Graphics and Visuals

The look of World of Warcraft: Forever: "Azeroth as you remember it", volumetric fog and longer views, shadows and global illumination, new water, the Duskwood rebuild from the 1.12 client, HD or SD character models with restored Classic animations and visual presets, the graphics cards it needs, and the standard-definition Skyborne due in early 2027.

33:52 The graphics of World of Warcraft: Forever keep the original game's art style but render its world with new technology for fog, lighting and water. Announcing the rendering updates on the What's Next panel at BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard's associate production director made what he called "a bold controversial statement": WoW Classic's art style is timeless, so the focus "was not on changing the game art" but on environmental effects, such as rivers that now flow in Elwynn Forest, fog rolling into Duskwood at night and moonlight breaking through the trees of Ashenvale. He admitted the gameplay trailer "went pretty hard" and that not every zone will be at sunrise or sunset all the time. Players can also choose HD or SD character models, and Blizzard offers Modern and Classic visual presets. The differences from Classic and modern WoW are summarized on Forever vs Classic vs Modern WoW.

A worn cobbled path winds through a dim blue-green forest of huge trees, where a single broad beam of light breaks through the canopy into the mist. Pale carved stones and small glowing lamps stand on the mossy slopes, with purple-leaved trees on either side. — A shaft of blue light falls through the tall trees of Ashenvale onto a mossy forest path lined with pale carved stones and small lamps, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

Quick facts

Visual goal	"Azeroth as you remember it"
Guiding principle	Everything must be authentic
Art style	Vanilla models and textures kept; new assets made in the same style
Fog	Volumetric fog with its own wind in each zone, and longer views
Lighting	Shadows that follow the sun and moon, and global illumination
Hardware	The custom raytracer runs on minimum as well as recommended requirements
Graphics cards	AMD Graphics Core Next 1 (2012), NVIDIA Maxwell (2014), Intel Skylake (2015) or newer
Water	A new water shader, flowing rivers, foam and reflections
Reference	The original 1.12 client
Character models	HD or SD, applied game-wide; the Skyborne HD only until early 2027
Animations	Classic animations restored for HD models
Presets	Classic and Enhanced Experience Presets at first login (called Modern and Classic at BlizzCon)
Ray Traced Shadows	Removed from the beta on Oct 1, 2026, to return once it works properly; not back in the beta notes through Oct 15

Evolving a Timeless World

0:47 Blizzard explained the work on its "Evolving a Timeless World" panel on the second day of BlizzCon 2026 (the video was uploaded on Sep 14, 2026). It opened in Darkshire, in Duskwood, at around two in the morning as the original game shows it: iconic, but perhaps "not as dark or creepy as you remember". The presenter then showed the Duskwood of his memory in Forever, with the full moon lighting an eerie cold fog, graveyards full of skeletons, the warm glow of torches and silhouettes of creatures in the mist.

2:45 The panel was presented by Matt Heyman, a lead environment artist who has worked on WoW at Blizzard for 15 years and has played since launch in 2004, and Jason Scott, a lead software engineer on the graphics and engine team who joined about three years ago after more than 20 years in visual effects and animation for film and television. Scott showed his invitation to the original beta, dated May 2004.

Azeroth as you remember it

4:16 Blizzard's visual goal is "Azeroth as you remember it": the original Vanilla Azeroth combined with the version that lives in players' heads, shaped by experience, nostalgia and imagination.

4:59 The team had three kinds of places to handle: brand new zones such as Zephras Isle and The Riverglades, existing areas it was changing, such as the city of Dalaran, now fully present in the Alterac Mountains instead of hidden in its purple bubble, and around 40 existing zones. Heyman described the zones as "a cast of characters", each with its own color palette, mood and atmosphere. The challenge was to make new zones feel as if they had always been there while breathing new life into old ones; changes to existing zones are described on Updated Zones.

7:01 Because changing a cherished world carries risks, the team followed one guiding artistic principle: "Everything must be authentic", to the world, to the art style and above all to players' memories of Vanilla Azeroth. "We're not here to change things just for the sake of change," Heyman said.

