WoW Forever Gear System: Blizzard Ends Item Creep [Confirmed]

Blizzard Entertainment vice president and senior game director Ion Hazzikostas officially confirmed to PC Gamer that World of Warcraft: Forever will retain a permanent level-60 cap and introduce horizontal raid progression designed to ensure existing endgame gear never becomes obsolete during future content phases. According to verified reports from PC Gamer, Blizzard is actively repudiating the steep exponential stat inflation seen in modern retail expansions like Midnight. In retail iterations, seasonal resets routinely invalidate hard-earned gear, forcing recurring stat squishes to keep mathematical scaling within reasonable limits. In contrast, WoW Forever embraces the philosophy of original Classic raiding, where stepping up from Blackwing Lair to Ahn'Qiraj provided subtle, granular stat increases rather than exponential multiplier jumps. Under this horizontal design model, C'Thun drops complement rather than completely replace tier-two armaments, ensuring foundational dungeons and legacy 40-player raids preserve their strategic relevance. Players seeking structured item progression will find parallels in our [Order of the Sinking Star Heroes and Stones West [Full Guide]](/news/order-of-sinking-star-walkthrough) breakdown. Hazzikostas emphasized that giving players persistent long-term value for their raid investments restores the core social fabric and prestige of old-school MMO raiding without trivializing earlier tier milestones.