World of Warcraft: Forever has me in a chokehold, and it's partially because—well, it's relaxing. As my colleague at PC Gamer so succinctly put it: "Sometimes it's fun to hit a scorpion with a club for 38 seconds." Despite aping an era seen as more 'hardcore' to some players, Forever's lack of blaring and annoying seasonal grist is honestly refreshing.
Speaking with associate production director Clay Stone about why I'm certainly not the only one feeling that way (given the success of Classic, Season of Discovery, and now Forever's beta), he says it's a question Blizzard's been considering "for a little while.
"We saw, certainly with the success of Classic and the response to that, it was more than just a nostalgic experience for some people. The fact that they didn't leave, you know? They didn't just play for a month. They fell in love with it all over again. Then we saw it again a lot with Hardcore in 2023. All of a sudden, now you had a whole bunch of people who'd never played the game before, but were coming in because of that slower pace, and the fact that Hardcore reinforced that slower pace for them."
But it's more than just about the pace of levelling—it's also about the wider structure, too. Retail WoW is a seasonal game, which certainly has both benefits and drawbacks. One such drawback being that if you miss the start of a season, you're kind of put off the whole exercise:
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