WoW Forever: the biggest shaman Discord locks itself in protest

The Shaman Classic Discord, a class community of almost 80,000 members with guides for Classic Era, Season of Discovery, Mists of Pandaria Classic and now WoW Forever, has locked its entire server in protest at how the developers are handling shaman in WoW Forever. Every channel is read-only, including those for the other Classic versions that the protest is not about.

In its announcement the server team says community feedback has been ignored and the class fantasy of every shaman spec is being destroyed. A follow-up post a few hours later says the lockdown is not blackmail but an attempt to be heard after weeks of feedback through other channels, and that the server will reopen whatever the outcome.

The team stresses that the complaint is not about damage output. For Enhancement, it objects that Windfury Weapon will not be the main imbue for raiding and that spell power and intellect gear seems to beat physical or hybrid gear. For Elemental, it points to the choice of Chain Lightning over Lava Burst, which leaves the spec without a second school against nature-immune enemies, along with mana problems, a Flame Shock with no links to the rest of the kit and the change to Totemic Projection.

For Restoration, the post says removing the upfront healing from Riptide turns the spell into a copy of other healers' heal-over-time spells. The background to all of this is the round of class changes for launch, including the removal of Lava Burst.

A class Discord going dark in protest has happened before: in August 2025 a retail paladin community closed its Retribution channels for less than a day over the spec's raid performance. That time the closure was limited to a few channels; this time it covers the whole server.