7:56 His example was Durotar. With new tools, an artist might be tempted to give the zone a cool blue atmosphere, or a foggy green one, but neither is Durotar. The right approach is to lean into the fantasy the zone already has: an arid but vibrant landscape of red rock canyons, dry cracked earth and a hot, sweltering atmosphere.

In a sandy canyon of red rock, spiked wooden buildings with red tiled roofs and hide sails surround a tall central tower, with the sun a bright glow in the haze behind it and an airship with a purple balloon to its right. Palm trees, cacti, a bonfire and a few small figures stand on the sand in the foreground, where the buildings cast long shadows. — The sun glows through haze over Orgrimmar, lighting red-roofed buildings, a spiked central tower and an airship between red canyon walls, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

8:51 Authenticity mattered even more for new assets. WoW's art style has changed with every expansion, but for Forever the team kept the iconic Vanilla look, with "an edge and grittiness" that "just feels like Warcraft". In Heyman's summary, the result is a little old and a little new: assets that keep the timeless look, and rendering updates that bring the world to life.

Fog and longer views

11:52 Fog has always set the mood of WoW's zones, from gloomy Dustwallow Marsh to the light, airy mountains around Ironforge, and each zone had its own. At launch, Scott explained, distant fog also served performance: the game could only draw so far, so the limit was hidden behind a wall of fog, and sight lines, such as from the Barrens into Durotar and Azshara, had to be controlled.

12:44 The team no longer wanted to be bound by those technical limits. It wanted pockets of fog players could walk through, fog that could hide things, carry light and shadow, move, and hold dust and particles. All of that is possible with volumetric fog, and Forever replaces the original distant fog with it.

Seen from just above the water, rolling green waves catch a trail of light from a pale white disc in a blue and violet sky. On the misty horizon stand the faint silhouettes of towers, spires and trees, and on the right a dark rocky headland carries a stone building with a pagoda-like roof. — A pale sun or moon glitters on rolling green waves as distant towers and a rocky headland fade into violet haze, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

13:52 Wind now moves through the fog, sweeping dust across the Western Plaguelands, and each zone has its own wind. Sight lines have been opened up: standing in the Barrens, players can make out Durotar's land formations, see towards Azshara and even see Nordrassil on top of Mount Hyjal.

14:35 In the Wetlands, players can now see the backs of the mountains of Dun Morogh and, looking across the water from Menethil Harbor, make out the Violet Citadel of Dalaran in the Alterac Mountains. Scott called the new fog "one of the biggest visual changes in WoW's history".

15:17 Light shining through the fog produces rays of light, often called god rays, shown vividly in Ashenvale. They come from a process called scattering, and their size and shape depend on what blocks the light, such as trees and mountains.

Pink light from a low sun fills a thick fog over a calm sea dotted with pointed rocks, its reflection glittering on the water. Waves foam along a curving sandy beach, where two small figures stand by a campfire beneath dark, twisted trees. — A low sun glows pink through thick fog over the shore of Darkshore, where waves wash onto a sandy beach and two small figures stand by a campfire, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

Shadows and global illumination

16:24 Time-lapse footage of the Badlands showed the problem with the old lighting. As the sun and moon moved behind a mountain, their rays were not properly blocked by it, and a tower's shadows did not move at all. The positions of the sun and moon in the sky had never really lined up with the light cast into the world, and the new fog would have made that obvious. In Forever, light streams over the mountain at dawn and the tower and mountain cast proper shadows. A similar comparison in Mulgore showed tree shadows that now move with the sun; the team made the terrain and everything else in the world cast shadows and aligned the sun and moon more closely with the light they give.

19:17 More shadows risked a darker world. The original game filled shadows with flat ambient light, which in Elwynn Forest left, for example, the inside of a stable as bright as the open air. Forever calculates how light bounces around the world instead, a technique called global illumination: red light bounces off the stable roof onto the chapel walls, green light filters through leaves, and the stable is naturally darker inside.

