Blizzard is not finished showing us what is hiding inside WoW Forever’s version of Azeroth.
World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale and Associate Production Director Clay Stone are heading to PAX Aus next week, and Stone will use the event to give players an in-depth look at one of Forever’s new dungeons. This will not simply be another trailer or five-second montage. Blizzard says the presentation will explore the dungeon itself alongside the design philosophy, creative process and decisions that went into building new content for original Azeroth.
The presentation takes place during the PAX Aus opening Storytime keynote on October 9 in Australia. European viewers will need either coffee or questionable life choices: the stream begins at approximately 3:00 a.m. CEST on October 9.
Blizzard Is Promising an Actual Dungeon Deep Dive
According to Blizzard’s official PAX Aus announcement, Longdale will open the event with a keynote discussing her career, the evolution of Warcraft and the importance of MMO communities.
Clay Stone will then join her on stage to show one of the new Forever dungeons in considerably more detail.
Blizzard specifically promises a behind-the-scenes look at the team’s design philosophy, creative process and approach to building new gameplay experiences. That makes this particularly interesting because Forever’s new dungeons are not simply remastered Vanilla instances. They are attempts to create completely new content that still feels as though it belongs inside the Azeroth we first explored more than twenty years ago.
That is a difficult trick.
Make them too modern and they stop feeling like Classic. Make them too conservative and you have merely built another stone corridor containing five bosses and several dozen angry humanoids.
Forever Has Nine Completely New Dungeons
WoW Forever launches with nine new dungeons spread across the entire leveling journey.
We have already explored Hall of Thanes and Ruins of Lordaeron during the early beta levels, but the complete list stretches all the way to endgame. Later adventures include Excavation Site: Wetlands, City of Dalaran, The Drowned City, Krol’dok Stronghold, Alcaz Prison, Blackmaw Hold and Shaper’s Terrace.
Some of those places deliberately use locations that have existed on the original map for years without ever receiving the content they appeared to promise. Forever’s broader design philosophy is built around exactly that idea: finding doors, islands, ruins and suspicious bits of geography that players stared at in 2004 and finally asking what might have been behind them.
Our complete guide to everything changing in WoW Forever shows how much of the expansion is built around filling those gaps rather than replacing old Azeroth with another continent.
Could This Be the Mega Dungeon?
There is one obvious question.
We recently covered Josh Greenfield’s extremely unsubtle hint that Forever contains something resembling a Blackrock Depths-style mega dungeon. Asked whether players could expect another sprawling BRD-like experience, Greenfield simply replied: “Hold our beer(s).”
Blizzard has not said whether the dungeon being shown at PAX Aus is that same dungeon.
It would certainly make sense for a large, complicated instance to receive a dedicated development presentation, but anything beyond that is speculation. Blackmaw Hold remains one obvious candidate for the mega-dungeon because it is described as a Great Furbolg City and sits in the level 55–60 range, but Blizzard has still not confirmed that connection.
For now, all we know is that PAX Aus will provide a deeper look at one of the nine.
This Could Tell Us a Lot About Forever’s Dungeon Philosophy
The specific dungeon may actually be less important than what Stone says about building it.
Forever has already changed how Blizzard wants players to approach instanced content. Repeated dungeon mob grinding is being discouraged, dungeon quests matter more, and the developers appear interested in making instances feel like adventures rather than endlessly repeatable XP tunnels.
That philosophy becomes especially interesting when combined with Blizzard hiding thousands of Forever item stats from dataminers. New dungeons are being designed around exploration while their loot is deliberately kept secret until players actually find it.
For once, walking into a new Warcraft dungeon may involve not knowing every boss, shortcut and Best in Slot item before the loading screen disappears.
When to Watch the PAX Aus Forever Presentation
The opening keynote and Forever dungeon deep dive stream live on the Warcraft and PAX Twitch channels.
- Australia: October 9, 12:00–1:30 p.m. AEDT
- UK: October 9, 2:00–3:30 a.m. BST
- Central Europe: approximately October 9, 3:00–4:30 a.m. CEST
- US Pacific: October 8, 6:00–7:30 p.m. PDT
PAX Aus itself runs from October 9 through October 11, with Forever also playable on the show floor throughout the weekend.
So sometime in the middle of the Danish night, Blizzard is going to open another door in old Azeroth and explain why it built what is on the other side.
We will probably be awake.
This is Warcraft, after all. We have made worse decisions for considerably less interesting loot.
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