At BlizzCon 2026, we got to go hands-on with the new version of World of Warcraft Forever (WoW Forever). Promised to be an expansion of all that people love about Classic, with all the technical improvements of Modern and beyond. Plus, with cut and never-before-seen content!
This version isn’t just a season, like Season of Discovery. Blizzard is treating WoW Forever as a new third pillar to its MMO, with content that’s to come, for, well, forever. Here’s what I played, saw, and thought about during my brief hour-long time with WoW Forever at BlizzCon.
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So the preview experience was split into two parts: a 20-minute leveling starting zone experience with the new race, Skyborne, and a 40-minute max time with one of the new dungeons with level 38 characters. Let’s start with the dungeon.
Combat in World of Warcraft Forever is on the slow and methodical side.
When Blizzard’s WoW Forever team said that combat would be slow and methodical, they meant it. I played an Undead Holy Priest to try healing out. For the group’s tank, whenever more than a pack of mobs was pulled, their threat retention went down the toilet. So we quickly learned we had to take it slow.
But the testable dungeon, The Drowned City, was MASSIVE. Think Zul’Gurub but somehow bigger. In 40 minutes (really was 30-ish, as the time included speccing talents, getting gear in order, and re-organizing the action bars), we only killed one boss, got eaten alive by a level 45 shark, and did some exploring as time started running out for group members. Without a dungeon map, like good ole’ Vanilla WoW, the amount of nooks and crannies everywhere was astounding.
Not just because it was a new dungeon, but without a map, you really have no idea what’s hidden anywhere or where secrets could be. It was truly a Classic dungeon experience, but with finding new surprises everywhere you looked. Like, right after the tank got 2-hit by the level 45 shark boss in the middle of the dungeon’s water, I dove under the water and saw several entrances guarded by Naga.
In a smaller pool down a side path was another entrance that had bigger, higher-level fish inside. Now, add-ons will probably be used to solve the no-in-game-dungeon-map, but for a first-time experience, maybe it’d be best to go without that. Enjoy the journey and exploration with a group.
As for the one boss fought, it actually wiped us the first time. We were all experienced Modern players. But like any normal group familiar with each other, we grouped up as the boss was pulled. The sheer amount of damage being pumped quickly made me run out of mana.
As people started dying, the boss became unkillable because its 50% enrage let it regain 5% HP every 5 seconds. But on a second attempt, we all spread out, with all ranged at max range from the boss, and it became a cakewalk.
Even the boss’s charge ability didn’t insta-kill a ranged when targeted, as it did with the first pull. Still much slower-paced, but required some thought to pull off. You can’t just run into these dungeons and expect to learn all you can about a boss right when you pull it. Many are going to take multiple attempts to get right, even by the skin of your teeth.
The Drowned City was also a great showcase of the new lighting and water effects. The sun peeked through some of the remaining undersea vegetation; the water glistened and reacted better to walking through (or dying in) it. It all looked like those Unreal Engine 5 WoW mock-ups you’d see pop up on the subreddit occasionally, but actually playable.
Making the switch from Modern to WoW Forever doesn’t guarantee boss-clearing success.
Now, for the Skyborne starting area. To get a completely new feel, I played the whole 20 minutes with a controller and the new built-in gamepad support. Shockingly, it worked perfectly fine. No issues with tab targeting; switching out abilities on the action bars went smoothly.
The biggest hurdle was the learning curve of how to even function with a controller. Heck, it may be even better because auto-run was pre-mapped on the controller. Other than that, swapping through menus was a little more tedious, as they’re all on a radial instead of tied to specific buttons on the keyboard.
And diving through the menus, I learned a lot more about WoW Forever than what was maybe intended. For the most part, the menu, HUD editing, and even some new features to Modern were all present in the preview’s menus. Some new stuff, too, like a Diminishing Return tracker, was found.
Other than that, the UI was as customizable out of the box as it is now, or soon will be, in Midnight. Including an in-game damage meter and map coordinates. So WoW Forever really is a whole new take on Classic but with all the Modern bells and whistles for more user-friendly options. Still TBD if there’s going to be a group finder for dungeons or raids.
Yet just playing for a couple of minutes and questing with a Skyborne was about as accurate as any other race’s starting zone. You spawn, get told to talk to someone, then are told to kill a couple bugs or creatures nearby. What was nice was the quests to get familiar with their racials.
One was particularly funny: with one of the Skyborne’s racials, you get what is essentially a levitate-to-fall slow. The associated quest was simply to “jump off the tall tower and survive the fall by using the racial ability.” The other, which is just like a Blood Elf’s siphon ability, also paired well with a later quest to kill some enemies in an enclave.
WoW Forever will have quality-of-life changes in the future, and that should help it last.
Honestly, just diving through the menus to see what exactly was different for WoW Forever was a blast. Figuring out what may be coming down the pipeline for Modern, and how the Classic team is trying to differentiate itself from just being another version of Classic.
World of Warcraft Forever has already gotten its grip on my November plans. Finding all the new stuff throughout it and getting ready for the new raids is all I’ll be doing in November (sorry, no more family plans for Thanksgiving!).
Even after just playing for an hour, my mind is racing about what I want to be, and where I’ll even begin my journey through a “new” take on Azeroth and all the knowledge of legend and current lore with me. But what will also be curious is how quickly Forever will incorporate any new changes from Modern‘s UI and vice versa as more quality updates are released.
World of Warcraft Forever is available November 4th on PC, with a beta starting September 17th.
