WoW: Forever Is Made for Lapsed Classic Fans, Dev Confirms

World of Warcraft: Forever is aimed at Classic players and the millions whose accounts lapsed, says world builder Matthew Armstrong, not retail fans.

Ever let your WoW account go quiet because the game just didn't feel like the one you fell in love with? If so, Blizzard might be building World of Warcraft: Forever specifically with you in mind.

That's the message from world builder Matthew Armstrong, who laid out exactly who Forever is for in a lengthy thread on Twitter. According to him, the project is aimed squarely at "the Classic gamer and for the millions of people who have had their accounts lapse over the years because they were not satisfied with changes that were made to the game" — whether those changes touched the art style, the story, social aspects, game design, or a favorite class.

Armstrong didn't mince words about the retail crowd either. "I did not spend the last year of my life relearning and mastering how to do things like we did it 20+ years ago for retail players," he wrote. He admitted he could have taken the easy route and kept working the way he had for the past eight years on retail, which he says takes far less time — but that wasn't the point.

Instead, he felt "a duty to uphold an artistic vision and integrity that millions of people expect" — not just from players, but from fellow developers past and present who worked on the original game over 20 years ago. The goal was to "create something that resembled their work." In his words, Forever is "an Old School RuneScape-style upgrade to the original World of Warcraft MMO many folks know inside out and love."

Before you retail fans grab your pitchforks, Armstrong clarified this isn't a dig at you. He just "wanted to make Forever as authentic of a vanilla experience as possible," which is obviously "wildly different" from retail. He even acknowledged that most retail players "wouldn't care and would probably actually prefer it" the other way.

Three sayings guided him through development: "Convenience is the death of the journey," "If you're making a game for everyone then you're making it for no one," and "Every change we make incurs a debt to the authenticity of the game and sooner or later that debt will be paid." Those beliefs, he says, cannot be shaken — and he'll keep pestering the team about anything that feels out of place.

Even so, Armstrong still hopes Forever "will pull in as many people as possible," Classic, retail, or otherwise. "I hope you can all remember what made this game so special in the first place," he added. With fans already joking that "you can't tell me this isn't WoW 2," it seems plenty of players are ready to believe again. Will you be reactivating your account for this one?