0hp: World of Warcraft

WoW: Forever Rogue and Warlock changes: Mutilate, axes, Banes

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's Rogue and Warlock class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 7 October. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Rogue can now learn one-handed axes, and Sap no longer breaks Stealth. New Rogue talents include Mutilate and Venom. Warlocks get Banes and pets that scale with the Warlock's own stats.

The Rogue is a sneaky melee fighter. It moves unseen in Stealth, uses Poisons, and spends Energy, the resource behind its attacks. Its attacks build Combo Points, charges that a finishing move then spends. The Warlock is a caster of dark Shadow and Fire magic who summons demons to fight beside it. Its Curses are spells that harm or weaken a target. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the classes so far, see our pieces on the Hunter and Druid, the Priest and Warrior and the Mage and Shaman.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each of these classes. In our talent calculator, rows further down a tree need more points spent in it first.

Blizzard says talents start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. Blizzard calls these gold medal talents. The tables below list the ones the post names.

To change your talents, Legacy talents included, you visit a class trainer, the in-game teacher for your class, in one of the major cities. Dual Specialization, a second saved talent setup, opens at level 40.

What changes for Rogues?

A Rogue's three trees are Assassination (poisons and daggers), Combat (hard-hitting direct damage) and Subtlety (combat tricks and Bleeds, wounds that keep hurting). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Rogue gets.

Ability	The change
Poisons	More charges on every poison, and they now work alongside weightstones and sharpening stones
Sap	Puts an enemy out of action, and using it no longer breaks Stealth
Distract	Also lowers affected enemies' Stealth detection for 10 seconds
Feint	Twice the threat reduction (threat is how badly monsters want to hit you)
Expose Armor	Cuts armor as much as 5 stacks of Sunder Armor, an ability of the Warrior class, at about the same level
Axes	Rogues can now learn one-handed axes

Blizzard says the Sap change is because it wants Rogues to bring crowd control, a way to take an enemy out of a fight, that needs their own skills, like Stealth and Distract, to set up. It says this helps parties and raids, the small and large teams players form, when a pack of monsters is too big to tank safely. To tank is to hold the monsters' attention while others fight. The Distract change has a catch: enemy players will know a Rogue is nearby.

Expose Armor also no longer stops a Warrior using Sunder Armor on the same target, though Sunder Armor still won't replace Expose Armor unless its effect is weaker. Blizzard says that lets Warriors build threat without Expose Armor getting in the way. On axes, it says Rogues include brigands and outlaws, who often carry axes in fantasy and medieval stories.

Rogue milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Assassination	16	Cold Blood	Now the 16-point talent, not the 21, and also works with Mutilate
Assassination	21	Mutilate	New: 60 Energy, strikes with both weapons (both must be daggers), more damage on a poisoned target, 2 Combo Points
Assassination	31	Venom	New finisher: 25 Energy, 30% more Poison damage and 10% more chance to apply Poisons, its length set by the Combo Points spent
Combat	16	Flawless Execution	New: Eviscerate, a finishing move, costs 10 less Energy
Subtlety	16	Premeditation	Now the 16-point talent, not the 31, and lasts 20 seconds
Subtlety	31	Thousand Cuts	New: each time Rupture deals damage, your next Hemorrhage or Backstab costs 3 less Energy, stacking up to 5 times

Vigor used to be Assassination's 31-point talent. It's now a 2-point talent on row 5 with the same total effect. Blizzard expects Assassination Rogues to spend their finishers keeping Venom and Slice and Dice up, with damage finishers like Rupture and Eviscerate a lower priority. Improved Poisons now also gives a large chance for a Poison not to use up a charge.

Combat loses four weapon talents: Dagger, Mace, Sword and Fist Weapon Specialization. A new row 5 talent, Hack and Slash, combines them and adds a bonus for axes. Axes get the same bonus as swords, a chance at an extra attack. Hack and Slash's mace bonus now lets attacks ignore some of the target's armor instead of a chance to stun. Subtlety loses Sleight of Hand and Deadliness.

Blizzard wants Combat and Subtlety to support both Backstab and Sinister Strike builds, two Rogue attacks. Aggression now boosts Backstab in Combat. In Subtlety, Quietus adds damage to Sinister Strike, Ghostly Strike and Hemorrhage against targets below 35% health. Cutthroat gives Backstab a chance to let your next Ambush work without Stealth.

Our favourite is Mutilate, the new 21-point talent in Assassination. For 60 Energy it strikes with both hands, and both must be daggers. It hits harder on a poisoned target and gives 2 Combo Points. Our reading: two daggers, two hits, two points, a talent that knows exactly what it's for.

What changes for Warlocks?

A Warlock's three trees are Affliction (damage over time and draining), Demonology (the Warlock and its demon) and Destruction (Fire and Shadow spells). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Warlock gets.

Ability	The change
Curse of Agony, Curse of Doom	Now Banes, a separate group for damaging Curses: one Bane per Warlock on a target, and anything that worked with Curses works with Banes
Curse of the Elements	Now applies to all magic damage
Curse of Shadows	Removed
Firestone	Now a weapon imbue, a spell on your weapon: more Fire damage and critical strike chance (a critical strike is an extra-hard hit)
Spellstone	Now a weapon imbue: more Shadow damage and faster spellcasting
Life Tap	Now scales with Spirit, one of the game's stats
Drain Soul	Each tick has a rising chance to give a Soul Shard, until one is certain
Pets	Now scale from their summoner's stats

Firestone and Spellstone now stack with other temporary enchantments like wizard oil. A Soul Shard is an item some Warlock spells use up.

Warlock milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Affliction	16	Curse of Exhaustion	Moves up from row 5 to row 4, and slows the target by 30%
Affliction	31	Wrack	New: Shadow damage every second, and 10% more damage from your other Shadow damage-over-time spells for 6 seconds
Demonology	11	Demonic Sacrifice	Redesigned: the effects last 2 hours and change by demon
Demonology	16	Fel Domination	Now needs Master Summoner first
Demonology	21	Soul Link	Now the 21-point talent, not the 31
Demonology	31	Demonic Pact	New: needs Soul Link; summoning a different pet no longer cancels Demonic Sacrifice
Destruction	16	Conflagrate	Moves up from row 7 to row 4
Destruction	21	Bane of Havoc	New: for 5 minutes, 15% of your damage to other targets also hits the cursed one
Destruction	31	Incinerate	New: needs Bane of Havoc; a 2.5-second Fire cast, 25% more damage if Immolate is on the target

Demonic Sacrifice gives up your demon for a bonus. Now the Imp raises Shadow damage, the Voidwalker restores Mana and the Succubus or Incubus raises Fire damage. The Felhunter restores Health. Resummoning the sacrificed pet still cancels the effect under Demonic Pact. Blizzard says Demonic Pact lets Warlocks, for the first time, have Demonic Sacrifice and Master Demonologist at once.

Affliction loses six talents: Improved Curse of Weakness, Improved Drain Life, Improved Drain Mana, Improved Curse of Exhaustion, Grim Reach and Dark Pact. Demonology loses six too: Improved Healthstone, Fel Intellect, Fel Stamina, Improved Subjugate Demon, Improved Firestone and Improved Spellstone. Destruction loses Improved Firebolt, Improved Lash of Pain, Devastation, Improved Immolate and Emberstorm.

Destructive Reach moves up to row 1 and now works on all damaging spells. Blizzard says that puts it in easy reach of every Warlock specialization. Ruin moves up to row 3 and is now a 5-point talent with the same total effect. Demonic Brand, new in Demonology, makes your pet's next 2 attacks deal Fire or Shadow damage. Blizzard says a recent change means a pet that doesn't tank, like the Imp, gets no extra threat from it. A tanking pet like the Voidwalker does.

Our favourite is Bane of Havoc, the new 21-point talent in Destruction. Put it on one enemy, and for 5 minutes 15% of the damage you deal to anything else lands on that enemy too. Our reading: two fights for the price of one spell, which is about as Warlock as it gets.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338 of 10 October. Every new talent the post names for these two classes is in it, and every talent the post says is removed is gone. The milestone talents above sit at the points the post gives. Here are four details side by side, and how we read them.

The calculator shows	The post	Our reading
Puncturing Wounds adds 10%, 20% or 30% Backstab critical strike chance by rank, and 5%, 10% or 15% for Mutilate	"a lesser percentage" for Mutilate	The two agree: Mutilate gets half
Venom lasts 9 seconds with 1 Combo Point, up to 21 seconds with 5	Duration set by Combo Points spent	The calculator adds the numbers the post leaves out
Demonic Brand has 3 ranks: your pet's next 2, 4 or 6 attacks	The pet's next 2 attacks	We read the post as describing the first rank
Demonic Brand says a branded attack has high threat if it deals Shadow damage	Shadow damage is high threat, and a tanking pet like the Voidwalker gains extra threat while the Imp doesn't	The two now agree on Shadow damage, after the beta's build of 8 October rewrote the talent's text, though the text doesn't say which pets deal it

We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Rogue class page and the Warlock class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

Strengths and weaknesses

Blizzard sums up each class like this.

Rogues remain the masters of Stealth, with abilities like Pickpocket, Distract, Sap and Garrote usable from it. They alone get Poisons. Blizzard says they're welcome in any party or raid, the small and large groups players team up in, for Stealth and control. They also have the highest potential single-target melee damage in the game.
Warlocks are still physically weak and rely on their demon pets for protection. But Blizzard says they now deal damage to compete with any other spellcaster, in three completely different styles.

WoW: Forever Mage and Shaman changes: Frostfire Bolt, totems, Lava Burst

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's Mage and Shaman class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 7 October. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Mage gets Frostfire Bolt, a spell that counts as Fire and Frost, at level 40. Shaman totems with lasting buffs now last longer, and a new display tracks them.

The Mage is a spellcaster who fights with three schools of magic: Arcane, Fire and Frost. The Shaman is a class that places totems, objects it sets down that buff allies, heal and solve problems, and it can fight in melee, cast damage spells or heal. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the classes so far, see our pieces on the Hunter and Druid and the Priest and Warrior.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each class. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. Blizzard calls these gold medal talents. The tables below list the ones the post names.

What changes for Mages?

A Mage's three trees match its three schools. Blizzard says Arcane bends and burns Mana, the energy a caster spends on spells, for more damage. Fire lands heavy hits and big critical strikes, the extra-hard hits. Frost controls the fight. Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Mage gets.

Ability	The change
Frostfire Bolt	New at level 40: a 3-second cast that counts as Fire and Frost, hits hard up front, then burns and slows the target
Comprehension	A new Mage-only minor tradeskill, a side skill, for reading scrolls that creatures drop in the world
Comprehend Scroll	The ability that uses Comprehension, in the General tab of the spellbook
Cone of Cold	Lasts less time
Mage Armor	More Mana back from Spirit, one of the game's stats

Frostfire Bolt always uses the better of the Mage's Fire or Frost spell damage bonus. It also uses the weaker of the target's Fire or Frost resistance. Blizzard's own example pairs two talents, Ignite and Ice Shards. A critical Frostfire Bolt then deals 200% damage, plus another 40% of that as Ignite burn damage, for 280% in all. Blizzard says it built the spell to open up builds that mix Fire and Frost talents.

Blizzard didn't say what Comprehension's scrolls give you. It says players will find out on their adventures.

Blizzard says the Cone of Cold change is aimed at gold farmers and experience boosters. It says they kite, or lead around, big packs of monsters for easy gold and experience. Improved Blizzard is trimmed too: its slow now tops out at 40%, down from 65%. Blizzard says gold farmers and boosters widely used Frost Mages' area damage, damage that hits a whole group, to farm dungeons and disrupt the game's economy.

One more anti-farming rule reaches beyond Mages. Spells come in ranks, stronger versions you learn as you level. Arcane Concentration, a talent that can grant a free effect, now triggers less often from much lower-rank spells. Blizzard says farmers used cheap low-rank spells to fish for those free effects. It has made the same change to talents across many classes.

Mage milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Arcane	11	Arcane Blast	New spell: a 2.5-second cast that raises the damage of your other Mage spells and its own Mana cost, stacking up to 4 times for 8 seconds or until you cast another spell
Arcane	16	Missile Barrage	Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt can make your next Arcane Missiles channel twice as fast for no Mana, with double the chance on Arcane Blast
Frost	11	Ice Lance	New: instant and low damage, but 300% more against a Frozen target, one held in place by ice
Frost	16	Ice Block	Moves up to row 4, one step higher in the tree
Frost	21	Cold Snap	Moves down to row 5, and its cooldown, the wait before you can use it again, rises to 10 minutes from 5

Blizzard says this Arcane Blast is a redesign of the one from early expansions. The old one encouraged Mages to cast nothing else. This one wants you to build a stack, then cash it in with other spells.

