As an undead, I'd very much like a capital city. (Sorry about the tree)

Remember how back in Legion during the Death Knight order hall campaign, it was Liadrin who almost fried Mograine into a crisp when the Horsemen attacked Light's Hope Chapel? Imagine if the Ebon Blade did this after the events of the Kith'ix raid. How the turntables...

Transmog list if anyone wants it (though the shield is off limits for us Death Knights, unfortunately):

• Augur's Lucent Helmet
• Lingering Phantom's Shoulderplates
• Primal Gladiator's Plate Chestguard
• Duelist's Midnight Doublet (shirt)
• Cauldron Champion's Fistguards
• Acherus Knight's Girdle
• Obsidian Guard's Chausses
• Draconic Gladiator's Plate Stompers
• Icy Ebon Blade
• Unchained Gladiator's Barrier (elite)

Here's a photo of my Orc, for reference! Jakog, Teacher of the Strong.

DISCLAIMER: This is only MY opinion, and I know that anything stated is subject to change. I might be biased, ignorant and inexperienced but ultimately honest to a fault.

Also check bradplay's video on youtube: https://youtu.be/8izwawU5Qfw?si=SoTpVWUzlw_wbcZq she absolutely inspired this post. We got to work for our positives. This is me trying.

Let's start with the list now:

1.- The Looks: Don't get me wrong, low-poly is such a vibe! Classic / Forever has, indeed, charm! But at this point I am enjoying the modern look. Polish happens to everything that endures. Quel'Thalas was beautifully revamped and soaring through the Eversong Woods feels like a dream. The zones, the effects, even the lightbloom looks mesmerizing. Azeroth is a pretty gal.

2.- Transmogging: On the topic of looks; It has never been easier to materialize your fantasy into the game. The fact that you can run legacy (old dungeons, raids) content for the sake of fashion (although I hate how that feels, oneshotting everything) is great. I've created 5 looks for my Mag'har orc and they're in rotation. There's never been more options too and coming spring--for those who don't know--we're going to unlock armor-type moggin' so full plate wearing Priest here we go!

3.- Progression: Okay, a double-edged sword. Retail unapologetically rushes you to the endgame and in the past, I would've been upset about that! I too am all about enjoying the ride. But now that Forever is coming, I can enjoy leveling there haha! Win / win scenario. I'll take it slow in the bloomy lands and then, when tired of its pace (It happens to the best of us) I'll do Retail's seasonal content (Chill, Mythic keys is not the only thing seasonal, I'm referring to new systems, zones, quest-lines) and maybe have a sweaty time grinding. Because we like to grind, YOU like to grind. Gearing up feels great. Monkey brain likes number go up.

4.- Skyriding: I agree with Forever's argument about flying, I do, podracing my way over the zones is a bad habit. However, come on, I'm riding a freakin' Dragon and it feels like such. Absolute win, thank you GW2, long overdue.

5.- QoL / Convenience: Not much to be said**.** If they haven't added the setting by now, there's an add-on for it. Customize anything, almost every-thing.

6.- Delves & Prey System: Don't have time to coordinate with your Guildmates? Would you like to watch some videos in the background while playing? Do you work from home (like I do)? Do you want to chill and enjoy your own company? Do you want to do solo-content and still be challenged for it? Well, done. Delving can be repetitive, but we have plenty of em and getting more. The rogue-like aspect is fun too. I'm playing with 1 friend consistently so it's perfect content for us. The Prey system on the other hand is so simple in how it works. Less, sometimes, is more. I've been invaded whilst doing rares or bosses. No more mind-numbing afk battles outside, got to have your guard up.

7.- Symbiosis with Forever: I'll insist in this one. I guess that for ages, the actual issue with Retail has been that for the most part (classic has been here for a while now but imo there's an obvious resistance in 1:1 repetition, I mean, it gets old, fast) there weren't any alternatives other than trying other MMOs for a change. Now, you can actually rest and experience the world we all love in fresh ways without feeling that you have to surrender WoW at all.