A pale stone bridge leads toward a small island where a huge tree trunk, shaped at its base into a horned beast's face, holds a building with a glowing doorway and hanging lanterns. Domed white pavilions on columns stand on either side above still blue water, a rider crosses the bridge, and giant trees with purple and red leaves fill the dim violet scene. — Violet light filters through giant trees in Darnassus onto a lit building set in a tree trunk shaped like a beast's face, with white domed pavilions beside the water, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

22:37 The global illumination comes from a custom raytracer the team built on "a mix of existing ideas and new technologies". It was designed to run on Forever's recommended hardware requirements, but has been optimized to run on the minimum requirements as well, "so all WoW Forever players get to enjoy this".

Water

23:05 Water was the third area. Traveling down the Southfury River, Scott set out what the team wanted to improve: movement from waves, wind and flow; color, including how light hits water and its transparency; and reflections. Artists can now set the size of waves for the size and depth of a body of water, and the water reacts to each zone's own wind.

Rolling green waves glitter under a low, hazy sun. On the right, steep gray-green cliffs rise from the sea with a round stone tower on top, and further along the coast a slender tower and what look like ships' masts fade into the mist. — A low sun shines through haze over rolling green waves beside steep cliffs topped by a stone tower, with another tower faint in the mist, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

24:24 Rivers used to have only simple movement. In Forever they flow down their course, bend around rocks and land formations and create foam where they hit rocks, as shown in the Redridge Mountains. Artists have full control, even against gravity, since, Scott noted, Azeroth has some magical rivers that flow uphill.

25:19 The team wrote a completely new water shader, working from artists' paint-overs. It controls the density of water, how light is absorbed and how it changes the color of objects beneath the surface, so a body of water can be anything from murky to crystal clear.

A low sun blazes through thick golden haze, sending rays across a sea of rolling, translucent green water. Two dark, broken wrecks jut from the waves, the outlines of submerged beams show beneath the surface, and a shore of rock spires and palm trees fades into the glow with a huge tree faint on a distant hill. — Sunlight pours through golden haze onto clear green waves, where dark wrecks rise from the water and the shapes of sunken beams show beneath the surface, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

25:59 Water in the original game reflected almost nothing. In Forever it reflects the whole environment, changing with the time of day and moving with the ripples, and it reflects the sun and moon, which gives new sunrises, sunsets, moonrises and moonsets.

Rebuilding Duskwood

27:10 Heyman stressed that the new look "isn't a filter or a switch": the team recreated each zone's lighting and atmosphere from the ground up, using the original 1.12 Vanilla debug client as its "ground truth" and stepping through every time of day, from midnight and 2 a.m. to noon and evening, to match the original feel of every zone.

27:51 He then rebuilt Duskwood on stage. Starting from flat models and textures with no lighting or fog, he added moonlight, which looked dark and cool but was "not playable", then point lights on windows, torches and lanterns, then global illumination to lift the shadows.

28:58 Next came a base layer of fog, then light scattering so the moon lit the fog with god rays over Darkshire, noise to make the mist move, and ground fog. Bloom and color correction then went "beyond what I would call the WoW style", so the team pulled them back until the scene matched an authentic Duskwood.

30:56 The final step is the player's view: running around the zone to check that it works everywhere. Under the forest canopy there is less light and it gets darker, and out in the farms there is more fog. Heyman said the team took this approach for every zone, and that every time of day has its own look.

Under a green sky with the sun a pale glow behind the trees, a cobbled road winds past a grassy slope of wildflowers toward a village of dark, steep-roofed houses and a clock tower. Tall pines rise into the fog, and a few windows and a lamp post glow. — A green haze hangs over a village in Tirisfal Glades, where a cobbled road leads past a clock tower and dark timber houses under tall pines, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

HD and SD models and Classic animations

39:58 Character models are a player's choice. Many players enjoy WoW's newer HD character models, Blizzard said on the What's Next panel, but many feel Classic's art style deserves to be preserved, so the choice is "completely toggleable gamewide": the player's own character, NPCs and other players all appear together in either HD or SD.

40:40 Blizzard also restored the Classic animation set for the HD models. The panel showed an HD dwarf running with its modern animations, then the same model with Classic animations, which the team "painstakingly restored" across the game's HD character models. "No bouncy dwarves in this game."

