After the BlizzCon panels, the Forever team spent the weekend in press rooms. The headline, in one line: there are no plans for a WoW Token or paid boosts, the level cap stays at 60, and the game will grow sideways without leaving Azeroth. Here's the rest — who said it, and to whom.
Who spoke to whom
- Wowhead (Destin): Clay Stone, Associate Production Director, and Nora Mills, Lead Software Engineer.
- Kotaku (Rebekah Valentine): Tim Jones, lead Classic designer, and Mike Nuthals, lead encounter designer.
- Screen Rant (Chris Carter): Tim Jones and Nora Valletta, Lead Software Engineer.
- IGN (Michael Peyton): Kris Zierhut, Principal Designer, and Mike Nuthals.
- But Why Tho? (Mick Abrahamson): Clayton Stone and Anna Resendez, Lead Software Engineer.
- Inven (Jaihoon Jeong): Ana Resendes, Senior Software Engineer.
- GameSpot: Josh Greenfield, senior game designer.
- Warcraft Tavern, at a press roundtable: Ion Hazzikostas, Senior Game Director, and Holly Longdale, Vice President & Executive Producer.
Names and titles are given as each outlet printed them, and they don't fully match (the software engineer appears under three different surnames).
Money: no token, no shortcuts
Clay Stone told Wowhead there are no plans for anything like a WoW Token or a character boost. That's a statement of intent rather than a written rule, but it fits the line everyone repeated: the journey is the game. The same interview confirmed that everyone starts at level 1 at launch, and that the beta opens with a level 20 cap that later rises to 30, where it stays until the end.
Asked whether more gameplay will sit behind a purchase, like the Skyborne race (a $29.99 pack; see our article), Jones and Nuthals declined to comment to Kotaku: they're designers and don't make monetization calls.
Progression: 60 and not a level more
- The cap isn't going up. Tim Jones told Screen Rant that latecomers will find people still waiting at 60, because nobody moves on to a higher level. Their catch-up system is, quite literally, playing the game.
- Why "Forever". Jones told Kotaku the name is a promise: a place where the time you put into a character isn't lost when a season ends or an expansion arrives. Ana Resendes gave Inven the other reading: going back to 2004 and expanding horizontally from there.
- Growing sideways, no Dark Portal. Per Stone and Mills on Wowhead, they're staying on Azeroth for the foreseeable future — focused on Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms — filling in zones that were never finished. Going through the Dark Portal is exactly what they don't want to do.
- Short sessions count. Jones stressed to Screen Rant that half an hour of quests, auction house or professions still moves your character forward, and admitted it will sometimes feel like a grind — which he's fine with.
Classes: a conservative start
Clayton Stone told But Why Tho? that Forever starts on the cautious side: the team feels Season of Discovery pushed changes about as far as they could go. Classes fill in missing abilities without losing their identity, and he left the door open to more SoD ideas later.
Tim Jones was more specific with Kotaku: no unusual role combos at launch, like SoD's shaman tanks. The baseline is simple and closer to Classic, though he asked players who want those roles to speak up. Every class is in our class pages.
Raids and groups: fixed sizes, and walk to the dungeon
- No flex, no scaling. Anna Resendez (But Why Tho?) and Ana Resendes (Inven) agree: fixed 10- and 20-player groups, and difficulty that doesn't adapt. If it's too hard, outlevel or outgear it.
- There will always be a 10-player raid. Nuthals and Jones confirmed to Kotaku that every tier gets at least one 10-player and one 20-player option, sometimes plus a 40. Nuthals spelled it out for IGN: Barrow Deeps (10), Hyjal Summit (20) and Onyxia's Lair (40).
- Grounded encounters. Resendez said fights won't open with the complex mechanics of the modern game, and the new entry raids need no attunement. Whether later raids will, Stone preferred not to say.
- No one-click matchmaking and teleport. Meeting Stones open a board to list and find groups but don't summon: without a warlock, you travel (Nuthals, Kotaku). Resendes told Inven it's about the conversations that happen when you build a group by hand.
- Race to World First: no official support, though Resendes wouldn't be surprised if the community races anyway.
PvP, add-ons and controllers
- PvP gets its own progression (Jones, Kotaku): honor climbs a ranking system up to rank 14 within each patch cycle, with cosmetic rewards and PvP armor with stats. A new battleground, Darkspear Islands, joins the originals.
- Add-ons restricted as in modern WoW. Nuthals told Kotaku that add-ons doing in-combat calculations to automate marking or callouts won't be available; specifics are still to come.
- Official controller support at launch, a first for the series (Screen Rant). Consoles? Jones: nothing to announce.
World, quests and lore
- 1,000+ new quests. Josh Greenfield gave GameSpot the context: the original game has roughly 3,000–3,500 playable quests; the four new zones bring 50 to 200 each, and older zones such as the Wetlands and Azshara get new batches.
- Riverglades grew out of an empty chunk of the map, Stone and Mills told Wowhead. Jones added on Screen Rant that the new Eastern Kingdoms zone picks up threads from Warcraft 1: human settlers who chased the orcs and never got reinforcements.
- Canon comes first. Valletta told Screen Rant they consult Blizzard's historians; in their timeline Arthas is still in Northrend and Illidan in Outland. Wowhead adds that the team works with Chris Metzen every day.
- The Skyborne are Forever-only, with no plans to bring them to modern WoW (Resendes, Inven).
- Transmog is optional: if you want a world without it, you can have one (Wowhead).
- Camping is Zierhut's favorite feature: you sit by the fire, another player walks up, and a group is born (IGN). More in the systems changes.
What the leads said
At the press roundtable transcribed by Warcraft Tavern, Ion Hazzikostas pitched Forever as the starting point for anyone who has never played, and noted it's covered by the same subscription as every other version. Other notes:
- Forever patches will also roll out staggered by region, because of time zones.
- The new lighting could come to modern WoW, and maybe surnames too if players like them, but there's no timeline: much of it is hand work by environment artists.
- Steam isn't in the plans for now.
- Holly Longdale is curious to see what community forms in Forever and in its Hardcore mode, which arrives in winter per the roadmap.
And on IGN, Kris Zierhut waved off the idea of a WoW 2: he doesn't see what it would add that Forever doesn't already offer, built on an engine and servers that have been improving for decades.
Still unanswered
- Whether more gameplay content will be sold separately, like the Skyborne race.
- Whether later raids will require attunement.
- Which Season of Discovery ideas will reach classes, and when.
- The details of the add-on restrictions, and Hardcore's exact date.
- Consoles ("nothing to announce", per Jones) and Steam (not planned, though Hazzikostas won't rule it out forever).
The next chance to ask is the live Q&A on Thursday, September 17 at 10:00 a.m. PDT, on the official Warcraft Twitch and YouTube channels — the same day the beta starts. We'll update this article with the answers.