8.- The Community: My bud and I were received by a guild (shoutout to Bring the Pain hurrah!) with a lot of patience and advice. Look, people that are running keys and have done so for a while have all the right to get upset if someone without experience (or willingness to learn) crashes their run and ruins it. It happens. I've done it. I'm sorry. Won't do it again. Otherwise, the community I've experienced knows that Retail is judged relentlessly and have been eager to help and show us the ropes. They obviously love the game.

9.- The Combat: This is my first time actually committing to the endgame and by extension: getting serious with the combat system and I've been having a BLAST playing with an Arms Warrior (Colossus because Idc about reaching the absolute ceiling) mashing buttons and fine-tuning my downtime. It's dynamic, a thing of rhythm. Action combat indeed. I stopped playing back in cataclysm and honestly don't recall how the combat felt back then. If you do? Good for you. I am enjoying it now. It's not perfect but it is FUN.

10.- Playing with Friends: Makes all the difference. In this and any other game. Make some. Be one.

11.- (HAHA! Two 4s) Your turn: Tell me what you and your friends have been enjoying about Retail, Midnight, Season 2, etc. You can complaint elsewhere (and I hope you do, there's plenty of room for improvement and critique is absolutely necessary).

///

Thank you for your time and attention. I know it is precious.

It is unreasonable to push free-to-play cash shop tactics in a game that already requires buying expansions and paying a monthly subscription. It creates a massive barrier to entry, making it impossible to convince friends to start playing when they see they will be constantly pushed to spend extra money on top of the mandatory fees. As for veterans, it does not feel good at all to see in-game merits being awarded with cosmetics which barely look half as good, nor have had half as much effort spent on them, in comparison to what's available in the cash shop.

This is especially frustrating because player power resets every patch. The only permanent progression in this game consists of collecting cosmetics, achievements, and titles. By locking the highest-quality cosmetics behind a paywall, the developers undermine the only meaningful long-term reward system players have.

I suggest that we remain vocal until something actually changes to any degree whatsoever for starters**.**

Some examples from the past where being vocal actually has had an impact:

Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) EA tied character progression to randomized loot boxes. Following extreme community backlash, EA temporarily disabled all microtransactions before launch and later implemented a complete overhaul, removing paid loot boxes and shifting to a gameplay-based progression system. As a result from the community being vocal, EA's stock dropped by roughly 8.5% over the month, temporarily wiping out around $3 billion in shareholder value.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017) Warner Bros. included a cash shop selling loot boxes containing orcs and gear, which heavily impacted the late-game grind. Due to ongoing player criticism, the developers permanently removed the cash shop and all microtransactions, rebalancing the entire final act of the game.

Payday 2 (2015) Overkill introduced "safes" containing weapon skins with stat boosts that required paid drills to open, breaking a prior promise to never include microtransactions. Following intense community outrage and review bombing, Overkill eventually removed the stat boosts from the skins and updated the system so all safes could be opened for free.

Apex Legends (2024) EA announced a change requiring players to purchase the seasonal Battle Pass exclusively with real-world currency instead of in-game premium currency. Following massive review bombing on Steam and coordinated community pushback, EA reversed the decision within two weeks and restored the original purchasing method.

YOU DON'T NEED TO QUIT THE GAME. YOU'RE NOT A HYPOCRITE OF ANY KIND. JUST MAKE SOME NOISE UNTIL SOMETHING'S DONE. IT HAS BEEN PROVEN TO WORK NUMEROUS TIMES.

EDIT: It seems like most counter arguments are "It's not that bad". "Not that bad" is not good. A series of "Not that bad" is how it got to this level in the first place.

Silly me for thinking that the Kul-Tiran/Drust/Tidesage themed housing decor and exterior would be tied to the upcoming Kul-Tiran/Drust/Tidesage themed mode that is Talebound.

Silly me for thinking that the new Cauldron mount would be a potential meta-achievement reward for sinking some hours into the new game-mode and truly mastering each playstyle.

