World of Warcraft Forever’s Hardcore rule set will have its own Legacy challenges when it arrives, Kris Zierhut, principal game designer, said at the World of Warcraft Hardcore: What’s Next panel at BlizzCon 2026. Legacy gives account-wide points for challenges such as reaching level 25 on a class, which are spent on perks in Legacy trees.
Zierhut framed Legacy as a softer landing after a Hardcore death. “In the past, okay, I lost everything,” he said. Now a character that dies after reaching 25 still earns “a legacy point when you get to 25 on that class. So your next run is just a little bit better.” He cited more rested experience and more gathered resources, and compared it to roguelike games.
Host Nora Mills asked about the PvP side of Legacy. “There’s a bunch of legacy challenges about PvP, and you can’t really do PvP in hardcore,” Zierhut said. “What we are planning on doing when hardcore launches is there are a bunch of hardcore specific legacy challenges to do.” More could follow later, “where we add new challenges and new ways to get perks that are hardcore specific.”
The one-way rule announced earlier stays: mounts, pets, Legacy points, and other collections from outside Hardcore do not carry in, so Hardcore keeps “its pristine progression,” while anything earned in Hardcore goes with you to other rule sets. The panel did not list the Hardcore challenges or give a date for Hardcore.