Going into BlizzCon 2026, World of Warcraft Classic fans, myself included, were hoping for what the community coined as Classic+. Instead, what we got is essentially WoW 2, an alternate vision for what Blizzard’s legendary MMORPG called World Of Warcraft: Forever.
It wasn’t long after Blizzard re-released WoW Classic, the original version of its genre-defining MMO, in 2019 that players started to dream about what might come next. A community that was at one time dominated by calls for Blizzard to make “no changes” to WoW Classic and keep the game as it was two decades ago gave way to an entirely different desire: more.
Sure, it was fantastic and nostalgic to return to the original version of Azeroth and old-school WoW’s slower and more methodical gameplay, but what if there were substantial changes and additions? What if there were major class balance changes to make more playstyles viable? What if Blizzard finished zones that were infamously half-baked in the original game? What if some of the zones long teased on the original WoW’s map, like Mount Hyjal, were actually accessible? What if there were new dungeons and endgame content instead of the same Molten Core and Onyxia raids players have completed dozens upon dozens of times over the years?
The list of possibilities felt endless, but the exact requests and no-nos differed depending on who you asked. As WoW: Forever senior game designer Josh Greenfield told me in an interview at BlizzCon, the “old adage” for Classic+ has always been “ask 10 different people what they want [and] you’ll get 11 different answers.”
Somehow, WoW: Forever is going above and beyond those community expectations, in often-surprising ways. After going hands-on with WoW: Forever for around two hours at BlizzCon ahead of the game’s closed beta on September 17, I can safely say it delivers on many of the changes the community has wanted over the years. But it’s also so much more–a fascinating blend of old and new that on the surface may simply look like WoW Classic with splashes of new content, but in many ways looks and feels like an all-new game.
What’s new? Well, plenty. A visual user-interface refresh that brings WoW: Forever more in line with the modern, retail version of WoW is added, as is the inclusion of transmog. Modern WoW quest UI features have made their way, too, giving players more guidance on where to go and what to do. A whole host of impressive visual changes to lighting, water, reflections, and fog make even old zones feel new, even if the actual lower-poly assets are not. Players even have the option of using HD character models ripped straight from the modern version of WoW, the biggest example of how WoW: Forever feels like a middle ground between the WoW Classic of old and its retail sibling.
WoW: Forever senior art director Jeff Parrott said the goal was for the visual changes to “make the world feel more alive” and to “feel like going home.” Every one of WoW: Forever’s four new zones are made to blend in seamlessly with existing areas from 22 years ago.
“It feels like a place you’ve been before,” Parrott said. “Like, ‘Did this exist?’ You know, if a player asks ‘Did this exist in the game?’ then I think we’re in a good spot.”
But Forever is far more than just visual updates. There are around 1,000 new quests. That might not sound like a lot for a world as massive as WoW, but for context, Greenfield said the original WoW Classic has around 3,000-3,500. These new quests are spread across Azeroth rather than only in the game’s four entirely new zones. There will be new quests in the game’s classic starting zones as well as across the old world, with a particular focus on fleshing out notoriously content-lite zones like Azshara and Wetlands.
Forever will include nine new dungeons spread across the game’s level brackets and two raids. I got to play one of the new dungeons, The Drowned City, at the show. It’s a massive, late-level-30s, early-40s open-air troll dungeon that feels true to the spirit of Classic but also stands as a showcase for what WoW: Forever can be. Right off the bat, I was struck by how much of an impact the game’s visual updates could have, with rays of light peeking through a rocky cavern and bouncing off a colossal monster skeleton helping to invoke the feeling of mystery and adventure that WoW Classic does best. Moving further inside, a massive courtyard with a colossal pool in its center showcased Forever’s impressive new water tech.
The Drowned Temple feels like a WoW Classic dungeon in the truest sense, with large packs of enemies players need to carefully navigate, lest they pull too many groups at once. For those worried about WoW: Forever’s “retailification” of WoW Classic, this dungeon put any fears I had aside. You still need to use your class’s full toolkit to crowd-control enemies–pull one extra pack and it’s almost certain death. Positioning is still important. You’ll still be taking breaks for mana and food after every few groups. WoW Classic’s unique flavor of gameplay is alive and well.
That being said, there are racial ability and class changes galore, with all-new abilities, class and race combinations (undead Paladins at long last), and reworked talent trees across the game’s nine classes. The class changes are significant but aren’t as radical as some of the entirely new class roles added in WoW Classic’s 2023 Season of Discovery, an experimental season Blizzard and the community viewed as a testing ground for what an eventual Classic+ might look like. There aren’t any Mage healers or Warlock and Shaman tanks in WoW: Forever–at least not yet.
