Dungeon Finder
Click the eye next to the minimap (or type /lfd), pick your role, pick a dungeon or Random, then Find Group. Players queued for the same dungeon on the same faction are grouped together; companions take every role nobody plays, at the group's level. A party leader queues the whole party.
When the group is ready you get a popup with the dungeon, your role and a 40-second timer. Enter, and everyone is taken inside. The window shows your group by role, lets you choose who leads, and has Teleport Out, Teleport In and Leave Dungeon.
You get the full solo experience for every kill when your group is companions. A Deadmines miner at level 21 pays 114 XP, not the 31 a split would leave you.
Who leads
Automatic (in a dungeon the companion tank leads unless you are the tank; outside, they follow you), Follower tank leads, Followers follow me, Hold position. Change it any time from the window or with /lfd mode.
Companions three roles, played properly
Invite any companion by name and it comes to you, takes the role your group is missing (tank, then healer, then damage) and is brought to your level with gear and spells for it. Tell them follow, stay, lead, pull, cc or mana in party chat.
Tank
- Waits until everyone is alive, close, healed and has mana. Then walks to the nearest pack and pulls.
- Line-of-sight pulls on casters and archers: steps back around the last corner and lets them come.
- Taunts whatever is on the healer, keeps the loosest mob in focus, shouts and claps for area threat.
- Shield block, shield wall, battle stance to charge and back to defensive.
Healer
- Triage by health, tank first. Sized ranks so the mana lasts the run.
- Heals over time and shields on whoever is being hit, group heals when several are hurt.
- Cures poison, disease, curses and magic. Battle-rez and out-of-combat rez for you.
- Fades or runs to the tank when the pack turns, and says so when out of mana.
Damage
- One kill target: casters and healers first, adds before bosses, whatever is beating on a healer in trouble before anything.
- Stays under the tank's threat. Rogues feint, priests fade.
- Melee behind the target, ranged at range, interrupts once per cast, area attacks once the tank holds the pack.
- Hybrids switch to healing when the healer is down.
Pick your pace Next up
When you make a character you choose how fast it levels. One alt at blizzlike 1x for the long road, another at a faster rate for the dungeon grind. Dungeon XP has its own multiplier so spamming Scarlet Monastery is always a real way to level, whatever rate you picked.
Hardcore is a per-character switch too. One death and the character is done; it stays in the list as a ghost you can look at but not play. Companions don't make it easier: they're the same followers everybody else gets.
A living world
About 600 adventurers live in a town for their level and quest from it: up to six quests at a time, taken from givers in town and out in the world. They go where the mobs actually spawn, loot the drops they need, open the crates, pick the sparkly herbs and fly back to hand in. They give up on quests a player would give up on, never sell quest items, and move to the next town when they outlevel this one.
Twenty-four newcomers live in the six starting areas as the races that start there, levelling 1 to 9, so Northshire and Valley of Trials always have someone in them. City folk stand in front of the banker and the auctioneer, facing them, at most two per NPC.
Chat they answer, in character
Whisper a companion, talk in party, /say near them, or post in Trade or General, and they reply in their own voice, with their name, race, class, level, zone and whatever they're doing behind it. They also hold conversations among themselves in Trade and General, and on open channels they only chime in now and then, like people.
Out of the box it's rule-based: greetings, "are you a bot", invites, dungeons, trade, levels, quests, thanks, goodbyes. With an API key the replies come from a language model, with a daily budget so it can't run away.
What's untouched
- Classes and talents
- The nine vanilla classes with the current Forever talent system: the trees as they stand on the official Classic realms today, kept in step with them, not frozen at 1.12 and not reworked by us. Your build from there works here point for point, and damage meters match the official numbers one to one.
- Dungeons
- Vanilla's twenty dungeons at their vanilla level ranges. Companions have been through every one of them; see the dungeon ladder.
- Loot
- With companions in your group loot is free-for-all, so it's all yours. With more than one player, a Dungeon Finder group uses group loot.
- The store
- Mounts and cosmetics. Nothing in it changes your numbers: no gear, no boosts, no consumables. If it would show up on a damage meter, it isn't for sale. Store