Blizzard Entertainment has put a class survey in front of select players through the Battle.net launcher, and the list of 11 concepts it contains is already the biggest talking point in the World of Warcraft: Forever community this week. Gaming outlet virus.hr was among the first to report the contents, and other sites have since picked up the same list, with Bard and Witch drawing the most attention from players scrolling through patch forums and Discord servers on October 3, 2026.
Nothing here is a confirmed addition. Blizzard has not announced a new class, has not set a release window, and has not issued a statement about the survey beyond what players who received it have shared. What exists right now is a questionnaire, reportedly testing player appetite for new class concepts against each other, long before any of them would reach a public test realm. That distinction matters, and it’s the first thing to get right before digging into what the list actually says.
What the WoW: Forever Survey Actually Shows
According to the reporting, Blizzard sent a survey through the Battle.net launcher to a limited set of players, asking them to react to a slate of possible future classes for World of Warcraft: Forever. The survey reportedly listed 11 concepts: Bard, Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Illusionist, Monk, Necromancer, a hero-style option described under the names Metalborn, Runemaster, and Runeknight, San’layn, Tinker, Warden, and Witch. Three of those names (Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Monk) are already playable classes in the live game, so their presence on a forward-looking survey likely points to a different framing, possibly gauging interest in a rebuilt version of those kits for a new game, rather than a brand-new slot on the character creation screen.
Illusionist, Necromancer, San’layn, Tinker, Warden, and the Metalborn/Runemaster/Runeknight concept have never shipped as playable classes in WoW, though several have circulated as community wishlist items for over a decade. Necromancer and Tinker in particular have been requested in player surveys going back to the original game’s beta. Their reappearance here suggests Blizzard is still testing the same wishlist items it has tested before, just inside a new project wrapper.
The Bard Class: A Support Caster Built on Songs
Of the 11 options, Bard is getting the loudest reaction, and the survey description explains why. Reports describe the Bard as a support and healing class that uses songs to buff allies and weaken enemies, a role template familiar to anyone who has played Final Fantasy XIV’s Bard job or Guild Wars 2’s Mesmer-adjacent support kits. For a 20-year-old MMO that has leaned almost entirely on traditional healer archetypes (priest, druid, paladin, shaman, monk, evoker), a music-based support class would be a genuine departure in presentation, even if the underlying buff-and-debuff mechanics aren’t new to the genre.
Player demand for a Bard has shown up in WoW community surveys for years, largely because its absence stands out next to other major MMOs that already offer one. Whether that demand is strong enough to survive Blizzard’s internal pitch process is a separate question. A class appearing in a survey and a class getting developer buy-in are two different stages, and WoW’s own history includes several concepts that tested well with players but never left the drawing board.
The Witch Class: Cauldrons, Blood Golems, and Cloth DPS
The Witch concept reads differently from Bard. Reports describe it as a ranged damage and support class wearing cloth armor, built around a cauldron mechanic that buffs allies standing near it and a blood golem summon that reportedly costs the Witch some of their own health to call out. That health-cost mechanic is notable because WoW has generally avoided player-resource-as-cast-cost designs outside of a handful of niche talents, so if it ships as described, it would be one of the more mechanically distinct kits the game has tried in years.
Cloth-wearing ranged classes already crowd WoW’s roster (mage, warlock, priest), so a Witch would need a clearly different fantasy to avoid feeling redundant. The cauldron-and-sacrifice framing reported here does suggest Blizzard is trying to separate it from existing warlock and mage kits, leaning into a more folk-horror, hex-casting identity than either of those classes currently offers.
The Other Nine Concepts on Blizzard’s List
Bard and Witch are getting headlines, but the rest of the list says just as much about where Blizzard’s design team might be looking. San’layn, the blood-elf-adjacent vampiric faction introduced as a Death Knight hero talent tree in The War Within, appearing as its own survey entry suggests Blizzard may be testing whether that identity deserves a full class rather than a specialization. Metalborn, Runemaster, and Runeknight being grouped as one concept points to an early-stage idea still being named internally, likely a rune- or metal-based fighter in the Death Knight or Warrior mold.
