How World of Warcraft: Forever Plans To Operate Forever: "It's Never Too Late To Start"

While World of Warcraft: Forever sounds fantastic on paper, we spoke to producer Clay Stone to get the rundown on how Blizzard will keep it going. Published Oct 14, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream. You may know him as the former Managing/Reviews Editor of Destructoid, where he published hundreds of game reviews across every genre, including MMOs, sports games, and Metroidvanias. Find Chris on Twitter @_SRChris. World of Warcraft is one of gaming's most memorable brands. Ever since 2004, it's been a massive name, not just for Blizzard, but for the entire industry. It never went free-to-play and has kept its premium subscription all this time; plus, it added multiple Classic experiences for veterans and newcomers alike. Now, it's bracing for a bold new era. World of Warcraft: Forever is ambitious and aims to recreate a "classic" experience, but with a brand-new world built on the Season of Discovery system. We spoke with WoW: Forever producer Clayton Stone about how it all began with a brainstorming session and where it's headed with the promise of "forever." Forever Was Born Out Of Classic Back during the deep dive panel during BlizzCon, the game's producers explained that Forever was crafted out of a brainstorming session from Season of Discovery. For the uninitiated, think of Season of Discovery as a "remixed" version of Classic, with newer concepts like Shaman tanks and experimental ideas that wouldn't make it into Classic, WoW retail, or even Forever. Stone's story of how it all came about is fascinating: So, back when we were in early discussions on it, Season of Discovery had already come out, and where we started from was a little bit of a smaller space. You know, we looked at what we had accomplished with Season of Discovery, and I think I talked about this in the presentation a little bit yesterday. We knew we could do a permanent version of that. We felt really confident in that, but over time, as we started development on WoW: Forever, our ambition certainly grew as we were able to, I think, do a really good job with some of the early content that we were developing, and then that confidence that we had, then certainly, you know was instilled in our Blizzard leadership team as well, and the confidence that they had in us to go bigger and to do things like gamepad and to do things like the rendering updates that we had and those the folks who supported those initiatives sort of joined the team over time. But to your question about the pillar, we were very careful because we wanted to make sure that WoW: Forever could live alongside Classic and could live alongside the modern game, so we didn't want it really from the outset to feel like it was taking either of those over. It had to have its own identity, no matter the scope or the scale that WoW: Forever ended up being. He continues: Classic, for the longest time, has just been, you know, recreating these nostalgic experiences that players have had, starting with no changes, moving to a place with some changes, kind of ending up in a place with lots of changes...but it was super important for us to find that and find the identity. I think that identity was solidified over the course of game development. Certainly, one of those things is that you have a pretty good sense or guess or conviction of what it's going to be from the outset, but you don't really know until you get further into development, and then certainly not until you get it into players' hands, and you see what the response is. And the response, obviously, to Wow Forever has been fantastic." This time, Forever is a completely different type of launch, and although it shares some DNA with Classic, it's not a 1:1 comparison in terms of expectations: From what I've seen, since we've never really had to, we've never really announced a brand new World of Warcraft before. The amount of time and effort that went into preserving as much of the surprise for Whitmore as possible was substantial, and it was not just a World of Warcraft team effort, but really was an effort all across Blizzard with a bunch of supporting teams to try to preserve that surprise as much as possible for players. And there were a couple of little things, of course, that got out there, which was interesting to see all the speculation build around potentially those things, which may or may not have been leaks. But yeah, having that support from Blizzard, having the support from Blizzard leadership allowed us to be able to preserve as much of the surprise as possible for our players, and I think it really paid off at BlizzCon with the full reveal. How To Fight FOMO I got a little ahead of myself, and asked Stone about the current initiative against FOMO, which was mentioned at BlizzCon. In other words, if the game is "forever," people should be able to join up whenever they want, without feeling like they've missed out on content. Stone had a lot to say about the future, though it's still early: "Yeah, so I think I mean, obviously, we're at the start of this journey, and we haven't even launched yet. But I have to keep reminding myself that even with, you know, how hard players have been going with the beta, which is so wonderful, we haven't even launched yet. I think that it comes down to a couple of things. The first