World of Warcraft Forever creators give sneak peak INSIDE reimagining of 22-year-old game with new zones, races & skills

FOR World of Warcraft players, it might already feel as though the game has been around forever. But Microsoft-owned gaming giant Activision Blizzard has launched a sprawling new version of the 22-year-old title intended to go on and on: World of Warcraft Forever. World of Warcraft enters a brand new era with World of Warcraft: Forever Credit: Activision Blizzard The announcement was made at the BlizzCon 2026 event Credit: Robert Paul / Activision Blizzard The blockbuster new title is a reimagining of the beloved original game, keeping the spirit of the classic title but with new content to enjoy. It was announced at Blizzard’s legendary gaming convention BlizzCon, which sees tens of thousands of players flock to Anaheim, California to celebrate titles like Warcraft, Starcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Hearthstone and more. Sign up for the Tech newsletter Thank you! The Sun’s tech editor Sean Keach was at BlizzCon 2026 to talk all things WoW: Forever with Kris Zierhut, Principal Designer and Michael Nuthals, Senior Encounter Designer, revealing what players can expect on the November 4 release date. Can we start with the new zones? Kris Zierhut: “So there’s four major new zones. There’s Zephras Isle, which is the starting area for the new race, the Skyborne Elves. There’s their island home that is floating in the air deep within the elemental plane of Skywall.” Michael Nuthals: It’s certainly inspired by the Cataclysm Skywall era areas. Kris Zierhut: “ Like Vortex Pinnacle and Throne of the Four Winds. Anyway, the magic there that the elementals have left – the elementals that raised them there have left – and now the island is starting to fall down slowly. “Things are falling apart, and so they’re looking for help making alliances with Kirin Tor or with the Earthen Ring, depending on the Alliance or Horde faction. Most read in Tech “Unlike Pandarens, you pick either alliance or horde at Kirin creation.” Michael Nuthals: “And it actually gives you access to different classes.” Blizzard has been working on the new title in secret Credit: Activision Blizzard The game reimagines World of Warcraft, which came out back in 2004 Credit: Activision Blizzard Kris Zierhut: “Different classes yah. Only Alliance can be Mage, only Horde can be Shaman. “Okay, so that’s one. Two: Mount Hyjal. We’re finally going to get to see what was Mount Hyjal like between the battle for Mount Hyjal that we saw in Warcraft 3 and then again in Burning Crusade, and then what happened in Cataclysm. “So what was going on in the time in between, and the survivors went out and what they’re doing and how they’re trying to recover. And of course, the two raids that Mike worked on there, the Hyjal Summit raid, which is a 20-player raid. “And the Barrow Deeps raid, which is the prison that Illidan was held in, which is a 10-player raid. It has multiple entrances, one is in Hyjal.” Michael Nuthals: “Yeah, that one was awesome because we were inspired by the Brothers in Blood mission from Warcraft 3. Yeah, where Tyrande and Malfurion go down into the caverns below.” Kris Zierhut: “To break him out, because they need his help.” Michael Nuthals: “Yeah, they go down to find the horn, I think, to blow that. They separate and Tyrande goes to free him.” Kris Zierhut: “So we get to explore those caverns and go into that vault. What’s happened now that the prisoners are in charge of the prison, essentially, because the wardens have left. Yes, they were there for Illidan, not for the other stuff. And then past that, Riverglades is our big new zone. The announcement was led by Johanna Faries, the President of Blizzard Entertainment Credit: Robert Paul / Activision Blizzard Blizzard’s Holly Longdale, the Executive Producer and VP for World of Warcraft, made the big reveal Credit: Activision Blizzard “It is located directly east of Burning Steppes. Right? South of Badlands. Yep, it’s kind of north of Redridge. “If you’re playing Alliance, you’re likely to come there from Redridge. You’re headed north on the road to Burning Steppes. There’s a fork to the right that used to be there. A lot of the story and creatures and stuff from Redridge extends into, bleeds into it. “So some of the stories are extended from Redridge, what was going on with the gnolls and the shadow magic there. All that continues into Riverglades. And then there’s more. And there’s humans and orcs and ogres. “There’s a goblin outpost there. Goblins are always up to what goblins do. There’s actually where we have a black market auction house. “It’s located there. And there’s a ship, there’s a dock there. And you ride that dock, that boat, that dock. It will take you to a dock that previously was not used, called Steamwheedle Port. “It’s connecting over to Gadgetzan. So now the goblin empire is growing and spreading. And then the last new zone is Shen’dralas, which is located at the very south end of Desolace. If you know the Valley of Bones, there are a few quests there that would send you in to fight monsters there. “And now there’s, again, a new fork in the road there that goes into Shen’dralas. And the story with the centaurs, the Magram and Gelkis centaur, continues into Desolace. It kind of carries you over into that area. “And then you discover these ruins of Shen’dralas. “And if you recall, the elves from Dire Maul were the Shen’dralar elves. So it connects to the Dire Maul story and what happened to Tortheldrin, all of that stuff.” So with the new zones, how does the XP work? Is it equivalent to the original game? Kris Zierhut: “The intent with the original game was not that you had to do every single zone to get level 60. The intent was that there were multiple paths through. “So what we’ve really done is just created a different path. So you might do Riverglades instead of doing