Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Forever is more than just a return to classic Azeroth. The new Classic+ MMO has been wildly popular with fans new and old, but it’s also drawn some ire from detractors who believe the retro revival is still made for modern players.
Right now, World of Warcraft is split three ways. Modern players spend most of their time on the Retail build with 20 years of modernisations and expansions. Classic players spend their time on WoW Classic, a faithful recreation of the original up until The Burning Crusade. Meanwhile, the new Forever build is a form of Classic that will continue with new, never-before-made content.
In response to the bevvy of discussions thrown at World of Warcraft: Forever, World Builder Matthew Armstrong told fans that the game has not been made “for retail players”. While the developer has spent eight years working on Retail, a lot of work has been done to master the older style of game design to bring new content to fans of that older format.
“I did not spend the last year of my re-learning and mastering how to do things like we did it 20+ years ago for retail players,” the developer said. “I could have taken it easy and just kept doing things like I had done for the past 8 years on retail, because I was much more familiar with it, and it actually takes a lot less time to do.”
“It means holding the line against changes that create a domino affect [sic] down the road. It means keeping friction and inconveniences in the game.”
World of Warcraft: Forever world builder Matthew Armstrong
He continued to state that many players who play on World of Warcraft’s Retail worlds are not likely to remain on World of Warcraft: Forever. “The reality is that the majority of retail players wouldn’t care and would probably actually prefer it,” he said. “But I felt I had a duty to uphold an artistic vision and integrity that millions of people expect from us. But not just for our players, but for my co-workers past and present who worked on it over 20 years ago”.
Armstrong added that World of Warcraft: Forever needs to feel like the game did two decades ago. They said: “If I could not create something that resembled their work, then I failed not only them, but myself.”
The world builder is clear to note that their statement is not “throwing shade at retail players or the retail team because I am one myself”. However, the point of Forever has always been to create “as authentic of a Vanilla experience as possible” which “involves making decisions wildly different than retail”.
While retail has changed countless times over the decades, as is the curse of all live-service games, Forever’s entire purpose is to bring in new content without changing too much. “It means holding the line against changes that create a domino affect [sic] down the road,” Armstrong said. “It means keeping friction and inconveniences in the game”.
The World of Warcraft: Forever developer later added that the game simply is not made for everyone. This new branch of the iconic MMO, while more popular than Blizzard expected, is not designed to please players of all three branches of WoW, and it’s not designed to please every gamer. It’s created for a hyper-specific audience, one that just so happens to be bigger than the studio thought it would be. “If you’re making a game for everyone, then you’re making it for no-one,” Armstrong told fans.
Blizzard is taking a somewhat different approach with World of Warcraft: Forever, not just in how its content is delivered, but also in how the new MMO is moderated. For example, the developers have announced a zero tolerance rule for gold buyers in the game, threatening full account bans for those trying to break the MMO’s economy.
World of Warcraft: Forever is currently in beta until October 21. 2026. The game launches in full later this year on November 4, 2026
