It's not often one of the biggest games of all time gets a do-over. It's even rarer for a game to get a third attempt. But that, in many ways, is what World of Warcraft: Forever is.
Developer Blizzard is pulling from 22 years of hindsight for what is the third major version of its landmark MMORPG, set to launch on November 4. That two-decade span includes not only the release of 11 WoW expansions, but also the re-release of the original WoW in 2019 and its subsequent "classic" expansions, as well. In the years since WoW Classic's launch, Blizzard has gone from "no changes" to "some changes," taking lessons learned from each Classic release and using them to inform their future work.
With WoW: Forever, Blizzard is finally going beyond replicating history and is instead forging a new vision for its genre-defining MMO, even if that vision is one firmly rooted in the past. GameSpot recently had the chance to talk with Clay Stone, associate production director on WoW: Forever, and Holly Longdale, executive producer and VP for WoW, about how Blizzard approached making a "new" version of original WoW, its approach to Forever's endgame, and what players can expect from Forever's future.
Exceeding Expectations
From the outset, Stone said Blizzard wanted to "push the envelope" and make a big first impression with Forever that went beyond players' expectations. Players certainly had a lot of them. The idea of a new version of WoW Classic that preserved the original game's world but added new content is one that's been around for a long time, and with it all kinds of community ideas of what it should and shouldn't be.
That made it important for Blizzard to deliver not just what players wanted, but go even further, Stone said. Rather than just class-balance changes or the completion of some of WoW's original unfinished quests and zones, as many players likely expected, Blizzard instead went bigger. It created over 1,000 new quests, four new zones, thousands of new items, substantial class changes, multiple new gameplay systems, and even an unexpected playable race not seen in any other version of WoW, Skyborne elves.
"I think that it was important for us to do this up front, to basically not have everything feel like, 'Oh, I predicted that …' and do that now rather than not do that and wait five years down the line," Stone said.
Waiting years to bring a new race or other major additions would be too late, Stone said.
"If there's an opportunity for us to take some bigger swings and some bigger risks up front, I think it sets us up much better for the long-term health of the game and figuring out ways for us to be able to create new surprises for players," he said.
In fact, Blizzard originally planned even more new additions for Forever's launch. Stone said Blizzard scaled some of those plans back as the game got further into development and its announcement at BlizzCon 2026 loomed. Stone teased more new race and class combos than what are currently playable on the game's beta, as well as "more extreme" class changes as seen in WoW Classic's Season of Discovery, could be coming to Forever in the future.
Blizzard is "deliberately holding back just a little" on what's to come, he said. At BlizzCon, it announced a roadmap through Summer 2027 that included new raids, dungeons, and quests, as well as the launch of the game's "Hardcore" permadeath server.
"As we got closer [to BlizzCon], I think we did start to get a lot smarter and go, 'Okay, let's go ahead and draw the line here. You know, this is a lot. This is great for launch.' But it also allows us to save some really good stuff in terms of new content, new dungeons, new raids--things like that--new race/class combos, for not that far after launch," Stone said.
Staying On Azeroth
What some of that new content will be is the subject of wild speculation among the game's passionate community. Stone was adamant the team is committed to "staying on Azeroth" and that there's "a lot of [existing] space [on the original world map] that we already know about and we have plans for."
When asked if Forever would potentially take players to areas outside Azeroth's original two continents of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, including places seen in other WoW expansions, Stone said the world is a big place and that there are "other locations on Azeroth that are not necessarily Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor that we may want to go visit in the future."
"I think that the creative constraint of telling ourselves we're going to stay on Azeroth has created some really cool and interesting creative opportunities for us to explore some places that perhaps players have seen before, and perhaps some places that they haven't seen before," he said.
As for what else the future may hold, Blizzard is already surveying the community on potential new classes, which raises the natural question of how Forever will be monetized going forward. The game is included as part of WoW's $15 monthly subscription, as has always been the case with WoW Classic, but for the first time Blizzard is charging $30 for a new race, the Skyborne. While previous WoW expansions have added new races and classes for a price, those expansions have also come with whole new worlds to explore and gameplay systems to master. In the case of the Skyborne, they do come with a new starting zone, but it's hardly an entire expansion's worth of new content.
Longdale said charging for access to the Skyborne was an example of Blizzard "testing things out" and finding a way to "support the team and support the business" without adding "unnecessary barriers" for players accustomed to being able to play WoW Classic with their subscription. It's not necessarily a confirmed business model for how Blizzard will handle the addition of new content in the future, she said. It's also not an indication that Blizzard is planning on "throwing a bunch of new races" into the game, though she said there's "a lot of stuff on the table" when it comes to possibilities.
"It's just something we're trying right now," Longdale said. "We'll see if players like it and if it's a reasonable model going forward."
Launch Is Just The Start
Even as players speculate about Forever's future, there are still plenty of unknowns pertaining to the game's launch. Players have only been able to reach level 30 in the game's beta, and there are still thousands of "secret" items in the game's files yet to be discovered.
Forever's endgame raids will unlock on December 9 for those who have reached level 60 roughly a month after launch, but what those raids will entail, and the items hidden within them, is still a mystery. Unlike in original WoW, where items gained from subsequent raid tiers represented substantial leaps in player power, Stone said Blizzard is aiming to make power progression between raid tiers in Forever "as compact as possible" while still making new raids "fulfilling and desirable."
He said one aspect about WoW Classic the Forever team loves is being able to find powerful, best-in-slot items from endgame dungeons or the world itself. Stone said there are "a lot of opportunities" for that tradition to continue in Forever, and that there are some "unannounced" ideas the team has that aim to keep content like dungeons relevant so that players will want to return to them. Combined with new additions like the Legacy system, an account-wide perk tree that rewards players for leveling up different classes, mastering new professions, and exploring the world, Stone said the intent is for it to never be too late to jump into Forever.
"We want that answer with WoW Forever to be an emphatic no, it is never too late to start this game or to rejoin if you've stepped away for a bit," Stone said.
Even as Forever represents an alternate timeline for WoW and pushes ahead with new ideas, it still finds itself repeating history. Just as original WoW was rooted in the lore of Blizzard's Warcraft RTS games, so too is Forever, only this time it was Warcraft 3: Reforged's newly released Forsaken Kingdom campaign.
The two projects actually began completely independently, Stone said, but it quickly became apparent there was an opportunity to tie the lore of the two games together. Blizzard knew it wanted to add Undead Paladins as a race and class combo in Forever, and so Forsaken Kingdom focused on telling the story of the first Forsaken Paladin while exploring the creation of an iconic location from WoW, the Undercity.
"Everything that we're doing, we're starting from a place of canon," Stone said. "Everything that's come before as far as the Warcraft RTS games, the Forsaken Kingdom RTS expansion that we just released as well, everything starts from that."
What's clear is that November 4 will merely be the start of another potentially decades-long game development journey for Blizzard, which will soon be operating two versions of WoW that are each receiving all-new content independent of one another. Where Forever ultimately ends up is still uncertain. After all, what we now call modern WoW first started as vanilla WoW 22 years ago, and is now radically different from what players first experienced in 2004. Trying to picture what Forever will be like if it similarly lasts 20 years is a fascinating thought experiment.
"We hope that this game goes for 10, 20 years, for as long as players want to go on this journey with us, is essentially what we're saying," Stone said. "Potentially forever."
WoW: Forever launches November 4 and will be playable with a monthly WoW subscription. Its beta will be live until October 21, and is included as part of the $60 Skyborne Epic Pack or $80 WoW: Forever Collection, which additionally includes Warcraft 3: Reforged's Forsaken Kingdom campaign.