// PC GAMER — GAMING
WoW: Forever dev says 'there's a real longing for that slower, more deliberate pace' in MMOs: 'A deliberate pushback on this go go go nature'
"It could be something with the times that we live in."
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"It could be something with the times that we live in. The amount of information and noise that we're facing all the time, the distractions of all the notifications on my phone that are blaring at me everyday, but there's a real longing for that slower, more deliberate pace … There seems to be a deliberate pushback on this 'go go go' nature," speaking to PC Gamer.
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:
"We had so many players who didn't even play Season of Discovery simply because it was a Season, even though they had friends who were saying 'this is the best version of World of Warcraft that they've ever made!' But because it was a season, it felt ephemeral, and therefore [people thought] 'I'm not going to jump in'."
Forever, in many ways, feels like an extrapolation of Season of Discovery—the Classic+ of it all—in a package that's not going anywhere. Personally, I fear for my free time, because even knowing my beta character's going to be deleted, I just can't seem to pull myself away. And it is, again, because of that zenlike state—the modern world is busy, which makes hitting satyrs chill by comparison.
"It could be something with the times that we live in," says Stone. "The amount of information and noise that we're facing all the time, the distractions of all the notifications on my phone that are blaring at me everyday, but there's a real longing for that slower, more deliberate pace.