Inven Global

Following the announcement of 'World of Warcraft: Forever' (hereafter Forever)—previously known as Classic+—at BlizzCon 2026 on Sunday, September 13, detailed information about Forever was revealed during the 'World of Warcraft: Forever - Deep Dive' session on Monday, September 14. Here is a summary of the development philosophy shared by the team, focusing on key elements such as camping, trade systems, server infrastructure, combat, items, and classes.

First are camping and professions. While players could previously meet others while wandering the world in World of Warcraft, Forever introduces a camping system so these chance encounters can lead to positive interactions. In existing WoW, players could place a cooking fire on the ground, but in Forever, this is changed so players can set up campfires instead. Players resting here can enjoy various benefits, including vendors, repairs, professions, and buffs.

By default, campfires allow players to place special crafted objects—one per player, up to a maximum of three. Each profession has objects that provide different buffs or features. Additionally, players can acquire new objects as their profession skill increases.

For example, Blacksmiths can place objects that increase Strength, Tailors can place objects that raise Spirit, and Herbalists can place objects that boost Intelligence to grant buffs. These buffs function like existing class buffs provided by Paladins or Mages, so they do not stack with each other. Objects beyond the default ones can be learned via recipes, which must be found through adventuring.

In addition, cooking and food have undergone a major overhaul. Most crafted food items now provide stat boosts in some form. Maintaining the Well Fed status also grants a minor experience gain buff.

Furthermore, over 600 new profession recipes will be added. Existing recipes are also being revamped, ensuring that profession choice makes a clear difference even at low levels. Clear motivation will be provided for raising profession levels as well.

The second feature is transmogrification. As transmog was not present in the original game, player opinions are divided, with many desiring to intuitively see what equipment other players are wearing. To address this, extensive work has gone into Forever to satisfy all player preferences regarding transmog.

First, players can simply speak to a transmog NPC to disable the transmog display option. This allows players to hide other players' transmogs on their own screens. Additionally, when logging in for the first time, players can choose between 'Classic Mode' and 'Enhanced Mode'; selecting Classic Mode immediately hides transmogs for all players upon entry. However, even if transmog display is turned off, players can still configure their own transmogs, and options to hide helmets and cloaks function regardless of whether transmog display is toggled on or off.

Furthermore, the issue of heightened competition in dungeon rolls for gear players don't actually need—just for transmog—has been addressed. When high-tier Bind-on-Pickup (BoP) gear drops in dungeons, the appearance is unlocked for all party members in the dungeon. However, Epic quality gear from raids will maintain its rarity, so only players who actually acquire and bind the item can use its appearance.

Transmog in Forever also features unique distinctions. First, appearances can be unlocked separately for different armor types, such as Cloth, Leather, and Plate. This allows players to configure transmogs appropriate for different armor types even if they obtain gear in the open world of a type different from what they previously wore. In addition, the level of the item being transmogged onto must be equal to or lower than the equipped gear's level. This level restriction is lifted once a character reaches level 60.

A new progression system called the 'Legacy' system was also revealed. Designed to turn leveling into engaging content rather than a simple step, players can complete new challenges to earn points and claim a variety of rewards.

Legacy points can be earned by fulfilling various challenges, such as leveling up specific classes or reaching profession milestones. Since most of these challenges are completed naturally while playing the game, they do not require extra effort or dedicated time sinks.

Legacy points can be invested across three talent trees: Adventure, Professions, and Resourcefulness. Various talents were showcased, such as increasing rested experience duration in Adventure, increasing gathering yields in Professions, and removing skill reagent requirements in Resourcefulness. Because the capstones at the end of each tree offer powerful effects, players will need to invest carefully.

While Legacy points are shared account-wide across all characters, talent trees are invested per character. Players can spend points on different talents depending on which character they play and how they play it. At launch, up to 16 points can be spent in talent trees out of a maximum obtainable pool of 65 talent points, which developers explained is intended to prevent players from feeling forced to level unwanted alt characters just to gain talent points.

Whenever Legacy points reach certain milestones, players can unlock cosmetic-only rewards, such as pets or transmog-exclusive gear.

Server structure in Forever differs from the traditional setup. Similar to live retail servers, it operates as a single unified infrastructure, categorized into four rulesets based on playstyle: Normal, PvP, RP (Roleplay), and Hardcore. While each ruleset functions as one mega-realm, players can only form parties and play with others in the same faction who selected the same ruleset. Hardcore, in particular, operates as a completely separate ecosystem.

However, not all players interact in a single realm instance; instead, players will encounter random adventurers out in the world, similar to a channel system. The system prioritizes matching players with others who selected the same language and is designed so players can encounter familiar faces again, maximizing the sense of community inherent to traditional single realms.