Other Mage talents in the post include Heating Up, a new Fire talent that needs Pyroblast first. Direct critical hits from Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Fire Blast and Scorch cut your next Pyroblast's cast time by 25%, stacking 3 times, down to 1.5 seconds. Blizzard says it borrows ideas from Hot Streak, a talent from early expansions. Fingers of Frost, new in Frost, gives your Chill effects, the slows from Frost spells, a chance to make your spells treat the target as Frozen.

Ignite now gives each Mage their own burn on a target. In Classic Era, the re-released original game, every Mage in a fight shared one. Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch now help only the Mage who casts them. Magic Attunement becomes baseline, and Blizzard lists no removed talents for Fire or Frost.

Our favourite is Frostfire Bolt, the new spell every Mage learns at level 40. It counts as Fire and Frost at once, so a Mage can mix both trees and feed one spell. And 280% on a critical strike, in Blizzard's Ignite and Ice Shards build, is our kind of maths.

What changes for Shaman?

A Shaman's three trees are Elemental Combat (spell damage), Enhancement (melee) and Restoration (healing). Weapon imbues are spells a Shaman casts on their own weapon. Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Shaman gets.

Ability	The change
All totems	Global cooldown, the short pause before your next ability, cut to 1 second from 1.5
Totems with lasting buffs	Last 5 minutes, up from 2
Totem tracking	A new display shows which totems are up and their time left; right-click one to dismiss it
Resistance totems	Now cover the whole raid group, the players taking on a raid together (a raid is a dungeon built for a large group)
Weapon imbues	Last 60 minutes, up from 5, and now work alongside sharpening stones, weight stones and wizard oil
Fire Nova	Now a spell that erupts at your current Fire Totem, replacing Fire Nova Totem
Windfury Totem, Flametongue Totem	No longer weapon enchantments: now buffs for your whole party, the small group you play in, which don't stack with each other or help a Shaman using the matching weapon imbue
Tranquil Air Totem	Removed
Totemic Recall	New at level 20: destroys all your totems and refunds 25% of their Mana cost
Totemic Projection	New at level 22: moves all your totems to a new spot within 30 yards, 1-minute cooldown
Call of the Elements	Level 20: a 3-second cast that drops a saved set of four totems, one per element
Lightning Bolt	Ranks 4 and up cast in 2.5 seconds, down from 3
Chain Lightning	Every rank casts in 2 seconds, down from 2.5

Call of the Spirits at level 30 and Call of the Ancestors at level 40 save a second and third totem set. Blizzard says a beta bug currently stops Totemic Recall from refunding any Mana. Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning also get less bonus from spell power, the stat that boosts spells, to match their faster casts.

Shaman milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Elemental Combat	16	Call of Thunder	3% more critical strike chance on Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning
Elemental Combat	21	Earthbound	New: Earthbind Totem roots nearby enemies in place for 5 seconds when you cast it
Elemental Combat	31	Lava Burst	New spell: a 2.5-second cast that deals Fire damage, 20% more if your Flame Shock is on the target, 10-second cooldown
Enhancement	11	Shamanistic Focus	New: cuts the Mana cost of Shocks and Lightning Shield by a large percentage
Enhancement	16	Stormstrike	Now the 16-point talent, not the 31; cooldown cut to 8 seconds from 20, and it boosts your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Earth Shock by 20%
Enhancement	21	Spirit Weapons	Formerly Parry: now also lowers your threat, how badly monsters want to hit you, without the Rockbiter Weapon imbue and raises it with
Enhancement	31	Rage of the Farseer	New: 30% more attack speed for 25 seconds, 3-minute cooldown
Restoration	11	Water Shield	New: 3 globes that give Mana when an attack hits you or a heal of yours lands a critical
Restoration	16	Mana Tide Totem	Now the 16-point talent, not the 31
Restoration	31	Riptide	New: an instant heal plus more over 15 seconds, and Chain Heal works 25% better on its target, 6-second cooldown

Blizzard says Spirit Weapons lets Enhancement Shaman manage their threat now that their damage is competitive, and still serve as a temporary tank, the one taking the hits, in small groups. Rage of the Farseer borrows from Heroism and Bloodlust in early expansions, but it helps only the Shaman.

Elemental Mastery is gone. Blizzard calls it a signature Elemental talent, especially in PvP (player versus player fights). It says Elemental damage couldn't be raised enough against the game's monsters while keeping it, without making the class much too strong in PvP. So the tree got new spells instead. Restoration loses Nature's Guidance.

Other Shaman talents in the post include Lightning Overload, new in Elemental Combat. It gives Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning a chance to cast a free second copy at half damage. Elemental Alacrity, formerly Lightning Mastery, moves up to row 3 and also speeds up Lava Burst. Blizzard says the old talent sat too deep for levelling Shaman and was twice as strong as similar ones.

In Enhancement, Maelstrom Weapon is a new talent where every melee attack has a chance to stack a charge that speeds up Lightning Bolt, until it can become instant. Mental Dexterity adds attack power, the stat behind melee damage, equal to a percentage of your Intellect, the stat behind a caster's Mana, and Mental Quickness does the same for spell damage and healing. Shield Specialization, Enhancing Totems, Two-Handed Axes and Maces, Weapon Mastery and Improved Weapon Totems become baseline.

Our favourite is Call of the Elements. Learn it at level 20, set four totems, one of each element, and one 3-second cast drops all four. Our reading: that rewards planning ahead, which is very Shaman.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338. Every new talent the post names for these two classes is already in it. Every talent the post gives a row or point count for sits there. Two talents leave the calculator's trees that the post never names, and one number the post leaves vague is there, so here is how we read them.

The calculator shows	The post	Our reading
Storm Reach is gone from Elemental Combat, and Elemental Reach sits on row 5	Says Elemental Reach "now also" reaches further with Fire Nova, Lava Burst and Flame Shock	We take Elemental Reach to be Storm Reach under a new name
Totemic Mastery is gone from Restoration	Doesn't mention it	Blizzard hasn't said where it went
Missile Barrage gives Arcane Blast a 40% chance and the other three spells 20%	A chance, doubled for Arcane Blast	The two agree

We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Mage class page and the Shaman class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

Strengths and weaknesses

Blizzard describes each class's strengths and weaknesses.

Mages deal the strongest and most varied ranged area damage of any class, and Polymorph is one of the best ways to take an enemy out of a fight. But they are very fragile and die easily if caught in melee.
Shaman are among the sturdiest classes, with Mail armor and a shield. They can deal damage or heal, but they lack an effective way to take enemies out of a fight. Blizzard says they need allies to cover that and their survival.

WoW: Forever PvP ranks: how Honor, Rank Points and gear work

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard has explained how PvP (player versus player, where players fight each other) works in World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard's new version of its online game World of Warcraft. In its post of 7 October, progression has two parts. Honor is a currency you spend on PvP gear. Rank Points climb you through the ranks, 1 to 14 in Blizzard's reward list, with a weekly cap.

A second post the same day describes a 15 against 15 battleground, the Darkspear Islands. A battleground is a map where teams of players fight each other, and Forever's ranks are the familiar ones from the original game, Blizzard says.

What are Honor and Rank Points?

Honor is the currency. You earn it from PvP, including beating other players, finishing battlegrounds and doing PvP quests, the set tasks the game hands out. Battlegrounds highlighted during their holiday weeks, special weeks for a given battleground, pay more Honor. Blizzard says it reviewed Honor gains across battlegrounds so the rates are more consistent. It wants players not to feel pushed into Alterac Valley, one of the game's battlegrounds, just for the Honor.

Rank Points are what move you up. They come from PvP activities such as battlegrounds and PvP quests, with a boost in holiday-week battlegrounds too. The top of the ladder is High Warlord for the Horde and Grand Marshal for the Alliance, the game's two sides. Ranks have a weekly cap, a limit on how far you climb each week. Blizzard calls that keeping the original system's base while making the climb more accessible.

To check where you are, open your character pane (press C) and pick the Player vs. Player tab. It shows your rank, your Rank Points and what you can buy at your rank.

What does each rank unlock?

Rank	What it unlocks	Legacy Point?
1	Tabard	No
2	PvP trinket	No
3	Cloaks	Yes
4	Necklace	No
5	Combat potions	No
6	Tabard	No
7	Battle standard	Yes
8	Epic bracers/epic belt upgrade token	No
9	Epic boots upgrade token	No
10	Epic gloves upgrade token	Yes
11	Mounts	No
12	Epic legs/epic shoulders upgrade token	No
13	Epic chest/epic helm upgrade token	Yes
14	Epic weapons	Yes

An upgrade token is an item that upgrades a piece of gear in the named slot, and epic is the higher of the two PvP gear grades. A tabard is the cloth worn over armour, a trinket is a small worn item with its own effect, and a mount is an animal you ride. The post doesn't say what the potions or the battle standard do. The last column is ours: Blizzard's Legacy post says reaching ranks 3, 7, 10, 13 and 14 each earns a Legacy Point, the account-wide points of Forever's Legacy System.

How does PvP gear work?

Honor buys two sets of PvP gear: a blue-quality set and an epic-quality set. Blue and epic are the two PvP gear grades here, and the epic set is the upgrade. To get an epic piece, you need the blue piece plus an Emboldened Seal, an item that upgrades it.

The seals have rank requirements you must reach before you can buy them. The post doesn't say whether the seals are the upgrade tokens in the table above.

Blizzard also added new and reworked items for specialisations that were missing options before. A class is a character's type, and a specialisation is the role it picks inside that class. Blizzard's example: Shamans, one of the game's classes, now get healer, melee and caster sets. That's one for keeping allies alive, one for fighting up close and one for casting spells.

What is the Darkspear Islands battleground?

Darkspear Islands sits off the coast of Dustwallow Marsh, a zone of the game's world. The Horde's Darkspear Raiders fight the Alliance's Theramore Expeditionary Force there.

	Darkspear Islands
Teams	15 against 15
Levels	30 to 60
Goal	First team to 2000 points
How you score	Hold any of the four capture points, and carry the central flag to a base you hold

A capture point is a spot on the map a team takes and defends. The more of them your team holds, the faster your points come in. The flag sits in the middle of the map. Grab it and bring it to a base your team has taken for more points.

You can queue in two ways. Talk to a battlemaster, the person who signs you up for battlegrounds, in any major capital city. Or go to the Barrens, a zone in Kalimdor, one of the game's continents. The Horde base is at the Merchant Coast and the Alliance base is at Northwatch, and a portal there takes you into the fight. Those bases also sell reputation rewards and give out quests for the battleground.

Reputation is your standing with a group in the game, and each side here has its own. Higher standing unlocks trinkets, rings, cloaks, weapons, armour and consumables (items that get used up) to buy. Blizzard's post also ties the reputation quests to Marks of Honor, an item, but its wording doesn't make clear whether you hand them in or earn them. At Exalted, one of the game's reputation levels, a short questline, a chain of quests, earns that side's own tabard.

How do PvP seasons work?

A PvP season is a stretch of time with its own goals. During one you climb the ranks and earn Honor. Each season also has a journey of weekly tasks. Finishing them gives Honor and Rank Points. Three tasks each season also give a Legacy Point, the account-wide points of Forever's Legacy System. Because those tasks are tied to that system, Blizzard says they stay open to finish in future seasons.

Compared: the 12 PvP Legacy Points, by name

The Legacy System, Forever's account-wide progress system, gives 12 of its points for PvP. Blizzard's Legacy post lists them. Our Legacy Challenges list reads their names from the files of the beta, a test version of a game people can play before release, for build 1.60.1.70338. The beta client, the game program players install, names each one and says what it asks for. Here are the two side by side.

Blizzard's Legacy post	What the beta client calls it
Reach rank 3	Rank 3: reach Sergeant
Reach rank 7	Rank 7: reach Knight-Lieutenant or Blood Guard
Reach rank 10	Rank 10: reach Lieutenant-Commander or Champion
Reach rank 13	Rank 13: reach Field Marshal or Warlord
Reach rank 14	Rank 14: reach Grand Marshal or High Warlord
Exalted with each Battleground reputation (4 points)	Master of Alterac Valley, Master of Arathi Basin, Master of Warsong Gulch, Master of Darkspear Islands (four battlegrounds)
Weeks 4, 7 and 10 of the Field of Honor season journey	Field of Honor: Week 4, Week 7 and Week 10

The client settles one thing the posts leave open: Darkspear Islands' reputation, either side's, is one of the four battleground reputations, so reaching Exalted there is worth a Legacy Point of its own. And by Blizzard's two posts, rank 14 also unlocks epic weapons and earns the last of the five Legacy Points for rank. Our Legacy System piece does the maths on reaching the 16-point cap.

