Blizzard has finally explained what pushed it to open the door on World of Warcraft Forever, and the timing makes more sense now. The new Classic+ style mode arrived earlier this week to strong numbers, which naturally raises the question explaining the reason it happened so much later in the first place.
In a conversation with Bloomberg, Blizzard senior game designer Josh Greenfield said the studio had been thinking about WoW Forever since before Classic launched in 2019. Even so, the team chose to release a more direct Vanilla WoW port first, while the Forever idea stayed in the background. As Classic aged, though, the developers began taking a more playful approach with the old-school MMO.
That experimentation really picked up in 2023 with Season of Discovery, a mode that reworked Classic in major ways, including ability gems and the transformation of older five-player dungeons such as Blackfathom Deeps into full raids. Its influence reached beyond Classic too, shaping later retail experiments like Mists of Pandaria Remix in 2024 and Legion Remix in 2025.
Still, the biggest effect of Season of Discovery was apparently on Forever itself. Greenfield said the reaction from players helped make the permanent Classic+ version a real possibility. He explained that the team began asking what a lasting version of the game could look like once that response became clear.
That momentum also helped win over leadership, allowing work on Forever to move ahead. Once the developers had the new graphics engines in place, the project seems to have clicked into shape. Northshire Abbey reportedly served as a kind of test area, and the result apparently impressed nearly everyone involved inside Blizzard.
Early signs suggest that was the right call. IGN’s initial look at World of Warcraft Forever has been very favorable, and while the final review is still pending, Len Hafer described it as a return that feels rewarding and full of new things to uncover. The question now is whether that promise lasts across the rest of the leveling journey.
Players, meanwhile, seem pleased with the launch as well. The rollout has been notably smooth, with very few server issues to speak of, which is no small feat for a release of this scale. Blizzard also reportedly committed massive hardware resources to the effort, including about 200TB of memory to help keep everything stable.
Jackie Thomas works as a Senior Tech Editor at IGN and has spent more than a decade covering gaming gear for publications such as IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer, and more. She also follows @Jackiecobra.