Tinker has been one of the most requested non-existent classes in WoW’s history, tied to the goblin and gnome engineering fantasy and teased in cinematics for over a decade without a release. Warden draws on the night elf prison-keeper lore seeded throughout Warcraft III and WoW’s elf questlines. Illusionist is the most open-ended name on the list, without a clear existing lore tie in the reporting, which makes it the hardest of the 11 to predict a kit for. None of this confirms development work is underway on any of them. A survey tests appetite. It doesn’t greenlight a roadmap.
Survey Players, Not Survey Says: Why Confirmation Still Matters
It’s worth separating two very different kinds of news: a studio announcing a feature, and a studio testing a question. This is the second kind. No class on this list has a release date, a price tag, or a developer commitment attached to it in any of the current reporting. Blizzard has not confirmed, denied, or commented on the survey’s contents as of this writing. That silence is normal. Blizzard rarely addresses leaked surveys directly, preferring to let its own announcement cadence, usually tied to a BlizzCon-style showcase or a dedicated developer update, carry the news when it’s ready.
Readers should treat every name on this list as a possibility, not a promise. The gap between “players were asked about this” and “this is shipping” has swallowed plenty of WoW community hype cycles before, and the smart read here is cautious interest rather than certainty.
A Short History of New Classes in World of Warcraft
WoW has added exactly four new classes since its 2004 launch, each tied to a specific expansion and each announced well ahead of release rather than surfacing first through a leaked survey. Death Knight launched with Wrath of the Lich King in 2008, giving players a hero class built around the game’s most prominent villain. Monk arrived with Mists of Pandaria in 2012, introducing a martial-arts fighter that could tank, heal, or deal damage. Demon Hunter shipped with Legion in 2016, built on a decade of player requests tied to the Illidan Stormrage storyline. Evoker, the most recent addition, launched with Dragonflight in 2022, bringing a dragon-themed class capable of switching between healing and damage roles.
That four-class, six-expansion pace (roughly one new class every four to five years) gives useful context for how rare a genuine class addition actually is in this game. It also explains why a survey listing 11 potential concepts at once has generated so much discussion. Blizzard has never tested this many ideas in one pass before, at least not publicly, which hints that World of Warcraft: Forever may be treated as more of a ground-up reset of the class roster than an incremental expansion-by-expansion addition.
| Class | Expansion | Year | Primary Role(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Death Knight | Wrath of the Lich King | 2008 | Tank, Melee DPS |
| Monk | Mists of Pandaria | 2012 | Tank, Healer, Melee DPS |
| Demon Hunter | Legion | 2016 | Tank, Melee DPS |
| Evoker | Dragonflight | 2022 | Healer, Ranged DPS |
The 11 Surveyed Classes at a Glance
Here is how the reported list breaks down, based on the descriptions that have circulated since the survey leaked. Status marks whether the name already exists as a playable class in live WoW or whether it would be a genuinely new addition.
| Concept | Reported Role | Status in Live WoW |
|---|---|---|
| Bard | Support / Healer (song-based) | New concept |
| Witch | Ranged DPS / Support (cloth) | New concept |
| Death Knight | Tank / Melee DPS | Existing class |
| Demon Hunter | Tank / Melee DPS | Existing class |
| Monk | Tank / Healer / Melee DPS | Existing class |
| Necromancer | Unspecified (ranged, likely pet-based) | New concept |
| Metalborn / Runemaster / Runeknight | Unspecified (rune or metal fighter) | New concept |
| San’layn | Unspecified | Hero talent tree in live WoW, new as standalone class |
| Tinker | Unspecified (engineering-based) | New concept |
| Warden | Unspecified | New concept |
| Illusionist | Unspecified | New concept |
Why Blizzard Is Testing This Now
World of Warcraft is well past its twentieth year, and keeping a subscription MMO of that age feeling current without alienating a veteran player base is a genuinely hard design problem. New classes are one of the few features that reliably bring back lapsed subscribers, because they offer an entirely fresh way to experience content players have already finished multiple times. Blizzard has used that lever sparingly, which is part of why it works when it lands. A survey with 11 options at once looks less like routine feature testing and more like an attempt to figure out which single idea (or pair of ideas) is worth the multi-year investment a new class actually requires, long before committing art, animation, and balance resources to any of them.
