Two weeks before the WoW: Forever beta closes and four weeks before launch, Blizzard is finally going to talk in public about the part of the game it has said almost nothing about: the dungeons. PAX Aus 2026 opens in Melbourne on October 9 with executive producer Holly Longdale delivering the event's Storytime keynote, and associate production director Clay Stone following her on stage with what Blizzard calls "an in-depth look at one of the new dungeons being added in World of Warcraft: Forever" — the first public, design-level reveal of Forever's instanced PvE.

Original editorial illustration by RealmList, generated for this article. This is artwork, not game footage or official promotional material.

Who is on stage, and what each half is

The segment is two different presentations back to back, and it is worth keeping them separate, because coverage tends to blur them:

• Holly Longdale's Storytime keynote. A career retrospective and a view of the Warcraft universe and the role online player communities hold for MMOs. Expect industry history and community framing, not announcements.
• Clay Stone's dungeon deep dive. The actual content reveal: one specific new dungeon, walked through with the team's design philosophy, creative process and approach to building new gameplay experiences. Blizzard has not named the dungeon.

Anyone writing "Blizzard revealed a Forever dungeon at PAX" should be able to say which half it came from. The keynote is Longdale on the industry; the dungeon segment is Stone on one instance.

When and how to watch

The keynote and the dungeon segment stream live on the Warcraft Twitch and PAX Twitch channels. Blizzard's listed times all convert to the same instant — 01:00 UTC on October 9:

Longdale and Stone also hold a signing session on Friday, October 9, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. AEDT in the Meet & Greet room between the Owl Bear and Drop Bear theatres.

The booth may matter more than the stage

Alongside the stage segment, a World of Warcraft: Forever booth runs the beta hands-on for attendees all weekend, with a themed photo experience and a "Raid for Riches" quest card that unlocks a Pinny Arcade pin and a prize-draw entry.

That hands-on access is quietly the most valuable thing the event can produce. Nearly three weeks into this beta, essentially everything published about Forever — ours included — comes from Blizzard's own posts, official forum threads, or datamined client files. A weekend of attendees playing the beta unsupervised is the first volume of first-hand, non-Blizzard game-feel reporting the game will get, and it arrives the same weekend the dungeon reveal does. If anything shown on stage contradicts what the datamined record says, the disagreement is the story.

What the dungeon segment has to answer

Dungeons are the least-documented part of Forever. Classes have had deep dives with numbers; the Legacy system has a published cap and a table; instanced content has had almost nothing specific said about it in public. That makes this segment less a preview than a baseline — whatever it establishes is what every later dungeon announcement gets read against.

The question that separates two very different versions of Forever, posed crisply by the WoW Private Server Tracker ahead of the reveal: is this a new layout running Classic mechanics, or new mechanics in a Classic layout? The first means Forever's PvE is a content drop — fresh geography on systems players already understand, and the interesting follow-ups are size, boss count and progression placement. The second means it is a systems change — familiar geography on rules players have to learn, and the interesting follow-ups are what the mechanics are and whether they appear elsewhere. Blizzard's announcement promises "an in-depth look" plus design philosophy, which could be either or both.

What is already known about the dungeon lineup: Forever launches with nine new dungeons spanning the leveling journey. Two — Hall of Thanes and the Ruins of Lordaeron — are playable in the level 13–20 beta phase now. Reporting on the remaining seven names Excavation Site: Wetlands, City of Dalaran, The Drowned City, Krol'dok Stronghold, Alcaz Prison, Blackmaw Hold and Shaper's Terrace, several of which occupy map locations that have sat unexplained on Azeroth since 2004.

And there is one speculative hook worth watching for. Asked whether players should expect another sprawling Blackrock Depths-style mega dungeon, senior game designer Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield replied: "Hold our beer(s)." Blizzard has not connected that hint to the PAX Aus presentation, and Blackmaw Hold — described as a great furbolg city in the 55–60 range — is the obvious candidate. That is inference, not confirmation. It would, however, be a strange choice to give a dedicated development presentation to a small instance.

Why this slot in the calendar

The timing is tight on both sides. The beta closes October 21, name reservation runs October 27 to November 3, and launch is November 4 — so a dungeon reveal now lands while a few hundred thousand testers can still go look at whatever was shown, rather than after it stops mattering. It also lands in the middle of Blizzard's final class push: four of the game's classes have had official deep dives so far, and the second Forever podcast covered the design philosophy behind them, which we summarized in our class deep dive briefing.

It also fits the pattern Blizzard has established with this game's secrets. Thousands of Forever item stats have been deliberately hidden from dataminers until players find them in the world — the approach we covered in our hidden loot stats briefing. New dungeons designed around exploration, with their loot kept dark until someone actually kills the boss, are the instanced version of the same bet: for once, walking into a new Warcraft dungeon might mean not knowing every boss, shortcut and best-in-slot item before the loading screen finishes.

::note Accurate as of October 7, 2026. The PAX Aus segment contents, broadcast times, booth activities and signing session come from Blizzard's own announcements and WoW Weekly post, as reproduced by the outlets cited. Blizzard has not named the dungeon being presented, and the nine-dungeon list and the Blackmaw Hold mega-dungeon speculation are secondhand reporting and inference respectively — neither is confirmed. Broadcast times were cross-checked to a single 01:00 UTC instant on October 9, 2026. The beta closes October 21 and the game launches November 4, 2026. ::