Good evening and welcome to Azeroth After Dark, the show that reads the patch notes so your guild doesn't have to. I'm Grukk, orc raid leader, key grinder, and professional loot enjoyer. And I'm Tinkra Sparkwhistle, the gnome with three spreadsheets open and a beta client downloading in the background. Tonight I brought receipts made of raid logs. Tinkra is our engineer and test build speed-reader, and she's the reason we get numbers right.

Tonight, Classic raid populations falling off during the WoW Forever beta, Taliesin and Evitel asking if retail is in trouble, and bad luck protection on quest drops. Let's start with those raid logs. Story one comes from Wowhead, and it's about WoW Forever, which is its own game, not Classic and not retail. Its beta is pulling raiders away from the Classic flavors, and the drop is steep. Steep is right, Grukk.

Ironforge dot pro pulls raid log data from Warcraft Logs, and Burning Crusade Anniversary went from 212,821 raiders the week of September 8th through the 14th, down to 124,487 the next week. Wait, that's how many raiders gone in one week? 88,334. That's the number the article gives, and it lines up with the beta going live one week in. And Burning Crusade Anniversary isn't even finished, right? There's still content on the board.

Correct. It's in Phase 3 with Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, and Zul'Aman and Sunwell Plateau are still to come. Whether it rolls into Wrath of the Lich King Anniversary is unclear, and Wowhead says so plainly. What about Mists of Pandaria Classic? Those folks have been on the same characters a long time. Since Classic launched in August 2019, yes. Their raiding base fell from 33,125 to 24,971 with the beta launch, and they've been in the final phase since June with Siege of Orgrimmar.

My read is people are either in the beta or waiting on Blizzard, and that's the article's read too. Speaking of everyone arguing about Forever, our second story is a retail one, sort of. Taliesin and Evitel's Weekly Reset spent this week on Forever and what it means for the live game. Wowhead highlighted it, and the pitch is blunt. They say the beta is live, it looks incredible, it plays beautifully, and then they ask straight out whether we need retail WoW any more.

That's a spicy question for a Friday. Do they actually answer it? They frame it as a coexistence question. They mention the less than stellar Midnight 12 point 2 Eclipse and The Last Titan news at BlizzCon, and ask if mainline is in trouble after the World Soul Saga or if the two games bring out the best in each other. My hot take is they can absolutely coexist, because I am not giving up my raid nights.

Tinkra, what else is on their show list? Four topics. Behind the scenes of the Forever beta issues with Tom Ellis explaining on X, Blizzard holding the line on shared tagging, over eight hours of Forever music, and increased weather effects coming to the beta. Let's put their episode up on the big screen, because it's a proper overview of what Forever is and how it stacks up against retail and Classic.

And since they mentioned Forever being pro-social, that's a perfect handoff to story three. Back in WoW Forever, Wowhead reports that Aggrend, Classic developer Josh Greenfield, revealed on social media that quest item drops now have a form of bad luck protection while you're grouped. And this is the part I love, because it's a systems tweak, not a rules change. He says the short answer on changing quest drops is no, but they added under the hood functionality to more predictably round-robin quest items to people who are grouped.

So is it true round robin, everyone gets one in turn? No, and he's specific about that. He says it's not pure round robin, there's still randomness, but it's more like bad luck protection if you haven't seen a drop in a while and others are pulling ahead. Every raid leader knows that moment. One guy has eight of ten furbolg butts and the other has one, and someone says it's fine, you can go, I'll wrap up here.

That's almost word for word his example, which tells you they've felt it too. He also says they're still dialing in the system, so treat the exact behavior as beta and subject to change. Does he promise it makes the grind shorter? He says it's still going to take time, just like vanilla, but less feast or famine, and you'll kill things much faster in a group. He also points at the Recent Allies feature, so you keep running into the same people later.

So tonight, raid logs falling during the Forever beta, Taliesin and Evitel asking whether retail and Forever can share a shelf, and Aggrend explaining quest drop luck protection. All three came to us via Wowhead, and the full posts are linked with this episode if you want the raw numbers and the whole quote. That's our lot. Go group up, share the furbolg butts, and we'll see you next time.