This feels so predatory. I can't shake the feeling like a new shop addition would've been better received if it wasn't so blatantly cut from content we were about to receive?

Like, can you imagine if Midnight shipped in all it's Blood Elf glory, with it's signature Housing feature, and then Blizzard just dropped "Oh, the Sin'dorei architecture will cost you an extra £30."

They KNOW that people are going to dip their toes into this spooky new game-mode, and start collecting some Drustvar-themed decor only to see that.. What's this? I can truly complete the fantasy by just paying more?

God, this expansion is really driving me away. Anybody else's blood boiling?

I have a grand total of two dungeon mounts left to collect in the entire game, and coincidentally, both are eligible drops from the Reins of the Quantum Courser.

A few weeks ago, I got a Reins to drop. But since one of the two mounts I still need is from King's Rest, and King's Rest is in the M+ rotation this season, I decided to hold onto it and try to farm the other mount normally first.

Well...

Today, completely by chance, I got a second Reins.

I was so excited that I immediately used both of them back-to-back.

What I didn't do was learn the mount from the first Reins before using the second one.

So now I have two copies of the same mount.

And the one dungeon mount I still need is from King's Rest.

🙃

Thanks to Misty for commissioning her Vulpera Mage Trixxie, the whole thing was a lot of fun to draw!

I’m sure in essence this is probably just an image made to look this way for style / presentation reasons. But it really frames how significant the size of Azeroth as a whole is in relation to the continents. Granted, it’s missing a bunch of pieces we know are in between, or just doesn’t illuminate them… but still, this looks like a much bigger planet to continent ratio than the holographic globes and such we’d seen prior.

Big fan of the new camping system in Forever and its had me thinking about “Cozy Fire” and the old survival system. Check out these old patch notes if you’re unfamiliar.

If you played in Beta Patch 0.6 in 2004 you might remember how the game tracked your character's "Tiredness" across five states, basically as you killed monsters without taking a break at an Inn or logging out, your XP rewards dropped like this:

Well Rested: Granted 200% XP from monster kills.
Rested: Granted 150% XP.
Normal: Granted 100% XP.
Tired: Granted 100% XP but was the warning threshold.
Fatigued: Slashed XP down to 50% of standard gains.
Exhausted: Heavily penalty, bottoming out at 25% XP per kill.

Most players absolutely hated it lol

However Designer Rob Pardo famously changed the perception to the system without actually changing the leveling pace. He doubled the base experience required to level up and rebranded the standard "100% XP" state as the new “Rested” giving 200%.

He then rebranded the penalizing "50% Fatigued XP" state as the new “Normal State” (100% XP) so the time it took to level up remained identical. However, because it was framed as a reward rather than a punishment, people suddenly loved the system!

Definitely interesting when you compare it to the patch notes of today. And it’s fun to think about how additional fun effects like these could be implemented using the Pardo method of skewing player perception.

There’s no in-game models for the Heartsbane Triad, but I have the voicelines from their fight in Waycrest Manor stuck in my head so I drew the sister that doesn’t have a mask as I imagined her to be before the Drust turned them into…whatever they became lol. They were still witches before the corruption, but then they apparently became super witches.

EDIT: Pre Drust transformation might have been a better description.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my modified fork of Wolkara, which lets you run the macOS client of World of Warcraft natively on iPad and iPhone - no cloud streaming, no GeForce NOW, and no remote desktop. The game executes directly on the device hardware using Apple Silicon.

Since r/wow doesn't allow direct video posts, you can check out gameplay and showcase videos in my previous post here:
Gameplay Videos & Showcase on r/wowforever

GitHub Repository

All code, build instructions, and documentation are open source:
https://github.com/Naosukii/wolkara

How It Works (Short Summary from README)

• Modern Apple Silicon Macs and M-series iPads (as well as A-series iPhones) share the same arm64 architecture.
• Wolkara is built on top of Tolkara, a lightweight runtime and translation layer (think Wine/Proton, but translating macOS system, AppKit, Metal graphics, and audio calls into iOS/iPadOS equivalents).
• Zero game files or assets are modified or redistributed: The client downloads the genuine macOS game data directly from Blizzard’s CDN and verifies files with SHA-256 checksums. The original executable is never patched or re-signed.
• Controls: Supports touch controls, customizable on-screen virtual gamepads, physical Bluetooth controllers, and full Keyboard + Mouse / trackpad.

