WoW Forever's Legacy System explained: 65 challenges, 16 points per character, and no need for alts

The Legacy System is WoW Forever’s answer to a hard question: what do you progress towards when the level cap never rises? Blizzard has now put numbers on it.

How you get in

The system unlocks the moment you earn your first Legacy Point. For most players that is when a character reaches level 25, but there are two other doors:

• reaching 150 in a non-gathering primary tradeskill;
• exploring the entire world map.

Once it is open, the Legacy panel is on the menu as a shield icon, or on the Y hotkey.

65 challenges, one point each

Legacy Challenges work like achievements, but only for progression. There are 65 of them in six categories, and each completed challenge is worth exactly one Legacy Point. Points are Battle.net account-wide and usable by all of your non-Hardcore characters.

Blizzard also lists how many points a single character can earn: 3 from leveling, up to 6 from tradeskills, 12 from PvP, 2 from Adventure and 6 from dungeons and raids. That is up to 29 points without ever making an alt.

The 16-point cap is the important number

Each character spends the account’s points on its own perks, in three trees: Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness. Every character can spend them differently, so one alt can specialise in crafting while another takes convenience perks.

At launch there is a cap of 16 points spent per character. Blizzard gives two reasons, and they are worth reading carefully:

1. New players can catch up. Someone starting in month six is not permanently behind a launch-day veteran.
2. Alts are optional. Since one character can earn up to 29 points and only 16 can be spent, you can reach the cap solo.

So the system rewards playing widely, but it does not punish players who stay on one character. That is a deliberate answer to the biggest fear about account-wide progression: that it becomes an alt tax.

Blizzard also mentions that the two new Alliance and Horde factions are a major source of new tradeskill activities, which is where a chunk of those points live.

Rewards: toys and cosmetics, not power

Beyond the perk trees, accumulated points feed a reward track. At launch there are four rewards: toys and cosmetic items, with more planned in each content update. Nothing on the track is endgame power, which matches what the developers told Windows Central about keeping Legacy away from raid power.

Hardcore plays by its own rules

Hardcore is not in at launch. When it arrives:

• challenges completed outside Hardcore do not count inside it;
• a challenge earned in Hardcore counts everywhere else;
• since PvP challenges cannot be done in Hardcore, Blizzard will add 12 Hardcore-specific Legacy Challenges.

What comes later

Blizzard calls the system “in its infancy”. Every content release should bring new challenges, new perks in the existing trees, and eventually new trees, plus more rewards on the track. That is how a game with a fixed level 60 cap plans to keep an account progressing for years.

Our Legacy guide lists every way to earn points found in the beta client so far, and the leveling guides show the fastest routes to level 25 if you want the system open early.