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World of Warcraft Forever is off to a monumental start, with more players wandering Azeroth than ever before. And at least one death metal guitarist can't put it down long enough to watch his opener play.
Death metal band Archspire posted a video to Instagram, overlaid with text that reads, "POV World of Warcraft Forever comes out the same day as the show," as the camera shows a Steam Deck with an undead Warlock running around with his voidwalker. The caption carries on the bit, saying, "When your set starts at 9:00 but you just zoned into Undercity to pick up your Voidwalker quest so you can pet-tank your way through Fenris Isle."
I get the appeal, some of the quests in Fenris Isle are absolutely brutal if you don't have anyone else in your party, so getting a purple blob that can tank it for you really is exciting. It doesn't hurt that WoW Forever runs incredibly on a handheld, either.
WoW Forever's newfound controller support and lightweight system requirements make it a natural match for handheld gaming PCs. I've tested the game on both the Xbox Ally X and the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, and both have been able to handle the game at pretty high settings without dipping below 60 fps. I haven't played the game on the Steam Deck quite yet, but at least from Archspire's Instagram post, it seems to be running just fine.
Archspire's guitarist is also not the only Death Metaller who loves WoW. IGN interviewed Cannibal Corpse way back in 2008, and when we asked George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher about his love for the game, he told us, "It is true, I am obsessed with WOW! I have 70 level 70 characters. I play HORDE side ONLY. I hate the Alliance with a passion!"
Corpsegrinder also told us a story about how he was inundated with messages from fans, saying, "I did another interview where I said my Rogue's name and the server I played on, and then I started getting tells in game. A LOT OF TELLS. I was getting bombarded even when I was raiding, so I transferred him off the server and changed his name. I loved talking to people who were into Cannibal Corpse, but it was getting so I logged in and couldn't play, because all I did was exchange tells with people."
A lot has changed since 2008, but WoW Forever is looking to recapture some of that old-school WoW magic. And just based on how many people are playing the game, Blizzard seems to have pulled it off, even though they've run into some hurdles with gold rewards and dungeon experience.
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