What I Added / Modified in My Fork

On top of base Wolkara, I added several quality-of-life features to make playing on mobile practical:

• Built-in CurseForge AddOn Manager: Search, download, and update WoW addons directly inside the mobile app without having to manually hook up to a PC/Mac to transfer folders.
• Settings & Addon Backup/Restore Manager: Easily backup your UI layout, WTF settings, and addons so you don’t lose anything across updates.
• Metal Performance Overlay: In-game toggle to track real-time FPS and frame timings.
• Config & Locale Sync: Automatically synchronizes textLocale and audioLocale in Config.wtf with launcher language settings (including German download fixes).
• Updater & CASC Fixes: More robust resume downloads and metadata recovery for on-device updates.

Performance

Tested and running smooth:

• iPad Pro M4 (2026): Solid, stable 60 FPS
• iPhone 16 Pro: Solid, stable 60 FPS

IMPORTANT WARNING: Risk of Account Ban

Please read this before trying it on your main account:

• This project is completely unofficial and NOT endorsed or approved by Blizzard.
• While Wolkara does not inject cheats, alter memory for gameplay advantages, or bypass integrity checks, it is an unauthorized runtime environment.
• Blizzard's Warden anti-cheat or automated detection systems could flag the translation layer or environment discrepancies as unauthorized third-party software, which can lead to an account suspension or permanent ban.
• If you decide to build and test this, do so at your own risk, and I strongly recommend testing on a secondary/throwaway account.

How to Try It

Setting this up requires a developer workflow:

1. A Mac with Xcode, XcodeGen, and Python 3.
2. An Apple Developer account (personal free or paid) to sign and deploy the app to your device.
3. Follow the step-by-step setup in the Getting Started Guide.

Feel free to check out the repo, ask questions, or leave feedback!

Azeroth Atlas is a fully rendered, 1/1 copy of the entire World Map of WoW Forever in 16K resolution. It includes every dungeon and raid available to us, plus some we haven't yet seen. Want to fly through Krol'dok Stronghold? You can! Same with all the battlegrounds, and even raids! You can even import your raid from raid helper to a battleground and use the map as a sandtable you can walk through. It's free to use, so come take a look! Disclaimer: The tool was partially created with Claude Codex.

New bundle is Kul Tiran themed. This is a rule #2 from official post on blizzard forums: https://news.blizzard.com/en-gb/article/24242736/developer-insight-hearthsteel-virtual-currency-and-housing-in-midnight

Are they pumping out too much content? Idk, I like the different options to get gear and activities to do. But who remembers ritual sites? And yes, a lot of bugs.

Could they do more to improve the world immersion? Maybe.

Did they overcompensate to make raiders Happy and get people to raid season 2? Yes. Season 1 mythic plus was my favorite m plus season and sad to see mythic plus in bad state this season. And feels horrible for people who didn't keep up and can't get cantrip items because they aren't 320 plus yet and have no chance for heroic pug invite.

I started playing wow BFA and blizzard made every QOL change I wanted (biggest is warbound rep and alt campaign skips).

Im loving retail and wow forever exists for people who want a break.

With all the talk of mythic plus being bad and retail hate, compare it to Islands in bfa and grinding neck and rep on alts with no skips.

Im having a blast in retail. For those who think wow forever is the future, I'm glad you are happy too.

No one asked me, but I'd thought I'd share some retail appreciation and QOL changes blizzard/ion are doing.

EDIT: yes I know the constant bugs and systems not working properly is an issue and I'm not trying to defend that, I addressed it indirectly in the title.