World of Warcraft: Forever‘s beta is officially online, which means anyone who spent $30 to unlock the Skyborne Elves can also now play a limited amount of the game. But what’s drawing the most attention from players isn’t the new blue elf race, or the new camping feature, or the newly-added quests.
Nope, we’re all just taking screenshots of sunsets.
And sunrises, and misty forests, and pretty much anything else that looks especially good thanks to the new lighting update. For some context, WoW: Forever is essentially built on World of Warcraft‘s original, base game. You know, the one that looked like this:
However, Forever comes with two different modes: an original classic mode, and an updated version where you can see the original world and textures and models as they were, but with updated lighting and water and other effects. And, dangit, dorky as it sounds, the changes are pretty cool. It’s really neat to see what 20 years of lighting tech can do when implemented in an older-looking game like this, particularly when the rest of the game isn’t being updated to some weird HD situation that would go against the tone of Classic WoW.
So, naturally, we’re all taking screenshots of sunsets, sunrises, sunbeams filtering through trees, misty woods, and more! Here are some nice looks I found, but there are many more:
I love this next one, as it has a comparison *and* you can see Mount Hyjal faintly in the distance! Wow!
I could just keep posting these, truly, there are so many. It reminds me a bit of the HD-2D stuff that Square Enix has been doing lately, in that they’re taking the feeling of a retro game but using modern updates to really make it shine while maintaining the classic vibes.
I haven’t personally played during sunrise or sunset, but the top image on this post is a nice one I took in the Skyborne starting zone. Of course, there’s nothing to compare it to as WoW didn’t have Skyborne Elves in its original incarnation, but it’s not bad-looking all the same. Still feels like old WoW, but a little prettier.
And yes, I’ve seen some people hating on the new look. I have great news for the haters: you can turn all this off, if you want. Be free.