Raid loot built to last

Principal Designer Kris Zierhut and Senior Encounter Designer Michael Nuthals told The Sun that Forever’s endgame spans three raid sizes — 10, 20 and 40 players — and that gearing up is meant to work across all three, with tier pieces obtainable regardless of which size a player runs.

The bigger change is pacing: Blizzard wants to slow the rate at which raid loot goes obsolete, so a raid stays worth returning to rather than becoming dead content once the next one opens. To that end, every boss’s loot table gets a chase item — a rare, low-drop-chance piece the designers described as comparable in power to Burning Crusade’s Dragonspine Trophy, strong enough to stay relevant well past a given raid’s own tier.

Why it matters: if raid loot is meant to hold up longer, older raids may keep pulling groups back instead of being cleared once and abandoned.