At BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard said World of Warcraft: Forever, its new Classic+-style project, will ship with official controller support built right into the game. For WoW, that’s a pretty major quality-of-life upgrade.
Forever is already running in alpha on the show floor. Players can try the Skyborne Elves 1-10 starting experience there, though the dungeon playtest doesn’t include controller support right now, and switching over is immediate: press any button on a connected pad and the game swaps inputs on the spot.
Blizzard also floated a cautious “never say never” on bringing similar support to World of Warcraft: Midnight, but it’s not promising anything yet. Associate Game Director Paul Kubit said retail WoW is a much tougher fit because of its heavier keybind load and the sheer number of abilities players juggle, especially compared with Forever’s reworked level-60 setup.
Forever isn’t just a nostalgia server with the old map left intact. It’s a remix of Azeroth, with reshaped world , new zones, fresh questlines, and the new Skyborne Elves race. That gives Blizzard more room to build a cleaner control scheme, too. The studio says accessibility is part of the reason for the change, and if you’ve been hoping for plug-and-play controller support instead of relying on community tools like ConsolePort on Steam Deck, Forever suddenly looks a lot more appealing because it finally makes pad support official.
World of Warcraft: Forever launches on PC on November 4, 2026. Blizzard says more testing will happen after BlizzCon, and it still hasn’t announced any plans for Xbox.
Author: Emmanuel Pina
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