something else in your leveling journey. The experience curve remains the same. We did not change the experience curve.” Shen’dralas is near Desolace, so it would be like 40? That’s a slow point in the levelling curve. Kris Zierhut: “You’ll notice Riverglades and Shenderlos both are in that range where things kind of slow down. And you needed more. And then Hyjal is at that point where it kind of slows down. You’re getting close to 60 as well. “So there’s more material to play through.” Is that just a happy coincidence? The game is set a year into the “vanilla” World of Warcraft experience Credit: Activision Blizzard World of Warcraft: Forever introduces new zones to explore Credit: Activision Blizzard Kris Zierhut: “It’s deliberate. Absolutely deliberate. We wanted to give players options in those areas where we felt like the game kind of slowed down a little bit. And you’re in the pacing. “Just to give players the ability to explore and forge their own path through their leveling journey. Some players, when in those levels, they would grind. And we want to make sure people don’t just decide to go grind. And instead, they go have quests and adventures and stuff.” Michael Nuthals: “They’re out in the world meeting each other. And having serendipitous interactions.” Kris ZIerhut: “Yes. Now, one place experience did change is we made a big change to our dungeons. In that the amount of XP you get from killing monsters in dungeons, we brought way down. “But we made the amount of XP for completing dungeon quests much, much, much higher. So your first run through a dungeon is amazing. You get tons of XP. You get great rewards. “But going back over and over and over again isn’t the best way to go. You’d be better off going to Shen’dralas or Riverglades or Hyjal instead of grinding a dungeon. We want people in the outdoor world meeting each other.” And so the new starting area for Skyborne, is that to level 10? Kris Zierhut: “It goes to about level 12. You can leave earlier than that, but there are some story and quests that extend. Tell me about the new race class combos. Kris Zierhut: Undead Paladin. Gnome Priests, which was a big omission. Everquest used to have them and we didn’t. And Dwarven Shaman. “Trolls can now be Warlocks and Orcs can now be Mages.” “Orcs and Trolls live together already, so it’s kind of natural for them to share their knowledge with each other. “And Humans can now be Hunters, which was never possible before.” So what can the Skyborne be? Kris Zierhut: “Skyborne: Mage, Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, and Druid. “Those five are available to all Skyborne. And then the Alliance can be Mages. The Horde can be Shamans. The game won’t feature expansion packs, Blizzard told us Credit: Activision Blizzard There’s a new playable race: the Skyborne elves Credit: Activision Blizzard “And that has to do with the conflict they’re having.” So the new skills and talents. What’s the detail on that? Is it a complete new system? Kris Zierhut: “No, it’s the original talent system. So, just as you remember it, every class has three talent trees, they have seven rows, and you have to spend five points to get to the next row. All the same. We still have what we call them gold medal talents. “11, 21, 31 point, one point talents. Those are all still there. We did add a new one point talent at the 16 point mark. So now each tree has four special one point abilities. “That let us bring in a few new things for classes that need to do stuff. But essentially the talent trees are the same structure as they always had, but some talents are gone, some talents are changed, and a lot of talents are new.” What’s the motivation to that, in terms of what’s removed and what’s added? Is it to speed up levelling, or add utility? Kris Zierhut: “The first motivation was to deal with the fact that some of them, trees, were actually very bad. If somebody played, say, a balanced druid in classic WoW, they got laughed at because it wasn’t any good. So now the idea is to make it fully viable. Our goal with all 27 of the talent trees is they are all viable for dungeons and raids. “Everyone is somebody you’d be willing to bring along, but at the same time, none of them are so good that you’d stack your raid group with them. If you show up and say, hey, I’m a balanced druid, can I come? If there’s room and they need a spellcaster, they’ll take you. “The talents that got removed the most, there used to be a lot of talents that gave you a new buff, like Divine Spirit or Blessing of Kings, or improved Mark of the Wild, improved Blessing of Might. All of those buff talents are gone. Those things were made baseline, the improvements were made baseline, and that made a lot of room for new stuff.” In terms of end-game, the idea is that you just stay at 60 forever. How does that work in practice? Kris Zierhut: “We’re going to have three different kind of raid sizes. folks are going to be able to participate in.” Michael Nuthals: “There’s going to be 10 player raids, that’s going to be our Barrow Deeps, is 10 players.” Kris Zierhut: “The Hyjal Summit will be for 20 players, and then we’ll also be offering Onyx’s Lair for 40 players.” Michael Nuthals: “The goal there is to allow players to find social groups that work well for them, and build their social groups.” Kris Zierhut: “It’ll be like, oh it’s time to go do Onyx, let’s bring everybody along, hit everybody on your Friends List, let’s go do Ony.” Michael Nuthals: “Then you have a smaller, more intimate group where just a couple of best friends can go do Barrow Deeps. I think one of the things we’re trying to do is really encourage folks to go between the different raid sizes. You’ll be able to get your tier pieces across all three raids.” The game was hotly rumoured ahead of launch Credit: Activision Blizzard Gamers will find a familiar world, but one that deviates from the main World of Warcraft story Credit: