THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · TRANSCRIBED FROM THE VOD, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
The World of Warcraft: Forever developer Q&A aired on September 17, hosted by Randy "Kaivax" Jordan with senior game designer Josh Greenfield, lead software engineer Nora Mills and lead Classic designer Tim Jones, and the beta opened as soon as it ended. Questions were gathered from the forums in advance. Here is every answer, in the order asked, quoted from the VOD, followed by what they did not touch.
GDKP is banned
The clearest answer of the hour. Greenfield: "The short answer is that no, we are not going to allow GDKP." His reasons, in order: it can "overtake the traditional guild structure" where it becomes ubiquitous; it is "a really big barrier to entry for new players" who end up buying gold to buy in; and it is "an excellent way for bad actors to launder large sums of gold."
Alongside the ban, three economy commitments. The team will be "very, very actively monitoring the economy," pulling levers on resource availability the way it did in Season of Discovery. The Tarnished Undermine Real system from SoD returns in Forever, described as "kind of like that emblem of justice system," with resource boxes whose drop rates can be tuned when something gets scarce. And on gold buying: "We've been probably too lenient on gold buyers... we are going to very aggressively punish gold buyers. It's not worth losing any of your accounts permanently." We have a separate piece on the GDKP ban.
Addons use the modern API
Asked whether Forever uses the Midnight addon API restrictions, the Classic API or something else, Mills: "We did opt for the modern API approach." Her reasoning: boss encounters in Forever are "a lot more simplified compared to Modern," so the combat restrictions should not hurt, and one API across both games is easier for addon authors to keep up with.
Forever also ships built-in tools so nobody feels they need addons: "we do also offer in WoW Forever the damage meter, the cooldown manager. And actually, additionally, I'm proud to say too, Swing Timer perhaps coming soon." Addons themselves stay allowed for UI customisation. The addons article has the full implications for Classic Era addons and WeakAuras.
No flex raiding, 10 and 20 every tier, Onyxia at 40 for launch
Jones: "No, we're not going to start off with flex raiding." The promise instead: "Every single tier that we will ever do will have both a 10-player raid and a 20-player raid," designed so a 10-man guild can graduate from dungeons and later grow into 20s. The Barrow Deeps has "eight or so bosses," Hyjal Summit "even more," and tier pieces drop in both.
Onyxia's Lair at 40 players is confirmed for launch, "kind of the first foray into having an extra piece of raiding content in addition to the 10 and 20 ecosystems." Not every tier will have a 40-man. Cross-faction raiding: "There's not going to be any cross-faction play. Horde and Alliance are going to hate each other. They need to fight."
One difficulty for everything
Jones: "Across both dungeons and raids, the instance is a single difficulty. There's no heroic difficulty." The multiple armour colour variants people have seen datamined "are just for offset pieces." One version of the 10-man, one of the 20-man, one of each dungeon. "You get what you get."
Realmless, explained again, plus Oceanic servers
Mills: you select a ruleset (Normal, PvP, Roleplay, Hardcore), which is "similar to selecting a mega realm." Battlegrounds may mix players from other rulesets. You cannot hop between rulesets on one character: "without a character transfer, you're not just going to be able to flip flop." Hardcore is not at launch; when it arrives "it will be a choice like RP or PvP." Server-wide events like the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj: not at launch, and "any events that should feel like a global effort should still feel like a global effort."
Oceanic: "We are going realmless but not regionless." Regions like EU and CN remain. "Oceanic players are going to be, for the most part, hosted on Australian data centers," can still play with US friends, and "share the same ruleset-wide auction house with your US friends." Group with people far away and your ping follows their data centre.
Surnames are mandatory and names are region-wide
"Yes, you do have to put something in that field." A name taken on the Roleplay ruleset is taken on PvP too: "names are region-wide in WoW Forever." Mills called it "a role-play forward way to reinforce that player identity."
The Skyborne: why not High Elves
Greenfield's answer was long and did not mention the price. The team wanted elves for Forever, considered Thalassian High Elves starting in Northshire Abbey, and decided Quel'Thalas was "too big for just kind of a simple starter or low level zone" and "not the right time" in Forever's stretched vanilla timeline. Chris Metzen encouraged them to "spread your wings a little bit," and Skywall gave "a really good set of hooks that we can sort of pay off later," with a Thunderfury nod. High Elves are still coming: "we will be back to Quel'Thalas." The gameplay upside he named: High Elf-looking Druids and, on the Horde side, Shamans, which have never existed.
From the modern WoW segment earlier in the stream: the Skyborne and any other new Forever races will not come to Midnight or the rest of the World Soul Saga, and neither will surnames.
Character models
The HD and SD models share a skeleton, so the team "painstakingly gone through all the animations on both" to restore the Classic feel, including the less bouncy Dwarf run. At first login you choose Classic or Enhanced mode; Classic mode automatically turns off quest tracking and transmog. The SD/HD toggle sits at the bottom of character customisation and also in the graphics settings, so it can be flipped anywhere in the world.
Transmog
Silhouettes are preserved: a Paladin in a cloth chest can only transmog to another cloth chest. Each saved set can hold multiple appearances per slot, so a healer Paladin who designates a plate chest appearance sees it swap in when a plate upgrade is equipped. Players who do not want it "can pretty much pretend it doesn't exist."
PvP: no rated, a new honour track per season
Jones: "There won't be any rated PvP, though we've re-envisioned the PvP ranking system." A new PvP track with unique rewards resets every season or tier, aligned with raid releases. Honour is adjusted so people "don't feel like they just have to sit in Alterac Valley over and over." Darkspear Islands has its own reputation; Warsong, Arathi Basin and "more battlegrounds to come in the future." That is an implicit no to Arena, the second most replied thread on the forum.
A weekly podcast through the beta
Greenfield announced a weekly podcast starting next week, hosted by himself and Josh Corbett of Countdown to Classic, running six weeks with developers, creators and community guests.
What the Q&A did not answer
- Dual spec. Not mentioned. Still open.
- The debuff limit. Not mentioned. Still open.
- The $29.99 Skyborne price. The origin story was answered; the paywall was not.
- Character transfers or cloning from Classic Era. Not mentioned, though Mills' phrasing implies paid transfers between rulesets exist. Details here.
- Hardcore's date. Confirmed as a post-launch ruleset, no date.
- System requirements, download size, RP-PvP, Dungeon Finder. Not raised.
The beta opened as the stream ended. Watch it live, or read the beta guide if you are trying to get in.
Source: the World of Warcraft Developer Q&A VOD on the Warcraft YouTube channel, Forever segment from roughly 59 minutes in. Quotes are from the auto-transcript and lightly cleaned for spelling.