No flex raids, no scaling, no attunement at launch: how WoW Forever's new raids will work

One of the most-asked questions before the WoW Forever beta was about raid sizes. Smaller guilds wanted to know whether flex raiding would come to Forever, because filling a 20- or 40-player roster is the hardest part of Classic raiding. It sat near the top of the 200 questions players sent to Blizzard.

There is now a clear answer. At BlizzCon, But Why Tho? interviewed Ana Resendez (lead software engineer, WoW Classic) and Clayton Stone (associate production director), and both were direct about how Forever’s new group content is built.

Fixed raid sizes, starting with 10 and 20

Resendez said the team is “starting with 10- and 20-man, and no plans for flex at the moment.” A new raid will need its full roster at first, but she added that this can loosen over time: as players gear up, “maybe you might need less people.”

That is the classic approach. Raids do not change their tuning to fit the group. Your group changes, getting stronger until the same encounter takes fewer bodies. Veterans will remember 40-player raids that ended up cleared by 20-odd players late in a phase. Forever wants to keep that curve.

Difficulty never scales to you

The second rule is just as firm. Resendez said the team does not want “content tuning or automatically changing the difficulty, or adapting to your level; it’s always gonna stay the same.”

This matters for Forever in particular, because some of the new raids are meant for level-40-plus characters, not only level 60. In retail, a mid-level raid would scale to whoever walks in. In Forever, a level 60 group going back into a level 40 raid will simply overpower it, like a max-level character clearing an old dungeon in 2004.

For the encounters themselves, she described a “more grounded” design with no opening mechanics that throw players around the room. The aim is content that is “challenging, but where you can also bring your friends.”

No attunement for the launch raids

The two new raids planned for about a month after launch will not require attunement. They work like the original entry-level raids, where you walk in with a group.

Stone would not say whether that holds for the raids that come later: “That one we’ll leave for players to find out a little bit more about.” So Molten Core-style open doors are confirmed for the first raids, while later raids could still bring back Onyxia- or Naxxramas-style quest chains.

Why the team is holding back

All of this fits the wider message of the interview. Stone called Forever’s launch “a little bit on a more conservative side,” and said the team heard that Season of Discovery “pushed the envelope about as far as we could push it.” The class changes aim to fill gaps in each class’s kit, not overhaul them. He also left room for more: “we will certainly bring in more and more of those interesting things that we brought into Season of Discovery.”

What this means for your guild

• Plan for a full 20. Do not count on the first raid scaling down to your core 12 players.
• Gear lowers the headcount. Once the raid is on farm, fewer players will be able to clear it, so smaller guilds should expect to catch up in later weeks.
• No quest chain to start. With no attunement for the launch raids, alts and late joiners can come straight in.

For the rest of the endgame picture, see our raids hub and the datamined Hyjal tier sets.

Quotes from But Why Tho?'s BlizzCon 2026 interview with Ana Resendez and Clayton Stone, published September 13, 2026.