Our take: earned by playing

We like what we read. Our reading of the two PvP posts is that every reward in them comes from playing PvP: Honor, Rank Points, reputation and quests. You buy gear with Honor or unlock it through reputation, and nothing in either PvP post mentions buying a rank or gear with real money.

Our reading is that the weekly cap on ranks favours steady play over marathon weeks, which fits a game that respects a player's time.

WoW: Forever beta level cap is now 30, with a new Wetlands dungeon

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Beta players in World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) can now reach level 30. Blizzard's notes for the 1 October beta build also add a new dungeon, Excavation Site: Wetlands, for levels 26 to 31. Razorfen Downs and Uldaman open too. Dungeon quests now give less experience, and Blizzard has done another pass on Fury, one of the Warrior's talent trees.

The beta is the test version people can play before release. A character's level is a number that rises as they play, and a quest is a task a character takes on for a reward. Experience is what a character earns to reach the next level. The Warrior is one of the game's classes, the kind of character you play. A dungeon is an instanced area, a private copy of a place, built for a small group to fight through together. The full notes run long, so our patch notes page has every line, with buttons to filter them by class and topic.

What changed in the 1 October beta build?

The headline is the level cap, the highest level a character can reach. Blizzard says players can now level up to a maximum of level 30. The other big lines, in plain words:

Change	What the notes say
Level cap	Players can level up to 30
New dungeon	Excavation Site: Wetlands, for levels 26 to 31
Dungeons opened	Razorfen Downs (25+) and Uldaman (30+)
Dungeon quests	50% less extra experience beyond normal quest values
Barbershops	New ones in Darnassus and Thunder Bluff, and all barbershops now have barbers
Honor	Most gear and upgrade token costs up by about 50%, and the cap raised from 15,000 to 25,000

Darnassus and Thunder Bluff are two of the game's capital cities. A barbershop is where a character changes how their hair looks. Honor is the currency earned by fighting other players, spent on PvP gear (player versus player, where players fight each other rather than the game). Gear is the armour and weapons a character wears. The notes price both PvP gear and upgrade tokens in Honor. Blizzard also says city guards now give directions to barbershops, which we think is the most old-fashioned kind of help there is.

Which dungeons can you run in the beta now?

The 1 October notes name 14 dungeons in all: the new Excavation Site: Wetlands, Razorfen Downs and Uldaman, and 11 that were already open. That count is ours, made from Blizzard's list. The 8 October notes add the new City of Dalaran dungeon for testing.

Dungeon	Status in the notes
Excavation Site: Wetlands	New, levels 26 to 31
Razorfen Downs	Newly open, 25+
Uldaman	Newly open, 30+
Ragefire Chasm	Already open
Hall of Thanes	Already open
Ruins of Lordaeron	Already open
Wailing Caverns	Already open
The Deadmines	Already open
Shadowfang Keep	Already open
The Stockade	Already open
Blackfathom Deeps	Already open
Gnomeregan	Already open
Razorfen Kraul	Already open
Scarlet Monastery	Already open

Our dungeon list reads every dungeon and raid (a dungeon built for a large group) on the beta's own list, with the boss fights, the big set-piece enemies, inside each one.

Why do dungeon quests give less experience now?

Experience, or XP, is what a character earns to reach the next level. Blizzard thanks players for their feedback on leveling speed as its ongoing discussions about the beta go on. It says that as part of those discussions it decided to cut the XP from dungeon quests in this build. Dungeon quests now give 50% less extra experience beyond normal quest values, and some quest rewards were recalibrated.

The same notes raise the respawn rate, how fast things come back after being killed or picked up, for many creatures and objects in Hillsbrad Foothills, Ashenvale, Wetlands, Duskwood and Thousand Needles. Those are five of the game's zones, the regions of its world map. Blizzard asks players to keep reporting areas where quests are hard to finish.

Has Blizzard fixed dungeon XP in the beta?

Yes. Blizzard's notes for the 8 October beta build fix a bug that cut XP for players in a group with higher-level players killing lower-level enemies. Until then, that cut was based on the group's highest-level member. Now, as in Classic Era, the re-released original game, only your own level counts.

The same notes raise the XP from killing monsters in dungeons by about 20%. Blizzard believes the two changes together will dramatically increase dungeon XP for most players. One rule stays: if someone in the group is far above the enemy's level, nobody gets XP.

Also on 8 October Aggrend, one of Blizzard's game developers, posted on Blizzard's forum that the team was fixing a bug with XP in dungeons. In earlier beta builds, the XP for each kill was based on the highest-level player in the group. With the fix, Aggrend says, you should now get XP based on your own level against the monsters you fight.

Aggrend's example of the bug is The Deadmines with four level 20s and one level 25: in those earlier builds, the level 20s got very little XP per kill.

Aggrend also mentions a 20% increase to base kills in dungeons, which we take to be the same change, and says the fix and the increase together should make dungeon leveling feel better and more even.

Don't expect Era's pace, though. Aggrend says dungeon XP won't be what it was in Era, the version of the game Aggrend's post compares Forever against. Some players want to "dungeon cleave" to 60, which we read as leveling all the way by running dungeons. Aggrend says making that the best way to level doesn't fit Blizzard's core goals, which it calls pillars, and that the team needs to hold firm on its balance changes. Two pillars are named: "World is the Main Character" and "Nurture and Protect Social Experiences". Once dungeons become the clear winner, Aggrend says, it has a knock-on effect on how players behave.

So how fast is it now? With perfect XP-per-hour play, Aggrend says, leveling in dungeons will be very close to the speed of the best questing, if not equal to it. Our view: a world you quest through beats the same dungeon run ten times over.

Aggrend posted the fix in the forum thread for episode 3 of Blizzard's WoW: Forever podcast, saying the episode didn't mention it. In the episode, host Countdown To Classic and guest Hammerdance talk dungeon leveling, questing and more with three of Blizzard's senior game designers: Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield, Jay Hartman and Rowan Ryder. Blizzard's post for the episode has the video, and so does this page, from the World of Warcraft YouTube channel.

What changes for Warriors and Druids?

The Warrior is a melee fighter built for close-up combat who spends Rage, a resource built up in a fight.

The notes have two lines on a Warrior's Rage from a critical strike, a hit that lands extra hard. One says Warriors now get 75% more Rage from a critical strike with a basic attack, an ordinary weapon swing. A later line says the extra Rage from critical strikes goes up to 100%, from 75%.

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in trees. Fury, one of the Warrior's talent trees, gets another pass. Blizzard says it wants Fury to have more useful tools and real choices early in the tree while leveling. A new talent, Lingering Rage, adds time before your Rage starts to drain after combat. Improved Cleave and Boundless Rage are removed.

The Druid is a class that changes shape into animal forms. Tiger's Fury, a Druid ability, is removed. A new talent in Feral, the Druid's tree for fighting in animal form, is Shifting Power. It works in Cat Form, the Druid's cat shape, only and turns Mana, the fuel for spells, into 40 Energy, the fuel for Cat Form's attacks. All Druid shapeshift forms are now immune to Disarm effects, which knock a weapon out of a character's hands. Blizzard says a Druid disarmed before changing form still deals less damage while the disarm lasts. It says the change matches how it felt in original WoW, the game as it first launched.

Our talent calculator has Shifting Power, though it shows a question mark for the Energy number, because the beta's own files don't carry it. It now has the Fury talents named above, since the beta's build of 8 October: Lingering Rage sits on row 2 of Fury, and Improved Cleave and Boundless Rage are gone.

Compared: Blizzard's levels against the beta's own dungeon list

Our dungeon list reads each dungeon's level from the beta client's own files, published by the wago.tools site, for build 1.60.1.70338. The client is the game program players install. The client gives one level for each dungeon, and the notes give a range or a "+" level. The two don't always match.

Dungeon	Blizzard's notes	The beta client's own level
Excavation Site: Wetlands	26 to 31	26
Razorfen Downs	25+	34
Uldaman	30+	35

Our reading: go by Blizzard's numbers when planning a group. For Razorfen Downs and Uldaman the client's single number sits above Blizzard's, by 9 and 5 levels. The client's list also names City of Dalaran as a dungeon, which the 1 October notes don't mention and the 8 October notes open for testing.

WoW: Forever Hunter and Druid changes: Lone Wolf, Foxes, Berserk

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's first World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) class deep dive covers the Hunter and the Druid. Blizzard's post of 30 September lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: Hunters get Aimed Shot at level 20 and traps in combat. Druids can drink potions without leaving an animal form.

The Hunter is a ranged class that fights beside a pet. The Druid is a shape-shifting class that can heal, tank or deal damage, and tanking means drawing the enemy's attacks onto yourself. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, spread over three trees for each of these two classes. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep the old structure, with the same number of rows. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. Blizzard's post calls these gold medal talents.

Some talents are exactly as they were in patch 1.12, a version of the original World of Warcraft. Others are changed, and several class buffs that used to be talents are now given to every player of the class. Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild are the two examples Blizzard names.

What changes for Hunters?

A Hunter's three trees are Beast Mastery (pets), Marksmanship (ranged attacks) and Survival (traps and melee, the close-up fighting). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Hunter gets.

Ability	The change
Aimed Shot	Every Hunter gets it at level 20
Arcane Shot	No longer shares a cooldown with Aimed Shot
Multi-Shot	Now shares a cooldown with Aimed Shot
Disengage	Its threat reduction is doubled
Aspect of the Beast	Now also grants melee Attack Power
Traps	Usable in combat, with a 30-second cooldown
Frost and Fire traps	Now on separate cooldowns
Scorpid Sting	Lowers the target's chance to hit by 2%, in place of Strength and Agility

Threat is how badly a monster wants to hit you. A cooldown is the wait before you can use an ability again.

What's new for Hunter pets?

Pets now get more stats from their Hunter's gear, and they can no longer take player buffs that raise their stats. Blizzard says every family can learn Bite or Claw, sometimes both, and Dive or Dash. Foxes are a new family with a new ability. Blizzard lists Trickster's Dance right beside them: it raises a pet's dodge chance and attack speed for 12 seconds.

The beta's own files also list a Core Hound family, which Blizzard's post doesn't name: it has Bite but neither Dive nor Dash, and the files don't say whether players can tame one.

Each family also gets one ability nobody else has.

Family	Its own ability	What it does
Bat	Sonic Blast	Damage, and slows the target's spellcasting
Bear	Swipe	Hits 3 targets
Bird of Prey (the old Owl)	Mine!	Damage, and disarms the target
Boar	Charge	Charges in, pins the target and powers up the next attack
Carrion Bird	Demoralizing Screech	Hits nearby enemies and lowers their melee Attack Power
Cat	Prowl	Stealth, and a harder first hit from it
Crab	Pinch	Damage, and slows the target's movement
Crocolisk	Dismember	Damage, and cuts the target's healing received by 50%
Gorilla	Thunderstomp	Hits enemies in an area
Hyena	Tendon Rip	Slows the target and makes it bleed
Raptor	Savage Rend	Makes the target bleed
Scorpid	Scorpid Poison	Stacking damage over time
Spider	Web	Pins the target and deals damage over time
Tallstrider	Dust Cloud	Lowers the target's armor
Turtle	Shell Shield	Less damage taken and slower attacks for 12 seconds
Wind Serpent	Lightning Breath	A 20-yard ranged attack
Wolf	Furious Howl	Raises the party's melee Attack Power

Picking a pet? Our hunter pet reference lists the families and abilities in the beta's own files, now with Sonic Blast for the Bat. The Hunter class page has more on the class.

Hunter milestone talents

These are the gold medal talents the post names by point count.

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Beast Mastery	16	Summon Hawk	Instant damage, and a Hawk attacks your target for 18 seconds, up to 2 at once
Marksmanship	11	Lone Wolf	20% more damage with all attacks while you have no pet out
Marksmanship	21	Trueshot Aura	Moved up to row 4, with new lower ranks
Marksmanship	31	Sniper Shot	A 4-second cast, 45-yard base range, and the next 3 Shots reach 10 yards further
Survival	16	Counterattack	Moved up to row 4
Survival	21	Strider Kick	An instant weapon hit, and 30% faster movement for 3 seconds
Survival	31	Lacerating Strikes	Mongoose Bite also makes the target bleed for 21 seconds

Lone Wolf is our favourite. Blizzard says the talent trees let a Hunter choose not to have a pet at all, and this talent pays 20% more damage for it.

One snag: Blizzard calls Trueshot Aura the 21-point talent, but also moves it to row 4, which is the 16-point row. Our talent calculator, read from the beta, has it on row 4.

What changes for Druids?