Activision Blizzard Kris Zierhut: “As far as the question of staying at level 60, a lot of it is where our plan is to slow down the rate of item progression. So a lot of things would happen, like in Classic, when Blackwing Lair comes out, nobody cares about the items in Molten Core anymore. They want the items in Blackwing Lair. “And then when AQ comes out, and Naxxramas in particular, nobody cares about any of those. Naxxramas is the only one that matters. So we’re trying to make sure that raids don’t go obsolete, and there’s still a reason to go back and get them. And you’ll be the first to hear about this. “One really exciting thing we did with raid drops is we added chase drops to every boss’s loot table. So items that have a lower than normal drop chance, but are very, very strong items. If you play Burning Crusade, you think about the Dragonspine Trophy. Super popular. “Everybody would go back to Gruul, all of Burning Crusade, hoping to get it. Every boss has a Dragonspine Trophy equivalent item on them, or two, or three. So there’s a reason to keep going back. They’re not obsolete. “So everything at 60 stays relevant.” So the plan isn’t to have expansion packs? Kris Zierhut: “The world will just sort of evolve indefinitely, forever. “We do a new update, and here’s a new couple raids. Here’s some new areas. Yeah, exactly. And every major update will have…the intention is every major update has something for every type of player. “That’s what we’re really trying to do. And some types of players are, I just like to make alts and explore the world. I just like to do trade skills. “It’s not all about the raid player. There’s something for them, but not everything for them.” I think why I’ve enjoyed playing Hardcore so much is that there’s always that freshness at the bottom level, and the world feels full and magical. So how many servers are there going to be? Kris Zierhut: “We’re going to have servers based on rulesets. So, when you log into the game, you’ll choose, am I going to be playing on the PvP ruleset, or am I going to choose to play on the PvE ruleset, the normal ruleset. And that’s going to be region-wide. So, I will be playing with all PvE players in the US. “So, you don’t choose a realm. You choose… I choose normal rules. And now, anybody else who picked the normal rules in all of the Americas, I can party with that person, play with that person, raid with that person. “There’s a separation between PvP and normal, and between those and RP. And of course, when hardcore comes out, hardcore will be separate from all of those. But other than that, you make that choice. Skyborne elves will be able to play five main classes, plus a sixth bonus class depending on your faction allegiance Credit: Activision Blizzard The game is due out on November 4, 2026 and is included in the regular World of Warcraft subscription Credit: Activision Blizzard “What rules do I want to play by? And once you’ve made that choice, everybody under those rules you can play with.” So you could still pick RP, and you would just be with RP players? And there is hardcore? Kris Zierhut: “Hardcore will be coming next year.” You need to work out how hard it is first? Kris Zierhut: “And also, we want to make sure we worked out all the bugs. You don’t want people dying because they ran into a bug, right?” In terms of the timing – year one of Vanilla – what was the thinking behind that? And how much will it deviate from the main story? Michael Nuthals: “Well, we’re definitely starting from a place of canon, right? It’s almost like the day before, well, I watched in 2004. “It’s like that moment before Molten Core opens, right? We’re trying to – so, we’re starting from that kind of place of like – we’re all starting from the same starting line. Where everybody was in November of 2004.” Will Molten Core open? Kris Zierhut: “Molten Core will open someday. But not now. “So, we’re doing other raids in between. And some of that is like Molten Core fatigue. Players are like, you know what? We did Molten Core in 2019, and then we did it again for Season of Mastery, and then we did it again for Season of Discovery, and then we did it again for Classic Anniversary. “Like, you know what? That’s enough Molten Core. Most players were active with it.” Michael Nuthals: “Like, you know, I kind of like a break from Molten Core. Let’s explore some new spots. Some new raid bosses.” Kris Zierhut: “And we really wanted to blow people’s mind with new stuff, right? Instead of, hey, go do Molten Core again, and maybe after Naxxramas, something new. That’s a little tiresome. “So, we wanted to start out the game with something new. We will get back to Molten Core.” Michael Nuthals: “And when it comes to story, right, we’re starting from that point, and like, I think it was Tim that said on stage, we’re going to explore, like, stories that could have happened, that might have happened, right? And it kind of gives us that ability to kind of take from that starting point and explore.” Undead Paladin is one of the new race/class combinations Credit: Activision Blizzard It was a race and class combo that was missing from the original version of World of Warcraft Credit: Activision Blizzard Kris Zierhut: “It’s not exactly the same story. It’s like we’re in an adjacent universe. Yes. Where things aren’t quite the same.” The just on the visual toggles, is it for your character, or all NPCs, or the entire world? Kris Zierhut: “When you turn on high definition models, you will see all players as high definition models. Yes. And when you turn off, you will see all players as standard definition models.” But the world textures don’t change? Michael Nethals: Correct, yeah, but you will see, like, a Stormwind guard. Kris Zierhut: “A lot of the NPCs also use the same texture. NPCs will change. Like, any NPCs as a player model will change, but NPCs are like a dragon or a gnoll, they’re not going to change.” Comment now