WoW Forever Raids Guide: Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit, Onyxia and the 9 December Unlock

Forever goes live on 4 November 2026 at 3:00 PM PST. The raids stay closed for the 1st 5 weeks. On 9 December 2026 Blizzard opens all 3 at once: Barrow Deeps for 10 players, Hyjal Summit for 20 and Onyxia’s Lair for 40. Blizzard has not announced the unlock hour, and its Korean and Taiwanese pages list 10 December in local time.

Those 5 weeks are the whole point of November. Level 60 takes about 150 hours of play. Then come the 1st dungeon clears for blue gear, gold for consumables and repairs, and a group that fits your raid size. Playing 3 hours a night, you hit 60 near 24 December and miss the 1st 2 weeks of raids. With a 1 to 60 boost, a human Pro plays your character 12 hours a day and has it at 60 in 14 days. The Pro plays by hand in our own gaming hubs, on a PC dedicated to your account and a unique residential IP in your city. To the game, it looks exactly like a family member playing from home. The 5-week plan is below.

Forever is set in the years after Warcraft III. The Forsaken hold Lordaeron, and the night elves have just lost their immortality. Molten Core and the other classic raids come later in the story. Blizzard plans to bring them back as revamped iconic raids. The summer 2027 slot on the roadmap is the 1st of them.

The barrow dens of Kalimdor are sacred to the night elves. Their tunnels wind for miles under the mountains, and all of them lead to 1 place: the Barrow Deeps. This is where the night elves keep their most dangerous prisoners. In the lore it held Illidan Stormrage for 10,000 years, and Blizzard teases that you will see the cell of “an infamous demon hunter”.

Something is wrong in the Deeps. The corruption that troubles the furbolgs of Blackmaw Hold has reached the prison, and the night elves let nobody in, allies included. That is your way in.

Barrow Deeps is a 10-player raid at level 60 with 3 entrances in the open world. 1 sits in Hyjal, the level 60 zone that also holds Hyjal Summit. Blizzard hints that the tunnels under Blackmaw Hold, the level 55 to 60 dungeon, lead there too. The 3rd door is unannounced.

Boss names, loot table and lockout are unannounced. What is confirmed: every boss drops a chase item, and 10 players is the smallest raid size in Forever, so this is the raid a fresh guild can fill 1st.

Barrow Deeps has 8 bosses, and clearing all 8 counts as 1 raid challenge in the Legacy system.

At the Battle of Mount Hyjal, Malfurion Stormrage gave up the power that kept the night elves immortal to destroy Archimonde. It worked. Years later, someone or something is draining the power from the land around the summit. Blizzard describes snowy peaks, a river cutting through elven ruins and the whispers of ghosts from the Third War.

Hyjal Summit is a 20-player raid with 13 bosses, and Blizzard calls it the largest raid in Forever. It sits in Hyjal, the level 60 zone you can walk into from launch day. The raid gate stays shut until 9 December.

This is also where Blizzard teased “legendary power”. The 1st new legendary of Forever is tied to this tier. Its full reveal is still to come.

Blizzard’s BlizzCon roadmap lists a 3rd raid for 9 December: Onyxia’s Lair for 40 players. It is the only classic raid in the 1st wave, and the only 40-player raid until the revamped iconic raid arrives in summer 2027. Blizzard has not yet said how the fight changes from the original or published a boss list. On Blizzard’s 8 October podcast the designers confirmed the attunement stays, and each character completes its own, at least at launch. The roadmap carries Blizzard’s own note that timing can change.

Defeating Onyxia is also 1 of the 3 raid challenges in the Legacy system.

On our checkout Onyxia’s Lair is a $349 pre-order.

Every raid boss drops a chase item. That is the drop you come back for week after week, so the boss you farm matters as much as the raid you pick. Name it before the run: on a LFCarry raid your loot priority is written into the order.

New tier sets exist for every class, and the set models are already in the game files. The 18 sets and their bonuses are in WoW Forever BiS lists. The 1st legendary is confirmed and unrevealed. Transmog changes 1 thing for raiders: an epic raid item unlocks its look only for the player who loots it, so a look you want has to drop to you.

