'All 27 talent trees are viable': WoW Forever's devs on raids every patch, Onyxia at 40 and a new continuity

Windows Central spoke to WoW Forever’s lead game designer Tim Jones and lead software engineer Nora Valleta at BlizzCon. It is the most concrete interview yet about classes and the endgame.

Every talent tree is meant to be raid-worthy

The headline quote is about class balance:

Every single one of our 27 talent trees is now viable for all content in WoW: Forever.

Jones adds the important caveat: viable does not mean identical or equal. Each tree keeps strengths and weaknesses, and none is meant to be so strong that raids stack it. Valleta gives the obvious example, a Retribution Paladin in raids, with seal twisting, which was never really a raid spec in 2004.

For anyone who played Classic, this is the biggest change of all. It is also the hardest promise to keep, and it is worth measuring against our class tier list, which currently shows a wide gap at level 20.

Raids: hard, but not a hundred wipes

The team described the plan for group content:

• 10 and 20 player content every patch;
• Onyxia is the 40 player raid;
• the world should be scary and raids should be difficult. Expect to prepare: potions, class diversity and buffs, gear, reputation grinds and research on what bosses do;
• but Blizzard is not aiming at retail Mythic difficulty. As Valleta put it, they are not going to stomp your face into the ground, and Classic players do not want 100 attempts on a boss. Do your homework and you should be on the road to success.

That is a clear split from retail: difficulty comes from preparation, not from execution under a hundred wipes. Our raid overview has what the beta files show about the launch raids.

A new continuity, not a rewrite

On the lore, Valleta says Forever is a new continuity in an adjacent timeline, starting from the same place. Some things will differ, but the team is not planning anything wildly divergent: no stopping Arthas from becoming the Lich King, no Jaina secretly being a dreadlord. She did add “but who knows”.

The same idea shapes the map. River Glades is a new zone on a landmass that existed on the Classic map with nothing on it. Jones lists the kind of questions they are answering: what was that strange gate in Azshara, which is now Timbermaw Hold, and what is inside Old Ironforge. The Skyborne story fills in Eldre’Thalas and Dire Maul, which Classic never fleshed out.

Content at every level, not just 60

Because the cap stays at 60 forever, progression is horizontal. The Legacy system is built to make alts worth leveling, with perks for trade skills and convenience and achievements that pay out cosmetics. Jones went further:

We might add an update where we put in a new zone designed not for level 60, but for level 27 to 32 for example, with a new dungeon.

A patch aimed at the thirties would be new ground for WoW. Our Legacy guide explains how the points work today.

One more idea on the table

Asked about sharing features with retail, Jones said the two teams borrow from each other, and floated something Forever players will notice: retail could take the camping system, and maybe connect it to player housing. He would love to bring player housing into the Classic world one day. Nothing is announced, but it is the first time camps and housing have been mentioned in the same sentence.

WoW Forever launches on November 4, 2026.