Blizzard says Forever gear will stay relevant across raid tiers

Blizzard Entertainment developers said gear upgrades in World of Warcraft: Forever will stay relevant for a long time, with only modest item level increases between raid tiers, according to an interview published by pcgamer.com.

"Our intention is to avoid invalidating old content wherever possible," the developers said, describing a design goal of keeping earlier raids worth running rather than making them obsolete with each new tier.

World of Warcraft: Forever launches on November 4, with the Barrow Deeps raid arriving in December. The current level cap in the Forever beta is 30, while Blizzard has said the cap will stay at 60 for the live version.

To support that approach, Blizzard resurrected old technology that keeps item stats, properties and tooltips secret from the client until an item has been obtained by someone on the server. Forever also has no Adventure Guide for dungeons, and every boss in its raids has low percentage drop chase items.

The studio compared Forever's chase items to the Dragonspine Trophy from Gruul's Lair, and noted that Forever items are deliberately not optimized for players' preferred classes and stats.

Rejecting the modern power curve

World of Warcraft's modern version, including the recent Midnight expansion, has seen drastic power increases that render previous seasons of gear irrelevant and require stat squishes.

In Classic, going from Blackwing Lair to Ahn'Qiraj was only a couple of item levels higher, and the two raids largely coexisted — a model Blizzard appears to be drawing on for Forever.