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I Spied on the WoW: Forever Beta as an Invisible God with the Blizzard Devs Who Made It

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I Spied on the WoW: Forever Beta as an Invisible God with the Blizzard Devs Who Made It

The grassroots reimagining of classic World of Warcraft seems huge, but the team wants to stay small

It's the final day of the beta test for World of Warcraft: Forever — Blizzard's new reimaging of classic, 2004-vintage WoW — and the servers are buzzing. In the village of Goldshire, a busy scrum of players has gathered, eager to tackle Super Hogger, a new, kaiju-sized boss version of the famous low-level elite gnoll. Outside the gates of the city of Stormwind, there's a festival atmosphere. Streams of players pour back and forth across the bridge, some of them three times their normal size.

I'm standing amid this hubbub as a silent, invisible observer. The Forever development team has invited me to an in-game tour on the live servers. I'm asked to roll an Alliance character; I hold my nose and do so. The team magically boost me to level 30 (the beta's cap) and make me invisible to other players and in-game monsters. My guides then teleport me around the game's vast map, including into new zones not yet unlocked in the beta.

It's like being invited behind the curtain by the Wizard of Oz. This is no siloed development environment; it's a live server being enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of players. We walk among them like gods, unsuspected, and cast our eyes over lands they cannot yet see. It's never occurred to me before that, when I'm lost in an online game world like WoW 's, its creators might be right there alongside me, silently watching.


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