Visual presets

7:44 When a player first logs in, a mode selector offers a preset of a handful of settings, any of which can be changed later; the Deep Dive panel's example was Classic Mode, which also switches off other players' transmog. Blizzard's recap of the What's Next panel lists Modern and Classic visual presets. Blizzard's New Player's Starter Guide of Oct 28, 2026 names them the Classic and Enhanced Experience Presets: Classic starts with Standard Definition models, quest points of interest, one bag and transmog off, and the Classic interface layout; Enhanced starts with High Definition models, those features on and a centralized layout. The models can also be set per character, and changed later in Options or at a Barbershop.

5:10 GameSpot, which played the BlizzCon demo, said the old character models are "a really easy toggle" and that the game asks at start-up whether a player wants old-school or new visuals across the board.

Graphics cards

Blizzard published Forever's graphics card requirement on Sep 17, 2026, the day the beta opened. From launch, cards based on older architectures "that fall well below the game's minimum hardware requirements" are no longer supported: a card must be based on AMD's Graphics Core Next 1 (2012), NVIDIA's Maxwell (2014) or Intel's Skylake (2015) or newer. The reason is the new look: it relies on a feature that reached graphics cards around 2012, "RGBA16F UAV support in compute shaders". Blizzard's examples of cards that qualify are the AMD Radeon HD 7850, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9xx series and 750 or 750 Ti, and Intel HD Graphics 530, all still "well below the minimum requirements for the game"; the Radeon HD 6950, the GeForce GTX 760, 770 and 780 and the GTX 8xxM series, and Intel HD Graphics 6000 are not supported. The vast majority of players, Blizzard says, already have a compatible card.

The Skyborne and standard definition

The HD or SD switch covers the original races only. Blizzard explained on Oct 7, 2026 that when it chose to offer the toggle "we focused on the pre-existing races", and that it agrees with testers that "the HD Skyborne can be jarring by contrast when placed in the same world as the SD models and world". Standard-definition Skyborne characters and Druid forms are in development, "arriving early 2027", and the HD Skyborne Druid forms have meanwhile been made less soft, with more detailed fur and adjusted saturation. See Skyborne.

Against a plain gray background, six low-polygon characters with long pointed ears and glowing eyes are shown from the chest up: a pale blue man with long mint green hair, a dark-skinned man with dark hair and red feathers, a fair woman with golden hair and white feathers, a fair man with spiky peach hair and red feathers, a blue-skinned woman with pale blue hair and feathers, and a dark-skinned woman with black hair streaked with red feathers. The women wear gold-trimmed halter tops. — Six standard-definition Skyborne, men and women with sky blue, fair and dark skin and feathers woven into their hair, in Blizzard's early work-in-progress image for World of Warcraft: Forever. Blizzard Entertainment

On a plain gray background, two four-legged creatures face each other. On the left a dark brown, shaggy beast with a pale swirl on its shoulder, long pointed ears and a purple snout bares yellow teeth. On the right a stocky creature covered in blue and white feathers, with dark curved horns, a hooked black beak, a glowing yellow eye and a turquoise swirl on its flank, crouches on dark claws. — A Skyborne Druid form, a blue feathered beast with a hooked beak, faces a snarling dark-furred beast with a purple snout, in Blizzard's example of how it is revisiting the HD Skyborne Druid forms of World of Warcraft: Forever. Blizzard Entertainment

In the beta

The beta has kept refining the look. The build of Oct 1 improved rain visibility and removed the "Ray Traced Shadows" option, which Blizzard says will return once it works properly, and the Sep 24 build had removed a setting that could switch off fog in an unintended way. Early in the beta Blizzard also teased increased weather effects for the test. Xaryu, on the first WoW: Forever Podcast on Sep 24, said he kept stopping to look at the lighting, the light shining through the trees and the water.

The beta build of Oct 15, 2026, the last in Blizzard's development notes, fixed a water display issue and other display artifacts on Mac, a memory leak that made performance degrade gradually for some players, and the Undercity canal ooze, which glowed much brighter than intended; casters' precast animations, which sometimes did not play, were fixed too. Blizzard's development notes through that build do not say "Ray Traced Shadows" is back. The beta closed on Oct 23, 2026, so what launches on Nov 4 is the next look; character creation opens on Oct 27.