A Druid's three trees are Balance (spellcasting), Feral Combat (shapeshifting, turning into an animal form) and Restoration (healing). Blizzard says the class-wide changes aim to make shapeshifting feel more fluid.

Potions: all potions and almost all similar consumables work in form without cancelling it. Rage potions and Thistletea are usable by Druids too.
Bombs: most Engineering bombs still don't work in form, but some new recipes do.
Weapons: weapon enchantments and procs, the effects that sometimes fire on a hit, now work in form.
Doors: most doors and objects can be opened without leaving form.
Racials: abilities that come with a race, like Shadowmeld and War Stomp, now work in form.

Several abilities also become baseline. Nature's Grasp comes at level 10 and Omen of Clarity at level 20. Revive, a new resurrection spell for use out of combat, comes at level 12. Lacerate comes at level 42, a bleed that stacks up to 5 times. Tiger's Fury is removed, and a new Feral talent called Shifting Power replaces it.

Druid milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Balance	11	Nature's Splendor	Longer Moonfire, Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Insect Swarm
Balance	16	Insect Swarm	Nature damage over 12 seconds, and lowers the target's chance to hit
Feral	11	Feral Charge	Now also has a Cat Form version on a 30-second cooldown
Feral	16	Shifting Power	Cat: instantly grants 40 Energy at a big Mana cost
Feral	16	Primal Bite	Bear: a 20 Rage attack with very high threat, chosen over Mangle
Feral	21	Leader of the Pack	Its critical strike bonus now covers all spells and attacks
Feral	31	Berserk	15 seconds in Bear or Cat Form: Fear immunity, and Primal Bite hits up to 3 targets
Restoration	11	Gift of the Earthmother	0.5 seconds off the global cooldown of three heals
Restoration	16	Swiftmend	Moved up to row 4, and no longer uses up the heal it rides on
Restoration	31	Wild Growth	A heal over time on the target's whole party, pets included

Rage, Energy and Mana are the resources a Druid spends, depending on the form. Feral gets two gold medal talents on its 16-point row, one for cats and one for bears.

Furor, a Restoration talent, now lets a Druid with 5 points in it build Energy, the resource Cat Form spends, outside Cat Form. Going into Bear Form throws all that Energy away, and Blizzard says that is there to stop "bear-weaving". It says the change also took away "power shifting", a playstyle some players prize, and Shifting Power brings it back "in a much more approachable way".

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338. Every milestone talent in the two tables above is in it by name and row, Shifting Power included. Some of the beta's talent descriptions still read differently from Blizzard's post, so read the two side by side.

Blizzard's post said three Feral changes weren't in the beta yet: Shifting Power, Improved Shifting Power and Shredding Attacks moving up to row 3. All three are in the calculator now. Shredding Attacks sits on row 3, Shifting Power on row 4, and Improved Shifting Power, which needs it, on row 5. One gap: the beta's own description of Shifting Power has no readable Energy number, so the calculator shows a question mark where Blizzard's post says 40.

Our reading: a cat Druid plan built in the calculator now has every talent the post names. We refresh the calculator when a new beta build appears, and the Druid class page shows which Druid abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

What they still can't do

Blizzard says both classes keep weaknesses.

Hunters deal damage only, though a pet can tank in solo and small-group play. They have the longest range of any class. They can't use ranged attacks inside 8 yards of an enemy, and they can't Stun or Interrupt, the moves that freeze an enemy or cut off its spell.
Druids can fill any role, but they can't snare (slow an enemy), Silence or Interrupt, and their crowd control, the moves that take an enemy out of a fight for a while, is weaker. Blizzard says they'll rely on others for the full toolkit in raids and dungeons.

Hunter and Druid come first. Blizzard says more class deep dives follow as the beta goes on.

WoW: Forever Priest and Warrior changes: Penance, Victory Rush, Rage

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's Priest and Warrior class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 30 September. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Priest gets Shadow Word: Death at level 32. Warriors no longer lose Rage to their own armor, and every Warrior gets Victory Rush at level 20.

The Priest is a spellcaster who heals, shields allies or deals Shadow damage. The Warrior is a melee fighter, built for close-up combat, who spends Rage, a resource that builds up in a fight. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the Hunter and the Druid, see our piece on that deep dive.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each of these classes. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. The tables below list the milestone talents the post names.

What changes for Priests?

A Priest's three trees are Discipline (shields and support), Holy (healing) and Shadow (damage). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Priest gets.

Ability	The change
Fear Ward	Every Priest gets it at level 20, whatever their race
Devouring Plague	Every Priest gets it at level 20, whatever their race
Divine Spirit	Baseline, learned at level 30
Shadow Word: Death	New for every Priest at level 32: instant Shadow damage, but the Priest takes 10% of their max health if the target survives
Prayer of Healing	Now heals the target's whole party and their pets, not the Priest's own
Renew	Can now be active from several Priests on the same target
Fade	Its threat reduction is doubled

Threat is how badly a monster wants to hit you. A cooldown is the wait before you can use an ability again.

What changes for Priest racial spells?

Every Priest race has two spells of its own, and Blizzard says it went over all of them again. Gnome Priests get two new ones.

Race	Spell	What it does now
Gnome	Confounding Flash	New at level 10: confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds
Gnome	Contingency Plan	New at level 20: a 30-second ward that shields and heals an ally who drops below 35% health
Dwarf	Chastise	Level 20: damages the target and pins it in place for 2 seconds, Humanoids, the game's person-shaped enemies, only
Human	Divine Grace	Level 10: an instant heal on an ally below 50% health that also clears Weakened Soul
Night Elf	Starshards	Much more damage, now on a 30-second cooldown
Night Elf	Elune's Grace	Cuts the chance of melee and ranged attacks hitting you by 50% for 15 seconds, or until 3 miss
Undead	Dark Sacrifice	Level 20: trades your own health for Mana over time

Desperate Prayer, Feedback, Hex of Weakness, Shadowguard and Touch of Weakness are unchanged. Weakened Soul is a lingering effect some Priest spells check for, and Mana is what a Priest spends to cast.

Priest milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Discipline	16	Soul Warding	A shorter cooldown and a lower Mana cost on Power Word: Shield, the Priest's shield spell
Discipline	21	Penance	Cast over 2 seconds: damages an enemy or heals an ally every second, 12-second cooldown
Holy	16	Binding Heal	Heals the Priest and their target at once, with no cooldown
Holy	31	Prayer of Mending	A heal that jumps from ally to ally until it has healed 5 times
Shadow	16	Vampiric Embrace	Now lasts 30 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown

Other Priest talents in the post include Divine Aegis, where a critical heal, an extra-strong one, also leaves an absorb shield, a barrier that soaks up damage. Litany of Light refunds some Mana when you switch between healing spells. Devouring Contagion makes Devouring Plague jump to a new enemy when its target dies. Shadowform, a shadowy form a Priest takes on, now allows every non-healing spell while in it, and halves the Mana cost of Shadow spells.

Holy Precision is a talent built for healers. Blizzard says it's there so a healing Priest doesn't need hit chance on gear it isn't expected to wear. Lightwell and Improved Prayer of Healing are removed.

Our favourite is Shadow Word: Death. It's instant Shadow damage, but if the target survives you take 10% of your max health. On a 15-second cooldown, it grades your judgement every time.

What changes for Warriors?

A Warrior's three trees are Arms (weapon mastery), Fury (raw damage) and Protection (tanking with a shield). Tanking means drawing the enemy's attacks onto yourself. Stances are the fighting modes a Warrior switches between.

Start with Rage. Blizzard kept the old formula for Rage from taking damage, with one big change: armor is ignored. It now counts every hit as if your armor always cut its damage by 50%. Wearing armor no longer cuts the Rage you gain, and neither does a damage-absorbing shield like Power Word: Shield. Rage from dealing damage now depends on your weapon's speed. Critical strikes, the extra-hard hits, give 75% more Rage than normal ones in the post, and Blizzard's 1 October notes raise that to 100%.

Blizzard also says players are hitting some bugs with Rage generation in the beta. It's hunting the root cause, and that may take a couple of weeks. Its notes for the 8 October build then say several bugs in the Rage gained from taking damage are fixed, and that the typical Warrior or Druid should gain more Rage from taking damage.

Ability	The change
Tactical Mastery	Baseline at level 14: keep 10 Rage when changing stances
Victory Rush	Learned at level 20: an instant attack on a 30-second cooldown that heals you for 10% of your max health, unlocked for 20 seconds each time you kill a non-trivial enemy
Recklessness, Retaliation, Shield Wall	No longer share a cooldown
Retaliation and Shield Wall	Cooldown cut to 15 minutes
Rend	Its damage now scales strongly with Attack Power
Thunder Clap	Usable in Defensive Stance, with a 6-second cooldown and less threat
Battle Shout	A smaller Attack Power bonus, with Improved Battle Shout built in
Sunder Armor	Can be used even if the target has a more powerful Expose Armor, another armor-cutting effect, and its threat scales with Attack Power

Attack Power is the stat that makes melee hits land harder. Blizzard says Battle Shout was trimmed because both factions, the game's two sides, now have both Shaman and Paladin buffs. Shamans and Paladins are two more classes, and buffs are the helpful effects they cast.

Warrior milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Arms	16	Spearing Strike	15 Rage, 20-second cooldown: a weapon hit that knocks the target off its mount, double damage on a mounted target, a Dragon or a Giant
Fury	16	Raging Blows	In the post: Whirlwind hits with both weapons when dual-wielding, and Cleave costs less Rage (since changed, more below)
Protection	16	Vanguard	Charge now works in Defensive Stance

In Arms, Weaponmaster replaces four talents. The four weapon talents for Axes, Maces, Swords and Polearms are gone, and this one talent gives a bonus based on the weapon you hold. Improved Slam moves from Fury to Arms, and Slam no longer delays your auto attack, the swing your weapon makes on its own.

In Fury, Bloodthirst no longer heals. It now grants 10% movement speed for 10 seconds. In the post, Boundless Rage raises your maximum Rage and Precision raises your chance to hit, though the beta's newest build drops both (more below). In Protection, Shield Specialization now has a chance to give 5 Rage on a block, up from 1. Bastion adds damage while a shield is equipped, and Focused Rage lowers the Rage cost of every offensive ability.

Our favourite is Victory Rush. Kill an enemy that counts, and for 20 seconds you can land a hit that heals you for 10% of your max health. That's welcome healing on a class Blizzard says can't easily recover from taking too much damage.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338 of 10 October. Every new Priest talent the post names is in it, on the row the post gives.

The Warrior's Fury and Protection trees have moved on since the post. Improved Cleave, Boundless Rage and Precision are gone. Furious Precision, which raises your chance to hit with your off-hand weapon, sits on row 3 of Fury, and Raging Blows now just lowers the Rage cost of Cleave and Whirlwind. Blood Craze no longer mentions Bloodthirst, and Dual Wield Specialization raises off-hand damage and Rage, not your chance to hit. Bastion is on row 6 and Focused Rage on row 5, the other way round from the post. Three more lines of the post place or name a talent differently from the calculator, so here is how we read them.

The post says	The calculator shows	Our reading
Vampiric Embrace moves to "row 3" as the 16-point talent	Row 4, the 16-point row	The row number looks like a slip, since row 4 is where the 16th point lands
Iron Will moves "to row 2 of Arms", in the Fury list	Row 1 of Protection	The calculator puts it in Protection, and row 2 of Fury now holds Lingering Rage, a new talent
"Unbridled Rage" gets a higher chance	Unbridled Wrath, on row 2 of Fury	We take this to be the same talent under its old name, though its text in the files doesn't have the post's 2 Rage for a two-handed weapon

Where the two differ, we go by the beta's own files. We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Priest class page and the Warrior class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

What they still can't do

Blizzard says both classes keep weaknesses.

Priests are the most flexible healers, with both heals over time and direct heals, plus shields that soak damage. But they wear cloth armor and have few ways to escape. As Shadow, they deal strong damage over time but lack the full range of extra tools a class like the Warlock brings.
Warriors remain the masters of melee combat. They are unique among melee classes at steady damage to several enemies at once. But they lack easy ways to recover after taking too much damage.

Blizzard says it will keep reviewing how these changes play in dungeons, PvP (player versus player fights) and the open world.

World of Warcraft: Forever camping explained: campfire buffs and objects

2026-09-27T00:00:00Z

Camping in World of Warcraft: Forever turns the simple Cooking Fire into a Basic Campfire, says Blizzard's Deep Dive recap. Place one and it becomes a campsite: sit a few moments to get rested and pick up one-hour buffs, use vendors, repairs and profession workspaces, and let nearby players add up to three crafted objects.

