Blizzard Says Season of Discovery Led to World of Warcraft Forever
Senior game designer Josh Greenfield told Bloomberg the Classic mode's community response pushed the team toward a permanent version.
Blizzard Entertainment has said that the community response to Season of Discovery is what led the team to commit to World of Warcraft Forever, according to an interview senior game designer Josh Greenfield gave to Bloomberg. The game launched earlier this week.
Greenfield tied the decision directly to how players responded to Season of Discovery, the Classic game mode Blizzard released in 2023 that added changes such as ability gems and turned older 5-player dungeons including Blackfathom Deeps into raids.
Blizzard said the launch passed without significant server problems. The studio dedicated roughly 200TB of memory in hardware to keeping the WoW Forever servers running smoothly at launch.
From tech demo to release
Northshire Abbey, the game's opening area, was used as a tech demo that convinced the team at Blizzard to proceed with development. IGN published an early positive review of World of Warcraft Forever, written by reviewer Len Hafer.
Blizzard had been weighing a project along these lines since before World of Warcraft Classic released in 2019, but chose to release a straight port of Vanilla WoW first. Season of Discovery later led to Mists of Pandaria Remix in 2024 and Legion Remix in 2025 in retail WoW.
Quick answers
What is World of Warcraft Forever?
It is a permanent version of World of Warcraft Classic from Blizzard Entertainment. According to Blizzard senior game designer Josh Greenfield, the community response to Season of Discovery prompted the team to make it.
How did the World of Warcraft Forever launch go?
Blizzard said the launch, earlier this week, had no significant server problems. The studio dedicated roughly 200TB of memory in hardware to keep servers running smoothly at launch.
What did IGN say about World of Warcraft Forever?
IGN published an early positive review of the game by reviewer Len Hafer.