How players and press saw it

1:47 GameSpot played with the HD models on and said that, with the lighting improvements, Forever "doesn't look like WoW Classic. It looks like a new game." It was particularly impressed by the lighting and water effects in the demo's open-air troll dungeon (Blizzard put the Drowned City on the show floor), which it said still had a classic feel. Game Informer's announcement article listed new lighting and global illumination, volumetric particle effects, a new water renderer and real-time shadows, and Icy Veins published before and after comparisons of Ashenvale and Theramore.

From low on the water, dark green waves roll toward wooden piers and a moored ship whose prow is carved as a great bird's head, with another ship's orange sails at the right edge. Beyond the docks, a pale stone city of battlements and towers climbs toward a tall white spire, beside a blue-roofed dock building and brown hills under a blue sky. — Choppy green water rolls toward wooden docks, a ship with a carved bird's-head prow and a walled stone city rising to a tall white spire, in an official World of Warcraft: Forever press screenshot. Blizzard Entertainment

19:14 MadSeasonShow read the graphics options as largely client-side: old or new models and old or new animations can be mixed, such as new models with old animations. He understood, without being sure, that the environment updates apply game-wide and cannot be switched off.

32:32 Xaryu, watching the panel live in a video uploaded on Sep 14, 2026, repeatedly asked for a toggle during the fog segment and praised the water. He ended as "a classic enjoyer" who still wanted a toggle, but admitted it "looks pretty darn good".

Frequently asked questions

Does Forever change the art style? Blizzard says no: the Vanilla models, textures and art style stay, and new assets are made to match. The changes are to rendering: fog, lighting, shadows and water.

Can I play with the original character models? Yes. HD or SD models can be chosen game-wide, and Classic animations have been restored for the HD models.

Will the new lighting run on older PCs? Blizzard says its global illumination raytracer runs on the minimum hardware requirements as well as the recommended ones. The graphics card must be an AMD Graphics Core Next 1, NVIDIA Maxwell or Intel Skylake generation or newer.

Can the Skyborne use standard-definition models? Not at launch. Blizzard says standard-definition Skyborne models arrive in early 2027.

Can the new environment effects be turned off? Blizzard's sources read for this page do not say. It offers Modern and Classic visual presets, and MadSeasonShow understood the environment updates to be game-wide.

Does WoW Forever have ray tracing? Its global illumination uses a custom raytracer that Blizzard says runs on the minimum requirements. The separate "Ray Traced Shadows" option was taken out of the beta on Oct 1, 2026 until it works properly, and the beta notes through Oct 15 do not bring it back.

Does WoW Forever run on a Mac? Yes. The Oct 15, 2026 beta build fixed a water display issue and other display artifacts on Mac.

Sources

New Player's Starter Guide: Welcome to World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 28, 2026
World of Warcraft: Forever GPU Requirements, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 17, 2026
World of Warcraft: Forever- The Future of Skyborne Visual Updates, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 7, 2026
WoW Forever Beta Development Notes - Updated October 15 and Increased Weather Effects, Blizzard Entertainment (Kaivax), World of Warcraft forums, Sep 23 to Oct 15, 2026 (read Oct 26, 2026)
Unpacking Beta Launch ft. @Xaryu | Episode 1 - The WoW: Forever Podcast, World of Warcraft, Sep 24, 2026 (video)
World of Warcraft: Forever What's Next Panel Recap, Blizzard Entertainment, September 2026
World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive Panel Recap, Blizzard Entertainment, September 2026
BlizzCon 2026 - World of Warcraft: Forever - Evolving a Timeless World, MMO-Champion, Sep 13, 2026
WoW Forever Introduces Massive Graphics Changes, Icy Veins (Tharid), September 2026
Blizzard Announces World Of Warcraft: Forever, Expanding Vanilla WoW With New Zones, Raids, 1,000 New Quests, Game Informer (Alex Van Aken), Sep 12, 2026
World of Warcraft: Forever - Evolving a Timeless World | BlizzCon 2026, World of Warcraft, Sep 14, 2026 (video)
World of Warcraft: Forever - What's Next Panel | BlizzCon 2026, World of Warcraft, Sep 13, 2026 (video)
World of Warcraft: Forever - Deep Dive | BlizzCon 2026, World of Warcraft, Sep 13, 2026 (video)
WoW Forever Preview Impressions | Blizzcon 2026, GameSpot, Sep 14, 2026 (video)
World of Warcraft: Forever - Everything We Know, MadSeasonShow, Sep 14, 2026 (video)
WoW Forever Just Got a COMPLETE Graphics Overhaul, Xaryu, Sep 14, 2026 (video)