The recap is dated 13 September. Our release date piece has launch day.

What does a Basic Campfire give you?

The campfire grows out of the Cooking Fire from the Cooking profession, one of the game's crafting skills. Placing one makes a campsite where players can:

Rest and take one-hour buffs. To get the buffs, you slow down, sit by the fire for a few moments and get rested.
Use vendors and repairs.
Use profession workspaces, the stations some crafting needs.
Refresh food buffs. Blizzard says those got a major update in Forever.

Our reading: it's a reason to stop on the road next to a stranger instead of racing them to the next herb, which is the whole pitch of the recap and a very old-school one.

Campsite objects compared: how they and their buffs work

A Basic Campfire takes up to three special crafted objects, added by nearby players. Each player can add one, and Blizzard says "those objects share a one-hour cooldown". Every profession has three objects, and a profession gives its own buff or utility whichever of its three you place.

These are the objects the recap names:

Profession	Object	What it does
Blacksmithing	Sharpening Wheel	Increases Attack Power
Tailoring	Faction Banner	Increases Spirit
Herbalism	Incense Candle	Increases Intellect
Alchemy	Alchemy Lab	Not stated in the recap
Leatherworking	Tanning Rack	Needed for more advanced Leatherworking recipes

One catch: Blizzard says the Sharpening Wheel, Faction Banner and Incense Candle effects are variants of buffs that some classes already give, and don't stack with them. Our reading: if your group already has that class buff, the matching object adds nothing on top.

Cooks can also learn upgraded Campfires that allow five or 10 objects to be placed at a camp, instead of the Basic Campfire's three.

Where do you learn campsite objects?

The first objects come once a profession reaches skill level 20. You learn them from special non-player characters who introduce you to camping, or from your profession trainer.
More advanced objects come from Blueprint recipes, which drop from specific dungeon bosses.

Professions are getting more depth too: Blizzard counts over 600 new recipes across professions and level ranges, and says crafted food has been adjusted and can give a small experience bonus and stat boosts. Leveling another character? Our Legacy system guide covers the account-wide rewards for that.

Does it matter where you camp?

Blizzard hints that it does. Its only word on it is to "choose your campsite carefully", because some parts of Azeroth, the game's world, suit a quiet rest better than others. It names no places.

What Blizzard hasn't said yet

The recap gives no buff sizes, no sit time, no cost or burn time for a campfire, and doesn't say whether you need Cooking to place a Basic Campfire. It doesn't say what the Alchemy Lab does, which bosses drop which Blueprint, or at what skill the second and third objects come. The other professions' objects aren't named. If Blizzard's development notes add any of that, it'll show up in our patch notes tracker.

Will your graphics card work with World of Warcraft: Forever? The cut-off

2026-09-27T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever drops support for older graphics cards at launch, says Blizzard's GPU post. Your card has to be built on AMD Graphics Core Next 1 (2012), NVIDIA Maxwell (2014), Intel Skylake (2015) or something newer. Older cards need an upgrade before you can play.

The post is dated 17 September. Our release date piece has launch day.

Which graphics cards does Forever support?

A graphics card, or GPU, is the chip that draws the game on your screen. Each maker builds its cards in families, and a microarchitecture is the design one family shares. Forever needs one of these families, or a newer one:

AMD: Graphics Core Next 1, from 2012
NVIDIA: Maxwell, from 2014
Intel: Skylake, from 2015

Blizzard says most World of Warcraft players already have compatible hardware.

Blizzard's example cards, compared

Maker	Supported (example cards)	Not supported (example cards)
AMD	Radeon HD 7850 (2012)	Radeon HD 6950 (2010)
NVIDIA	GeForce GTX 9xx (the 900 series), GTX 750 and 750 Ti (2014)	GeForce GTX 760, 770 and 780, and GTX 8xxM (2014)
Intel	HD Graphics 530 (2015)	HD Graphics 6000 (2015)

The catch is in the supported column. Blizzard says those cards are "still well below the minimum requirements for the game." Our reading: clearing this cut-off isn't the same as meeting the minimum, so don't expect a supported card from that list to run it well.

Our reading of the NVIDIA row: the number on the box isn't the test. A GTX 750 Ti clears it while the bigger-numbered GTX 780 doesn't, so don't go by how big the number is. Look for your exact card in the table. If it isn't one of Blizzard's examples, the post doesn't settle it.

How do you check your graphics card in Windows?

Blizzard gives two ways:

Open Settings, select System, then Display, and choose Advanced display. It shows your card's make and model.
Open Device Manager and expand Display adapters to see the graphics hardware you have.

Why is Blizzard cutting older cards?

Forever gets a new visual look, and Blizzard says that look relies on a graphics feature cards picked up around 2012, "RGBA16F UAV support in compute shaders". It says the change also gives players a more consistent experience.

What Blizzard hasn't said yet

The post doesn't list the full minimum specs; it points to the Battle.net Shop for those. It says nothing about recommended specs or Macs, and it only explains how to check your card on Windows. Our patch notes tracker follows Blizzard's development notes.

World of Warcraft: Forever name reservation: 27 October to 3 November, and how two names work

2026-09-26T00:00:00Z

Early name reservation for World of Warcraft: Forever runs from 27 October to 3 November 2026, Blizzard's post of 21 September says, for "eligible upgrade purchases". Names go first come, first served, and none is guaranteed. Every character will have two names, and it's the full pair that has to be unique in your region.

Name reservation timeline: when it opens and closes

Date	What happens
27 October 2026	Early Name Reservation opens
3 November 2026	Early Name Reservation's last day

Which purchases count? The post doesn't say. It names "eligible upgrade purchases" and stops there, so we won't guess. The window is on our calendar, and our release date piece covers launch day.

How the two-name system works

Each character has two names, which Blizzard compares to a first name and a surname.

The pair is what counts. Somebody else taking the first name you love doesn't necessarily rule it out: two characters can share a first name as long as their full names are different.
Unique across your region, not one realm. Forever is realmless: a name is no longer tied to one realm, one of the separate game servers, so your full name has to be free in the whole region.
Shared surnames are fine. Blizzard's own example gives Asha, Thalen and Mira the same family-style second name, Brightvale. A guild could use a shared naming theme too, as long as each full name is free.

Will my name pass? A checklist

Is the full pair free in your region? Only the pair has to be unique.
Does it follow the code of conduct? Names still have to meet the in-game code of conduct for names.
Could it confuse people, pose as Blizzard or the World of Warcraft team, or clash with existing naming policies? Those may be restricted.
Does it use certain words, spellings or repeated-character patterns? Some of those may be restricted too.
Did you split a restricted word across the two names? Blizzard can check both halves together, so that won't necessarily get through.
Did you get there first? Reservation is first come, first served.

If the pair is taken or fails the rules, you pick another one, or roll the in-game random name generator.

What happens when a name breaks the rules

A Blizzard staff post of 24 September says the beta, the test version before launch, is getting forced name changes for characters that broke the naming policies. Some testers whose names were far outside Blizzard's code of conduct lost beta access altogether.

The post says the World of Warcraft development team carried out those actions itself, and each one was individually reviewed. Customer Service can't and won't help with appeals. The post adds that Blizzard's system for enforcing naming standards will come online "very shortly", and asks testers not to go poking at it, because that risks losing beta access too.

How to hide your second name

Press Escape to open the Game Menu.
Pick Options, then Nameplates.
Click the checkbox for "My Secondary Name".

Your second name no longer shows in the game world, but it still shows in chat.

Our take: easier names, one open question

Our reading is that two names make a favourite first name much easier to get, because nobody can own it outright anymore. The open question is who gets to reserve early. Blizzard's name post doesn't list the eligible purchases, so we'd plan a few backup pairs either way.

Planning the character itself? Our talent calculator and hunter pet reference help with that.

World of Warcraft: Forever Skyborne guide: Horde or Alliance, classes and racials

2026-10-08T00:00:00Z

The Skyborne, a playable race new to World of Warcraft: Forever, get one class that depends on the side you pick. Blizzard's post of 22 September says Horde Skyborne get the Shaman and Alliance Skyborne get the Mage. Both sides share the other four classes and three of their four racials, the abilities that come with the race, and both start on Zephras Isle, a new starting area and their home.

Zephras Isle covers levels 1 to 12. In Blizzard's story, exiled Highborne, an ancient line of elves, made a pact with wind spirits and built a civilization in Skywall, one of the elemental planes. The spirits have vanished, and you arrive to find that civilization in crisis.

Horde or Alliance compared: the two Skyborne side by side

	Windshaper Skyborne	High Order Skyborne
Side	Horde	Alliance
Class only this side gets	Shaman	Mage
Classes both sides get	Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior	Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior
Racial only this side gets	Skysight: 10% more run speed	Read Ley Line: 100% more Health and Mana regeneration
Racials both sides get	Walk on Air, Wind Blessed, Elemental Insight	Walk on Air, Wind Blessed, Elemental Insight
Where you start	Zephras Isle, levels 1 to 12	Zephras Isle, levels 1 to 12

Blizzard frames the split as two outlooks. Windshapers keep the elemental traditions. The High Order wants back the arcane knowledge their people lost, so they don't depend on the spirits.

Picking by class? Planning a Shaman or a Mage, our talent calculator has both. Planning a Hunter, our hunter pet reference lists the pet families. Skyborne Druids get new forms made just for the race.

Every Skyborne racial

Racials are abilities that come with a race. Here are all five, in Blizzard's own numbers.

Racial	Who gets it	What it does
Walk on Air	Both sides	Glide downward through the air for 10 seconds
Wind Blessed (passive)	Both sides	1% more melee, ranged and spellcasting Haste
Elemental Insight (passive)	Both sides	5% more damage to Elementals
Skysight	Horde only	An Elemental Blessing that adds 10% run speed
Read Ley Line	Alliance only	Activate a ley line for 100% more Health and Mana regeneration

Passive means it's always on. Haste makes attacks and spells come faster. Elementals are a kind of creature in the game.

What you can change about how they look

Two body types, each with 10 faces and the same nine skin colours, from sky blue to light peach to darker tones.

Body Type 1 has 21 hair styles and 13 facial hair options. Body Type 2 has 25 hair styles and six earring styles, in silver or gold. Both can wear feathers in their hair, face tattoos and a choice of two body tattoos, Zephyr and Wayfinder. A barber shop in the cities lets you change things later, for a little in-game coin.

Skyborne also get their own /dance, the emote your character does when you type it.

Will the Skyborne get Standard Definition models? Blizzard says early 2027

Forever lets you switch player characters between Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) models, two levels of detail for how a character looks. In Blizzard's post of 7 October, the team says it built that switch around the races from the original World of Warcraft, since many people are attached to those models. Our reading is that the Skyborne, being new, come only in HD for now.

Blizzard says it has heard feedback that the HD Skyborne can look jarring next to the SD models and the SD world, and it agrees. SD Skyborne characters are in development and arriving early 2027, along with SD versions of their Druid forms, the animal shapes a Druid can turn into. Blizzard says it looks forward to sharing more closer to that date.

The HD Skyborne Druid forms are getting a rework too. Blizzard's example makes them a bit less soft, with more detailed fur and adjusted colour saturation, so they don't clash with the look of other creatures in the world.

Our take: a small edge, and one open question

Our reading is that the stat racials are modest: 1% Haste and 5% more damage to one kind of creature won't decide who wins a fight. Pick the side for the class you want.

The open question is access. Our release date piece covers what Forever's paid upgrade packs include and what the Blizzard posts we've read don't say about playing a Skyborne without one.

WoW: Forever Legacy System: can one character reach the 16-point cap?

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever gives every account a Legacy System, and Blizzard says every perk in it can be unlocked on a single character. Blizzard's post of 23 September says each character can spend up to 16 Legacy Points at launch. It also says one character can earn up to 29.

Legacy Points are the system's account-wide points: earn one on any character and all your characters can use it, except in Hardcore (covered below), where death carries lasting consequences. An alt is a second character on the same account.

How do you earn Legacy Points?

You finish Legacy Challenges, which work like achievements tied to how a character grows. Each one is worth one point, and there are 65 in six groups. Your first point switches the system on. For most players that's reaching level 25. Taking a primary crafting profession to 150, or exploring the whole world map, also does it. Then open it from the shield icon on the menu, or press Y, the default key.