“I think in spirit, a lot of the lessons we learned are carried over, but some of the more out-there things that weren’t originally in original WoW, we tone them back a little bit,” Greenfield said. “Because it’s one of those things…It’s in the name: It’s Forever. We can do a lot of things over years, but we wanted to kind of start from a place where the soul of the class is very coded and original-WoW-centric. But there’s still meaningful changes and really exciting kinds of ways to play, the existing ways to play your class and new ways to play your class.”
There are even entirely new systems. A Legacy perk tree system, where players essentially earn perk points for completing account-wide achievements, looks to be a real game-changer. By completing achievements related to leveling-up classes, mastering professions, or exploring the world, you can invest perk points to make it so you travel faster on flight paths, gather more profession resources, or even start acquiring talent points sooner. Of all WoW: Forever’s big changes, this might be the one that I’m personally most excited about, with there finally being some level of account-wide progress in a game that has traditionally tied all progression to individual characters. A camp system, where players can gather around a campfire to get buffs and craft items, is also making its debut, and it looks to further encourage WoW Classic’s more social nature.
Somewhat controversially, Forever adds a new playable race that can join the Horde or the Alliance, the Skyborne elves. Their starting area of Zephras Isle makes up one of WoW Forever’s entirely new zones, though players do have to pay for the privilege. In a first for WoW, Blizzard is charging $30 for the new race, though WoW: Forever as a whole is simply included in WoW’s monthly $15 subscription.
If there’s one aspect of WoW Forever I’m not entirely sold on, it might be the Skyborne. They are cool enough–wind-elemental-loving blue elves who live in the sky. For those who desperately want to play as something close to a high or blood elf in the WoW Classic setting, perhaps $30 is a small price to pay. For me, they don’t feel essential after playing through a good chunk of their starting zone, even if it does make great use of WoW: Forever’s new visual tech to deliver spooky, fog-covered forests and impressive elven towers peaking above the clouds. The fact they can be members of either the Horde or the Alliance also dilutes some of the faction-specific flavor that defines so much of WoW Classic.
Giving players options is clearly important for Blizzard. You don’t have to buy the Skyborne. Toggling between HD character models and the game’s old-school ones is done with a checkbox. Transmog, a beloved feature in modern WoW that allows players to create custom outfits and looks, is also entirely optional. If you don’t want to see player-made outfits, you can simply turn them off to see the mishmash of random gear that has long defined how WoW Classic players look while out adventuring.
In a first for WoW (officially at least) you can even play with a controller, which was available when playing through the Skyborne starting zone but not the dungeon demo. Forever’s full-fledged controller support works surprisingly well. Cycling through friendly or enemy NPCs is done with the shoulder buttons. Interacting and jumping are done with the face buttons. Abilities and spells are bound to both the d-pad and the face buttons, with additional keybinds accessible by pressing one or both triggers. Each trigger provides access to eight keybinds, with another eight from holding down both triggers at the same time. Combined with the d-pad, you have 28 buttons at your fingertips.
That’s a lot of buttons, and while it might not work for every player or be more suited to some classes than others, I was actually shocked how quickly it felt natural, despite having played WoW on a keyboard and mouse for 22 years. There have technically been player-made add-ons that allow full WoW controller support for years, building upon some barebone controller options Blizzard has added in recent years, but this felt easy and intuitive in a way most of those don’t. It’s currently unclear if controller support will be launching alongside Forever or if it will also be coming to modern WoW, but it certainly opens the door to some fascinating possibilities. Being able to potentially play WoW: Forever on Xbox or on a handheld PC could be revolutionary.
It’s that clash of old and new, the adherence to much of what makes WoW Classic so beloved while still pushing the game forward in ways not all players will expect or agree with, that makes Forever such a bold vision for the future. I can’t say I’m 100% on board with everything WoW: Forever is doing, but I am excited to experience it when it launches on November 4. I’m even more eager to see where it goes from there. WoW: Forever feels like a fresh starting point for the 22-year-old MMO, taking lessons learned from two entirely different versions of WoW and coalescing them into an almost entirely new one.
“What I think we were trying to do is get somewhere, if we can get like 80% of what almost everyone is looking for, or, you know, pretty ubiquitous things that people are looking for, then I think we could call that a success,” Greenfield said.
He added, “We tried to make it so that it could be as much your Classic+ as possible. We’re never going to be anyone’s perfect, perfect, perfect game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to hit as many of those big things as possible.”