Still unannounced: boss lists, loot tables and lockouts. On Blizzard’s 8 October podcast the designers said Onyxia’s Lair keeps its attunement, done by each character, at least at launch. Blizzard has not announced an attunement for Barrow Deeps or Hyjal Summit. The designers said nothing stops you walking into the new raids, though the full experience may take a little digging. The beta files keep 2 raids and 5 new dungeons encrypted, so the loot stays closed until Blizzard reveals it. This guide is updated the day Blizzard publishes them.

Blizzard plans 2 major updates in 2027, and both bring raids. A new raid tier roughly every 6 months, with a small power gain, means the gear you earn on 9 December can stay best in slot for some classes past spring. It also means the 40-player format is here to stay: Onyxia’s Lair is the 1st classic raid to return, and summer 2027 brings the next one, rebuilt for Forever. Blizzard calls that a “revamped iconic raid” and has not named it. A producer of the game said in a video of 11 October that the team keeps the power gain between raid tiers as small as it can, so gear from older raids and endgame dungeons stays useful.

Spring 2027 also adds a new legendary questline, so the legendary teased with Hyjal Summit is the 1st of at least 2 in the game’s 1st year.

On your own at 3 hours a night, 60 takes 7 weeks, and the raids open in 5. That gap is why the 1st 2 weeks decide the whole plan. A character that is 60 by 18 November gets 3 weeks of dungeons and gold. A character that hits 60 in late December raids in January.

The 1st clear of each new dungeon pays a large quest-XP bonus, and every dungeon boss drops blue items, so 1 tour of the 9 dungeons gears a fresh 60 faster than any farm. Hyjal holds the Hyjal Summit gate, 1 of the 3 Barrow Deeps entrances and its own reputations, so park your hearthstone there for weeks 3 and 4.

Consumables and repairs cost gold. The one thing that gets an account in trouble is a large amount of gold arriving from nowhere. That means a hand trade from a seller, gold by mail or gold dumped through the auction house. We never do that. Our Pros farm gold on your own character the normal way: professions, gathering, auction-house trading, dungeon runs and LFG carries for gold. On your character it is, and looks like, normal play.

The raid decision comes last. 10 players is the easiest group to fill. 20 is where the legendary was teased. 40 is the classic experience with the most moving parts.

Raid comp. Blizzard has not published boss mechanics, so start from a balanced comp. For Barrow Deeps (10): 2 tanks, 2 to 3 healers and 5 to 6 damage dealers. For Hyjal Summit (20): 2 to 3 tanks, 4 to 5 healers and the rest damage. For Onyxia's Lair (40): 3 to 4 tanks, 10 to 12 healers and the rest damage. Paladins tank in Forever with Seal of Fury, so a Prot Paladin fills a tank slot next to a Prot Warrior.

A raid spot is a full clear with our group, self-play or piloted, from 9 December 2026. Piloted means a human Pro plays your character by hand in our own gaming hubs, on a PC dedicated to your account and a unique residential IP in your city. To the game, it looks exactly like a family member playing from home. Your character needs to be 60. Loot is group loot, and the chase item you want is written into the order before the run.

Book the leveling together with the raid and the calendar works out: 60 by late November, raid on 9 December. Both orders show up in 1 chat, so the same team plans the hand-off.

With our guild membership you raid with the guild. You join our community of WoW Forever guilds. Our guild is open on every ruleset and faction, in the US and the EU, from launch day on 4 November. Members get raid sign-ups from 9 December, dungeon and battleground premades and a monthly gold quota from the guild bank for their rank. The quotas are Member 125 g, Veteran 250 g, Officer 500 g, Champion 1,000 g, Council 2,500 g, High Council 5,000 g and Patron 10,000 g a month. Ranks start at $50 a month. Membership in a game guild does not violate Blizzard's User Agreement: guilds are part of the game, and contributing to and drawing from a guild bank is what guilds do.