Collectibles and Legacy points are shared across the Normal, PvP, and RP rulesets. Collectibles and Legacy points earned in Hardcore can be used in the other three rulesets, but not vice versa. Hardcore will not be available at launch and will be added later; characters that die in Hardcore can be transferred to servers in the remaining three rulesets.

Forever plans to preserve the overall combat feel and pacing of WoW Classic. The development team highlighted four main pillars of Forever's combat design philosophy. First, they emphasized that each class should feel simple and intuitive, while prioritizing fun and depth so that the experience does not feel overly clunky or frustrating.

Second, every class must express a unique identity, retaining class-defining strengths and weaknesses. Third, combat pacing will be prevented from becoming excessively fast. The tempo will be maintained so that killing a single monster solo generally takes about 10–15 seconds. Finally, dungeons and raids must deliver tactical combat experiences that leverage crowd control and dynamic threat management.

Additionally, to prevent rigid, solved builds from repeating after so many years, existing itemization will be revamped to provide fresh options. Hit and Critical Strike stats—previously split between melee, ranged, and spell—will be unified into single consolidated stats. Weapon Skill will remain intact as in Classic, but balancing adjustments will ensure individual pieces of gear do not provide excessively high values.

Furthermore, to fix the issue where healing power stats were useless in open-world solo play for healing specs, items with healing power will now grant bonus spell damage equal to one-third of the healing value. Weapons used by spellcasting classes will also feature increased spell power and health regeneration, while trinket effects have been further specialized to serve clear purposes in specific scenarios.

Loot tables for all bosses have been updated so that dungeon drops are Rare quality (blue) or higher, and quest rewards have been revamped to resolve issues where players received gear unsuitable for their class. Naturally, iconic items popular in Classic remain intact, while various new open-world drops will be added.

Existing racial traits have also been redesigned in Forever. To ensure each race provides a unique gameplay experience, traits were made stronger and more distinct than before. Race-class restrictions have also been expanded. Forever will enable new combinations such as Gnome Priests, Human Hunters, Dwarf Shamans, Orc Mages, Troll Warlocks, and Undead Paladins.

Now, every race gains two active abilities and two passive effects, balanced so that each race achieves comparable offensive output and utility. For instance, Dwarf Stoneform remains similar to its traditional version but has been changed to reduce physical damage taken rather than increasing Armor. Additionally, a passive granting 5% bonus damage against Beasts has been added, balancing races so their strengths stand out in specific situations.

For the Undead, the historically dominant 'Will of the Forsaken' has been adjusted from granting 5 seconds of immunity to Fear, Charm, and Sleep into a simple single-use break skill. Concurrently, the Undead racial trait 'Touch of the Grave'—previously exclusive to retail—has been added to Classic to provide offensive utility, ensuring every race possesses distinct strengths tailored to different situations.

Class specializations have also seen significant revamps. While preserving the core structure from Classic, a new major talent node has been added at the 16-point mark in addition to the existing key talent nodes at 11, 21, and 31 points. Furthermore, some passive talents that merely tuned raw stats were removed and baseline class abilities; in their place, new talents that directly influence gameplay have been introduced.

The Paladin was showcased as a specific example of class overhauls. First, Holy Strike—a skill from the original beta testing—has been added. It is a melee ability available to all Paladins at level 6 that deals Holy damage to the target using their weapon. Protection, Holy, and Retribution talent trees each contain unique talents to enhance Holy Strike.

Judgement no longer consumes Seals, and a new Seal—Seal of Wrath—has been added for Protection Paladins. It deals damage on hit while generating a shield, and casting Judgement while Seal of Wrath is active taunts the target. Unlike taunts from other tank classes, this can be used at range, serving as a unique advantage for Protection Paladins. The Protection tree enhances Seal of Wrath and restores mana when blocking attacks with a shield.

Holy Paladins receive talents that reduce the cooldown of Holy Strike, grant immunity to Silence and Interruption effects, and restore mana through Spirit. Numerous new options are provided, such as healing multiple party members simultaneously. Alongside these, the offensive playstyle centered around Holy Shock—traditionally dubbed 'Shockadin'—is preserved.

Retribution Paladins receive various new talents, such as gaining the benefits of two Seals simultaneously or making Hammer of Wrath instant cast. In addition, talents enhancing Intellect gear efficiency allow Retribution Paladins to also execute Shockadin builds utilizing Holy Shock.

While these talent changes allow Paladins to enjoy far more diverse gameplay options, their weaknesses have not been entirely erased. Paladins still lack spell interrupts and have limited ranged capabilities. Instead, their inherent strengths—such as unique Seal and Judgement mechanics and single-target healing—have been amplified, making them especially powerful against Demons and Undead. Distinctly defining each class's strengths and weaknesses rather than homogenizing them is at the heart of Forever's class design.