World of Warcraft: Forever is bringing Azeroth back to life, "as it lives in our heads", without losing what made it special
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When we return to a game after years away, we tend to remember it as bigger and more vivid than it ever looked on screen. The forests, the mountains, and the little settlements along the way to somewhere more exciting all grow a little in memory. Blizzard Entertainment is building World of Warcraft: Forever around that effect.
WoW: Forever, the new version of the iconic MMORPG, released today, takes players back to the original Azeroth, with reworked environments, lighting and atmosphere. It won’t get a full visual overhaul or take on the look of the recent expansions. Blizzard wants it to feel like coming home to a place that’s more alive. That's a tricky task, given that World of Warcraft is one of the defining video game art styles many look to and love.
“We believe WoW Classic’s art style is timeless,” says Matt Heyman, lead environment artist at Blizzard Entertainment. “Which is why our focus was not on changing the game art but on small ways we could push specifically things like the environmental effects. Such as the way rivers now flow in Elwynn Forest, or the way the fog rolls in the Duskwood at night. Or the way the moonlight breaks through the leaves in the Ashenvale. It’s the same original Azeroth that players fell in love with all those years ago, with just a few small but powerful effects and updates to make it more immersive than ever.”
The fine balance of WoW: Forever
World of Warcraft: Forever is designed as a permanent home alongside modern and Classic WoW. It returns players to the original continents and the level 1-60 journey while adding new stories and experiences, and Blizzard says it will keep expanding this version of Azeroth over time.
For this unique release, the team needed to build something new without disturbing the memories players already hold. The work covers around 40 existing zones, new locations such as Zephras Isle, home of the new Skyborne race, and changes to familiar places including Dalaran.
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“We asked ourselves, ‘What does it mean to evolve a timeless world?’” says Heyman. “We wanted to take that original ‘Vanilla’ version of Azeroth and combine it with the version that lives in our heads. Where our experiences, nostalgia and imagination all shape the ways we remember it.”
Each zone has its own colour palette, mood and atmosphere. “We often talk about the world as the main character of World of Warcraft, but I like to imagine it as a cast of characters,” he says.
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Reanimating memories in World of Warcraft
Duskwood shows the problem well. Players remember a gloomy forest full of spiders, wolves, undead and skeletons, with the Night Watch patrolling Darkshire by torchlight. “However, while it’s an awesome and iconic zone, it’s probably not as dark and creepy as people remember,” says Heyman.
For WoW: Forever, the team is leaning into the remembered version, with moonlight cutting through the branches around Darkshire and fog drifting through the graveyards.
New tools can tempt artists to change things just because they can, so Blizzard has set a guiding rule. “Changing a world that players have cherished for such a long time has risks. We approach it carefully and responsibly,” Heyman explains. “We developed a central artistic principle that everything must be authentic. That’s both authentic to our world but, most importantly, authentic to the memories we have of Azeroth when the journey began in WoW.”
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He points to Durotar, the arid, vibrant homeland of the Orcs. A cool blue atmosphere would look natural and realistic there, he says, but it wouldn’t be authentic. “The correct approach is to go in with purpose and to lean in and push the fantasy that the region already has.”
Giving Azeroth more atmosphere
Most of the changes sit in the rendering technology, according to lead software engineer Jason Scott, who describes work on fog, lighting and water. Fog has been part of WoW’s look since the beginning, creating depth and gloomy vistas. Blizzard has replaced the original distant fog with volumetric technology, which gives artists much more control.
“We can control fog like we never have before,” says Scott. “Now we can increase the sense of creepiness in Dustwallow Marsh, and we can see the effect of wind in a zone. The texture of dust as it sweeps across plains.” It also extends sightlines across the map, which adds to the sense of scale.
Lighting has changed too. Until now, the sun and moons didn’t cast light into the world, a gap that would have been obvious once volumetric fog went in. Light now shines through the fog in a process called scattering, with the size and shape of the rays set by whatever blocks it, whether trees, mountains or other terrain.
“Now in WoW: Forever, when the sun comes up at dawn, there are streams of light that now cascade down the mountains, and we created similar rays for the moons as well,” says Scott.
To make that work, the team had to be sure the world properly blocked light and that the sun and moons lined up with the illumination on the ground. “There are still creative and artistic choices that we make, but it altogether makes the world feel much more alive,” he adds.
How Blizzard is making water feel like water
Rivers used to move simply, without resembling a river. For Forever, Scott says, the team studied how water moves, how wind and waves affect its surface, and how light interacts with its colour, transparency, and reflections. Rivers now follow their course, bend around rocks and produce foam where they hit them. Artists have full control over the effects, so different kinds of water can be tuned to look the way the team wants.
The models and textures remain the foundation of Warcraft’s look, even though the style has shifted with each expansion. Heyman says Forever is deliberately holding on to the character of the original assets.
“There’s an edge and grittiness to the way those assets look, and it just feels like Warcraft,” he says. “It’s a little bit of old, and a little bit of new. It’s maintaining that timeless iconic look matched with new rendering updates that breathe life into the world.”
World of Warcraft: Forever is available from today on Mac and PC (Pacific Time).