WoW: Forever interview outlines raid rewards, PvP balance and class tuning

Blizzard’s Kris Zierhut and Tim Jones discussed raid rewards, PvP balance, class tuning and the future of World of Warcraft: Forever in a new interview summarized by Wowhead on November 6. The conversation touched on how the team wants raids to feel rewarding without overwhelming groups, what kind of PvP balance they are aiming for, and which classes are already headed back into the tuning queue.

The interview also gave a clearer picture of the roadmap ahead, with two large content updates planned and more than one raid structure change under discussion. Earlier reporting on WoW: Forever has already covered topics such as the Black Market Auction House, global raid launch and quest helpers in a separate interview report.

Raid rewards are being split across multiple wings

One of the biggest takeaways from the interview is how Blizzard wants raid rewards to push players through more of the available content. Zierhut said the Tier 1 set is split across all three raids, so players who want to complete it will need to visit all three. A 10-player group will still be able to get a lot of the rewards, but not all of them.

That approach is tied to the team’s view of raid progression. They want each raid to feel meaningful, and they want item level to be even across all difficulties. In the interview, they argued that raid size does not change how hard encounters are, but it does change how hard it is for organizers and raid leaders to coordinate the run. On that basis, they do not think loot should be better simply because a raid has more or fewer players.

To support that philosophy, Blizzard has already made a series of changes aimed at reducing class stacking and making raid setup less restrictive. Shaman buff totems are now raid-wide, raid buffs last an hour, and the team has cut down on the number of Blessings a group needs to manage. The goal is to avoid forcing raid leaders into narrow compositions.

“They want to make sure that you don’t need to stack your raid group.”

Shaman, Warlock and Druid tuning are already on the list

Much of the class discussion centered on Shaman. Zierhut addressed backlash around Discord closure and said, “I think some of their issues are legitimate and some of them are that they’re mad they can’t have improved Ghost Wolf”. The team is also re-examining Enhancement, which they feel is being pushed too hard toward spell power gear. They want Enhancement Shamans to want Strength, Intellect and Spell Power, in a way that feels closer to Retribution Paladins.

At the same time, Blizzard does not want the spec wearing Cloth Robes. For Elemental, Kris said he made a last-minute call after hearing that players did not like Lava Burst and wanted a more powerful Chain Lightning, though he admitted the change could have used a little more “cook.” Shaman talents are expected to be revisited early next year, with some tuning arriving sooner once raid data comes in. Druid talents are also on the radar for early next year.

Warlocks are getting attention too. The team said it lowered the health of both Hunter and Warlock pets, but it has also heard complaints that Voidwalkers feel too squishy. Compared with 1.15, pet stats now scale from master stats, so pets will rise in power as player stats do. Blizzard said someone will look at Voidwalker health to make sure it is not in a bad place. There may also be tuning concerns around Wrack for Warlocks.

“I think some of their issues are legitimate and some of them are that they’re mad they can’t have improved Ghost Wolf”

Kris also said that once changes are in players’ hands, the community often finds math problems that a small internal team cannot catch. That feedback loop, he said, helps the team fix issues they might otherwise miss.

A lighter touch on raid difficulty and attunements

The interview also drew a line between the difficulty Blizzard wants here and the more complex raid design seen elsewhere. Zierhut said Season of Discovery goes “a step too far” toward modern encounter design and complexity, and that the team would rather look back to Naxxramas from Era or Season of Mastery for complexity instead. The intent is to preserve room for class utility to matter — with examples like Mind Control, Descursing and Curse of Tongues — without making raids feel oppressive to average groups.

He described the preferred experience as one where a group of friends can organize, pick up pre-BiS gear, learn the boss a little, and see “a moderate amount of success without much stress.” At the same time, the team still wants secrets, aspirational encounters and, of course, Legendaries.

Attunements will stay part of the game in some form, but Blizzard wants them to be used intermittently rather than as a heavy gate. Zierhut pointed to Onyxia and Karazhan as examples of attunements with strong story value. By contrast, he said Tempest Keep and Mount Hyjal went too far, and Karazhan is about the upper limit of how far they should go.

Legacy raids are another area Blizzard is beginning to explore. Zierhut said there is a time and place for raids like Molten Core, but the team wants to incorporate them in a way that feels meaningful rather than simply repeating old content. He described Molten Core as too one-note, with elementals, fire and fire resistance dominating the experience. The wider goal is to build raids with more varied environments and creatures so different classes have more chances to shine.

Two major content updates, then more raids and quests

The roadmap discussed in the interview includes two major content updates, each arriving about four months apart. Every update will include a 10-player raid, a 20-player raid and new quests. Blizzard also outlined how the upcoming raids are structured: after defeating the first boss, players will open three paths, and all three wings must be completed before entering the final section. There are also three entrances to the Barrow Deeps, each leading to a different raid section.

The team said it wants to mix up the meta with each patch so that new unsolved problems keep changing the best way to play. It also wants to continue unfinished threads in the world and add new ones to future stories. That thinking was part of the “success” discussion in the interview, where the team described an ideal future as one with a stable ecosystem of raids and PvP events, but not so much content that it becomes overwhelming.

Tim Jones said he wants there to be many opportunities still: zones to explore, quests to do, raids to defeat. He also emphasized that the game should keep sending players to places they want to go, while still introducing new mysterious zones, raids and dungeons.

PvP balance aims to stay flexible outside rated arenas

PvP balance was the last major topic, and Blizzard framed it around the history of how competitive balance changed over time. Frost Mages remain a strong PvP class, but their 31-point talent will be dispellable, which Blizzard sees as an in-built counter in PvP.

The team said PvP balance became much tighter once rated arenas were added. Before that, balance was looser and more focused on what players could contribute to a Battleground team rather than one-versus-one duels. Blizzard wants Battlegrounds to remain the centerpiece of PvP so that classes can stay less homogenized.

For gearing, the structure remains split between Honor gear and ranked gear. Honor pieces are meant to be fairly easy to get, while the seasonal grind for higher-rank gear is where the real advantage lies. Players will need to trade in Honor gear to obtain the higher-rank set.

The interview did not include a release date for those content updates, but it did lay out the shape of Blizzard’s priorities: broader raid access, less rigid class stacking, more room for utility, and a PvP system centered on Battleground play rather than strict arena-style balancing.