The Vision of WoW: Forever and Overpowered Quest Rewards

At the beta finale of WoW: Forever we had the opportunity to talk with Blizzard developers Aidan Moon and Kris Zierhut about the vision of Classic Plus and overpowered quest rewards.

This is the second part of our interview with Principal Designer Kris Zierhut and Senior Game Designer Aidan Moon before the launch of WoW: Forever. You can conveniently jump to the other parts via our table of contents. A concise summary of the key insights can be found on page 1.

MeinMMO: Regarding your vision for Forever: How much change can Classic withstand without losing its identity, and what core principles guide your decisions?

Kris Zierhut: We discussed our core design pillars at BlizzCon:

• The world is the main character: It’s about fully immersing in Azeroth, the zones, and the local stories—not about global, over-the-top epic events or solving the problems of Jaina and Thrall, but about your own adventures with friends.
• The journey is the destination: Having fun on the way to the top is more important than rushing straight to the endgame. We give players reasons to explore every nook and cranny—through new rare mobs, recipes, and the legacy system.
• Fostering and protecting social interactions: Systems like the campfires and maintaining raid sizes of 10, 20, and 40 players directly support this. Different raid sizes create a stable social ecosystem where players can help each other across groups.

MeinMMO: Where do you draw the line? Was there a feature that was tested during development and then scrapped because it felt too modern or not classic enough?

Kris Zierhut: When it came to class design, there were moments when an ability felt a step too far in the direction of Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King. For example, with the Druid, we transformed Rake into Shred and adjusted how Powershifting [the constant switching between Druid forms to gain advantages] works to stay true to the Classic spirit.

The camping system was originally conceived to be more elaborate with its own buffs, but we simplified it so that it grants regular class buffs instead. Additionally, questing in the wetlands initially felt way too smooth—more like in Wrath of the Lich King. We consciously made the process a bit more cumbersome and incorporated backtracking to make it feel like Classic.

Aidan Moon: Regarding item design: It would be easy to just give players perfect stats like Intelligence, Stamina, Spell Power, and Critical Strike Rating. But Classic items are not perfectly optimized. They feel handcrafted and quirky—like a ring with Agility and Intelligence or random Spirit. We pay attention to balance but also want to maintain that rugged RPG character.

MeinMMO: In the early beta phase, many players were concerned about a possible power spike due to overly strong quest rewards and dungeon drops, which devalued green gear too quickly. How do you currently view the quality of quest rewards and loot?

Kris Zierhut: We experienced that firsthand. In the Halls of Thanen, I walked out with four blue quest rewards without winning a single loot roll. We realized that the dungeon quests were too generous, so we scaled them back. Now only the main dungeon quest rewards a blue item, while side quests yield green items or gold.

Furthermore, we removed several blue crafting recipes from the vendors in the capital cities and placed them as drops in the dungeons. We are also considering toning down some random green world drops before the launch. The drops from dungeon bosses will remain at blue quality to incentivize players to run instances multiple times.

We deliberately design items with compromises, so there are very few “perfect” items. Aidan has worked on items with situational effects, such as bonus damage against Worgen, Undead, or Dwarves or advantages when fighting in forests. We’ve given players a bit more bank space than in the original Classic, and we will address the bag space issue once more items come into play.

MeinMMO: This supports your planned horizontal progression in the endgame—having different gear for different situations.

Kris Zierhut: Exactly, especially with trinkets. Most trinkets are generally useful but exceptionally strong in certain situations, encouraging players to switch them situationally.