Group	Points	What earns them
Classes	27	Reach level 25, 45 and 60 with each class
Tradeskills	18	Take each primary crafting profession to 150, 225 and 300 skill
PvP (player versus player)	12	Five PvP ranks (5), Exalted with each Battleground reputation (4), and three Field of Honor season quests (3)
Adventure	2	Explore the whole world map on one character, and finish the Lord Valthalak dungeon set questline
Dungeons	3	Beat the last boss of every dungeon in three level bands: 15 to 25, 26 to 45 and 46 to 60
Raids	3	Beat Onyxia, all 13 bosses of Hyjal Summit, and all 8 of the Barrow Deeps

Three notes on that table. Tradeskills count only primary crafting professions, not gathering ones. The five PvP (player versus player) ranks are ranks 3, 7, 10, 13 and 14, and the three season quests are the ones for weeks 4, 7 and 10 of the Field of Honor PvP season's quest track. Exalted is one of the game's reputation levels, and there is one challenge for each Battleground reputation.

Can one character reach the 16-point cap?

Yes, but how you play decides how. Each character can spend at most 16 points at launch, however many your account holds. Blizzard gives two reasons. New players won't be too far behind to catch up, and 16 is reachable on one character, so alts aren't required.

Blizzard's own tally for one character is 3 from levelling, up to 6 from tradeskills, 12 from PvP, 2 from Adventure and 6 from dungeons and raids. That makes 29. Our reading is that the 6 means two primary crafting professions taken to 300, since each is worth 3.

Our maths, from that tally, for a one-character player:

How you play	Points	Reaches 16?
Level to 60, two crafting professions to 300, both Adventure challenges, all three dungeon bands	14	No, 2 short
The same, plus 2 of the 3 raid challenges	16	Yes, exactly
The same, plus all 3 raid challenges	17	Yes, 1 spare
Level to 60 and all 12 PvP challenges	15	No, 1 short (add any one more)
Level to 60, one crafting and one gathering profession, all dungeons, raids and Adventure	14	No, 2 short. Only PvP is left to fill it

Our maths also says this: skip PvP and the most one character can collect is 17, so you can miss only one point. Miss a raid and every other challenge becomes a must. If you love PvP, it covers most of the cap by itself. If our two-profession reading holds, we'd make both professions crafting ones, because a gathering one earns nothing here.

What can you spend Legacy Points on?

Perks, sorted into three trees, the branching menus you spend points in. The points belong to your account, and each character spends up to 16 of them on its own perks, independently of your other characters. Blizzard's post doesn't list what each perk costs. Wowhead, the big community database, has a guide and a Legacy calculator for planning a build.

Tree	Perk	What it does
Professions	Working Overtime	Better odds of a skill point in every tradeskill, including skills only some classes have, like Lockpicking
Professions	Bountiful Harvest	Helps you find extra Scarce resources while mining, gathering herbs or skinning
Professions	Bartering	Vendor items cost less gold
Professions	Performance bonus	Sometimes more Merchant's Favor from the two new trade factions
Professions	Master Chef	A chance for cooking recipes to make extra
Professions	Luremaster	A chance to catch extra fish
Professions	Dedicated Study	A daily boost to level tradeskills faster, or free Elemental Essences once all are at 300
Adventure	Well Rested	A higher cap on rested experience, and it builds faster
Adventure	Thrill of Adventure	A little health and mana back after each kill that isn't trivial
Adventure	High Alert	Better stealth detection outside Battlegrounds
Adventure	Field Guide	Cuts the one-hour wait between placing camping features
Adventure	Field Medicine	Shortens Recently Bandaged, the wait between bandages, except in dungeons, raids and Battlegrounds
Adventure	Talented	Unlock talent points up to 5 levels lower than normal
Adventure	Frequent Flier	Cheaper, faster flights
Resourcefulness	Gourmand	Food buffs last longer
Resourcefulness	The Quick and the Dead	Dead players run back to their body faster, and group buffs cost nothing after you're revived
Resourcefulness	Reinforce	Less durability damage to your gear when you die
Resourcefulness	For Great Honor	More Honor from PvP
Resourcefulness	Permanence	Party, raid and camping buffs last longer
Resourcefulness	Diplomat	More reputation gained
Resourcefulness	Reagent Economy	Class abilities stop needing purchasable reagents, and tier 1 camping features need no materials to craft

Two terms from that table are new to Forever. Merchant's Favor comes from the Azeroth Commerce Authority and Durotar Supply and Logistics (Blizzard calls them two new Alliance and Horde factions). Camping is a new system: Blizzard's Deep Dive recap says placing a campfire creates a campsite where players can rest and get benefits such as vendors, repairs and one-hour buffs.

Talents are upgrades a character buys with talent points as it levels. Our talent calculator doesn't include the Talented perk. With it, our reading is that a build can come up to 5 levels sooner than the level the calculator shows.

What are Legacy Rewards?

Account unlocks. Legacy Points build up across your whole account, and the total unlocks toys and cosmetic items. There are four at launch, and Blizzard plans more with each content update:

Replica Ironforge Air Rifle, a toy gun that stuns other players and keeps score.
Spectral Bear Cub, a pet, which Blizzard says was inspired by the Dwarven Hunter, a character in Forever's cinematic, and his companion.
Spectral Bear Tabard, a tabard, the cloth worn over armour.
Reins of the Spectral Bear, a mount, the animal you ride.

How does Hardcore change it?

Hardcore, a mode where death carries lasting consequences, is one of Forever's rulesets, the kinds of world a character can live in, and it isn't there at launch. When it comes, challenges you finished elsewhere won't show up in it. A challenge finished in Hardcore counts in every other ruleset too. PvP challenges can't be done there, so Blizzard says Hardcore will launch with 12 challenges of its own.

Our rulesets piece covers all four rulesets.

Our take: earned by playing, and capped

We like this. Every point in Blizzard's post comes from playing: levelling, crafting, fighting, exploring. Nothing in the post mentions buying one. Blizzard says the 16-point cap keeps new players from falling too far behind to catch up. Our reading is that it's the right call, because a veteran with a dozen alts still can't spend more than 16 on any one character at launch.

We read the perks as modest. Cheaper flights, longer food buffs, no more buying reagents for class abilities. We'd call that respect for a player's time rather than a power race. Blizzard plans new challenges and perks with each content release, and new trees later. Whether future perks stay this modest is the open question. For the launch date, see our release date piece.

WoW: Forever rulesets: which to pick, and can you play with friends

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever moves away from the realm list, the old screen where you picked a server before you made a character. Each character picks a ruleset instead, which is a set of rules for how you want to play. Blizzard's post of 21 September names four. Choose with care: characters can't freely hop between rulesets, and friends on different ones can't group.

The four rulesets, side by side

Normal is the baseline ruleset, the plain version of the game where fighting other players is something you opt into. PvP, short for player versus player, where players fight each other rather than the game, is for people who want every trip into contested ground, the parts of the world where both sides roam, to carry more danger.

Roleplaying is for people who want to lean into the fantasy of Azeroth, the world the game is set in, and find others who do too. Hardcore, a mode where death carries lasting consequences, will be available sometime after launch.

Ruleset	What it's for	Characters on both factions?
Normal	Exploring, questing and working together, with player fights when you choose them	Yes
PvP	More danger and more fights with other players out in the world	No, one faction only
Roleplaying	Leaning into the fantasy and finding like-minded players	Yes
Hardcore	The hardest challenge, where death carries lasting consequences. Not at launch	Yes

Blizzard describes each ruleset as working like "a broad player ecosystem" rather than a single server. For a second read, MMORPG.com, which is a news site about online role-playing games, has its own piece on the ruleset choices.

Can I play with friends on a different ruleset?

For grouping, dungeons and raids, only if you pick the same one. Settle this table before launch.

Your friend is on	Group, dungeons and raids together?
Your ruleset and your faction	Yes
Your ruleset, the other faction	No, Horde and Alliance still can't group
A different ruleset	No, cross-ruleset grouping isn't supported

Battlegrounds, the game's team matches where players fight each other, work differently. Blizzard says they may include players from other rulesets, except Hardcore, which stays separate. Our reading is that this helps fill matches. Blizzard's post doesn't say you can sign up for one with a friend on another ruleset, so we wouldn't plan on it.

There is also a language setting, so you run into players who share your language. Press Escape, pick Options, then Languages and Social under the System heading, then set Preferred Online Language. It covers every character on your account. Once set, it can't be changed again for 24 hours.

The PvP catch: you pick one side

On the PvP ruleset you can only make characters for one faction. Make an Alliance character there and you can't make a Horde one there, and the other way round. Normal, Roleplaying and Hardcore let you play both sides.

Blizzard also says Forever will have systems intended to help keep Horde and Alliance numbers closer on PvP. It points to the approach it used in Season of Discovery, where making new characters on one faction could be limited for a while when the balance needed help.

Can I switch rulesets later?

Not freely. To play under a different ruleset, you make a new character in it. Blizzard names one exception, and it's for Hardcore. When it arrives, Hardcore characters live in a fully closed world of their own, but a Hardcore character that dies can move to another ruleset, PvP included.

Your collections, the things your account has gathered, and Legacy Points, the game's account-wide progress points, carry across rulesets, with Hardcore handled differently. Progress, collections and rewards earned there can become available elsewhere, but progress from other rulesets won't flow back into Hardcore.

Our take: fewer wrong turns, fewer names

Blizzard says the realmless setup is meant to reduce the pressure of choosing the right launch realm. Our reading is that this goes after a real headache. We think picking a server was often a bet made before you knew who you'd play with. Now the choice is about how you want to play, which we'd guess is the part most people already know on day one.

Our worry is losing something this site is openly fond of: servers with names, which in our experience gave guilds, the player-run clubs, and rivals a reputation you could learn. Blizzard says it doesn't want a place that "feels anonymous", and wants the world to feel "active and lived in". Whether a space that big still feels like a neighbourhood is something we don't think any post can settle, and we'll judge it when people are playing.

The one-faction rule on PvP reads to us as a fair price for a war worth fighting. We also expect it to be the rule most likely to split a group of friends, so agree on a side before launch on 4 November.

When is Hardcore coming, and what's next?

Blizzard gives no date for Hardcore beyond "sometime after launch". Until then, three dates matter. The beta, a test version people can play before release, runs through 21 October, which Blizzard calls the last full day of testing.

Forever launches on 4 November 2026, and Blizzard's panel recap says new raids unlock on 9 December. Our release date piece covers the launch hour. The beta and the December raids sit on our calendar, and the launch sits on our release tracker.

While you wait, two of our tools are built from the beta's own game data. The talent calculator plans talents, the upgrades a character buys with talent points as it levels. The hunter pet reference covers the animal companions of the Hunter, one of the game's playable classes.

WoW: Forever release date is 4 November, beta starts 17 September

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever launches on 4 November 2026 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific, worldwide, per Blizzard's announcement and its panel recap. The beta (the test version) runs until 21 October. You don't buy the game itself: it comes with a World of Warcraft subscription or with Game Time, which is subscription time paid for up front.

The dates Blizzard has given

What	When	Blizzard's own wording
Beta	17 September to 21 October 2026	"The beta will be available through October 21, the last full day of testing"
Friend invite codes sent	From 20 October 2026	"Codes will be delivered by email beginning October 20, 2026, PST"
Launch	4 November 2026, 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 UTC, our maths)	"globally on November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST"
Invited friends can play	4 to 11 November 2026	"during launch week, from November 4 through November 11, 2026, PST"
First new raids	9 December 2026	"New raids unlock on December 9"

Where Blizzard's wording carries no year, the year is ours. Early name reservation has its own row on our calendar.

Converting the launch hour, and this part is our maths rather than Blizzard's. Clocks on the US west coast go back an hour on 1 November, so launch day falls on Pacific Standard Time. That makes 3:00 p.m. PST 23:00 UTC, 6:00 p.m. in New York, 11:00 p.m. in London, and midnight going into 5 November in Paris. Blizzard's announcement wrote the hour as PDT once and PST once. The panel recap and the 24 September post, the other two that give the launch hour, both say PST, which is the label that matches the date.

What Forever is

Blizzard calls it a permanent home that sits alongside modern World of Warcraft and WoW Classic (the re-released original game). It says Forever is neither a mode, nor a season, nor another version of Classic. The story sits after Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom and before Molten Core. Players go back to the original continents, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, and level to 60.

The design rules are blunt about what is missing: no flying mounts and no level scaling (monsters quietly adjusting to your level). Blizzard's four stated pillars are being approachable and familiar, treating the world as the main character, putting the journey before the destination, and protecting the social side of the game.

Watch the panel yourself

Blizzard's panel recap embeds the BlizzCon replay (BlizzCon is Blizzard's own convention), and the recording below is that same one: "World of Warcraft: Forever - What's Next Panel | BlizzCon 2026", published on the World of Warcraft YouTube channel.

What is in it

More than a thousand new quests are woven through the level 1 to 60 journey, and Blizzard names four places to go.

