- World of Warcraft: Forever won't receive any new races from retail World of Warcraft
- Blizzard says its "main focus" is to "build off the foundational lore of Warcraft," since Forever exists in its own "continuity"
- It confirms that the stakes won't be as high as retail WoW to begin with, as "You aren’t THE hero in WoW: Forever, you are just A hero"
Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that it doesn't plan to add any modern World of Warcraft races to World of Warcraft: Forever, since the game exists in its own timeline.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where the WoW: Forever team discussed adding the controversial dual-faction Skyborne race and its plans for the game's future, Blizzard said it doesn't plan to reintroduce any races from Azeroth-based expansions, such as Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, or Midnight.
"We have no plans to add races from WoW’s expansions at this time," Blizzard said, meaning fans shouldn't expect new races like Vulpera, Goblins, or Haranir.
And Blizzard's reasoning for avoiding the newer additions to retail WoW? It explained that it wants to build on the original Warcraft game because WoW: Forever essentially exists within its own timeline.
"Our main focus for the game is to build off the foundational lore of Warcraft," it said. "This means first and foremost the RTS [real-time strategy ] games, and we’ve hit on this right from the start with our content that picks up after the events of the new Warcraft 3: Forsaken Kingdom campaign.
"One of the liberating things about this game existing in its own continuity is that we can forge our own path forward and tell stories that serve the world of WoW: Forever first and foremost. It wouldn’t be fair to WoW: Forever and the players who want to see where this world is going for us to spend a ton of time trying to further flesh stories that have already been told extensively in the modern game."
Blizzard added that it plans to "keep our stories very grounded," explaining that while the stakes of modern WoW are "so vast" and "have that gravity and weight because of how far our characters have gone in that world," WoW: Forever will start "in a very different place."
"We may be a part of larger narratives and events, but how we interact with those narratives will be more subtle and grounded, just as was the case in original WoW," the team said, emphasising that "You aren’t THE hero in WoW: Forever, you are just A hero."
It continued, teasing, "That isn’t to say we’ll never go to some of the places that came in later WoW expansions, but we are fairly committed at this time to doing the WoW: Forever version of those places, not simply retreading the versions of these places that we’ve already seen."
Elsewhere in the same interview, Blizzard confirmed that it's actively working to combat real-money trading (RMT) in WoW: Forever.
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