever.

And the more I've thought about it, the more I've realised it isn't really one particular feature that's got me excited. It's the possibility of it.

A familiar Azeroth, but one where we don't already know every road, every boss, every zone and every answer.

A chance to go back to that world we all recognise and have it feel unknown again. What is over that mountain this time? Where does that road lead? What stories are hiding in places we've walked past a thousand times?

What happens if Blizzard takes the foundations of the original World of Warcraft and, instead of simply recreating them, actually builds something new on top of them?

That idea is bloody exciting.

A New Adventure, Not Just Another Reset

I've done Vanilla. I've done Classic. I've levelled through those zones enough times that some of the routes are probably permanently burned into my brain.

And while nostalgia is great, I don't particularly want another museum.

I want possibility.

I want to recognise somewhere and then realise I don't actually know what comes next. I want us wandering off somewhere because someone says, "I wonder what's over there?"

I want new stories in old places, new dungeons to discover and new raids we haven't spent months reading about before we even step inside.

More than anything, I want Azeroth to feel like a world again rather than somewhere we're simply travelling through on the way to the next objective.

That's what Forever seems to be offering, and that massively appeals to me.

The World Matters Again

One of the things Blizzard has spoken about with Forever is the idea that the world itself is the main character, and that might genuinely be my favourite part of the whole concept.

Modern WoW is brilliant at giving us things to do. There is ALWAYS something to chase: gear, Mythic+, raids, vaults, collections, achievements and twenty-seven different currencies I've forgotten the purpose of. 😂

But sometimes we're so focused on getting somewhere that we barely notice the journey anymore.

Forever seems to be deliberately pushing in the other direction. Explore. Get lost. Find things. Actually travel somewhere. Run into people. Need help occasionally.

Maybe even remember the name of the random person who helped you kill something instead of immediately disappearing into another queue.

There is something really appealing about slowing things down enough for the world

and the people in it to matter again.

And THAT Is Where Carnage Comes Into It

This is probably the biggest reason Forever has grabbed me. When I think about playing it, I immediately picture Carnage experiencing it together.

All of us stepping into a version of Azeroth where we don't already know everything, discovering places, helping each other, getting distracted by random things and turning what was meant to be a quick dungeon into an entire evening.

That suits the kind of community we've built perfectly. Carnage has never just been about logging in for raid and logging back out again. Some of the best nights are the completely unplanned ones where someone asks for help and suddenly half the guild is involved.

For me, that's the real potential of Forever: another place for this community to explore, raid, mess about and make completely new memories together.

And honestly, that excites me more than any individual feature they've announced.

And Can We Talk About 10-Man Raids?!

Because this is one part I am ridiculously excited about.

10-man raiding again. YES PLEASE.

From a guild point of view, it opens up so many possibilities. Smaller groups, different teams, people raiding together who perhaps aren't part of our main Mythic setup on modern WoW, and a way for Forever raiding to have its own identity within Carnage instead of simply becoming another version of what we already do.

I don't even know yet what our raiding in Forever will look like, and that's actually what I love about it.

We don't need to decide.

We can get there, see who loves the game, see what people want from it and let it grow naturally.

But the thought of getting ten Carnage players together and walking into a completely new raid where none of us really knows what the hell we're doing?

Yes please — take me there. 😂

Because Carnage Is More Than the Raid Team

Obviously raiding is a huge part of what we do. I love progression, I love killing hard bosses and I love that moment when everyone finally gets something right at exactly the same time and a boss falls over.

But Carnage has never just been the twenty people standing inside a Mythic raid.

It's the people in Discord, the ones doing keys, the collectors, the achievement hunters, the people who log in for social raids and the ones who appear for guild events.

It's the people who will spend three hours helping someone get something they don't personally need, and the conversations that start about WoW and somehow end up absolutely nowhere near WoW.

That's the heart of the guild.

And Forever feels like it could give that side of Carnage an entirely new playground.

The smaller-scale nature of things like 10-man raiding makes me even more excited about that. There could be room for so many different little groups and adventures within the guild without everything needing to revolve around one fixed raid team.

I really, really like that idea.

Imagine Everyone Starting From Nothing Again

This is also weirdly exciting to me.

A fresh character. Empty bags. No giant collection accumulated over twenty years. No ridiculous bank full of things you are absolutely convinced you'll need one day despite not touching them since 2014.

We're all peasants again. 😂

And there is something really fun about that.

We'll have to discover what matters, learn the world together, figure out professions, find all the weird little secrets and work out which dungeons we love and which dungeon immediately gets labelled "absolutely fucking not."

And I'm also ridiculously excited about the old-style talent trees.

There's something I really miss about putting points into a tree as you level and watching your character gradually become your version of that class.

One point here, another one there, working your way towards that talent you really want and making choices as you go.

Obviously we'll all eventually end up staring at guides and somebody will produce a spreadsheet because we're WoW players and apparently we cannot help ourselves. 😂

But I love the idea of character progression feeling gradual again.

Of getting a level and actually thinking:

"Ooooh, I get a talent point!"

It's such a small thing, but it makes levelling feel like you're constantly building something rather than simply racing towards the finished character waiting for you at max level.

That whole approach fits perfectly with what excites me about Forever.

The journey actually matters.

I Hope Blizzard Protects That Feeling

Forever doesn't need to replace modern WoW for me. I don't want it to.

I bloody love modern WoW.

What I want is for Forever to be confident enough to be something different.

Let the world feel big. Let exploration matter. Let travelling somewhere actually feel like travelling somewhere.

Give people reasons to group naturally. Give professions and little community interactions a purpose. Let levelling and talent choices feel meaningful, and give us raids where the people you're playing alongside actually matter.

Give us mysteries that aren't completely solved five minutes after the servers come online.

At the same time, keep enough modern lessons that the game feels good to actually play, without sanding away all of the things that create spontaneous interactions between people.

Because those little interactions are often where the best memories come from.

Forever Is Quite a Fitting Name, Really

There is something a little bit lovely about Blizzard calling this World of Warcraft: Forever.

Because World of Warcraft has never really just been a game I've completed and moved on from.

It's somewhere I've remained, and somewhere I've met people who became part of my actual life.

I think that's true for a lot of us.

Expansions come and go. Characters change. Classes change. Sometimes WoW is amazing and sometimes we're all moaning about it. Sometimes we're playing every night, and sometimes real life takes over.

But somehow the community remains.

And that's probably why Forever appeals to me so much.

It's another beginning. Another version of Azeroth. Another excuse to log in and say:

"Right then… where are we going?"

And yes, before anybody asks, there will ABSOLUTELY be a Carnage Inc. in World of Warcraft: Forever. 😂

I have absolutely no idea yet what we'll end up doing with it. Maybe we'll end up with a proper 10-man progression team. Maybe we'll have a couple of groups. Maybe it'll all be completely casual.

Maybe half of us will become obsessed with something completely unexpected. Maybe we'll spend most of our time wandering around like idiots.

That's the best part.

We don't know yet.

For once, we have a version of Azeroth ahead of us that feels full of questions instead of answers.

New characters to build, new raids to walk into together, a familiar world that we don't completely understand anymore, and a whole new place for this ridiculous little community of ours to call home.

Whatever Forever ends up becoming, I'm just ridiculously excited that we get the chance to find out together. ❤️

Carnage for Life.

Or, apparently…

Carnage Forever.  So… who's joining us on Beta on September 17th?