Blizzard has been listening for a long time. WoW Forever is the latest proof.

I have played World of Warcraft since the original beta in 2004, and I have spent 26 years marketing video games, so I see this from both sides of the table. Heck, our guild downed Illidan last night.

World of Warcraft: Forever was revealed at BlizzCon on September 12 and launches November 4. Beta opened September 17, and lead developer Josh Greenfield, 17 years at Blizzard, called the turnout the craziest numbers he has seen. The population cap was raised again this weekend.

Blizzard ran an hour-long developer Q&A within a week of the reveal. On day seven it published a feedback podcast naming what players had flagged, including Druid forms that looked too modern for classic Azeroth and quest rewards that were too generous. Yesterday they shipped a change so grouped players receive quest drops evenly. In the same window it said no in public to shared tagging and to GDKP. Listening is in their DNA.

In early 2023 our team at Ayzenberg ran a research project that scored ten large live-service games on community health across six months of social media, forums and Discord. WoW finished first of ten at 8.1/10, ahead of Fortnite, and GTA Online and others. WoW published over a thousand original posts in six months, held 23.51% positive social sentiment. More than half of its content was for pure engagement not just patch notes.

I saw this internally while I worked as VP of Publishing on Hearthstone. Legendary cards are the rarest and most powerful in the game, and a deck can run only one, so pulling a duplicate from a pack turned the best moment in the game into the worst. Players said so on social, on the forums and on Reddit. Development and publishing proposed eliminating duplicate legendaries permanently. Finance modeled the scenarios, and some showed revenue declining because players would buy fewer packs. The company sided with the team, and the long-term health of the community, and we shipped it.

WoW may be the largest open-development game franchise in history, and WoW Forever may be the clearest picture yet of what building a game with its fans looks like.

Where is your guild going on November 4?