A Nostalgia-Filled Weekend in the Forever Beta

Well, that was a thoroughly enjoyable, nostalgia-soaked weekend! After messing around with a few classes and levelling a Paladin to level 20, I thought I’d share some of my initial impressions of the World of Warcraft: Forever beta.

First things first, can we take a moment to appreciate the new environmental effects? The fog looks fantastic, although it can feel a little heavy in certain areas. The updated water is absolutely gorgeous, even if I can understand the argument that it might look a little too good for a Classic aesthetic. And the lighting… honestly, I love it. It’s relatively simple, but it looks beautiful and adds so much atmosphere to the world.

Speaking of the world, I actually think sticking with the original environmental assets works better than what we see in retail WoW. Retail can sometimes feel like a mishmash of old and new assets that don’t quite fit together, whereas Forever feels much more visually consistent. Combine that with the updated lighting and environmental effects, and the result is genuinely stunning. It still looks like Classic, just with a fresh coat of paint.

Levelling, Dungeons and New Quests

It’s a little too early to judge the levelling experience properly, given that we’re capped at level 20 in the beta, but so far, the pacing feels good. I’m less sure about the decision to nerf dungeon XP. I understand what they’re trying to achieve, but I’d like to see it brought a little closer to the original Vanilla experience over time.

I’ve only run one of the new dungeons so far: The Hall of Thanes. It was great to explore something new, although a low-level dungeon can only tell us so much about what the end-game experience will look like.

I’ve also worked through the new quests in Elwynn Forest and Westfall. They’re nice additions, if not particularly groundbreaking, but the SI:7 questlines were genuinely fun. I’d love to see more of that sort of storytelling as we get into the higher-level zones and end-game content.

All of this got me thinking about something else: I’d love to see a system that allows us to run every dungeon at end-game level. I know some people will immediately say absolutely not, and I can understand why, but it feels a shame to leave so much dungeon content behind once you’ve outlevelled it. There must be a way to make those dungeons relevant again without taking away from the original levelling experience.

A Few Technical Issues

Of course, it wouldn’t be a beta without a few issues!

The first one I’ve encountered is the crash-on-login bug when secondary lighting is set above “Fair”. You can work around it by lowering the setting before logging in and increasing it again once you’re in-game. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s hardly ideal. From what I understand, the issue also occurs in retail, so hopefully it can be tracked down and fixed sooner rather than later.

The second issue is by far the more frustrating one: the apparent memory leak causing FPS to tank over time.

I’ll log in sitting comfortably at around 250–270 FPS, only for performance to steadily deteriorate until I’m down to 30–40 FPS. At that point, the game starts feeling genuinely unpleasant to play. Restarting the client might be a temporary workaround, but it’s not something you should have to keep doing. Blizzard seems to be aware of the issue, so fingers crossed we get a fix soon.

It’s Good to Be Back

Aside from those technical niggles, I’ve had a fantastic time so far. There’s something genuinely special about running around populated Classic zones again, seeing players everywhere, and experiencing a world that feels alive in a way I haven’t properly experienced in around 15 years.

That’s the magic I’ve been missing. It’s not just the graphics, the quests, or the gameplay mechanics. It’s the atmosphere, the sense of community, and the feeling that there’s a whole world out there to explore alongside other players.

And honestly? I really, really love the new lighting.

These are only my initial impressions after a weekend in the beta, and there’s still plenty more to explore. I’m looking forward to seeing how things develop as we get access to more content.

What does everyone else think of the beta so far? How are you finding the visual changes, levelling, new dungeons and quests? And has anyone else been running into the same performance issues?

Edited by Grumpitude on October 28th 2026 at 16:30