Hyjal deals with the aftermath of Archimonde's defeat. Shen'dralas is a hidden mystery between Mulgore and Desolace. The Riverglades is a frontier of rivers and trade routes with more than 150 quests, across much of what Blizzard calls the mid-30s to mid-40s experience. Zephras Isle (a starting area in the sky) covers levels 1 to 12.

Zephras Isle is home to the Skyborne, a new playable race. You pick a Skyborne character's side when you make it, and the side decides one class: Horde Skyborne get the Shaman, which Blizzard ties to elemental traditions, and Alliance Skyborne get the Mage, tied to an arcane legacy. Both sides can also play Warriors, Hunters, Rogues and Druids.

There are nine new dungeons, and eight are named: the Hall of Thanes beneath Ironforge, the Ruins of Lordaeron, the City of Dalaran, Blackmaw Hold, the Drowned City, Krol'dok Stronghold, Alcaz Prison and the Shaper's Terrace.

Two raids are named (the Barrow Deeps, planned as a challenge for ten players at the level cap, and Hyjal Summit, built for twenty). Across the two, Blizzard names new tier sets and a legendary reward it has not detailed.

For player versus player fights there is a new 15 versus 15 Battleground (on the Darkspear Islands), and Blizzard says updates to that side of the game carry on after launch.

Blizzard names two new systems among others. It pitches Legacy progression at players who love levelling alternate characters; our Legacy System piece covers how it works for a player with just one. Camping, which is new, lets you build a campfire out in the world so other players can stop by, help through their professions and share campsite buffs. Transmog is opt-in. There are also modern and Classic visual presets, high and standard definition character models, and controller support.

What it means for your wallet

Blizzard names three optional digital packs (our reading: Heroic in the first name is a product label, not a difficulty) plus a physical Collector's Edition.

Edition	What it adds
Skyborne Heroic Pack	The Skyborne race and the Zephras Isle start, Early Name Reservation, the Cerulean Prideclaw ground mount, cosmetics, housing decor, one Invite-A-Friend Launch Code
Skyborne Epic Pack	Everything above, plus beta access from 17 September, 30 days of Game Time from 4 November, more cosmetics, pets, tabards, and three Invite-A-Friend Launch Codes in total
Warcraft Forever Collection, limited time	Everything above, plus Warcraft III: Reforged, its Forsaken Kingdom campaign, and Forsaken and Human figurine decor for housing in modern World of Warcraft
Collector's Edition	A physical box from the Blizzard Gear Store and some retailers: a Warcraft Forever Collection code, a 13-inch Dwarf and Bear statue, a Zephras Isle mousepad, art prints, pins and a journal

Each digital pack starts with everything in the one above it. Blizzard's 24 September post adds that orders from its Collector's Edition restock are expected to ship in February 2027, after launch, with a limit of one per household on its store. No Blizzard post we read gives a price for any of them, that one included.

Our reading of that table, in three parts. First, the good news, and it is genuinely good: anyone already paying to play owes nothing extra on 4 November. Nothing Blizzard lists in those packs is described as a stat, damage or gear boost, and that is worth saying out loud.

Second, that is still not the same as saying the packs are all paint. The base pack carries a playable race, and Blizzard's panel recap says the Skyborne come with class access that depends on the side you pick, plus racial abilities of their own. Whether those abilities are any stronger than another race's is a thing none of the posts we read says, so we are not saying it either. What we will say is that a playable race reaches into how a character plays, and calling these packs cosmetic would be wrong.

Third, the Cerulean Prideclaw. It comes with the base pack, and Blizzard's own line says players will need to purchase the riding skill in-game to access and use the mount. So it is a mount you paid real money for, with a second purchase inside the game between you and riding it. A small thing, and the kind of small thing that reads badly on launch day.

And the question none of the posts we read answers. Blizzard lists Skyborne access as a pack benefit, and the beta includes the Skyborne and Zephras Isle. None of the Blizzard posts we read, the latest from 24 September, says whether they can be reached after launch without buying a pack. That is the question we would put to Blizzard.

What comes after launch

New raids arrive on 9 December. Past that Blizzard lists more raids and dungeons, player versus player updates, more world content, more quests through the 1 to 60 journey, and a revamped iconic raid (Blizzard does not say which). None of those has a date.

It also lists Hardcore. Forever moves away from picking a realm: each character picks a ruleset instead, which is the kind of world it lives in, and Hardcore is the one where death carries lasting consequences. Blizzard's ruleset post says Hardcore arrives sometime after launch, and that a Hardcore character who dies can move to another ruleset, player versus player included. Our rulesets piece covers all four rulesets.

The beta, the invite codes, the launch and the December raids are on our calendar, and the launch is on our release tracker too. For the beta itself, see our talent calculator, hunter pet reference and patch notes.

BlizzCon 2026 UK time: 18:30 BST Saturday, 18:00 Sunday, and both championship finals after midnight

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

BlizzCon 2026, which is Blizzard's own convention for its games, now has a running order. The studio published the schedule, stream plan and rewards detail on 1 September, eleven days out from the show on 12 and 13 September at the Anaheim Convention Center. It says which parts are streamed for everyone at home, and it prints every start time twice, once in Pacific and once in UK time.

Three rows below are esports matches, and they come from two tournaments. The MDI, which stands for Mythic Dungeon Invitational, is the studio's dungeon competition. The AWC, the Arena World Championship, is its arena tournament. One panel on day two is about Hardcore, a mode where a character who dies is gone for good.

The World of Warcraft slots, both days

The Warcraft panels and three of the esports matches, taken from Blizzard's own longer list. Blizzard prints both clocks itself, so the UK column below is Blizzard's own, not a conversion of ours. BST is British Summer Time, the UK's summer clock. Every time is marked subject to change.

Four of these land after midnight in the UK. The UK is eight hours ahead of California, so a slot from about 4 p.m. Pacific onwards has already tipped into the next UK day. The dates in this table are ours too. Blizzard writes "day one" and "day two" and says the show runs on 12 and 13 September. Which day is which, and what weekday each one falls on, are our own reading of a calendar.

Day	Pacific	UK (BST)	Segment
Sat 12 Sep	10:30 a.m.	18:30	Opening Ceremony
Sat 12 Sep	12:00 p.m.	20:00	World of Warcraft: What's Next
Sat 12 Sep	12:45 p.m.	20:45	MDI Grand Finals: Dignitas vs Big Lucky
Sat 12 Sep	2:00 p.m.	22:00	Building Cutscenes in World of Warcraft
Sat 12 Sep	2:45 p.m.	22:45	World of Warcraft: What's Next II
Sat 12 Sep	3:30 p.m.	23:30	Developers x Creators Showcase
Sat 12 Sep	5:30 p.m.	01:30 Sun 13th	MDI Grand Finals, championship match
Sun 13 Sep	10:00 a.m.	18:00	World of Warcraft: Deep Dive
Sun 13 Sep	10:45 a.m.	18:45	Crafting Coziness and Creative Freedom
Sun 13 Sep	11:45 a.m.	19:45	World Building in World of Warcraft
Sun 13 Sep	1:15 p.m.	21:15	World of Warcraft: Art Design
Sun 13 Sep	2:45 p.m.	22:45	World of Warcraft: Design Deep Dive
Sun 13 Sep	4:15 p.m.	00:15 Mon 14th	World of Warcraft Hardcore: What's Next
Sun 13 Sep	5:00 p.m.	01:00 Mon 14th	AWC Grand Finals, championship match
Sun 13 Sep	5:20 p.m.	01:20 Mon 14th	Closing Remarks

Our take: what it means for players

Two "What's Next" panels on the same afternoon is the shape worth reading. Our reading, and Blizzard has said none of this: one of those panels on its own is usually a year plan. Two back to back, with a cutscene panel wedged between them, looks like a roadmap split across a reveal and its detail. That is how we would pace an announcement we wanted to land twice.

The second signal is Hardcore getting its own forward-looking panel on day two, at 4:15 p.m. Pacific, rather than a mention inside a broader session. Our reading: a named "What's Next" slot is about the smallest promise a schedule can make to a mode, and it is still a promise. We will take it. A mode where death is permanent, given a stage of its own, is the genre remembering what it is good at.

The fine print is where our complaint sits, and Blizzard states it plainly. The streams cover the opening ceremony, major panels and esports competitions. The musical performances are not part of that, and neither are what Blizzard calls some other elements. Le Sserafim plays at 6:00 p.m. Pacific on day two and the trophy ceremony follows at 6:30 p.m. Pacific. Anyone attending in person has until 18 September to link a BlizzCon Pass, which is the in-person ticket, to a Battle.net account and still claim the rewards.

That deadline is the bit we think will cost somebody something. It is five days after the show closes, and Blizzard publishes it down inside a rewards section rather than up at the top. Our view: a paying attendee should not have to find a deadline in the small print to keep what they already bought. Say it louder, and say it early.

What's next

Blizzard says to check back after the opening ceremony for the fully updated schedule. Our expectation is that day two moves more than day one, because it has longer to move in. Both days, the two esports finals and the reward-linking deadline are on the calendar with the day we last checked each against Blizzard's page.

WoW hotfixes, 1 September 2026: thirteen specs buffed, and boss health cut in Raid Finder

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's fix pass dated 1 September 2026 points in two directions at once. Thirteen character specialisations went up in World of Warcraft, while several healing and defensive numbers came down where players fight each other. Ten of the thirteen took a damage increase, two took healing and one took survivability. It all sits on Blizzard's running hotfix page, which is edited in place as fixes land rather than reposted each time.

Three words to carry through the rest of this. A hotfix is a small change applied to the live game without taking it down. A spec, short for specialisation, is the role and playstyle a character picks inside their class. A raid is a dungeon built for a large group.

The numbers, against monsters

Spec	Change
Frost Death Knight	Howling Blast and Obliterate +15%, Frost Strike +20%, melee +10%
Protection Paladin	Blaze of Glory +150%, Consecration +30%, Divine Guidance +30%
Feral Druid	all ability damage +5%, auto-attacks +10%, Ferocious Bite +10%
Beast Mastery and Survival Hunter	+7% each, Survival only +3% against other players
Frost Mage	+6%
Fire Mage	+3%
Restoration Druid	healing +4%
Vengeance Demon Hunter	Demonic Wards 15% (was 12%), Fel Devastation healing +25%
Mistweaver Monk	healing +5%, tier 4-piece proc chance 25% (was 20%)
Havoc, Balance, Windwalker	+4% each, against monsters only

A tier set, which is a matched set of gear whose pieces give a bonus when worn together, is what the Mistweaver "four-piece" row is about: wearing four of them.

Five of those rows carry a developer note explaining the intent, and the notes are more specific than the numbers. Frost Death Knight is aimed at single target and two-target cleave. Vengeance is called out as still short defensively. Feral is called short in raids. Mistweaver is said to want more healing and more value from its four-piece. Protection Paladin is behind other tanks in dungeons.

Our take: what it means for players

This is a difficulty correction aimed at the bottom of the ladder rather than the top, and that is the right end to aim at.

The Venomous Abyss, which is the raid at the centre of the current season, has four difficulty settings. Raid Finder, the automatic queue that puts strangers into an easier version, sits at the bottom. Then Normal, then Heroic, then Mythic at the top. Every Venomous Abyss change on 1 September touching Raid Finder, or a smaller Normal or Heroic group, makes the fight easier. Inside that raid, Mythic is the only setting that gets stricter anywhere, on the Twin Fangs, though two abilities on the Coiled Altar, one of its boss fights, were cut there as well.

Nek'zali the Soulcoiler lost 15 percent of its health in Raid Finder, the Entombed Sentinels the same, and Vexhul and Ithraz 20 percent. On Mythic, Eternal Venom now takes ten applications to kill instead of fewer, and Ravenous Feast hits at least four people.

Read that split as a statement about whose evening matters. Midnight Season 2 is the game's current run of months, and Blizzard's own schedule for it puts wing 3 of that raid in the week of 1 September, so it opened the same week these numbers came down. A group walking in that night met a trimmed version rather than the one that had been standing. Nobody had to buy anything to get that. The fight moved. A player with a couple of evenings a week getting a fix in a hotfix, for free, is how this is supposed to work. Worth saying out loud in a genre where the same problem is often solved by selling somebody a shortcut.

The pass for fights between players runs both ways, and the healing cuts are unusually blunt about why. Healers keep topping people up too fast. So the Gladiator's Distinction set bonus now grants 5 percent primary stat for healing specialisations instead of 10, Restoration Druid's Swiftmend heals 20 percent less, and Mage barriers absorb a quarter less. Those are pace changes aimed at shortening matches rather than at any one class, and the studio saying so in the notes beats leaving people to guess from the numbers.

