World of Warcraft: Forever Revealed at BlizzCon 2026

Blizzard officially revealed World of Warcraft: Forever at BlizzCon 2026. The long-term project is being developed by the team behind WoW: Classic and aims to revolutionize the traditional MMORPG experience, according to an IGN Latin America report from the event.

Executive Producer Holly Longdale stated the idea had been discussed internally for years. She described Forever as an ideal starting point for new players. It will allow them to begin from scratch alongside others progressing at the same pace. Longdale emphasized the project seeks to be a persistent, immersive world that honors players' time.

New Content and Playable Race

The experience maintains a maximum character level of 60. It organically expands the original continent with over 1,000 new quests, 9 new dungeons, and 2 max-level raids at launch. New explorable areas include the Riverbed Plains and Mount Hyjal.

A major addition is the Cielonato, a new neutral race of exiled noble elves. They can join either the Alliance or the Horde. The update also introduces highly requested new class-race combinations, such as Undead Paladins and Dwarf Shamans, alongside fully revamped talent trees.

Clayton Stone, Associate Production Director, said the design aims to solve a historical problem from Vanilla WoW: content gaps at mid-to-high levels where players ran out of quests.

Technical Features and Controller Support

A surprising announcement was official gamepad support for PC and Mac. While there are no immediate plans for a console release, this implementation aims to improve accessibility. The developers claimed testing different classes with a controller transforms the gameplay dynamic, especially for melee characters or healers in 40-person raids.

Graphically, artists have manually re-lit the entire original map zone by zone. This enables dynamic real-time lighting effects, volumetric fog, sun rays, and shadows cast by landmarks like Blackrock Mountain. The classic 3D aesthetic from 20 years ago remains.

A new Campfire System will let players gather to share buffs and craft items based on their professions. A Legacy System will grant account-wide rewards based on the accumulated progress of alternate characters.

Game Philosophy and Endgame Details

The team addressed the community debate over addons in competitive content. Game Director Ion Hazzikostas clarified Blizzard has no intention of eliminating addons, as they are essential for interface customization. However, the studio will continue restricting certain API functions that offered automatic competitive advantages. Native visual and audio alerts will be reinforced so players don't feel forced to download external addons.

Principal Software Engineer Ana Resendez confirmed raids will maintain fixed formats of 10, 20, and 25 players. Dynamic difficulty scaling ("Flex") and automatic level scaling for world enemies or bosses will not be implemented."temporal bubble" within the Vanilla era.

World of Warcraft: Forever will be included for all users with an active World of Warcraft subscription. Players who purchase special editions can participate in the beta starting September 17, 2026.