What happens when Blizzard hands an entire generation the game they skipped homework for, then adds new zones and a race of windswept elves on top? You get a week of World of Warcraft Forever memes, mostly from people who swore they were too old for this and then logged in before dinner on a weeknight. WoW Forever launched on November 4, and the first week has been equal parts nostalgia, crowd control and players falling out of the sky.
The WoW Forever Memes Never Trusted the Launch
Nobody believed Blizzard, which honestly makes it the most stable relationship I have ever been in. Everyone came in braced for queues and disaster, and the funny part is that Icy Veins ended up calling it a surprisingly smooth launch. We prepared for war and mostly got a waiting room.
Then the identity crisis kicked in. I have a retirement account and a bad knee, and I still spent Sunday agonizing over which hairstyle my elf deserved. The memes know exactly who this game is for: the emo elf who is not going through a phase, the guy closing his curtains on the news, and the rude but accurate retirement home rebrand.
Somebody Mashed All the Layers Together
Quick explainer for anyone who does not live in Azeroth: layering splits a busy zone into copies so a thousand people are not fighting over the same boar. On November 6 something slipped, Westfall suddenly filled with far too many harvesters, and a server message apologized for “a slight blip in the multiverse.” @JhaviArt’s joke that the devs heard the population complaints and hit the “mash all layers together” button is still the cleanest summary of WoW Forever’s layering problems you will find.
The zeppelin version is even better. When the layers collapse mid-flight, a quiet ride turns into a deck packed with hundreds of strangers all typing some version of “where did you all come from” at once. It is the most social anyone has been on a zeppelin in about twenty years.
The Horde Has Decided Stairs Are Optional
Instead of riding the zeppelin tower down like adults, Horde players are leaping off the second it arrives and raining onto the Undead below, and @Nikkinahx captured it with a polite safety announcement that nobody followed. I respect it. I once got off a moving bus because I saw my ex on it, so I am not in a position to judge anyone’s exit strategy.
The Deathguard on duty deserves hazard pay. And the new Skyborne players, judging by the memes, treat every ledge in Azeroth like a skydiving lesson they paid for in advance.
Azeroth Is Still Azeroth, Hats Included
Some things never change, and the jokes about them feel like coming home. Quest rewards still read like a caveman’s shopping list, young Anduin developed a hat habit back in the beta, and at least one new player has declared a personal war on every Tauren he sees. Players have even spotted Game Masters wandering the world telling corny jokes while fishing, which is the most 2005 sentence I have typed all year.
The evolution chart is the one the whole week was building toward: two decades of expansions, and the final form of the player turns around to tell everyone to go back.
See you in Westfall, assuming they leave a harvester for the rest of us.
For a bad case of launch-week nostalgia, take WoW Forever Launch Memes From Players Who Remember Every Single Queue with a glass of water. Retro Gaming Memes: 32 Jokes For True Millennial Gamers treats the related symptoms, and 35 Millennial Memes For The Best Generation With The Worst Knees handles the knees.
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