8. Class, Racial, and Itemization Updates
We’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about classes. Back in 2005 and 2006, the class team modestly redesigned several of the talent trees, such as priest, mage, hunter, druid. The changes they made back then weren’t really about making every class equally good at everything, rather they wanted each class to feel unique. They wanted to give us a reason to bring each class on their next adventure.
The changes we’ve made in classes of WoW Forever follow that same spirit. We want to cover gaps where they exist, but we don’t want to erase what makes each class unique.
Class Abilities
For example, paladins, there’s a new seal that allows you to tank a bit more effectively. If healing is your jam, you might find talents that enable you to do a bit, just a bit, of group healing. And the retribution paladins, maybe now is you time to shine.
We have moved away from talents that simply give you small incremental improvements and have instead tried to give you talents that you notice. You may find yourself in situations where you are making real, meaningful trade-offs, depending on how you wanna go with your character. But that’s not all.
Items & Race Abilities
World of Warcraft: Forever is huge, and you’ve got hundreds of brand-new items to look forward to, including all sorts of really fund and exciting on-use and on-equip effects. For example, check out this charp and cutlery I found backstage, which you can equip as your Thrown weapon. And possibly related, we have this Graverobber’s Shovel for, you know, when you want to dig a grave. Anyway, we’ve gone through and made a variety of updates and existing items and rewards throughout the games. Check out the Tidal Charm, now super effective against certain sea-dwellers, and Whitemane’s Chapeau which has, ooh, an increased healing and damage done alongside a reduction in the cast time of resurrection spells.
Now, let me touch on race abilities in World of Warcraft: Forever. We want to give you reasons to want to spin up a new character and embark on a new journey, which is why we’ve done a pass over race abilities to make them feel more distinct, more unique, such that each race has something special to bring that other races do not.
You can see a sneak peek of a few of our upcoming racial passives, a 5% increase of damage dealt against beasts if you’re a dwarf, and a 5% chance to drain health from your target if you’re undead. But I highly encourage you to check out tomorrow’s World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive panel where my friends will go into a lot more detail on what I’ve teased today.
But I’m an introvert. And it’s time for me to crawl back into the shadows from whence I came. So I’m going to go ahead and hand things off to our wonderful production director, Clay Stone, who will share even more fun and exciting World of Warcraft: Forever updates.
| BLIZZCON 2026 WORLD OF WARCRAFT: WHAT'S NEXT PANEL TRANSCRIPT | ||||
| 1. Intro | 2. Design Pillars | 3. New Zones | 4. Cultures | 5. Dungeons |
| 6. Raids | 7. PvP | 8. Classic Updates | 9. Rendering Updates | |
