THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED SEPTEMBER 29, 2026
Short answer: in the WoW Forever beta, every player with Skinning in the same group can skin the same corpse, and each of them gets their own leather. It works like retail's gathering rules, not Classic's. Testers say that has already produced 30 to 40 player "skinning raids," and a forum thread asking Blizzard to remove it passed 98 replies within a day. Blizzard has not said whether this is intended or a bug. Nobody from the team has posted about it anywhere we could find.
If you skinned in 2019 Classic, you remember the rule: one corpse, one skin, and the fastest skinner wins. Forever doesn't work that way right now.
How shared skinning works in the beta
Everything here comes from testers, not from Blizzard, but the reports agree with each other.
- Only group members share. "When several players with Skinning are in the same group, ALL of them can skin the same mob," the first thread on the subject said on September 21. A later reply added that players outside the group or raid can't skin a corpse once it has been skinned.
- Everyone gets a full skin. Each skinner in the group loots their own Light Leather, Light Hide or whatever the mob drops. Nobody is splitting one stack.
- Herbs and ore still work the Classic way. Nodes are single-pick, which is one reason players think skinning is the odd one out.
It has been visible since the first weekend. On September 20 a tester posted "Skinning is Broken. Multiple players can skin the same mob" and linked a video showing it. One reply guessed it was deliberate and pointed out that it makes farming scales in Wailing Caverns worth doing for a whole group.
Testers have also reported two bugs that come with it. Skinners can sometimes skin a mob before the player who tagged it has looted it, and in some cases the corpse then disappears before the owner gets their loot. That was reported in the US thread on September 21 and again on the EU forums on September 24.
Where it came from
Shared gathering is a retail system, and a fairly recent one. Patch 9.2 in early 2022 changed it so that "many skinnable, mineable, and gatherable enemies can now be skinned, mined, and gathered by all the players who engaged with the enemy," as Blizzard Watch quoted from the patch notes at the time. The stated goal was a friendlier experience in groups.
Forever runs on the modern client, so retail rules show up in odd places during the beta. Some are clearly deliberate. Others have turned out to be leftovers. Shared skinning could be either, and that's why the thread matters.
The thread
"Please Remove the Retail Skinning Function - Economy Crash" went up late on September 28 and had 98 posts, close to 1,000 views and 141 likes by the next afternoon. The opening post puts the complaint like this:
"This has created a meta of 30-40 man skinning raids."
The poster describes groups forcing fast respawns, with every member skinning the best mobs, and argues that it will sink the skinning market before launch. Nobody has posted footage of a 40-player skinning raid on the forums, so treat the size as one tester's description. A gold-selling site also claims a Wetlands group pulled more than 200 leather and hides in about 50 minutes. It doesn't name the group, so we have left that number out of the argument.
Players asked Blizzard directly in the thread. One reply on September 29 reads: "Kaivax can we get confirmation whether this is a bug or not?" As of this afternoon there is no answer. The community bug tracker on GitHub logged it on September 28, and that issue is still open with no comments.
The case against it
- Leather gets cheap. If a 10-player group of skinners gets ten skins from every mob, supply goes up tenfold for whoever organizes best. "Leather is gonna be dirt cheap," one tester wrote.
- It adds gold, not just leather. Leather that no one buys goes to a vendor, and vendoring creates new gold. Several posters say bots will be the ones to profit.
- It doesn't match the rest of the game. Herbs and ore are first come, first served. So is tagging: Blizzard's Josh Greenfield said on September 21 that no shared tagging is "one of those things that we simply must hold the line on." Blizzard hasn't linked the two decisions. Players have, and they point out that a group now shares the skins but not the kill. We covered that decision in our shared tagging dispatch.
- It's a slippery slope. Some posters worry that shared nodes come next.
The case for keeping it
Not everyone in the thread wants it gone. One of the first replies was "I actually like it. It makes skinning less of a hassle overall." Other supporters say:
- Cheaper leather is good for crafters. Leatherworkers and anyone leveling the profession pay less.
- Racing a stranger for a skin is not friendly. A few posters point out that Blizzard's own design pillars for Forever talk about protecting social play, and ninja skinning never made anyone friends.
- Friends can skin together. A duo of skinners questing together both get something from every kill.
- Ban the bots. If the problem is bots, fix that and keep the feature for everyone else.
A few testers want a middle ground: turn it off in raid groups, cap it at three to five skinners per corpse, or hand out skins round-robin among the skinners in a group.
What it means for you
If it ships as it works now, skinning is a weaker gold profession at launch and a better leveling partner for Leatherworking. Leather prices will depend on how many groups farm together, not on how fast one skinner can move. If you planned to make your launch gold selling leather, have a backup. Our Forever professions guide lists the profession bonuses, and the skinning page covers leveling it to 300. Skinning also appears among the Legacy perks. The "Bountiful Harvest" perk has been reported with 20% more scarce materials from Mining, Herbalism and Skinning, though that comes from datamining, not Blizzard.
If Blizzard changes it, the change will probably arrive with a beta build. The beta hub tracks every build and the level 30 phase. We will update this page when Blizzard says whether shared skinning is staying.
Sources: Blizzard forums, Please Remove the Retail Skinning Function - Economy Crash (September 28 to 29), Skinning System atm will be negatively impactful to the economy (September 21) and Skinning is Broken. Multiple players can skin the same mob (September 20); Blizzard forums, WoW Forever Beta Development Notes, updated September 24 (September 24, no mention of shared skinning); Nekrage on YouTube, World of Warcraft: Forever - Skinning is BROKEN!? (September 20); ClassicWoWCommunity forever-bugs, issue #171 (September 28); Josh Greenfield on X (September 21); Wowhead, Blizzard Will Hold the Line on Shared Tagging (September 21); Blizzard Watch, Skinning finally isn't the worst profession ever (February 7, 2022).