Ion Hazzikostas: WoW Forever's lighting was redone by hand, and it could come to retail

WoW Forever’s volumetric fog, real sun shadows and flowing water drew the biggest reaction of BlizzCon, and retail players quickly asked when their game would get the same. In an interview with But Why Tho?, game director Ion Hazzikostas and executive producer Holly Longdale explained why that is not simple. They also shared a few details about how Forever will run.

The lighting was done zone by zone, by hand

Hazzikostas said the new look is not a setting you can switch on elsewhere. “Forever isn’t just an engine improvement. It’s also work that was done by hand by our environment artists across the entirety of those zones to relight them to apply those new techniques.”

So the new lighting is not just a new renderer. Every zone in original Azeroth was relit by hand. Doing the same for retail would mean relighting retail’s zones too, which is a lot more ground. For what the tech actually does, see our graphics breakdown.

What could make it to retail

Hazzikostas named three things Blizzard will “look for opportunities to bring over” to the modern game:

• Improved server infrastructure
• The lighting improvements
• Surnames, “depending on how that plays out and how players feel about that in Forever”

The surname line stands out. It suggests Forever is where Blizzard tests the feature, and player reaction there will decide whether retail gets it. There is no timeline for any of it. He said “No specifics on timeline now,” and added that “a lot of it is not as simple as just flipping a switch.”

Patches will still roll out region by region

The new server infrastructure had some players hoping for one worldwide patch day. Hazzikostas said no: “We’re going to have staggered rollouts of our updates in Forever across regions as well.”

He was clear that this is about time zones, not technology. Patching “means taking down the servers for several hours,” so Blizzard times it around each region’s weekly reset, when fewest people are playing. A single global rollout would work technically, he said, but it would take European servers down for an evening, from around 5 to 11 p.m. local time.

For players: expect NA and EU to get Forever patches on different days, as they do in Classic and retail. Guides and tier lists will change a day apart between regions.

Duskwood by lantern light

Asked what impressed them most about the Classic team’s work, both named the lighting and the water. Hazzikostas picked Duskwood after dark, where players’ torches and lanterns now throw real light across the road. The models and the setting are unchanged, he said, but the mood is transformed.

It matches what the beta has shown so far. The zones use the original models and layouts, but the lighting makes them feel new.

Quotes from But Why Tho?'s BlizzCon 2026 interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Holly Longdale, published September 13, 2026.