WoW devs surprised to find pure liquid nostalgia is popular

Blizzard's developers were taken aback when they discovered that their new beta version of World of Warcraft, Forever, was incredibly popular. Forever is essentially Classic+, a version of the game as it was back in 2004, but with over 1,000 additional quests, new zones, redesigned talent trees, new racial abilities, and improved lighting. The developers had made these changes not to modernize the game, but to enhance the classic vision.

Senior game producer Tom Ellis expressed surprise at the success of Forever, stating that it's not uncommon for beta environments to struggle with high load. He also mentioned that they had scaled up their REGIONAL server from 2 connections to 8, which resolved the issue of players being kicked out due to long queue times. Ellis emphasized that this was an unprecedented situation, noting that they had never seen such a problem when there wasn't an obvious CPU issue.

Despite the technical hiccups, the developers are excited about the potential of Forever. Senior game designer Josh Greenfield commented that it's the craziest numbers he's seen in his 17 years at Blizzard, and his eight years on Classic. He described the game as something special, and the author agrees, finding the combination of nostalgia and improvements to be quite impressive.