Blizzard explained the structure during the September 17 Forever Q&A. The developers said they want guilds to grow naturally from dungeon groups into 10-player raiding and then, if they want, into 20-player groups. Forever will not launch with Flex Raiding, and there is currently only one raid difficulty, which makes raid size itself one of the main ways Blizzard can create different types of endgame experiences.
That gives Forever a surprisingly clear identity.
Five people learn to play together.
Ten become a raid team.
Twenty become the larger guild challenge.
Forty becomes the evening where somebody inevitably asks whether anyone remembered to invite the remaining seven healers.
Every Tier Gets Both Raid Sizes
The important detail from the Q&A is the word every.
Blizzard is not simply launching with one 10-player raid and one 20-player raid because those happened to fit the first content update. The developers say every raid tier is intended to contain both formats.
That makes Forever fundamentally different from several older versions of WoW where raid sizes shifted depending on the expansion, difficulty or particular instance. A guild built around ten reliable players should not suddenly discover that the next tier expects twenty simply because Blizzard changed direction.
The launch structure already demonstrates the model. Barrow Deeps is the first 10-player raid, while Hyjal Summit is the first 20-player raid. Both open on December 9. Blizzard’s official Forever panel recap had already confirmed those sizes, but the Q&A now tells us they are the template for future tiers rather than a one-off arrangement.
10-Man Raids Are Not Supposed to Be Tiny Side Raids
Blizzard also said the 10-player raids will contain plenty of bosses.
That matters because smaller raid sizes have sometimes been used for short, specialized instances containing only one or two encounters. Forever appears to want 10-player raiding to stand on its own as a substantial progression path.
The goal is social as much as mechanical. Blizzard wants the transition from dungeon group to raid guild to feel manageable. Five people already running dungeons together only need to find another five players before they can begin raiding seriously.
That fits neatly with Forever’s wider emphasis on recognizable communities despite its realmless structure. Blizzard wants large populations without losing the feeling that the people around you are players you actually know.
A permanent 10-player raid path makes that considerably easier than asking every new guild to assemble twenty or forty people before seeing meaningful endgame content.
Forever Is Launching Without Flex Raiding
The tradeoff is that Forever will not initially use Retail WoW’s Flex system.
A 10-player raid wants ten players.
A 20-player raid wants twenty.
If Steve cannot make Tuesday because his boiler has developed opinions, the boss does not politely scale itself down to nineteen people.
That may sound old-fashioned, but it is deliberate. Forever’s broader design repeatedly chooses stronger social structures over maximum convenience. Rated PvP is absent at launch in favor of a simpler seasonal reward track, Horde and Alliance cannot group together, and Blizzard has also banned GDKP because it believes that system can eventually displace traditional guild organization.
Fixed raid sizes belong to the same philosophy.
You are supposed to build a group, maintain it and know who is coming next week.
There Is Only One Raid Difficulty
Forever is also avoiding the ladder of Normal, Heroic and Mythic difficulties found in Modern WoW.
Blizzard says there is currently a single difficulty for both dungeons and raids. An encounter is simply the encounter.
That should make progression considerably easier to understand. A guild does not clear Barrow Deeps on one difficulty and immediately begin climbing through another version of the same raid. Once the boss dies, it is dead.
The difficulty can instead come from which content the group chooses to attempt and from the raid size itself.
It also works particularly well with Blizzard’s decision to hide raid loot and encounter information until players actually discover it. Forever wants a boss to feel like one shared challenge rather than four parallel versions already dissected through months of testing.
40-Player Raids Are Still Here, Just Not Every Tier
Anyone worried that Forever was becoming suspiciously reasonable can relax.
Forty-player raids still exist.
Onyxia’s Lair returns as Forever’s first 40-player raid alongside Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit on December 9. But Blizzard says players should not expect a 40-player raid in every tier.
That distinction may be the smartest compromise in the entire raid structure.
Forty-player raids are memorable partly because forty-player raids are ridiculous. They create enormous social experiences, spectacular battles and guild stories that survive for years.
They also require forty people.
Making that the default Forever structure would turn guild recruitment into a profession.
Instead, Blizzard can use 40-player raids as occasional events. Onyxia can feel enormous precisely because next week’s normal progression raid does not require maintaining a small municipal population.
Blizzard Wants Old Raids to Stay Relevant Longer
Forever’s raid philosophy also extends to loot progression.
In another post-BlizzCon interview, Blizzard explained that it wants different raid sizes to remain useful rather than immediately becoming obsolete when the next piece of content appears. Tier pieces can appear across the raid structure, while individual bosses will have rare “chase” items intended to remain unusually desirable.
That fits the broader loot philosophy we covered in Forever’s massive Classic itemization overhaul. Blizzard is deliberately slowing the rate at which equipment becomes disposable.
If that works, a 10-player raid from an earlier tier may remain worth visiting even after a newer 20-player raid appears.
That is much closer to Vanilla’s overlapping endgame than Modern WoW’s seasonal replacement cycle.
Forever Finally Has a Clear Endgame Ladder
The result is surprisingly elegant.
Dungeons teach five people to work together.
Ten-player raids give smaller groups a serious progression path.
Twenty-player raids provide the larger guild challenge.
Forty-player raids occasionally turn the entire evening into organized chaos.
And Blizzard does not need four difficulty settings to make that hierarchy work.
Forever is changing a great deal about original WoW, but its raid structure may be one of the clearest examples of what the developers are trying to preserve.
Not forty players because 2004 did it.
Not Flex because Retail does it.
Just enough structure that the people standing beside you eventually become your raid team.
And ideally somebody who knows where Steve is.
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