Moments

World of Warcraft: Forever - What's Next Panel | BlizzCon 2026

World of Warcraft

33:52 The graphics of World of Warcraft: Forever keep the original game's art style but render its world with new technology…
39:58 Character models are a player's choice. Many players enjoy WoW's newer HD character models, Blizzard said on the…
40:40 Blizzard also restored the Classic animation set for the HD models. The panel showed an HD dwarf running with its…

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

World of Warcraft

0:47 Blizzard explained the work on its "Evolving a Timeless World" panel on the second day of BlizzCon 2026 (the video was…
2:45 The panel was presented by Matt Heyman, a lead environment artist who has worked on WoW at Blizzard for 15 years and…
4:16 Blizzard's visual goal is "Azeroth as you remember it": the original Vanilla Azeroth combined with the version that…
4:59 The team had three kinds of places to handle: brand new zones such as Zephras Isle and The Riverglades, existing areas…
7:01 Because changing a cherished world carries risks, the team followed one guiding artistic principle: "Everything must…
7:56 His example was Durotar. With new tools, an artist might be tempted to give the zone a cool blue atmosphere, or a…
8:51 Authenticity mattered even more for new assets. WoW's art style has changed with every expansion, but for Forever the…
11:52 Fog has always set the mood of WoW's zones, from gloomy Dustwallow Marsh to the light, airy mountains around…
12:44 The team no longer wanted to be bound by those technical limits. It wanted pockets of fog players could walk through…
13:52 Wind now moves through the fog, sweeping dust across the Western Plaguelands, and each zone has its own wind. Sight…
14:35 In the Wetlands, players can now see the backs of the mountains of Dun Morogh and, looking across the water from…
15:17 Light shining through the fog produces rays of light, often called god rays, shown vividly in Ashenvale. They come…
16:24 Time-lapse footage of the Badlands showed the problem with the old lighting. As the sun and moon moved behind a…
19:17 More shadows risked a darker world. The original game filled shadows with flat ambient light, which in Elwynn Forest…
22:37 The global illumination comes from a custom raytracer the team built on "a mix of existing ideas and new…
23:05 Water was the third area. Traveling down the Southfury River, Scott set out what the team wanted to improve: movement…
24:24 Rivers used to have only simple movement. In Forever they flow down their course, bend around rocks and land…
25:19 The team wrote a completely new water shader, working from artists' paint-overs. It controls the density of water, how…
25:59 Water in the original game reflected almost nothing. In Forever it reflects the whole environment, changing with the…
27:10 Heyman stressed that the new look "isn't a filter or a switch": the team recreated each zone's lighting and atmosphere…
27:51 He then rebuilt Duskwood on stage. Starting from flat models and textures with no lighting or fog, he added moonlight…
28:58 Next came a base layer of fog, then light scattering so the moon lit the fog with god rays over Darkshire, noise to…
30:56 The final step is the player's view: running around the zone to check that it works everywhere. Under the forest…

World of Warcraft: Forever - Deep Dive | BlizzCon 2026

World of Warcraft

7:44 When a player first logs in, a mode selector offers a preset of a handful of settings, any of which can be changed…

WoW Forever Preview Impressions | Blizzcon 2026

GameSpot

5:10 GameSpot, which played the BlizzCon demo, said the old character models are "a really easy toggle" and that the game…
1:47 GameSpot played with the HD models on and said that, with the lighting improvements, Forever "doesn't look like WoW…