“Maybe 4 to 8 months from now”: that is how one of the two guests brings up new race-class combinations in WoW Forever, then adds a few seconds later “it’s probably better nobody hears what I said.” The scene is in a video from the Nick Beckwith channel posted on November 4, 2026, and it says more about the team’s caution than about a schedule.
Two interviews from the first week let us take stock of what the WoW Forever developers are promising. The first, by Nick Beckwith (12 minutes 16 seconds), brings together Holly Longdale, executive producer of WoW Forever, and Clay Stone, associate production director. Those two titles appear in the announcement of the PAX Australia panel of September 29, 2026; we already ran into them in our article on what Blizzard showed at PAX. The second, a 29 minute 44 second Raider.IO video from November 6, 2026, gives the floor to Tim Jones, lead classic designer (2:03), and Nora Mills, lead software engineer (1:43). The subtitles of both videos are automatic and do not say who is speaking: when the attribution is uncertain, the article writes “the team” or “one of the guests.”
Gnome Paladins and ogres: the wish is there, the date is not
Ogres come first in the Nick Beckwith video. At 8:34, the question comes and the answer is blunt: “Ogres are a dream,” “the golden nugget.” The team played them in Warcraft II and says it hears about them all the time. At 9:01, it points out that the game already has “a whole bunch of new race class combos” at launch, and judges it is “probably just a matter of time” before the next ones, while wanting players to say what they expect. One example already in the game: the human hunter, which one of the guests says they played during the internal alpha, with a class trainer placed in the starting zone (2:27).
Caution comes next. At 9:45, the team cites dwarf shamans and undead paladins as cases where a good story is needed before opening the door. At 10:08, one of the guests recounts that before the game was announced, the team had wondered whether to add even more combinations “maybe 4 to 8 months from now,” then concludes they want to “be really careful about moving too quickly.” Nick Beckwith points out that once the door is open, there is no going back. The line about “nobody hears what I said” comes at 10:36. It is a hypothesis dropped on the spot, not a plan.
Gnome Paladins come right after. The video’s title puts them forward, and its description says Holly Longdale mentions them. The automatic subtitles do not transcribe that word in the 4-to-8-months passage, but Nick Beckwith brings up “Gnome paladins” at 10:47. One of the guests confirms the question comes up often (11:23) and answers that these choices must fit the lore: class identity is “extremely strong” in the vanilla era, and the team wants to do things right (11:45). The paid-expansion leak we went through in our line-by-line check cited new races (Worgen, Darkfallen Elves) without any proof, and mentioned neither a Gnome Paladin nor an ogre.
| Topic | What the team says | Timestamp |
|---|---|---|
| Ogres | “Ogres are a dream,” never announced | 8:34 |
| New combinations | Probably “just a matter of time,” following what players ask for | 9:01 |
| Gnome Paladins | A frequent question, with the lore to sort out first | 11:23 |
| Date | None: “4 to 8 months” was a possibility considered before the announcement, followed by a call for caution | 10:08 |
Level 60 for good in WoW Forever, a 10-player raid and a 20-player raid per patch
In the Raider.IO interview (video), the WoW Forever team rules out raising the level cap. “The goal posts are not moving,” says one of the guests at 21:38, and level 60 is kept because the team wants the journey to stay long (21:36). Content additions come through updates: at 12:42, the team talks about around two major patches a year “in addition to our major release,” each time with a 10-player raid and a 20-player raid (13:27).
For the first raid tier, opening on December 9, it is Barrow Deeps at 10 players and Hyjal Summit at 20, with a bonus 40-player raid, Onyxia, which the subtitles spell “Onexia” (13:34). As for other content, the team promises more dungeons, PvP content with rewards, professions and reputations (13:53). Our article on WoW Forever raids explained by Joardee already covers the single raid difficulty in detail.
The pace calls for a remark. According to IGN, Kris Zierhut was aiming for an update every four months, or 17 weeks, as our article on triple specialization recounts. Two major patches a year on top of the launch also make three high points in the first year: the two figures do not necessarily clash. That is our reading; the team does not put it that way.
| Topic | What the team says | Timestamp |
|---|---|---|
| Level cap | Stays at 60: “the goal posts are not moving” | 21:38 |
| Pace | About two major patches a year, on top of the launch | 12:42 |
| Raids | One 10-player raid and one 20-player raid with each patch | 13:27 |
| First tier (December 9) | Barrow Deeps (10), Hyjal Summit (20), Onyxia (40) | 13:34 |
| Other content | Dungeons, PvP with rewards, professions, reputations | 13:53 |
Classes still being tweaked, an arachnophobia mode under study
“This is not a museum piece,” one of the guests insists at 19:01, contrasting WoW Forever with the Era servers, which freeze the original version. Classes will keep changing: adjustments to talent trees, rotations and how the design evolves (18:06). The pace will be slower than during the beta, because the team does not want to “rug pull people” (18:42), and an interesting aspect of a class can stay untouched for “a patch or more.” As for the third specialization, the door IGN described as not ruled out remains the only public element, see our article on triple specialization.
Arachnophobia mode, a WoW Retail setting that changes the look of spiders, is the subject of a question at 25:35. The answer: the team did not have time to integrate it for launch (25:45), it is not a simple copy-paste from Retail, and there is “nothing to announce yet” (26:13). An internal accessibility channel receives this kind of request, from lighting that is hard on people with epilepsy to controller support (26:24).
| Topic | What the team says | Timestamp |
|---|---|---|
| Pace of changes | Tweaks to come, slower than during the beta | 18:38 |
| Principle | “This is not a museum piece” | 19:01 |
| Arachnophobia mode | Not ready for launch, “nothing to announce yet” | 26:13 |
Hidden items to discover after level 30
What the WoW Forever team looks forward to most: players getting past level 30 and starting the dungeons, to find items the team has hidden that do not yet appear in any public database: trinkets, weapons and sets (28:26). It imagines players rebuilding their pre-BiS (the gear aimed for before the raids) by picking from them.
1 Commentaire
ils trouvent qu’il y a trop de races/classes………………..race je veux bien…mais classes………………….en bref, ils sortiront une nouvelle classe max……..parce que coa les aura forcé a le faire……………coa ayant disparu, je suis sur qu’ils ont laisse ca de cote. a voir leur temps de reaction anemique quand leur concurrent reviendra…………ils se bougeront alors………….des années apres.