Really excited about the reception to our first episode of the WoW: Forever Podcast. As I mentioned on the show, we are going to be talking about classes next week, so look forward to that. For future episodes after that, are there any aspects of the development or design of WoW Forever that you would like to get more insights on from the dev team? Let me know! Also have a picture of the spooky forest, because it's cool.

Awesome film. ‘Dumb’ - but the kind of dumb only a smart person can make. Genius viewer interactivity - plays with how you’d think as a Resi player (knowing it’s a game), vs him as a normal dude. Thematically enjoyable on multiple levels. (🇺🇸 as a low trust society).

Video game pirates are making an effort to support Remedy, rallying the community to purchase Control Resonant after it was leaked. bit.ly/4yXm02p

Found an orc with a katana, top 5 coolest shit ive ever seen

“REMEDY”

I'm seeing a lot of discourse about who WoW Forever is being made for and while I cannot speak for anyone else on the team I can speak for myself. I am making WoW forever for the classic gamer and for the millions of people who have had their accounts lapse over the years because they were not satisfied with changes that were made to the game. Whether those changes were to the art style, the story, social aspects, game design, or changes to their favorite class. I did not spend the last year of my life relearning and mastering how to do things like we did it 20+ years ago for retail players. I could have taken it easy and just kept doing things like I had done for the past 8 years on retail...because I was much more familiar with it and it actually takes a lot less time to do (height maps on textures do a ton of heavy lifting). Because the reality is that the majority of retail players wouldn't care and would probably actually prefer it. But I felt I had a duty to uphold an artistic vision and integrity that millions of people expect from us. But not just for our players, but for my co-workers past and present who worked on it over 20 years ago. If I could not create something that resembled their work then I failed not only them...but myself. Please do not take this as me throwing any shade at retail players or the retail team because I am one myself...but I wanted to make Forever as authentic of a Vanilla experience as possible. This involves making decisions wildly different than retail. It means holding the line against changes that create a domino affect down the road. It means keeping friction and inconveniences in the game. It means finding friends and forming groups with strangers and being social!! Because WoWs social aspects have always been the pillar of the game and over the years it has slowly been chiseled away at with changes that allow you play alone. Since the day I started working on the Riverglades I have lived by three sayings. "Convenience is the death of the journey." "If you're making a game for everyone then you're making it for no one." "Every change we make incurs a debt to the authenticity of the game and sooner or later that debt will be paid." These are my core beliefs and I had a specific group of people I was targeting with my work. These beliefs cannot be shaken and I will try to hold the line against anything that goes against them and will continue to pester the team about things that feel out of place. That being said, my hope is that Forever will pull in as many people as possible, whether you are a retail gamer, a classic gamer, someone who hasn't played in years, or even a new player. I hope you can all remember what made this game so special in the first place and that starts with understanding why we are so passionate about keeping it authentic.

Ouch, but true. Bungie has a mountain to climb. I think they can do it, but that PS’s willingness to fund them through a period of reform is the real constraint.

Found one of my favorite authors! The old man and the seal is my favorite book of hemet nesingwary.

RT @Stiven_SRB: There’s something deeply unsettling about Duskwood now. The fog crawling through the trees. The shadows. The silence. That…

This is what an MMO is supposed to feel and look like. Major cities are so full of life and activity. So many people with so many different journeys, taking a break or getting ready to move on to their next quest or dungeon. Peak

As someone who loves digging into the technology behind Blizzard games, I just want to give a huge shoutout to the Warcraft engineering team for the rendering tech they keep building. The new Global Illumination system especially deserves recognition. The deeper I looked into how it works, the more impressive it became. Software ray tracing on the GPU, scrolling probe grids, temporal blending, probe relocation, and guided reconstruction, all working together to bring dynamic indirect lighting into WoW massive world. Then there is the work on virtual shadow maps, and froxel-based volumetric fog with light scattering and temporal reprojection, all integrated into a world that constantly streams around the player. WoW launched in 2004, and its technology has continued to evolve for more than two decades. Seeing modern lighting, shadow, and atmospheric systems being engineered into a world with that kind of history is genuinely impressive. I wish more players knew how much engineering goes into improvements like these. We see the better lighting, shadows and atmosphere, but the technology making all of it work together deserves recognition too. Huge respect to the Warcraft engineers behind this tech. 👏 And now I can finally stop researching it and actually enjoy it. 😄

Very true! Keep ambient sounds & music on.

I think some people are missing the point of Forever. Sometimes it's nice not having an arrow holding your hand and telling you exactly what quest to complete next. Stop and enjoy the view, take the route you actually want to take. The game's going to be around forever, so what's the rush?

WE'RE SO BACK

We continue to watch all the beta flurry on WoW: Forever. Then we remind ourselves... IT'S BETA! WTH? I don't want to jinx anything, but methinks launch might be wild...and we are here for all of it, come what may. 💙

Man, it was hard to sleep last night, I was so excited. Beta has been... crazy. The craziest numbers I've seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost 8 years on classic. We've got something really special here.

Great (long) vid going through WHY wow’s writing is bad Talking about the actual writing itself as a vehicle for story telling instead of being bogged down by “it’s explained in this side quest which makes the bad themes and bad dialogue actually good” piped.video/8TJ36hJiO64?si=vKfi…

Warcraft 3: Forsaken Kingdom is so damn good. Seriously, it's worth picking up.