THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED OCTOBER 15, 2026
Short answer: WoW Forever's gear is not horizontal in the Guild Wars 2 or RuneScape sense. Each new raid tier will be a power step up, and Blizzard has said so in plain words. Clay Stone, the associate production director, told Skill Up on October 11 that "there will be a little bit of vertical power progression that happens between each of the raid tiers, but we're going to try to keep it as small as possible." When Blizzard says "horizontal," it means the world gets wider (new zones, dungeons, raids, profession content and Legacy perks), not that your gear stops aging. The aim is gear with a long shelf life. That gap between what players heard at BlizzCon and what the team means has become the loudest argument on the Forever forums this week.
What Stone actually said
There are two primary sources, both from the team's trip to PAX Australia, and they agree with each other.
The first is a written interview with Inven Global, published October 8, with Stone and executive producer Holly Longdale. Asked what horizontal progression means to the team, Stone answered: "When we talk about 'horizontal', we primarily mean expanding the world itself horizontally." He listed new zones, dungeons, raids and quests, deeper professions and more Legacy systems, then got to gear: "Looking strictly at gear progression, it isn't entirely horizontal. When a new raid tier is introduced, there will be a degree of power escalation between tiers. However, we aim to keep that power jump as narrow as possible."
The second is episode 106 of Skill Up's Friends Per Second podcast, recorded at PAX and uploaded October 11. Skill Up asked what besides transmog would give "horizontal progression over the life of the game." Stone pushed back on the framing first: "What I said at BlizzCon is we're going to expand the world horizontally. So it encompasses a lot more than even just horizontal progression."
He then gave the most concrete version of the plan so far. Launch raids open December 9 Pacific time, and Blizzard intends "at least two more raid tiers after that" before announcing anything beyond them. Between tiers there will be that small vertical step. The reason he gave is old gear: items from earlier raids and even dungeons "could continue to be your best in slot item for a very long time. Now, that may not be forever."
Skill Up summed it up as gear having "a longer shelf life," not gear staying valuable forever, and asked if that was right. Stone said: "I think that's a good way of looking at it. Yeah. At least from where we're starting from."
The pieces that are actually horizontal
Strip out gear and the horizontal part of Stone's answer is three systems:
| System | What Blizzard has said | Where to read more |
|---|---|---|
| World content | New zones, dungeons and quests added over time, including leveling dungeons, not only endgame ones | Every key change from Classic |
| Professions | "There's a lot we've already done with professions and there's a lot more we plan to do" | Profession bonuses and Merchant's Favor |
| Legacy system | Perks earned from challenges, "a system that we want to add to over time," and a reason to level alts | Legacy system explained |
One detail from the dungeon side: Stone told Skill Up the team is "not just going to add new dungeons at endgame. We're going to add new dungeons over the course of the leveling journey, too." So the 1 to 60 journey itself is meant to keep growing, which matters if your main progress is going to come from alts.
Why players feel misled
The anger is about the word, not about any one item. To most MMO players, "horizontal progression" means a near-fixed power ceiling where new gear adds options, not raw stats. Guild Wars 2 and Old School RuneScape come up in nearly every thread as the reference points.
The first big thread, "WoW Forever won't stay forever if gear keeps scaling," started on September 21 and has passed 500 replies. It made the core argument early: if every raid drops slightly better gear than the last, older content still becomes trivial in the end, just slower.
After Inven published Stone's answer, a poster opened "I'm concerned Blizzard doesn't understand 'Horizontal Progression'" on October 9, worried the team was "treating it more as a marketing term than as a guiding design philosophy." On October 12 came "WoW Forever does NOT have horizontal progression," now past 300 replies and 5,000 views. Its opening post says the developers "have chosen to ignore what horizontal progression is as defined by the genre and make up their own definition." That post also claims seven raids will be live by next summer. We could not find Blizzard saying that. Stone's own number is the launch raids plus "at least two more raid tiers."
Then on October 14 it boiled over. "Horizontal Progression Cope" hit 290 replies in its first day. "WoW forever won't last long if not Horizontal" added 82 more, and "Why are you turning Classic+ into WoW 2.0?" reached 90.
The other side
Plenty of players defend the plan, and their arguments are not just "trust Blizzard."
The most common one: vanilla was vertical, and nobody calls Blackwing Lair loot a betrayal of Classic. Stone made the same case with Skill Up, describing an item "you earn in BWL" that stays best in slot "for a very long time" as "so authentic to vanilla." One reply in the October 14 thread pointed out that retail "has been vertical for the last 22 years and is still going strong." Another argued that most purely horizontal MMOs struggle to keep players, with Guild Wars 2 the exception.
Others think the real problem is build variety rather than item level. A reply in the "Cope" thread noted that horizontal games keep players hunting gear because new pieces unlock new builds, and WoW's class design doesn't do much of that, so even a hard stat cap wouldn't produce the same loop.
What we still don't know
Soft resets. Asked by Inven whether gear progression might get a soft reset, Stone said "it's still too early to say." Nothing more specific has come out of any interview we could check.
Catch-up gear. Nobody has asked Blizzard directly how a player starting a year after launch gets raid-ready. Stone's answer to "is it too late to start WoW Forever?" was "a definitive no," with the reasoning that gear earned "long after launch could still be extremely powerful," but that is a goal, not a system.
How small "small" is. We will not know the size of the step between tiers until the second raid tier exists. The first tier's numbers are not even fully visible yet, since item stats are hidden in the beta.
What this means for you
If you're planning around the December 9 raids, treat your first-tier gear the way you would in Classic. It will be replaced eventually, but not as fast as a retail season. Pieces that are best in slot for your spec could stay there across a tier or two. Our BiS lists will flag items like that once raid loot is datamined. If you want progress that never expires, it lives in the Legacy system and professions, not your bags.
Blizzard has not posted on any of the horizontal threads. If the backlash keeps growing, a developer clarification on the forums before launch would not be a surprise, but nothing is announced.
Sources: Inven Global, Post-Beta 'WoW: Forever': What Is the Development Direction? (October 8, 2026); Skill Up, We asked Blizzard the big questions about World of Warcraft: Forever, Friends Per Second #106 (October 11, 2026, Clay Stone segment from about 44:00 to 50:10, quoted from the video); Icy Veins, Horizontal Progression in WoW Forever: Blizzard Clarifies (October 2026); AccountShark, WoW Forever Developer Interviews (Oct 12) (October 12, 2026); Blizzard forums, WoW Forever Won't Stay Forever If Gear Keeps Scaling (September 21, with replies), I'm concerned Blizzard doesn't understand 'Horizontal Progression' (October 9), WoW Forever does NOT have horizontal progression (October 12), Horizontal Progression Cope (October 14), WoW forever won't last long if not Horizontal (October 14) and Why are you turning Classic+ into WoW 2.0? (October 14). Reply counts checked October 15, 2026.