WoW: Forever will live and die by the valley

Judging from player interest in the WoW: Forever beta, it seems like Blizzard's got a good start at channeling nostalgia into its retirement home for aging MMO millennials. But there's only one thing that'll determine if it's a successful rebottling of the old lightning, and that'll be whether or not I can find myself shuffled back into the same game of Alterac Valley that I'd logged out of 18 hours earlier, where nothing has changed except the number of times an orc has been cursed out in text chat for wasting effort by fighting over the wrong graveyard.

Nothing else matters.