WoW Forever Beta Numbers & Secrets — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Hey folks, this is Kalani. World of Warcraft Forever's beta launch has been absolutely insane, with some of the craziest numbers the dev team have ever seen. That hype is reflected almost anywhere you look,

[00:12] whether it's Twitch viewers, YouTube video performance, or just how many players are in-game. So we'll dig a bit deeper into those numbers to see just how popular this new game mode is. There's also been some drama about the dev team nerfing the levelling experience in Forever,

[00:28] which would be very much against the philosophy of vanilla, and there are so many new secrets, gear sets, and special effects that players are starting to uncover. Now before we jump in, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe so you never miss another video.

[00:43] First up, let's have a chat about how well WoW Forever has been received so far. The hype has been kind of unreal. The game is always busy, everyone seems to be devouring any content they can get their hands on,

[00:56] and engagement is through the roof on most platforms. I know some folks would say, what do you expect of a new game launch? Classic was the same, every retail expansion is the same, except it actually might not be.

[01:10] According to AdRend, the WoW Forever beta has been the craziest numbers they've seen in the last 17 years working at Blizzard and the last 8 years or so working on Classic. That means like more people jumped into the WoW Forever beta

[01:24] than they've seen pick up either classic or retail game versions over the last number of years, and potentially more players than some of Blizzard's other games as well, or at the very least here, the numbers blew their expectations out of the water.

[01:39] That is very promising if you're excited for what WoW Forever could become. We also saw a lot of excitement over on Twitch, with the beta launch day spiking viewership in the World of Warcraft category to about 800,000,

[01:53] something that we haven't seen in quite a while. The most recent similar numbers were during Dragonflight, which was widely regarded as a major revival for Retail WoW. Before that, Shadowlands managed to peak a little bit higher,

[02:07] and the only other launch that hit similar numbers in the past 10 years was WoW Classic. So it's pretty clear that folks are very excited about returning to the vanilla world, and this time we actually get new content to go along with it.

[02:20] but bear in mind, this is a beta, and it's nice to drive more interest than the most recent World of Warcraft releases, at least on Twitch. I can also speak to the YouTube side of things.

[02:32] A lot of WoW Forever content on YouTube has been popping off. Players are very interested in hearing about the new game mode, what's changing, what's staying the same, and how it's shaping up so far. The overview video that we made just after BlizzCon that put together all of the information from the various panels and interviews is one of the most successful videos we've made to date.

[02:54] All of this just backs up what Adren said in that earlier tweet. They have something special here. Those numbers and that excitement are definitely reflected in game two. No matter what race you decide to create, your starting area is going to be buzzing with fellow players.

[03:09] Every questing zone and area is chock-a-block with fellow adventurers, every boat has players waiting for it, and the cities are just full of folks hanging out. You'll even find players in areas they definitely shouldn't be, partly because the cap at level 20 for now is not much else to do except explore, and partly because players really want to find out what's changed in some of the later zones.

[03:33] I've seen folks out in the new Riverland Zone, which looks pretty awesome by the way. The new Alliance Fort over there was a very cool sight as you crest over the hill. I've seen players making the trek through Stranglethorn Vale to reach Booty Bay,

[03:46] and there are even folks puttering around Tanaris. And all of this is still in beta. You either had to buy a pack to get into the beta, or get lucky enough to win a code or gain access through the opt-in process.

[03:58] That means the vast majority of players that are interested might not even be able to get into the game if they wanted to. I know there's also a significant number of players waiting for the actual release of WoW Forever in November to jump in and experience everything fresh either because they don want to spoil the experience in the beta or they just not as interested right now because all of your progress in beta is going to be reset and they rather

[04:24] save all that time and effort for when it really matters. All of those limitations and restrictions, and we still have this many players running around. So yeah, I would think World of Warcraft Forever is definitely off to a good start.

[04:38] Now, one concern I have seen pop up again and again is that WoW Forever is too easy, and too quick to level especially. All the little bonuses added in this game mode lower the difficulty too much.

[04:52] If you saw the WoWhead post about the experienced nurse, you may think the dev team even reduced the amount of experience required to level by 26%. So we're going to get to level 60 way too fast.

[05:04] Surely that goes against the whole journey before destination thing they touted at BlizzCon, which by the way, I think someone has picked up the Stormlight Archive book somewhat recently, and while things like camping, new trade skill recipes, and better dungeon

[05:17] quest rewards and loot certainly increase your character's power level by a little bit, the part about the experience requirement changes is actually completely wrong. WoW had released an article that compared

[05:29] vanilla experience requirements with the amount of experience needed to level in WoW Forever, and came to the conclusion that some levels were reduced by over 40%, with an average reduction of 26% across the entire 1-60 leveling journey.

