WoW Forever: no arenas and no flying mounts

WoW Forever will not get PvP arenas or flying mounts. In an interview published on 27 October, lead Classic designer Tim Jones and principal game designer Kris Zierhut said the team rejected both as possible vibe-killers: neither felt relaxed or grounded enough for the game they want to make.

Instead, Zierhut said, the team set out to balance play styles against each other, making exploration as valuable as raiding and keeping PvP and raid progression at a more even pace and value. The effort went into new social mechanics such as the camping system and into making the game approachable for new players, even where that clashed with keeping it familiar to veterans.

Zierhut also talked about the classes. He asked what it would be like if all 9 classes were just as good to play, and named Druid, Shaman and Paladin as classes that had really big problems in the original game. Places such as Dalaran, Grim Batol, Gilneas and Mount Hyjal were on the team's wish list too, with some arriving now and others later.

The team means to stay small. Zierhut said the Forever team is only about 50 to 60 per cent bigger than the one that made Season of Discovery, and that the beta reached tens of thousands of players who had never played WoW before.

This comes from one interview rather than an official announcement, and Blizzard has not said whether it would ever revisit the decision. Group PvP at launch runs through battlegrounds such as the new Darkspear Islands. Forever launches for Europe at midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.