Where we would push: a fix pass this large arrives as edits to one running page, dated by day rather than laid out change by change with a build behind each one. Six weeks from now, working out which version your Tuesday night sat on means reading the whole page again.

Credit where it is due: Wowhead is where the community keeps a running record of these hotfixes.

What's next

The Venomous Abyss finishes opening with Raid Finder wing 4 in the week of 8 September, the last scheduled unlock of Midnight Season 2. That date, and BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention and which we wrote up in our piece on its running order, are both on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

WoW's Midnight Season 2 finishes unlocking on 8 September

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft's Midnight Season 2, the game's current run of months, finishes unlocking in the week of 8 September 2026. That is when the fourth and last chunk of its big group dungeon opens to the automatic queue. Blizzard staged the season across five weekly steps rather than one day, in its own announcement.

The names, in plain words. The Venomous Abyss is this season's raid, which is a dungeon built for a large group and the hardest thing on the schedule. Raid Finder is the automatic queue that puts strangers into an easier version of it, released in chunks called wings. Above Raid Finder sit three harder settings: Normal, then Heroic, then Mythic at the top. The Great Vault is the weekly chest a character earns just by playing. Delves are short solo dungeons.

The unlock timeline

Week of	What opened
11 August	Altar of Fangs, Heroic and Mythic 0 dungeons, the new eight-dungeon rotation, Tidebound Grotto on World difficulty, Prey Normal and Hard, Nemesis delves at the first difficulty, arena training grounds
18 August	The Venomous Abyss on Normal, Heroic, Mythic and Raid Finder wing 1, Mythic+ Season 2, player-versus-player Season 2, bountiful delves and keys, Prey Nightmare mode, Great Vault season rewards
25 August	Raid Finder wing 2 and the raid's story mode
1 September	Raid Finder wing 3
8 September	Raid Finder wing 4

Mythic 0 is the detail people miss in that table. It ran on a weekly lockout in the first week and moved to a daily reset in the second, at the same 292 item level either way. Item level is the number that says how strong a piece of gear is.

Our take: what it means for players

A five-week ramp is a decision about who the season is for. Read it in order and it tells you who Blizzard expects to be where.

The first week is a gearing week with no raid in it at all. The second carries almost everything competitive at once: the timed dungeons, the fighting between players, the raid on Normal, Heroic, Mythic and the first Raid Finder wing, and the Great Vault, all turning on together. The three weeks after that add the raid's story mode and three more Raid Finder wings, and nothing else.

That last part is the interesting choice, and we think it is a good one. A schedule whose back half is built entirely around pacing the story for people who do not raid on a fixed night treats a casual evening as a legitimate way to play rather than a lesser one. The competitive players got everything in week two and are not waiting on anybody.

For a returning player the practical read is that arriving now costs almost nothing. Every source of gear except the last two Raid Finder wings has been open since the week of 18 August. The dungeon rotation is fixed for the season. The rating thresholds are published up front: 1500 for the title "the Venomous", 2000 for the mount Breath of Blight, 3000 for Breath of Ruin. Rating here is the score a character builds from timed dungeon runs. The top one percent and top 0.1 percent of players in your region settle at the season's end rather than on the way through. Thresholds published up front are the difference between a goal and a treadmill.

The raid's rewards are unusually generous for housing, and this detail is worth copying. Defeating Ula'tek drops the Venomous Abyss trophy decor for every raid member at 100 percent, on every difficulty. Heroic adds a second trophy and Mythic a third. A guaranteed drop rather than a chance is the right way round for a cosmetic. It pays the group that finished the raid, rather than the one lucky person in it.

Credit where it is due: Raider.IO is where a lot of groups will actually watch those rating thresholds move.

What's next

After the week of 8 September the season has no further scheduled unlocks. The next dated Warcraft event is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, on 12 and 13 September. Its published running order carries a "World of Warcraft: What's Next" session and a second one numbered II. Both sit on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

WoW's Curse of Ula'tek adds an island, an eight-boss raid and a Discord link

2026-09-13T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft's Curse of Ula'tek update went live on 11 August 2026. Blizzard's own summary leads with the Coiled Isle: a new outdoor area off the east coast of Zul'Aman, with an eight-boss raid, a three-boss dungeon and three new delves behind it. The raid arrived a week later.

Three words worth unpacking. A raid is a dungeon built for a large group, usually the hardest thing a game has. Delves are the small solo version. Zul'Aman is a region long-standing players already know, so the isle sits somewhere familiar.

What shipped, and when each piece opened

Piece	Detail	Live from
The Coiled Isle	Public events, Curse Surges, cursed fishing, an isle-only talent tree	11 August
Altar of Fangs	Three bosses, up to Mythic 0 (Mythic is the hardest difficulty setting)	11 August
Lairs	World bosses moved into private instanced fights; the notes describe scaling up to flexible Mythic with 15 to 25 players	11 August
Three delves	The Ring of Glory, Gnarldor Isle, and Venomfall Deeps as a Nemesis one	11 August
The Venomous Abyss	Eight bosses, Ula'tek last	18 August, with Season 2
Mythic+ rotation	Altar of Fangs joins seven others	18 August, with Season 2

Our take: what it means for players

Two changes in this update outlive the season around them, and neither of them is the raid.

The first is the Discord link. Discord is the chat app a great many guilds already run on the side. Connecting a Battle.net account to a Discord one and passing messages both ways closes a gap guilds have long papered over with a second app. It changes nothing about how the game plays and quite a lot about who reads guild chat, because the people who miss a raid signup are the ones not logged in. Unglamorous plumbing, and the best thing in the patch.

The second is housing blueprints, and this is the one we will actually praise. Exporting a whole house, an interior, an exterior or a single room and handing it to another player turns decorating from a private hobby into something shareable. The detail that makes it usable is the import screen: it lists what you are missing and still lets you import. A reset option puts everything back in storage, so experimenting costs nothing.

Note what is not there. Nothing in Blizzard's summary attaches a charge to any part of it. No shop entry, no bundle, no currency. In a genre where housing is very often the first thing put behind a shop, a sharing feature arriving with no price on it is worth saying out loud.

The area design earns a line too. Killing a rare tough monster at a Curse Surge unlocks cursed fishing in that spot, which chains a combat activity into a quiet one rather than running them in parallel. Those monsters rotate across five locations, so the isle rewards moving rather than camping. A world that pays you for walking around in it is a world rather than a menu.

Credit where it is due: Wowhead is where the community documents the blueprint format and the rare rotation.

What's next

The last dated step of this content cycle is the fourth Raid Finder wing, which is one chunk of the Venomous Abyss opened to the automatic queue that puts strangers into an easier version of it. Blizzard's own Midnight Season 2 schedule puts that wing in the week of 8 September.

The next Warcraft date on our calendar after that wing opens is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, and we have its dates and its running order in our piece on the schedule. Both sit on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

Black Temple opens on WoW's Burning Crusade Classic servers, with a new arena season

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Black Temple, which is a big-group dungeon from an old World of Warcraft expansion, opened on the Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary Edition servers on 27 August 2026. It arrived alongside the Battle for Mount Hyjal, the Netherwing daily quest hub and epic gems. Blizzard's own notice lists them together under what it calls your journey ahead, and puts Arena Season 3 five days later on 1 September.

The short version for anyone who has never played. Burning Crusade Classic, which is a re-release of the game's first expansion, runs on its own servers so people can play it as it was. Each of Black Temple and Mount Hyjal is a raid, which is the game's word for a dungeon built for a large group. The Caverns of Time, where the second one sits, is the in-game hub that leads to dungeons set in the game's own past. Netherwing is a faction you build standing with to earn a flying mount. And an arena season is a numbered stretch of ranked small-team fighting, with its own gear.

The two raids, side by side

	Black Temple	Battle for Mount Hyjal
Level	70	70
Location	Shadowmoon Valley, Outland	Caverns of Time, Tanaris
Bosses	9, ending on Illidan Stormrage	5, ending on Archimonde
Reputation	Ashtongue Deathsworn	Scale of the Sands
Gate	An attunement chain	The Vials of Eternity questline
Extra vendor	Okuno, inside the raid	Indormi, inside the raid

An attunement is a chain of quests you finish before the game lets you in at all. Indormi is the row to note for anyone not raiding: the jewelcrafting designs for the new epic gems sell from inside Mount Hyjal, and the gems themselves come from mining in that raid at 375 skill or as rare drops in Black Temple. Blizzard's notice also says a raid group is not required to enter Mount Hyjal.

Our take: what it means for players

The arena rollover is the part with a deadline on it, and it has already passed for anyone holding points. Season 2 closed the week of 16 August, at 10:00 pm local time the night before each region's reset. Unspent Arena Points, which is the currency earned in ranked small-team matches, turned into Honor Points at ten each. Honor is the older currency, earned from fighting other players out in the world.

That is a conversion rather than a refund, and we think it is the wrong way round. Points saved for a Season 3 purchase became honor, which buys a different and older set of gear. Anyone who did the disciplined thing and banked their points for the next tier was paid out in the currency for the last one. The people who spent theirs immediately lost nothing. A rollover that punishes patience is a small unfairness with a real cost, and it was avoidable.

The upside of the same rollover is genuinely good, and worth being loud about, because it is the opposite of how a lot of this genre now solves the same problem. Two tiers of player-versus-player gear dropped their gates at once. Season 2 gear now sells at a discount from Area 52 with no rating requirement, and Season 1 gear moved to the Honor vendors in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. For a player arriving late to this phase that is a cheap way back in, and it costs time rather than money. No boost, no bundle, no shop page. A vendor and an afternoon.

Netherwing is the long tail and it makes no apology for it. The standing comes from daily quests on Netherwing Ledge. That is a floating outpost in southeastern Shadowmoon Valley, which the notice says needs a flying mount to reach, or a willingness to take a very strategic fall. The six Netherwing Drake colours all need exalted standing, artisan riding, and the Blood Oath of the Netherwing step of the quest chain. Nothing about that chain is fast. That is the point of putting it in beside a raid tier. It is the sort of reward that still means something a year later, precisely because nobody can shortcut it.

Credit where it is due: Blizzard's own notice links a community guide for the Netherwing chain, and Wowhead is where a lot of players will check the steps.

What's next

The anniversary servers have no further dated phase in Blizzard's notice. The next Warcraft date on the record is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, on 12 and 13 September. Its published running order carries three forward-looking Warcraft sessions, one of them for Hardcore, the mode where a character who dies is gone for good. Both days are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

BlizzCon is back in Anaheim on 12 and 13 September

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention for its games, is back on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September 2026 at the Anaheim Convention Center, per Blizzard's own announcement. Two days, one venue, and a named list of what is on: opening ceremony, panels, the Darkmoon Faire, friendly competition and hands-on gameplay.

The Darkmoon Faire, for anyone who has not played, is a recurring in-game carnival in World of Warcraft, and Blizzard names it among the show's staples.

What the announcement actually commits to

There is a difference between a date and a schedule, and this is a date.

	In the announcement	Not in the announcement
Days	Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September	any hour-by-hour timing
Venue	Anaheim Convention Center	hall or stage detail
Programme	opening ceremony, panels, Darkmoon Faire, competition, hands-on play	which tournaments, which finals
Tickets	sign up at BlizzCon.com for first notice	an on-sale date or a price
Broadcast	nothing	a stream plan, a paid at-home ticket, or Twitch reward drops

Blizzard says it aims to "meaningfully elevate this iconic celebration", which is the language of a company that knows the last few years have been uneven. The announcement dates the first BlizzCon to 2005.

Our take: what it means for players

A two-day, single-venue BlizzCon is the shape, and the shape is the news.

An opening ceremony still on the list means the ceremony carries whatever announcement weight the year has. That is worth planning around if you follow one of Blizzard's games: our reading is that the ceremony is where the year's dates arrive, and that everything after it is elaboration.

Now the part we were not gentle about, and the update it has since earned. Nothing in this announcement mentions a stream, a virtual ticket or drops. For most of the people reading it, who will watch from home rather than fly to Anaheim, that was the one fact they wanted. Blizzard said plans would be shared as they took shape, and it has since published them. We have the running order and the stream plan in full in our piece on the schedule. That is late for a question this basic, and it is answered.

The thing we like: a convention that comes back at all, in a hall, with a schedule, is a genre keeping a tradition that costs money and returns goodwill rather than revenue. Worth defending, even while we complain about the broadcast.

What's next

Tickets have no on-sale date in this announcement. Blizzard asks people to sign up at BlizzCon.com for first notice, and to follow it on social media. That is the whole of the call to action in it.

We carry the event on the calendar with both days and the day we last checked it against Blizzard's page. If a broadcast plan, a ticket date or a tournament schedule appears on a Blizzard page, that row moves and the date it moved sits on the row.