That calculus isn’t unique to WoW. Live-service games across the industry now lean on community surveys and sentiment testing before committing to expensive content decisions, partly because the cost of guessing wrong has gone up. Bungie’s own back-and-forth with Destiny 2’s content vault, which the studio reversed after years of player pressure, is a recent example of a live-service team changing course once it became clear the original plan wasn’t landing with its audience. The pattern repeated when Bungie explained why it brought vaulted content back following a round of layoffs, and the player response to that reversal showed up directly in engagement numbers the studio has since tracked. Blizzard surveying 11 class ideas before picking one fits the same cautious, data-first playbook.
Market Impact: What a New Class Actually Does for an MMO
New class launches have historically been among the biggest subscriber and engagement events in WoW’s calendar, sitting alongside full expansion releases rather than regular content patches. Demon Hunter’s 2016 launch drew enough interest that Blizzard opened an early-access period just to let players create and level the class before Legion’s full release, a decision the studio doesn’t make for ordinary content updates. That kind of response is exactly what a publisher wants to replicate with World of Warcraft: Forever, especially if the project is positioned as a fresh entry point for players who haven’t logged in for years.
The risk runs the other way too. Class reveals that undersell their fantasy or ship mechanically thin have generated backlash in WoW’s history, and a rushed class built to chase survey hype rather than solid design has a track record of aging badly. Evoker, for instance, launched in 2022 with a narrower role spread (healer and ranged DPS only, no tank or melee option) than any class before it, and that choice is still debated in the community four years later. Whatever Blizzard builds out of this survey will face the same scrutiny the moment it’s playable.
Competitive Comparison: How Other MMOs Handle Class Reveals
WoW isn’t the only long-running MMO wrestling with how to grow its class or job roster without diluting what already exists. Final Fantasy XIV ships new jobs with each major expansion and has included a Bard job since launch, which is part of why WoW’s lack of one stands out to players who split time between both games. Guild Wars 2 built its entire elite-specialization system around reshaping existing professions rather than adding wholly new ones, sidestepping the balance risk of a brand-new class altogether. The Elder Scrolls Online added a new class with nearly every chapter release, treating it as a recurring selling point rather than a rare event.
Against that backdrop, WoW’s four-classes-in-eighteen-years pace looks conservative, and a survey testing 11 ideas at once could be Blizzard signaling a shift toward a faster cadence for World of Warcraft: Forever, matching how its competitors have already been operating. Coverage from outlets including PC Gamer’s ongoing WoW coverage and Polygon’s WoW archive has tracked this competitive pressure building for several expansions now.
How Class Design Choices Echo Across Other Genres
Job and class systems aren’t exclusive to MMOs, and the same tension between adding new options and keeping the roster balanced shows up in smaller-scale RPGs too. The Octopath Traveler series’ job system, built around distinct classes with clearly separated kits, has had to solve a similar design puzzle at a smaller scale: give every job a reason to exist without making half the roster redundant. Blizzard’s 11-option survey, spanning overlapping roles like three different ranged casters, suggests the studio is running into exactly that redundancy question before committing to a final list.
Predictions: Where This Goes From Here
Based on Blizzard’s past pattern with class reveals and how this survey has been described, a few outcomes look more likely than others over the coming months.
- Expect additional surveys, not a reveal. Blizzard has historically run multiple rounds of internal and limited external testing before committing to a class design, and one leaked questionnaire rarely means a final decision has been made.
- If a class moves forward, expect it to surface first on the Public Test Realm rather than in a trailer, matching how Evoker’s kit was tested publicly well before Dragonflight’s 2022 launch.
