With World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard had to reconnect with what made WoW great in the first place

A lot of the team had to "unlearn" design habits they picked over the years.

By Igor Bonifacic Nov. 3, 2026 12:00 pm EST Blizzard Add Engadget on Google: Google Discover

After 13 years at Blizzard, Michael Nuthals faces what might just be the toughest challenge of his career yet: working on a familiar but different and highly anticipated version of World of Warcraft. As lead encounter designer, he's part of the team working on WoW: Forever. Announced at BlizzCon earlier this year, Forever is a sort of remaster of WoW designed to expand on the game's "Classic" era. It takes players back to Azeroth, the setting of the original 2004 game, before Blizzard over the course of 11 expansions took the game in the direction that it did. In the process, it imagines a "what if" scenario.