World of Warcraft: Forever will let players choose between HD and SD character models with a single game-wide toggle, Associate Production Director Clay Stone said at the World of Warcraft: Forever What’s Next panel at BlizzCon 2026. The slide showed the same Dwarf side by side in both versions.
“Many players enjoy WoW’s newer HD character models, but many of us also feel that Classic’s art style is timeless and deserves to be preserved,” Stone said. “Which is why we’ve made it completely toggleable game-wide. Your character, the NPCs, other player characters, together, unified in either HD or SD.” Classic players see the original races in their original SD designs, and those who prefer the modern look pick HD. “You choose what you see.”
The second part concerns animation. Stone showed an HD Dwarf running with its modern animation set, then the same HD Dwarf attached to the classic animation set. “I am so proud to announce that we have gone back and painstakingly restored the classic animations you know and love across the game’s HD character models,” he said. “No bouncy dwarves in this game.”
Stone did not say whether the model choice and the animation choice are separate settings or one.
