WoW Forever: big changes to wait for major updates

WoW Forever will change a lot over time, but not at the speed of the beta. Lead game designer Tim Jones and lead software engineer Nora Mills said so in a live Q&A on a community livestream on 5 November, with the recording published the next day.

During the beta the team could iterate on almost anything. Now that players are attached to their characters and their way of playing, big changes are meant to come no more often than major updates, and until then players should expect bug fixes and minor balance changes. The developers added that almost any part of the game may change in one direction or another with a coming major update, so something players dislike today could well look different later.

Urgent fixes are still being prepared after launch, and their results are due with the weekly reset on 11 November. Major updates should bring something for every type of player at least 2 times a year, and most likely more often, with the team aiming for a predictable schedule of about one major update every 4 months. New PvP rewards are planned alongside PvP activities.

The developers also warned that every convenience can turn into a time bomb: faster levelling or extra flight masters help now, but can hurt how the game feels in the long run. The arachnophobia mode from the current game could come to Forever in a future update; players ask for it and the team is discussing it, but it cannot simply be copied over from Midnight. These points come from one summary of the stream so far, and Blizzard has not repeated them in writing.