At BlizzCon 2026, Destin interviewed two Blizzard developers about WoW: Forever: Clay Stone (Associate Production Director) and Nora Mills (Lead Software Engineer). The key statement: there are no plans for anything like a WoW Token or a boost. The journey is the game; endgame is great, but the way there matters just as much.
Entry and beta
- You do not need to have played modern WoW or Classic to enjoy Forever.
- The Legacy system encourages multiple characters and makes a new playthrough a little easier.
- Blizzard wants to return to the humble adventurer of the Vanilla era, where the journey matters more than the destination.
- The beta starts with a level 20 cap and rises to 30 later, where it stays for the rest of the beta.
- Everyone starts at level 1 at launch.
New zones and quests
- The Riverglades were a stretch of map that had never been filled in. There is now room for more than just Scarlet Monastery.
- The goal: it should feel like Classic but still surprise players. Internally, feedback was that it felt like it had been in Classic all along.
- The quest designers write their own quests and the dialogue for every race, and work with the lore team every day, including Chris Metzen. They can email historians for questions such as Night Elf naming.
Transmog, the future and the Vanilla feel
- Transmog: Blizzard sees it as the best of both worlds. If you want a world without transmog you can play that way, and those who love it can express themselves freely.
- The future: Building Season of Discovery taught the team how to create a strong roadmap. They are expanding horizontally and staying on Azeroth for now, exploring unfinished and unused zones, and Azeroth is more than Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, though the focus for now remains on those two.
- Vanilla: The goal is a Vanilla feel in a Vanilla world that keeps going as long as players want it to, without going to the Dark Portal.
Original report: Wowhead