thing, of course, is our pillars- the four pillars that we discussed at BlizzCon, and I got to cover again yesterday at PAX are extremely important." Stone clarifies that there is definitely a plan, however: They help make sure that we, in any of our design decisions and any of the new content or features that we choose to bring to the game, really align with these four pillars, and the pillars are set up to essentially make sure that we are consistently playing or paying attention to something that makes WoW Classic so special, such as the one to 60 leveling journey. We are committed to continuing to add new content to that leveling journey and support it for new players over time, as well as returning players and players who want to run alts. We want to reward players for going on that journey, which is part of why our legacy system exists. It turns out there's extra incentive for leveling, so even if you do cap out, there's more to do: As players repeat that leveling journey, they can unlock new legacy perks to apply account-wide to all their characters in Forever, which only further benefits their next journey to 60. I think there's something really special about that. I think that's something that will help us make sure that the world always feels full and feels like, hey, even if you were to leave the game, even if you were to leave the game, let's say for a period of time and come back, and let's say continue that leveling journey or start a new one, you're guaranteed. Well, you're almost guaranteed to find the world in that and players across that journey and find the world filled and active at any level, and then the other element of it too is kind of as we announced at BlizzCon, our intention is really to expand the world horizontally as much as possible, and that's new things like, of course, new zones, of course, new dungeons, of course, new raids, but it also means things for us like expanding our professions and the trade skills that come with them, or expanding the way that the camping system works, things like that. But finding these deeper progression paths, these deeper horizontal progression paths, I think will certainly help with that too. We were very careful, because we wanted to make sure that WoW Forever could live alongside Classic. There's going to be a lot going on, but you'll be able to revisit it when you log back in: So even if you drop off on some of these horizontal progression paths at some point, or you come, you find yourself coming to WoW: Forever later. It doesn't feel like it's too late to start because these horizontal progression paths are so deep and keep getting added to. And then the last thing that I would say on it as well, when we think of our power inflation, so things like adding new rate tiers, our intention is very much to keep the power inflation as small as possible. There certainly will be power increases that happen from rate tier to rate tier, but we want to try to make it so that the gear that you're getting from, let's say, the new tier is certainly aspirational and certainly something that you want to pursue, but it may not completely invalidate the gear that you've already collected. Let's say from previous rate tiers. There's something very vanilla or classic feeling to finding gear. Let's say even in, like a max-level dungeon or a previous rate tier, and that ends up being your best in-slot for a really long time, and so our hope is that that will encourage players to want to continue to run previous content with potentially new players or returning players to keep that content feeling fresh. We also have other ideas we haven't discussed yet about how to keep older max-level content feeling relevant and exciting for players. I don't think we'll talk about it today, but we're excited for players to hear more about it as well. Forever Is Adding Replay Value Digging further into the class reworks, I wanted to get a sense of how WoW: Forever handled classes throughout the game's lifetime. Is there a chance we could see wilder class combinations in addition to the ones Forever is adding? Possibly: Yeah, gosh, I'm glad you asked that because it's something that we talk about a lot, like even now, and, of course, we'll continue to talk about it for the life of the game. With Season of Discovery, we took some big swings. If you happen to play it, or if you played it, I mean, we pushed classes really far. We did a bunch of stuff in that game, and it had an exciting, experimental nature, which is great for a seasonal environment like Season of Discovery. But for something that we're building, you know, I think I said at BlizzCon we're not just building something for today, but for something that lasts. In the end, Stone and his team didn't want to do too much. They laid down a unique framework, and can alter it as time goes on: It makes more sense to us to start in a little bit more of a less experimental, more controlled setting when it comes to things like classes. I certainly think that the changes that we've made to classes are really exciting. I'm incredibly impressed by the thought and care our team members working on classes have put into the updates they've made, including some of the changes and additions. Their goal was really to make sure that we're not homogenizing classes, but we're keeping them feeling distinct. Something incredibly important to us for