News · Reported ·

MeinMMO interview: layering comes first, the new raids sit between Molten Core and Blackwing Lair

During a tour of Forever at the end of the beta, MeinMMO spoke with Kris Zierhut and Aidan Moon. The key points: layering is the engineering team's top priority, dungeon and raid loot is missing from the client on purpose, and Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit are meant to be a little harder than Molten Core.

Type
Interview

The interview ran on 28 October across four pages and was recorded during the beta's farewell event. These are statements by Blizzard staff to a third party, so they are reported. The English version is marked as a machine translation and garbles names: "Depthgraves" means Barrow Deeps, "Halls of Thanen" means Hall of Thanes, "Riverlands" means Riverglades.

Tech and numbers

  • Layering: "Improving this experience is the highest priority for our engineering team." That includes keeping groups together on ships and zeppelins.
  • Factions in the beta: 51.7% Horde, 48.3% Alliance.
  • Loot and datamining: dungeon and raid drops are "completely" missing from the client's local item database. Anyone reading loot lists out of the client before launch won't find them.
  • Professions: over 600 new recipes, dropped by mobs, bosses and rares in dungeons.
  • Experience: less from dungeon mobs, more from quest rewards.

Raids

  • Difficulty: one difficulty at launch, plus early "hidden bosses or special unlock conditions". Hard modes like Ulduar's are possible later, "but not at launch".
  • Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit: "slightly harder than Molten Core, closer to Blackwing Lair".
  • Onyxia: largely the original Classic Onyxia, with minor surprises. Her Deep Breath now fires reliably, "regardless of DoTs".
  • Legendaries are planned for the first raid tiers. The first one is a guild-wide crafting effort.

Classes

  • New flavour quests, for example a moonlight quest for the druid's Cat Form, a weapon chain for shamans, and quests for Undead paladins.
  • Elemental shamans get further adjustments.
  • All 27 specs should be competitive. Hybrids sit roughly 5 to 10% behind, and rogues should lead single-target damage.
  • There is no War Mode like retail's; it does not fit Classic.

What this changes here

The raid pages said nothing about difficulty so far, and the Barrow Deeps page called it open. The placement between Molten Core and Blackwing Lair is reported, not announced, so it stands here as a news item rather than as a fact on the raid pages.

Last checked October 30, 2026.