[05:44] This was shared around quite rapidly, and a lot of players were complaining that this is what we get for, quote, listening to retail players. Needless to say, a lot of arguments ensued, but as players started to dig into the numbers

[05:58] presented in this article, they realised that I was actually just wrong. The numbers Wowhead were comparing with were for a different expansion, not the original vanilla WoW numbers. The WoW Forever experience numbers do match vanilla exactly, so there

[06:13] is no actual change. If you go back to the WoWhead article now, they even have a massive disclaimer at the top that basically says, oops, we were wrong, my bad guys, but that

[06:25] hasn't stopped some players kind of just running with it and using it as ammunition to start arguments about why WoW Forever shouldn't have any changes at all, which is kind of just silly. There are also players that missed the part where WoWhead was wrong, so they

[06:39] may be thinking levelling up won't be as important as the dev team promised, and may be disappointed as a result. So if you see anyone in-game, or any of your friends or guildies, chatting about these huge experience nerfs in WoW Forever, it may be worth pointing out that nothing

[06:55] has actually changed. Your characters being a bit more powerful might speed up levelling a touch, but the experience values themselves are the same as vanilla. Now, there are a few things that are not the same as vanilla, like various new secrets,

[07:10] fun little interactions, and the dev team has borrowed a few things from Season of Discovery as well, like the Cozy Sleeping Bag. If you didn't play Season of Discovery, the sleeping bag was a multi-step secret that ends with you getting the Cozy Sleeping Bag item. It

[07:24] has a one hour cooldown, and it provides you with an experience game spuff that you can stack up to 3%. So it's basically a permanent 3% experience game spuff, as long as you remember to take a nap every now and then.

[07:37] When you add that to the 5% experience buff available for most cooking recipes, you can actually earn a good chunk more experience, especially for monster kills. So I guess if you go out of your way to get the Cozy Sleeping Bag,

[07:50] leveling might be a touch faster after all. There are also some fun new interactions with existing items and sets, like the Of the Fang set from Wayland Caverns. If you complete this set as a druid,

[08:02] it turns your feral form into a snake, instead of your regular cat form. When this was first discovered, many players didn't believe it, but I ran into this sneaky snake slithering around the Riverlands. Apparently,

[08:14] the snake's colour changes depending on your race, and when you prowl, you actually slither along the floor, which sounds pretty hilarious. There are a bunch of these new interactions being added in so even if something is technically old gear or old content chances are it might have at least something new going on in WoW Forever which is super exciting

[08:36] We also have far more set bonuses scattered across the game, like this new set that comes from Open World Rares in the Barrens. You can pick up a ring, a necklace, and a cloak, and you only need two of them to trigger the set bonus that increases your movement speed

[08:50] by 5% in the Barrens and Stonetalon Mountains zones. The dev team said they had a bunch of biome or area-specific bonuses in the works, so I guess this is kind of what they mean. A 5% movement speed bonus should help you get through these massive horde zones a bit faster,

[09:07] but with how rare rares actually are in the classic versions as well, I imagine most folks won't be able to put this set together all that quickly. Still, if you happen upon any rares while out and about, this is just one more reason to take them down.

[09:22] But the best part about all of this kind of stuff is that players don't really know about it until someone stumbles across it. A lot of folks were calling the Armour of the Fang Snake thing fake, or AI, or from a private server.

[09:35] It wasn't until more players completed the set and realised oh hey, this is actually a real thing that people started paying attention. The same kind of thing is going to happen with corrections. We'll have an account-wide collections menu for things like companion pets.

[09:49] So instead of them picking up bagged slots, you'll collect them into this new menu and summon them from there. So it's very similar to retail in that function. Mounts may end up being the same, but the point here is that you can't see everything

[10:03] in the game like you can in retail. You can only see the stuff that you've already collected. The same thing goes for transmog, if you choose to turn it on. In retail, you can see all available weapon and armor skins across the entire game,

[10:18] check where they come from and what you might have to do to earn them, but in WoW Forever, you can only see the stuff you've already obtained and unlocked, so you can't go shopping through unreleased or upcoming content to see what new mounts, pets, or items might drop.

[10:32] And then when we get to the raids at endgame, the dev team are actively fighting against data mining, and we won't have any dungeon or raid journals to explain things beforehand. That means every new raid should be completely fresh when it opens up.

[10:46] No one will have any idea what we're doing, or what loot any of the new bosses are going to drop. In Retail WoW, the most exciting bosses have always been the last ones in the raid, partly because that's the big bad you've been chasing after throughout the story quests,

[11:01] but mostly, for me at least, because these bosses don't get tested on the PTR. That's the only one that's new and exciting. That's how every raid boss in WoW Forever is going to feel.

