WoW: Forever Devs Promise Old Gear Won't Be Useless

Ever grinded for a piece of gear only to see it replaced by a quest reward a week later? The devs behind World of Warcraft: Forever feel your pain—and they're promising things will be different this time.

In a recent PC Gamer interview, Blizzard developers explained that even though the level cap in Forever stays at 60, there will always be new gear to chase. And crucially, lower-level gear has never been more powerful. They're wary of the drastic power increases in modern WoW, like the recent Midnight expansion, which render previous seasons of gear irrelevant and lead to periodic stat squishes. "Classic wasn't far off from this," said vice president and senior game director Ion Hazzikostas. "It's gradual. Going from Blackwing Lair to Ahn'Qiraj that's actually only a couple of item levels higher. Those two largely coexist. C'thun drops are probably better than anything in Blackwing Lair, but that's like one or two items per player. This is a system that can last for a long, long time."

Associate production director Clay Stone added that's what makes gear in Forever—and Classic—meaningful. "Your best-in-slot that you pick up from a previous raid tier may continue to be your best in slot for a long time. It's very much our intention to try wherever we can to not invalidate old content." Of course, "a long time" isn't literally forever. Hazzikostas noted that at some point, if you're running the Barrow Deeps raid coming out in December, you'll have all the items you want. "That's fine. You're done with it."

So how does progression work at level 60? Players will see modest item level increases, gear that's good in specific niche situations, and rare "chase" pieces. An item might be especially powerful when fighting in a desert or against a dragon, for example, making it particularly good in one tough fight. And yes, devs are aware that bag space will be at a premium. "We're already thinking about that," said principal designer Kris Zierhut, mentioning ideas like more bank space, trinket bags, or even garment bags.

Forever launches on November 4, and so far players have seen few end-game pieces. The beta level cap is 30, and future items have been hidden from view and datamining. "We resurrected some old tech that keeps item stats and properties and tooltips secret, unknown to the client, until the item has actually been obtained by someone on the server," Hazzikostas said. "That's something we can use in modern WoW if we want." Essentially a flag on items determines whether they are known, making them visible in the game's data. It trips when someone discovers an item for the first time. Until then, players can't get a sneak peek. That's why Forever doesn't have an Adventure Guide for dungeons—developers want the game to keep its secrets.

"Every single boss in our raids has some items that are very low percentage drop chase items, kind of like the Dragonspine Trophy was in Gruul's Lair—but for every boss," Zierhut said. "It might be three weeks, four weeks before somebody sees that item drop, and the whole meta is torn up again." The goal is to keep the magic of exploration alive. "The goal is to un-solve the game, so players have to figure out again what's the best path," Zierhut said. "They don't know what the best items are. They don't know what to get. It's back to 2004 and nobody knows anything and figuring it out all over again."

To add complexity—and keep players from gaining power too quickly—items deliberately aren't optimized for your class and stats. "Our items are much more idiosyncratic, and you don't get exactly what you want," Zierhut said, noting that knowing your class and choosing between gear sets will be one way players express skill. "None of the gear is perfect." That's an old strategy—like strength on cloth gear from vanilla—but what's new is how much power items can have at a relatively low level. Both low-level drops and crafted gear are powerful early, on purpose. "A lot of times tradeskills felt like an afterthought in Classic," Zierhut said. "I made a deliberate effort to make more crafting recipes worthwhile to craft while you are leveling up, including lowering the skill requirement to craft them. The typical item from tailoring, leatherworking, blacksmithing requires 25 fewer skill points than it used to. So you'll be able to craft that item right around the time it's your best-in-slot at that level."

Much of the tuning in Forever's beta has been to keep that idea of modest but steady progression across the whole leveling process. "It's just a slightly different gradient in terms of power level," said lead game designer Tim Jones. So, will you be diving into Forever on November 4? What do you think about the slower gear progression? Let us know in the comments!