A Nostalgia-Filled Weekend in the Forever Beta
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Well, that was a fun little nostalgia‑soaked weekend. After messing around with a few classes and levelling a pally to 20, I figured I’d jot down my initial impressions of the beta.
First off, can we just collectively appreciate the new environmental effects? The fog looks great, occasionally a bit heavy in certain spots, but overall it’s a solid addition. The new water is obviously gorgeous, though I do understand the argument that it might look too good for a classic aesthetic. And the lighting… honestly, I love it. It’s simple, it’s beautiful, and it adds so much atmosphere to the world.
Speaking of the world, I still think using the old environmental assets actually looks better than what I’ve seen in retail. Retail often ends up with a mishmash of old and new that feels inconsistent, whereas Forever looks cleaner. Paired with the updated effects, the whole thing is visually stunning.
As for levelling, I don’t have strong opinions yet since we’re capped at 20, but the pacing feels good. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about dungeon XP being nerfed. I get what they were aiming for, but maybe over time they can bring it back in line with true vanilla.
I’ve only run one new dungeon so far, The Hall of Thanes. It was nice to see something fresh, though a low‑level dungeon isn’t exactly a preview of what end‑game will feel like. I also did the new quests in Elwynn Forest and Westfall. They’re nice additions, nothing mind‑blowing, but the SI:7 bits were genuinely fun. Hopefully end‑game questing leans more into that kind of storytelling.
All this actually got me thinking: I’d love some kind of system that lets us run all dungeons at end‑game. I know plenty of people would immediately say “absolutely not”, but it feels like wasted content otherwise.
I did run into a couple of issues. The first is the crash on login bug if secondary lighting is set to anything above “Fair”. You can turn it back up once you’re in‑game, so it’s not catastrophic, but still something that needs fixing. From what I understand, this also happens in retail, so who knows how quickly it’ll be addressed.
The second issue, and easily the most annoying, is the memory leak FPS drop. I’ll log in at 250–270 FPS, and over time it just drops… and drops… until I’m sitting at 30–40 FPS and the game feels genuinely bad to play. I think Blizzard is aware of it, so hopefully it gets sorted soon.
Aside from that, it’s just been simple fun running around in populated zones that haven’t felt properly alive in about 15 years.
Anyway, those are some of the things I’ve noticed so far. I really do love the new lighting. What’s everyone else thinking about the beta so far.
