How hard are WoW: Forever raids?

Beer and pretzels: the difficulty Blizzard is aiming for

"We talk a lot about beer and pretzels on the encounter team," Lead Encounter Designer Michael Nuthals said on the official WoW: Forever Podcast on 22 October. The idea is a raid you bring your friends to and have a good time with. There may be something to work out, such as the order to kill a boss's adds, but a group that prepared should be able to win.

Nuthals spelled out what preparing means: you've ground the pre-raid dungeons, made potions, maybe a flask or two. Then "we should feel like we can come in prepared, execute a challenge and have success and find some new epics."

It's a different target from retail. Guest Meeix, who works on retail esports, called comparing the two "apples to bananas": Forever raids are about doing the content with people you like, not competing.

One mistake kills you, not the raid

Another developer described the classic standard Forever is copying. A mechanic is simple, and if you ignore it, you die: Onyxia's Deep Breath, or the bomb you have to carry away from the raid in Molten Core. It doesn't wipe the raid. You lie on the floor while everyone laughs at you for three or four minutes.

Nuthals said each boss gets a complexity budget. One hard mechanic can carry a fight, as long as the whole encounter asks the right amount of the players. Every boss goes from a pitch to a build to play tests with Blizzard's QA team, and back again when testers find a mechanic boring or too much. The aim stays approachable and familiar, not overcomplicated.

Nuthals also designs around class buttons: where a raid can use a decurse or crowd control, so that every button the class team made has a reason to be pressed.

Do you need consumables, world buffs or voice chat?

No, but they help. Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield called Classic and Forever games "you overprepare for". Modern WoW gives you a guardian elixir, a battle elixir or a flask. In Forever you can stack many more. "Do you need them to kill the boss? No. But it's pretty cool to smash it when you do." World buffs are a different story: Blizzard has already removed traditional world buffs from Forever raids.

Voice chat isn't required either. The designers pointed to the ping system, carried over from the modern game's code, for marking an add to attack, or not to attack. Another developer added text-to-speech and speech-to-text as accessibility tools, so a player who can't use voice can still raid, though talking to your group is still the easier way.

Why the first weeks will feel harder

Every Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit boss is new, and the beta stopped at level 30, so no player has fought one. A developer recalled Season of Discovery: players called its new raids hard. Some were overtuned. Others felt hard because players were used to knowing everything in advance.

Expect voice chat to matter more at the start, while groups work out the fights, and less once they're solved. Your guild's strategy may end up quite different from another guild's.

Raid sizes won't move around either. Nuthals said Blizzard means to keep adding 10- and 20-player raids patch after patch, so a 10-player group can always plan around content of its size, and two of them can join up for the 20.

How to get your group ready

Wowdee's raid preparation is planned for the app, and will list the supplies and dungeon runs your group still needs before raid night.

1. Gear through the new dungeons before 9 December. Nuthals' idea of a prepared raid starts with pre-raid dungeon grinding.
2. Bring potions and a flask or two. You won't need a full stack.
3. Know your crowd control and dispels. Bosses are built to give them a job.
4. Agree on voice or pings before the first pull, and use both while the fights are new.
5. Learn the one mechanic that kills you, so you're not the one on the floor.