Developer Blizzard's new version of its flagship MMORPG, World of Warcraft: Forever, will receive content updates "every four months," avoiding modern WoW's somewhat controversial eight-week patch cycle.
In an interview with IGN, Forever principal game designer Kris Zierhut revealed the content schedule plan and explained Blizzard's reasoning. He said WoW Classic's Season of Discovery received updates "way too fast," every 8-10 weeks.
Since the launch of WoW's Dragonflight expansion in 2022, an eight-week update schedule is also what modern WoW operates on. Its more frequent patch schedule means there's always something new to do, but has been criticized by some players due to the buggy nature of recent updates and lackluster content.
On the other hand, some older expansions, like Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands, saw content droughts that lasted six months or more, leaving players hungry for something new to do. Forever will split the difference.
"We're fairly convinced the correct [update] rate is something closer to once every four months or 17 weeks or three times a year," Zierhut said.
Just because major updates will be coming every four or so months doesn't mean there won't be anything new to do between patches. Zierhut said some content will unlock partway through those four-month patch cycles.
"It's not just patch day comes [around], here's a content fire hose, and now we're silent for four months," he said. "A lot of that is, 'Hey, there's a time event calendar that gradually unlocks things and opens them up over those four months' to give things a little bit more life instead of all at once."
According to a Forever content roadmap released during BlizzCon 2026, the latest version of Blizzard's MMORPG will receive its first major update in Spring 2027. That update will add new raids, dungeons, and quests, and mark the start of a new PvP season. Another major update is slated for Summer 2027 and will add yet another new raid, revamp an existing raid from WoW Classic, add two additional dungeons, see a new legendary item and quest chain, and introduce updates to the game's professions and its new Legacy system.
WoW: Forever launches on November 4, but you can technically go ahead and make your character now if you paid for the game's new playable race. With less than a week before launch, Blizzard has been busy announcing changes and improvements ahead of its release, with major changes to racial abilities, improvements to layering, and the addition of a new server option.