The scale of it
Blizzard announced the pass at BlizzCon: every dungeon drop reviewed, weak items redesigned, unique items from dungeon bosses now blue quality.
What that means in numbers is not in the announcement but in the beta client. An analysis of build 1.60.1.69913 counts 5,335 items that do not exist in Classic and 4,271 that differ from their Classic versions. Both figures are read out of the files, not published - and both can still change before launch.
Blizzard is withholding the values on purpose
This is why so many of those items come with no numbers, and it is not an oversight. The interesting records sit in encrypted sections of the client files, and the eight keys that open them are not shipped. The client itself cannot read them. On top of that sit roughly 3,300 fully sealed files whose type cannot even be identified.
Senior Game Designer Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield put it plainly in an interview: an item's stats are not meant to be known until it drops. Nobody walks into the first raid tier with a finished BiS list; the first week will be "the Wild West". It fits that no PTRs are planned for new raid content and there is no dungeon journal at launch.
In practice: what becomes known about a new item becomes known because somebody looted it. One day into the beta, that was fourteen of them.
The effect depends on where you are
This is the change that moves furthest from Classic thinking. An item is no longer equally good everywhere, but good at what it was made for:
- Staff of Westfall carries spell damage, healing and movement speed - but only in Elwynn, Westfall, Redridge and the Deadmines.
- Rune of Perfection pierces spell resistance, in forests and woodland.
- Worgenbane Talisman stuns a worgen on use. Not a gnoll, not an ogre - a worgen.
The consequence is inconvenient and presumably intended: there is no longer one best piece for a slot, but several you take depending on where you are going. Which is why the bank holds 48 slots at launch instead of 24, and eight bank bags instead of six.
An item that breaks a profession rule
Rockslicer, a two-handed axe from the Deadmines, gained a use effect in Forever: it opens copper, tin, silver and iron veins - without the Mining profession and without a pick. Reports give it about 30 uses, and it only works on the lower-level nodes.
That sounds like a footnote and is not one. Since 2004 the rule has been: one gathering profession and one crafting profession, or you run out of materials. Pick up several of these axes and you can run two crafting professions and still cut your own ore.
Whether that is intended or something a later build reins back in is not settled. As an example of how far Forever is willing to move from Classic, it works better than any stat change.
The values themselves are cut differently
Slither Cord is a good example of the smaller rebuilds: an item level 22 cloth belt from level 17, with 22 armor and +3 mana regeneration - and a use effect that frees you from immobilising effects. A belt with an escape button, at level 17.
Set bonuses pay out more often
Twenty-six Classic armour sets got a new bonus structure in build 1.60.1: thresholds at two, three, four, five and six pieces instead of every second one. A set you either wore whole or not at all becomes one where three pieces already earn something. The eight-piece bonuses were dropped outright.
Several of the new bonuses are more than a number:
- Postmaster (level 56) grants Return to Sender - a free spell reflect when health falls to 25%.
- Necropile's Raiment has a chance to steal life when you cast.
- The warlock Dread and Deathmist raiments can fear attackers, on a one minute cooldown.
- Grovekeeper's Rage, a feral tanking set, allows Rebirth in bear form.
- Many sets grant damage against a creature type - a rogue set gives attack power against humanoids, Demonheart Raiment spell power against demons.
Two of them are written out in full on their dungeon pages:
- The Defias Leather set from the Deadmines, with arcane resistance, attack power against humanoids, a bleed on attacks from behind, and dagger skill.
- The Fang set from Wailing Caverns, which turns a druid's Cat Form into a serpent.
Raid sets go a step further than Classic: every class gets separate sets per role. Warriors no longer share one set between Arms/Fury and Protection but get distinct items - the pattern comes from TBC and Wrath. Eighteen new raid sets have been read out so far, all with six slots.
A ring at level 17, its partner at 60
First Mate Band drops in the Deadmines and is a level 17 item. Band of the Better Half requires level 60. Together they form the Partners in Crime set.
That is the clearest example of what Blizzard means by horizontal progression: a find at level 17 does not become vendor trash but completes something forty levels later.
This page first said it was exactly one example. That is no longer true: mixed sets are a category of their own in Forever - dungeon blues paired with level 60 gear. Partners in Crime is just the first one somebody found.
Open-world rares are worth killing again
The second new category, and perhaps the more surprising one: rare spawns out in the world drop set pieces.
The first documented case is in the Barrens. Blessing of Kalimdor has three pieces, and two of them already grant 5% movement speed in the Barrens and Stonetalon Mountains. Anyone who knows the size of the Barrens knows what that is worth. The sources are old acquaintances: Humar the Pridelord, Swiftmane and Takk the Leaper.
One piece has surfaced so far - Mark of the Pack Leader, a neck from level 20 with +5 Strength and +5 Intellect. Nobody knows the other two, because nobody has looted them yet.
The same pattern exists in Winterspring: a rare there drops Wintersaber Hide Lined Gloves, granting 6% mount speed - in Winterspring.
What is not known
Who drops what. The client table linking an encounter to its drops is empty - 208 bytes, no records. Loot is handed out server-side, as are quest rewards and vendor stock. Every boss-by-boss table that exists right now is either carried over from Classic or somebody's loot log.
What most of the new items even are. The encryption above is not a side note: thousands of items exist in the client with nobody able to say what they do. Every list out there - including this one - shows the small part somebody has looted.
Whether the values hold. For several items two trackers give different figures for the same piece. A build can settle that at any time - in either direction. And any client build may ship the missing keys, which would change the picture overnight.
Whether there is a dungeon journal. None is announced for launch. Without one, complete loot tables only come into being because players report what dropped.