WoW Forever: the old character portraits are back

Testers on the WoW Forever beta noticed that the character creation screen was showing the modern portraits for every race, and kept showing them even when the Standard Definition setting was switched on. That setting is what players use to put the older, Classic look back across the game, so on this one screen it was doing nothing. A recent build has restored the old portraits, and the screen now has both: the modern set with the setting off, the Classic set with it on.

It is a small thing to fix and a telling one to ask for. The people who play with the Classic setting on are particular about which parts of the interface actually look the way they did, and have been saying so loudly through the beta; creators such as Xaryu have been pressing Blizzard to extend a full Classic option to the whole interface rather than to parts of it. Putting the portraits back is an answer to that pressure on one screen, not a commitment to the rest.

It also follows a pattern the beta has settled into: something about how the game looks is reported, and a build changes it soon after. The same happened last week when the shaman's wolf form came out far too bright and Blizzard called the appearance temporary until the fixes were in.

This comes from a single report by a site that tracks the beta, and Blizzard has not listed the change in its development notes. The beta runs until 21 October, and WoW Forever opens at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.