WoW: Forever is not raising the level cap and marching through the Dark Portal, but that does not mean Outland and Northrend are gone for good. On today’s episode of Blizzard’s official WoW: Forever Podcast, the developers said both places are still on the table for the future. They were just as clear about one thing players should not expect: a fight with the Lich King.
The answer came near the end of Episode 7, a lore episode with Senior Game Designer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield and Lore Historian Lead Sean Copeland. The host asked how the team has handled Arthas, calling him the elephant in the room.
“It doesn’t mean we won’t ever go to Outland or we won’t ever go to Northrend”
The reply from the developers’ side of the table separated two ideas that players often treat as one: skipping The Burning Crusade as an expansion, and never visiting its continent.
Just because we said that we’re not going through the Dark Portal, as in raising level caps and doing Burning Crusade Outland, it doesn’t mean we won’t ever go to Outland or we won’t ever go to Northrend. Those places exist. They are part of the world.
There is no timeline attached. “Just because we’re not really in a hurry to do it right the second doesn’t mean we never will,” the answer continued. “We’ve got that door that we can open later if we want to.”
Arthas is “still glued to his chair” in Northrend, and Blizzard is in no hurry to get there
In WoW: Forever’s timeline, Arthas is where Warcraft III left him. He is “hanging out in Northrend,” in the developers’ words, “still glued to his chair,” frozen on the throne. The team is “not really in a super big hurry” to explore that part of the story.
What comes first is closer to home. The developers said they are using the story beats of original World of Warcraft as anchors, and named Naxxramas and the Scourge Invasion as one of them. “There’s a lot more that could be explored there at some point,” they said, “and so we’ll get there eventually.”
The Lich King is still “way too strong” for level 60 players
On fighting the Lich King himself, the answer reached back to an early BlizzCon, where a panel was asked the same question and told the crowd, “You can’t handle the Lich King at level 60. He’s way too strong for you.”
“That’s still true,” came the verdict for WoW: Forever. “I can’t see us fighting him. I don’t think we can take him yet.”
One of the guests agreed, remembering the Val’kyr that grab players and throw them off the platform in the original fight. “I don’t think we have the DPS to prevent people from getting dropped off the edge,” the developers joked back.
Characters from later expansions are already getting backstories in WoW: Forever
The same stretch of the episode explains how the game treats events from later expansions. WoW: Forever will sometimes nod to them without following them. The example given: characters players would meet in Cataclysm already appear in WoW: Forever, and the team has written them a backstory there.
The full episode runs an hour and 15 minutes and covers Riverglades, Skyborne lore, undead paladins and race and class combinations. Next week’s episode moves on to systems, classes and PvP.