a vanilla-based game, was to do that. But there's certainly, you know, fans internally trying to push, you know, shaman tanks to the front and things like that. And you know, we and we hear that a lot, and we love that discussion. And I promise you, there are people internally who are fighting so hard for something like that right now. And I think what's exciting about WoW: Forever is sort of that promise of us eventually doing something along those lines. I think there was even a point pretty close to launch where we considered, well, let's get to, you know, our first or our second major update, and let's throw some new race class combos in there, and that would only be, you know, a few to several months after launch, and we think about that, and we're excited about it too. As players repeat that leveling journey, they can unlock new legacy perks. Stone reiterates that the game will be fully-featured at launch, and will continue to get new updates, including "potential new race class combos" that could pop up: But we think that what we're offering at launch is already so substantial that we're excited to jump into it with as gosh, as players ourselves, experience what we have at launch, and then provide room for ourselves to add so much more as we go forward, not just, you know, new zones, new raids, new dungeons, but new additions to classes, of course, updates to classes, and potentially new race class combos and things like that. So there are a lot of reasons, I would say, why we didn't jump right into let's let every class or every race be every class, or go with, you know, potentially some more experimental things right from the start, but I think that this is going to be a journey that we're on with our players, and we're going to continue to listen to what they want to and marry that with what we also want to do because we're as players ourselves, and I think players are going to be really excited about the things that we add over time to this game. The Servers Are Ready For Forever As someone who has experienced just about every Blizzard online launch dating back to the '90s, I've seen my share of ups and downs. For WoW: Forever, things seem handled, especially based on the beta performance, and new tech that Blizzard has invested in: Speaking as someone who was on the ground floor for the beta launch, you always hope and try to predict what the level of interest will be, and you certainly hope you get a launch-like environment when you launch the beta. But oh my gosh, it was amazing! I mean, it certainly exceeded my expectations. I know Holly [Longdale] has talked about this, but I should just say one of the biggest betas Blizzard has ever launched in the history of our company, and players were going in and treating it as though it was a full launch, and you know we're working with our live operations and our server team, and we're scaling up the capacity of this beta environment, which is not meant to hold a launch, a worldwide launch-size audience, which, you know, is an amazing problem for us to have. It's incredible to see the team work so quickly to solve issues on, you know, concurrency caps and things like that as they pop up, and I'm so proud of what the team did at that moment when we saw this incredible volume of players show up for beta day one, and really solve you know and any issues that we found in gosh almost under like an hour. Stone elaborates on what exactly those upgrades are: I think I put out a social media post that basically said, wow, there are a lot of you here, you know, excited, you know, at the door to the beta. We're raising caps again and again and again, and you will all get in very soon. And in fact, everybody did get in, you know, very soon, which was great. I think it also speaks to the new server infrastructure that we've worked so hard on, and that we were really excited to announce at BlizzCon as well. With Wow: Forever, we're going realm-less for the first time in WoW history; players now only have to pick a rule set, so PVE or normal PvP, RP, and eventually, when we release it, hardcore. And there's a ton of work that the team did behind the scenes to be able to create a server-structured environment to be able to host what are effectively mega realms with caps that we can scale far, far greater than anything we've ever done with World of Warcraft before. So yeah, so really excited about all of those things. Seeing it all, I think one of the most fulfilling aspects of that was seeing it all work. You know, it's one of those things where you do the best of your ability. You do automation testing. You do all this testing internally, and you hope that when the day comes, it works as intended. In the end, Clay is hopeful, and based on my time with WoW: Forever, that hope is warranted: "Seeing it all actually work as intended with the launch of the beta was both a relief and incredibly fulfilling. It was working the way we expected it to. So yeah, that was a moment that I will never forget. The beta launch, and, you know, being there at Blizzard, surrounded by the rest of the team as we were launching the beta. It's something I'll never forget." Systems Released November 4, 2026 Developer(s) Blizzard Publisher(s) Blizzard Multiplayer Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op Franchise Warcraft Number of Players Single-player PC Release Date November 4, 2026