Tauren Town is POPPIN

Long potentially sappy yap incoming. You know, having worked on this game for last few years I have done a lot of playtesting my own content, internal alpha testing, team playtests, etc. I've probably "played" multiple thousand of hours of WoW: Forever at this point. Since beta launched, I'd been playing it as much as I could, but it was sporadic. I managed to reach 20 on two characters doing that, so it was not an insignificant amount of playtime. However, I often times interrupt myself to go send a slack msg, or fix a bug when I notice things while playing, and it usually turns into work in one way or another after a few hours. But yesterday, I just... played the game for a whole day in the beta. I'm talking 9 or 10 hours. Slack closed, off VPN. I just played. And it was a full day: - I got 4/5 pieces of the Fang set on my druid - Crafted a sweet leather helm for her - Finished leveling my forsaken pally to 20 - Finished up the last of my dungeon quests my warrior - I met a hilarious and very irreverent paladin tank who I ran Wailing Caverns 3 times in a row with to try and get him the cape from Verdan, and me the fang boots from Serpentis (Neither of us got what we wanted) - Did 2 dungeons with some guild members I haven't really spoken to or grouped with in 3 years or so It was a transformative experience for me. I think yesterday was when it is really starting to actually feel real. It wasn't Blizzcon and how crazy that was, the reception to beta, the podcast, or anything like that. It was just "no lifing" the game for 10 hours and wanting more at the end. Honestly, I got a little emotional. It hit me that the team really did it. I mean they DID IT. Yeah there's improvements and fixes to be made still, and there's feedback to act on (and stay tuned, we've got updates coming soon on some big feedback items). But all of that stuff aside, this is going to be a legendary launch, and the Forever team completely blew even my expectations out of the water. I look at each loving detail or small secret, knowing who exactly put that there and thinking how we couldn't have done this without that person. Then I think of the brilliant things that person added that haven't been found or aren't available yet, and I get almost giddy with excitement for them. I said a week or so ago that I thought we had something special here, and we do. I just can't believe the dumb luck that I get to be a part of this moment with such a once-in-a-lifetime team. It's wild. Anyway, rambly sunday morning post. Have fun and be good to each other!

I wouldn’t have called it World of Warcraft Forever. I would’ve called it "Azeroth Forever", because I know for sure that Azeroth is where I’d want to stay forever.