First impressions of the World of Warcraft: Forever demo from the BlizzCon floor

After the BlizzCon 2026 opening ceremony, I charged over to the World of Warcraft: Forever demo stations. With rumors of Classic+ swirling for what felt like eons, it was a strange feeling to actually be standing in front of a whole bank of computers with the next Azerothian adventure loaded and ready to play.

Before I even sat down, my eyes popped at the Xbox controller sitting next to the keyboard. Sure enough, after launching the game there was an option to switch to it. The gamepad option is in an alpha stage, but controlling a World of Warcraft character with a joystick was a bit of a trip. I think there’s a saying about teaching an old gamer new tricks, but adjusting to a controller wasn’t in my time budget and it will have to wait for a future article.

As an almost-exclusively solo midcore player, I chose the Skyborne starting area over the dungeon run option. This new race can pledge their allegiance to either the Horde or Alliance. One interesting facet from this demo is that Horde Skyborne can be Shamans and Alliance can be Mages, with either faction able to choose Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, or Druid. We’ll see if that class divide holds up through testing and makes it to launch.

Another surprise from the character creation process came when I was prompted for a secondary name. Whether you’re re-creating the main you’ve had for 20 years or you’re rolling a brand new hero, be sure to spend some time coming up with a proper two-part name before you spend your first 15 minutes of Forever waffling on what to call your adventurer.

The intro voiceover/flyover for the Skyborne starting area was well done, and is a pretty good representation of the feel of the whole demo. It really had the vibe of Classic and modern World of Warcraft mashed together at 900 miles per hour. Perhaps it will eventually coalesce into its own identity, but that’s my honest impression from fifteen minutes of gameplay: a mishmash.

Starting quests? Have a bunch instead of one and track them on the map. Leveled up? Trek your way back to town and find your class trainer to learn some new abilities. I could customize my UI with Edit Mode just as much as modern WoW, but the fact that I ran out of mana repeatedly while slinging Fireballs at level 1 mobs reminded me of desperately bashing troggs with a stave when I first played 20 years ago.

The Legacy system seems very interesting as a way to dive into customizing characters. Without being able to utilize it at level 1, it appears to be a way to boost things like professions by earning achievement points.

Ultimately, World of Warcraft: Forever seems like it is going to be a branch of Classic that brings new zones, dungeons, and features without the “no changes” restrictions. After playing through to level 3, it felt enough like Classic to satisfy me, and I’m eagerly awaiting the November 4 launch.