World of Warcraft: Forever - Evolving a Timeless World | BlizzCon 2026

Summary

At BlizzCon, Blizzard's rendering team said WoW Forever swaps distant fog for volumetric fog and adds global illumination that runs on minimum hardware. The talk was given by Matt Haymon and Jason Scott.

Highlights

• Blizzard says every change had to stay authentic to the original look of each zone.
• Volumetric fog replaces the old distance fog, so far-off lands such as Durotar, Azshara and Mount Hyjal's world tree show from the Barrens.
• The sun and moon now match the light cast in the world, so terrain and buildings cast proper shadows.
• A custom ray-traced global illumination system fills shadows with bounced light and runs on minimum hardware.
• Water is rewritten with flowing rivers and reflections of the sky, sun and moon.
• The team rebuilt each zone's lighting against the original 1.12 client at every time of day rather than applying a filter.