- Bard and Witch are the most likely of the 11 to generate follow-up survey rounds, given how much player discussion they’ve already drawn relative to options like Illusionist.
- Blizzard is unlikely to comment directly on this specific leak. The studio’s standard approach is to let its own announcement events carry class news rather than confirming or denying leaked material.
- Whichever concept ships first will likely borrow mechanics already live in WoW (buff auras, health-cost abilities, pet summons) rather than introducing something mechanically unprecedented, consistent with how Monk, Demon Hunter, and Evoker all repurposed existing systems in new packaging.
All five of these are analysis, not confirmed plans, and should be read that way until Blizzard says otherwise.
What Players Should Actually Watch For Next
The most reliable signal that any of these 11 concepts is moving from survey to development will be a follow-up communication from Blizzard itself, whether that’s a developer livestream, a post on the official Blizzard news portal, or a dedicated panel at a future showcase. Until then, player-run tracking of additional leaked surveys, datamined strings, or Public Test Realm builds will remain the main source of new information. Outlets like PCGamesN’s WoW coverage have a track record of catching datamined class references well before Blizzard confirms them, so that’s a reasonable place to watch alongside Blizzard’s own official World of Warcraft news page.
It’s also worth tracking how Blizzard frames the broader World of Warcraft: Forever branding itself, since the name suggests a long-term commitment framing rather than a single expansion cycle. If that reading holds, a staggered rollout of new classes, rather than all 11 concepts arriving together, is the far more plausible path, matching how every previous class addition has been spaced years apart rather than bundled.
The Bigger Picture for a 20-Plus-Year-Old MMO
World of Warcraft has outlasted most of the MMOs it launched alongside in 2004, and a big part of that longevity comes down to Blizzard’s willingness to periodically reset or expand core systems rather than leave them static. Class additions sit at the riskier end of that strategy because they touch balance, itemization, and raid design all at once, which is exactly why Blizzard tests the water this carefully before committing. A survey with 11 names on it, even an unconfirmed, leaked one, is a reasonable way to gauge which of those risks are worth taking for a project explicitly branded around playing the long game.
For now, players interested in the broader gaming industry’s live-service strategies have plenty to compare this against, from Bungie’s content decisions on Destiny 2 to how other long-running MMOs keep their rosters fresh. None of it changes the core fact: Bard, Witch, and the other nine names on this list are ideas Blizzard is testing, not features it has promised.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is World of Warcraft: Forever adding a Bard class?
Not confirmed. Bard appeared as one of 11 concepts in a player survey distributed through the Battle.net launcher, reportedly described as a support and healing class built around songs. Blizzard has not announced it as a feature.
What is the Witch class in the WoW: Forever survey?
Reports describe the Witch as a cloth-wearing ranged damage and support concept, built around a cauldron ability that buffs allies and a blood golem summon that reportedly costs the Witch health to cast. It has not been confirmed as a class in development.
How many classes were in the Blizzard survey?
Eleven concepts were reportedly listed: Bard, Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Illusionist, Monk, Necromancer, a concept named Metalborn, Runemaster, or Runeknight, San’layn, Tinker, Warden, and Witch.
Is this survey an official Blizzard announcement?
No. It is a player survey distributed to a limited set of accounts through the Battle.net launcher, reported by gaming outlets including virus.hr. Blizzard has not issued an official statement confirming any new class for World of Warcraft: Forever.
How many new classes has WoW added since launch?
Four: Death Knight with Wrath of the Lich King in 2008, Monk with Mists of Pandaria in 2012, Demon Hunter with Legion in 2016, and Evoker with Dragonflight in 2022.
When will Blizzard confirm a new WoW: Forever class?
No date has been set or confirmed. Blizzard typically confirms new classes through dedicated developer updates or showcase events rather than responding directly to leaked surveys, so a confirmation timeline remains unknown.
Are Necromancer or Tinker likely to be added to WoW?
Both have appeared in player wishlists and surveys for years without being confirmed. Their presence on this latest list shows continued internal interest, but neither has a development commitment attached to it.
