WoW Forever Doesn’t Rule Out a Triple Spec

A few days before WoW Forever opens on November 4, Blizzard left the door ajar on a triple spec. Kris Zierhut, the game’s lead designer, told IGN that a third spec is not ruled out. He gave no date, no plan and no list of classes.

The line comes from a long interview published on October 27, 2026 by Jacqueline Thomas, with Kris Zierhut and Tim Jones, lead Classic designer. It also covers what is settled at launch, the pace of updates and several pieces of the roadmap. Here is the sort between what was said, what is certain and what remains open.

The starting point is a single IGN question: talent resets (the « respecs », which let you redo your tree for gold) were expensive in Classic, so how much flexibility should we expect this time?

What Zierhut said about a triple spec

Asked about a third spec, Zierhut answers: « I wouldn’t take that off the table. » He adds: « We don’t need it now, » but he can imagine a future where it would become desirable. He also says that, in the team’s experience, two builds are enough most of the time in Classic content, and that Blizzard will keep watching the question.

So this is not the announcement of a triple spec. Nothing is dated, nothing is designed, and the « not now » wording sits in the same answer as « not ruled out ».

The gap with how the news spread is clear. Icy Veins runs the headline « Triple Spec Might Come to WoW Forever » and goes further than the interview: a paladin would switch freely from Retribution to Holy and then Protection, « like in Retail ». Zierhut says nothing of the kind in the IGN text. He talks about a door he is not closing, not a paladin changing role at will.

At launch: dual spec, no talent loadouts, one commitment

What is certain comes down to a few things. Dual spec will be in the game from November 4: two builds available. The interview says nothing about the price of a talent reset. The talent calculator already helps you prepare the two builds of this dual spec.

Zierhut does rule out Retail’s « loadouts », the saved talent sets you swap on the fly. Changing talents point by point mid-session strikes him as « a little bit too overwhelming and finicky. » The risk he describes: players end up expecting to modify their tree for every fight, which would no longer be « approachable and familiar, » two of the game’s design pillars. His phrase: « It starts to become a different game. »

The underlying position is stated plainly: « I think we do want to keep talents being a commitment. » Blizzard does have « ideas and plans, » though, to make changing spec a bit easier when it becomes necessary. No detail was given on these ideas.

For and against a third spec

What follows is our own reading of the idea; it does not commit Blizzard. Hybrid classes are the first concerned: druid and paladin each have three roles, the shaman alternates Elemental, Enhancement and Restoration, and the priest plays Shadow to level, Holy in raids and Discipline in PvP. A triple spec would let them cover all three uses without paying for a reset at every change. It would also make it easier to help friends and guildmates, who often need a stand-in healer or tank.

The counterarguments weigh just as much. A triple spec weakens the idea of commitment that Zierhut wants to keep. Resets are also a gold sink, meaning a regular expense that removes currency from the server economy; fewer respecs means less gold destroyed. Finally, flexibility that is offered quickly becomes an expectation: if the third spec exists, groups will ask for it. To choose your class with full knowledge, our guide which class to choose details what hybrids do in each role.

A patch every four months, PvP seasons

Blizzard wants a calmer pace than Retail. Six or eight months without anything new, says Zierhut, « always feels bad, » but the 8 to 10 week schedule of Season of Discovery « felt way, way, way too fast. » The target: an update every four months, that is 17 weeks, or three times a year, with at least four months between raid tiers.

PvP follows the same cycle: there will be PvP seasons, spaced four months apart. Our article on Honor, ranks and battlegrounds describes the system these seasons will pace.

Between two patches, content unlocks one, two or three months after release, through a calendar of timed events that Tim Jones handles. Smaller, more local stories make this pace sustainable, and the « loose threads » are tied up later.

The pieces of the roadmap

Zierhut recalls the three families of content shown at BlizzCon: the expected places (Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj), the new places that feel like they belong (the Riverglades zone and an ogre dungeon) and the truly different places (the Skyborne, Zephras Island). Zierhut estimates that each makes up roughly a third of the pie. Molten Core will not open the show: « We’re not starting with Molten Core, » and the schedule will be slowed down, stretched out. Our deep dive summary covers this presentation.

For destinations, here is what was said:

• Gilneas: all the terrain is already in the game, but you cannot enter. « Sharks will eat you, » Zierhut warns. A new story is meant to take place there one day, before Cataclysm.
• Silvermoon: later; Retail is focused on it right now.
• Emerald Dream: Blizzard would like to explore it at some point. Grim Batol: to be explored in full, like Blackrock Mountain.
• Tim Jones showed a new dungeon at the northern tip of Un’Goro Crater, a Titan site he calls Shaper’s Terrace, already linked to Northrend in Wrath of the Lich King.

At PAX Australia, Blizzard had already shown the list of this unfinished or merely hinted-at content that the community has been waiting on for twenty years.

Our article on the PAX map already read Gilneas, Grim Batol and the Emerald Dream as leads. Trips to the Dark Portal, Northrend or Pandaria remain possible for a dungeon or a quest, but not any time soon. No new capital is planned beyond the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor: « You always come home. » As for player housing, Zierhut answers: « we don’t have any plans » for Forever.

Raids will be played at 10, 20 and 40 players, dungeons at 5. Blizzard knows too many raids pile up over time and says it has ideas, with nothing to show. The topic also comes up in episode 5 of the podcast, on the 10 and 20 player content.

Hunter and Elixir of Wisdom: the last tuning before launch

While the interview was making the rounds, a hotfix showed up on the launch realms, with no Blizzard note. foreverchanges.pro, a fan site that reads every build of the game files, spotted it on 28 October. The hunter is the only class whose numbers go down.

Both hunter bonuses are roughly halved, rank by rank. Context matters: on the beta, capped at level 30, the hunter dominated, and Trueshot Aura now applies to the whole raid. The same hotfix puts the roots of Entrapment, Counterattack, Improved Wing Clip, Improved Hamstring and Frostbite in a single diminishing returns group (each new root from the same group lasts less on the same target).

None of this is confirmed by Blizzard, and the realms stay closed until launch: no value can be checked in game.

Quests: plenty of new content in known zones

In Elwynn Forest, IGN cites a new quest chain where kobolds steal books. Zierhut says every zone gets new quests, and that rare creatures each have a unique drop.

The numbers come from GameSpot: Eddie Makuch and Cameron Koch interviewed Josh Greenfield, senior game designer, on September 14. He counts more than 1,000 new quests, against about 3,000 to 3,500 playable quests in the original game. The four new zones each contain 50 to 200 quests, and existing zones were reworked: the Wetlands and Azshara get many quests to fill them out. Greenfield promises surprises « even from like level five onward. »

The beta gives a first measure. A player counted every quest in the level 1 to 30 zones and posted the result on the r/classicwow forum, picked up by Icy Veins on 28 October: 202 new quests out of 998 across 18 zones. The Wetlands and the starting zones hold the largest share. Duskwood, Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothills, level 20 to 30 zones, barely change.

This count comes from a player, not from Blizzard. If the 1,000 announced quests hold up, about 800 are still waiting between levels 30 and 60.

Two thirds of the leveling curve were never opened to testers: the beta stopped at level 30.