[11:14] Now, something else that sparked a bit of controversy is the black market auction house. There's two parts to this. The first is a vendor that sells rare materials, even some of the new scarce materials you'll find from gathering professions.

[11:26] So things like fell crystals, pristine hides and scales, black lotus, and arcane crystals. The initial knee-jerk reaction may be to say, Well, that's dumb. Why would you let people buy these rare materials from a vendor?

[11:39] That goes against the whole point of the materials being rare. But this vendor does two things very effectively. First, it puts a price cap on those items. It doesn't matter how much gold you have or how much time you spend camping the auction house,

[11:54] these items can never go higher than these set prices. All versions of WoW have had problems with goblins or even bots manipulating prices. Resetting the price on a valuable item can be risky, but it can earn you mountains of gold.

[12:10] And when you have mountains of gold, you can reset items much more often. This can lead to some crazy prices for your average player, but with this vendor in play, there's a limit on how high those prices can go

[12:22] for some of the most important items at endgame. The typical sources for these items isn't changing from what we know, so you'll still be getting them from gathering, you just won't be able to charge an arm and a leg for them.

[12:34] And secondly if the prices are too high and players are just buying these items from the vendors that actually acting like a gold sink Anything bought from a vendor takes gold directly out of the economy which is incredibly important if you want to maintain a healthy

[12:48] economy across the game and retain the value of the in-game currencies, especially if this game mode is actually going to be forever. If these prices end up being too high or too low when we

[13:00] get to endgame, the dev team can always change them as well. Now, another oddity is this gift of the Galloping Item, which costs 150 gold and gives you a 10% mounted movement speed boost for

[13:13] 15 days. That's a good chunk of gold just to be able to move a bit faster. But hey, if you have 150 gold to spare every time your buff runs out, then you really just need to move that little bit

[13:26] faster. You do you. Gold will matter a lot more in Classic WoW, and with Forever being a full reset, it's going to matter just as much in this new version. So 150 gold is not cheap.

[13:38] So this will be another decent gold sink if players end up being a bit too wealthy. Now the other part to the black market auction house is the actual auction house itself. Just like other versions of the game, the black market auction house

[13:52] will let you pay absurd amounts of gold for rare items, and we've seen some curious things pop up here. It seems like you have to get almost anything from pats and tabards to maps like the Death Charger's range.

[14:04] There's also quite a lot of high-level gear options on here, which seems a bit odd. Now, the starting bids for these items are very high, and remember that black market auction house items are bid-on, you can't buy them out like regular auctions,

[14:18] and rare items typically go for gold cap on retail servers. So these items could sell for significantly higher than the listed start price, depending on how rare they are or how much gold we end up with.

[14:31] That does bring up the question of gold buyers. Gold buying has been rampant throughout WoW's history and in every version of the game. With the WoW token, you can even buy gold in a legit way. So if you can just buy good gear or some of the rarest mounts in the game with gold,

[14:46] and you can buy gold, doesn't that just remove all incentives for some players? It might, but there are two factors to consider here. The dev team has said they are going to be very harsh to gold buyers,

[14:58] with permabangs on the table right from the get-go. no more slaps on the wrist. So buying gold is going to be much riskier in WoW Forever, and I really hope they stick to their guns on this. The other factor is that the dev team has said the WoW token isn't coming to WoW Forever.

[15:14] Hopefully that remains the case, but it should be much harder to buy gold moving forward. With that being said, I think the black market auction house should be restricted to items that you can't really get anywhere else.

[15:27] Things like old TCG rewards, or maybe even just black market specific items. Treat them like the cash store, put something unique in the black market auction house, and let people fork over a whole bunch of gold for it.

[15:39] That could work just as well as a gold sink, without offering actual rare rewards or gear upgrades that you can get in-game. But what do you think of a black market auction house? Is it okay for these items to be in here with how expensive they're going to be?

[15:53] and what do you think of rare professional materials being offered on the nearby vendor? Let me know what you think in the comments section below. But that's all of the updates we have regarding WoW Forever's crazy numbers, the experienced nerf drama, and all of the shiny new secrets coming in this new game mode.

[16:08] So that's it for this video. How do you feel about all of the changes being added into WoW Forever, and what older gear or set bonuses would you like to see get some new effects? Leave all your thoughts in the comments section below.

[16:20] A big thank you to all of our supporters over on Patreon, and to all of our members who are on YouTube. You can see their names on screen. If you're interested in supporting the channel, you can find links in the description, or click the Join button just below the video. If you enjoyed the video, or found it useful in any way,

[16:33] make sure to subscribe and ring that notification bell so you're always kept up to date. Thanks for watching, folks. Go look and have fun, and as always, I will see you next time.

[16:50] Thank you.