World of Warcraft: Forever was officially announced on September 12 during the opening ceremony of BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim. World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale took the stage to reveal the new game, which Blizzard describes as a third permanent way to play WoW alongside Modern and Classic. The announcement was followed by a What’s Next panel with Senior Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones, Lead Software Engineer Nora Mills and Associate Production Director Clay Stone, giving us a much better idea of what Blizzard wants Forever to be. The beta starts on September 17, while the full game launches on November 4, 2026.
After everything Blizzard showed during BlizzCon, I think this might finally be the Classic+ many of us have wanted for years. Not another reset where we level through exactly the same quests and already know every item that can drop, but a version of the classic World of Warcraft that is allowed to continue growing.
What We Know About World of Warcraft Forever So Far
Forever takes place in the original Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, after the events of the new Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom campaign but before Molten Core. The level cap remains 60 and Blizzard plans to keep expanding the world with new quests, zones, dungeons, raids and other content instead of simply moving everybody into the next expansion. Access to Forever itself will also be included with a normal World of Warcraft subscription or Game Time.
There is already quite a lot of new content confirmed for launch. The gameplay trailer reveals that Blizzard is adding more than 1,000 quests, nine dungeons, two raids and several new or expanded areas, including Mount Hyjal, Shen’dralas, Riverglades and Zephras Isle. Riverglades alone will have more than 150 quests covering much of the mid-30s to mid-40s leveling experience, while Zephras Isle will serve as the level 1-12 starting area for the new Skyborne race. Mount Hyjal and Shen’dralas also finally open areas of the old world that Classic players have been looking at and wondering about for more than 20 years.
The dungeon list is equally interesting because Blizzard is using places that already felt like they belonged in Vanilla WoW. We will be able to explore the Ruins of Lordaeron, the Hall of Thanes underneath Ironforge, the City of Dalaran, Alcaz Prison, Blackmaw Hold, Shaper’s Terrace and several completely new locations. There is also Krol’dok Stronghold in Riverglades, described as a huge outdoor dungeon. Instead of replacing the original dungeon journey, the idea seems to be giving us more options while leveling through the same Azeroth.
At max level there are two new raids confirmed. Barrow Deeps is a 10-player raid, while Hyjal Summit is designed for 20 players. New raids begin unlocking on December 9, with Blizzard already confirming that further raids, dungeons, PvP updates, world content and additional quests will follow after launch. Hardcore is also planned for later.
New Systems, Classes and the Skyborne
The Skyborne are the first completely new playable race in Forever and can join either faction. They have their own starting experience on Zephras Isle, with class options changing slightly depending on whether you choose Alliance or Horde. Blizzard is also expanding existing race and class combinations, while talents and abilities are being changed without abandoning the original three-tree Classic structure.
There are some more modern additions as well. Transmog will be available but can be disabled if you don’t want to see it. Players can choose between original SD character models and updated HD versions. Gamepad support is confirmed. Professions are getting more than 600 new recipes, and a new Legacy system will give additional rewards to people who enjoy leveling multiple characters.
One of the more interesting ideas is Camping. Players will be able to create camps in the open world where others can stop, contribute crafted objects and gain useful buffs. On paper it sounds like a small feature, but it fits surprisingly well with what Blizzard says it wants Forever to focus on: slowing people down occasionally and giving strangers reasons to interact with each other.
More importantly for me, there will be no flying mounts and no level scaling. Blizzard says leveling should remain an important part of the game, with challenge, preparation, communication and cooperation still having value. The world itself is supposed to be the main character rather than something you rush through on the way to the latest raid.
Why We Still Chase That Feeling From 2004
If you played World of Warcraft for the first time around 2004, you probably remember how enormous Azeroth felt. You didn’t know exactly where every road would take you, what was behind the next mountain or whether entering some random cave would lead to a quest objective, a rare enemy or simply your death. The game was slow, sometimes ridiculously slow by modern standards, but that also made the world feel like an actual place that you were exploring rather than a collection of objectives.
Travelling somewhere could take half an evening. Finding a new flight path actually mattered. Reaching a town you had never seen before felt exciting because you had no idea what quests or stories were waiting there. Sometimes you grouped with another player simply because killing the mobs alone was painful, and twenty minutes later you were still travelling together.
Even getting gear felt different. A good green item could be a meaningful upgrade, while getting the right blue weapon from a dungeon could feel like a huge win. You might use it for the next ten levels and actually remember where it came from. Gear was not constantly thrown at you and replaced twenty minutes later, which gave even relatively ordinary items some value.
That slower progression also made your character feel much more like your character. You had spent days walking around the world with it, collecting equipment piece by piece, learning abilities and struggling to earn enough gold for things that now seem trivial. By the time you reached level 40 or 50, that character already had its own little history.
I don’t get exactly the same feeling from modern WoW. Modern WoW is bigger, smoother and in many ways much better designed, but the relationship with the world and your character is different. Everything happens faster and there is always another system, reward or objective waiting to replace the previous one. However, this is not exactly what the Classic fanbase is looking for. This is why the community is still playing games like Heroes 2 on Android or waiting for the Heroes 3 Remake. Sometimes we just want a slower, more peaceful gaming experience.
Classic Brought Azeroth Back, but Not the Mystery
WoW Classic did an amazing job of bringing a lot of that atmosphere back, especially during its first months in 2019. Seeing people everywhere again, grouping for quests and slowly travelling through the old zones reminded me why I loved the game in the first place. But there was something Classic could never truly recreate. We already knew everything.
We knew which quests were worth doing, which dungeons had the best items and which talents we should pick. People had optimal leveling routes before the servers even opened. Raid bosses that had once seemed impossible were being cleared by players who had spent years analysing every mechanic and every number behind the game.
Forever has the opportunity to change that without throwing original Azeroth away. You can still know exactly how to reach Ironforge or remember the road through Duskwood, but now there might be a dungeon underneath a place you have walked past hundreds of times. You might find a quest you have never seen before or get a blue item that you cannot immediately recognise from a 20-year-old loot table.
That combination of something familiar and something unknown is exactly what I wanted from Classic+.
This Is What Classic+ Should Be
I never wanted Classic+ to completely redesign World of Warcraft. The whole point was to keep what made the original game special and simply ask what could have happened if Blizzard had continued developing that version of Azeroth instead of constantly leaving it behind for another continent.
Keep the level cap at 60, together with the slower combat and meaningful leveling. Keep class identity, long journeys, dangerous mobs and those moments when seeing another player nearby is genuinely useful. Then give us new roads to follow, new dungeons to find, new items to chase and stories that feel like they could have been there back in 2004.
That seems to be exactly the direction Blizzard is taking with World of Warcraft: Forever. The developers have described it as something they want to keep building for years, with original Azeroth remaining at the center instead of becoming another temporary stop on the way to the next expansion.
Of course, we still need to actually play it. Blizzard can add too much convenience, get the balance wrong or slowly turn Forever into something very different from the game that inspired it. But from everything shown at BlizzCon so far, the basic idea feels right.
I don’t expect to feel exactly like I did when I first entered Azeroth more than twenty years ago. I don’t think any game can completely recreate that first experience. But if Forever can send me down a familiar road, show me something I have never seen before and make me wonder what I might find at the end of it, that is probably as close to Classic+ as I could ask for.