We need to talk about World of Warcraft: Forever
With World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard promises to bring back that 2004 feeling – minus the struggle. What sounds like a nice nostalgia project could turn out to be the most honest admission Blizzard has ever made about its own flagship game.
I miss the old World of Warcraft. Only, I don’t really want to play it any more.
It’s something I notice every time nostalgia draws me back to a Classic server. Early on, it’s all there again: the vast world of Azeroth, the slow journey and the feeling that something new might be waiting behind every hill. But I quickly end up trudging through the wasteland for what feels like the hundredth time, and my initial thought of «Wow, this world is huge» has long since turned into «Do I really have to go through this again?»
Source: Luca Fontana
At Blizzcon 2026, Blizzard announced World of Warcraft: Forever, which is a third, permanent WoW alongside Retail – the current modern version – and Classic. What’s more, the beta’s even launching today, with Blizzard officially describing the project as follows: The world is once again meant to be «at the centre», the community comes first and the journey is just as important as the destination.
Fellow editor Philipp wrote a comprehensive Blizzcon report on it. Forever sounds like a nice bonus for nostalgic players. But it isn’t. The more I think about it, the more it strikes me as the most exciting WoW announcement in years.
And that’s not because of the more than 1,000 new quests and the new elf race, the Skyborne.
Maybe I don’t miss Classic at all
Forever is set in the original Azeroth, keeps the level cap permanently at 60 and instead expands the world with new zones, dungeons and raids. At the same time, Blizzard is modernising areas where Classic simply feels outdated today. Useless talents are being removed, all specialisations are set to become viable and future second and third characters will benefit from significant simplifications through an account-wide Legacy system.
This is precisely where the real difficulty lies. Much of what we now associate with a pleasant sense of nostalgia was actually a struggle back then; we just perceived it differently. Back in 2005, whenever I ran through a zone for twenty minutes, I didn’t know the way, and I might have discovered a cave or met a player I didn’t know. The world felt huge because I actually had to cross it. By my fifth character (called Twinks), however, exploration turned into tedious, repetitive work.
Retail has solved many of these problems. The Dungeon Finder saves me the hassle of searching for a group, flying mounts shorten travel times and faster levelling gets me to the sacred endgame more quickly. These are all reasonable improvements. The thing is, Blizzard hasn’t just fixed the problem – it’s also removed the experience along with it. If you can teleport to a dungeon with the push of a button, you no longer have to ask anyone where the entrance is. And anyone who flies over every mountain transforms the landscape into a mere backdrop below them.
These days, Retail simply doesn’t offer anything as memorable as my epic journey from the human city of Stormwind all the way to Ashenvale, the enchanted realm of the Night Elves:
This is exactly what makes Forever truly intriguing. I don’t miss Classic at all, with its tedious talent trees and its «LFM UBRS tank!!» group searches via world chat. I just miss how Classic felt before I knew every path by heart.
What if Forever is the better WoW?
But now things get tricky for Blizzard. Ion Hazzikostas, who has been the chief innovator behind modern WoW for years and is currently also the director of the ongoing Midnight expansion, is also the face of Forever.
In an interview with Men’s Journal, he describes his ambition at Blizzard as follows: «to take the best MMO ever made and make it better.» He explicitly counts players who «tried Classic, enjoyed it, but then jumped off and went back to current WoW» among the target audience. So, me. What’s remarkable about this is that the same man who’s been in charge of Retail for years is now positioning himself as the curator of a game that explicitly promises to bring back everything that Retail lost along the way.
Source: What’s Next Panel, Blizzcon 2026
This imbalance is evident, even on a small scale. Forever will have official controller support right from the start. As for Retail, according to Associate Game Director Paul Kubit, we’re stuck with a noncommittal «never say never.» The modern version, with its countless buttons, is simply more complicated. A small detail that nevertheless reveals something bigger: this new, nostalgic project is receiving attention that the established main game is currently being denied.
The community has long since noticed this irony. On the largest WoW forum, MMO-Champion, there’s a busy thread titled Blizzcon 2026: The worst blizzcon for retail-players ever. In it, a user sums up the contradiction: people are celebrating a Classic+ version – developed by the same studio that many accuse of watering down Retail – while the actual, current version came away almost empty-handed at the same Blizzcon.
Whether Blizzard will ever openly admit that is another question. Yet the very existence of Forever almost seems like a subtle critique of the present.
Which WoW is the real one in the end?
This is most clearly evident in the frozen level cap itself. Sure, Blizzard never said that modern WoW is too focused on endgame content. Still, Forever puts the journey back at the heart of the game. Blizzard never claimed that Azeroth’s been reduced to a mere backdrop. And yet, Forever makes the world the main character once again. And finally, Blizzard has never claimed that 20 years of vertical progression devalued content too quickly. But Forever still freezes the level cap at 60.
Think about it.
The irony is, Blizzard has driven most of these developments itself, often at the request of its own community. Faster travel, a more convenient group finder and a greater focus on the endgame solved real problems. So, Forever isn’t an admission that Retail has fundamentally gone off track. But along the way, due to modernisation, things have undoubtedly been lost that can’t be measured in terms of comfort and efficiency.
That’s precisely why the concern currently sweeping through Retail communities is more than just nostalgia-fuelled defiance. If Forever actually delivers on its promises, it won’t just be competing for a little attention with Retail in a friendly way. It answers a pertinent question in real time: which of these three World of Warcrafts will be considered the real one going forward? Retail gamers have every reason to be afraid. Their game is currently being publicly exposed for what it’s been missing for over 20 years.
I don’t know if Blizzard itself even knows what the «one true WoW» will be in the future yet. I don’t want to go back to 2004 either – I don’t have the patience for that. And Blizzard has solved too many real problems since then – I’ll gladly admit that. But I’d like to understand again why, back then, I could walk for hours from Stormwind to Ashenvale without ever wondering when the actual game – the endgame – would finally begin.
I simply felt like I was already right in the thick of things – and that is what WoW: Forever absolutely has to get right.
Do you think Forever can actually bring that feeling back, or am I underestimating how much we’ve changed? Put it in the comments.
I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.
This is a subjective opinion of the editorial team. It doesn't necessarily reflect the position of the company.
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