WoW Forever Keeps Its 40-Player Onyxia Raid. Blizzard's First Three Raids Open December 9 at 10, 20 and 40 Players, and a Riot MMO Engineer Who Worked on WoW Is Cheering It On.

What Happened

Blizzard's October 20 raid overview lays out three level 60 raids that unlock together on December 9.

The three raids

• Ten players. The Barrow Deeps, the 10-player raid, has 8 bosses in the prison beneath Mount Hyjal, a zone on Forever's new level 30 to 60 route, that once held Illidan Stormrage.
• Three entrances. Players reach the Barrow Deeps from the mountain itself, from Winterspring or from Blackmaw Hold.
• Twenty players. Hyjal Summit, the 20-player raid, has 13 bosses near the World Tree Nordrassil, opens with an ancient guardian and offers more than one route up the mountain.
• Forty players. Onyxia, the boss of the 40-player Onyxia's Lair, is a three-phase fight in Dustwallow Marsh. Blizzard tells raiders to "build their fire resistance before entering".
• Weekly resets. Blizzard says all three raids are "currently planned to reset weekly".
• Nine new dungeons. Launch also adds nine new five-player dungeons, from Hall of Thanes at levels 13 to 18 to Shaper's Terrace at 58 to 60, per the MMO news site MMOHuts.

The Onyxia attunement

• Amulet required. Every raider needs the Drakefire Amulet, the reward from a faction quest chain, to enter Onyxia's Lair. It only has to be carried, not equipped.
• Alliance route. Alliance players start with Helendis Riverhorn in the Burning Steppes, about 10 steps by MMORPG.com's count.
• Horde route. Horde players start with Warlord Goretooth in the Badlands, about 12 steps.
• Same last stop. Both chains run through the Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire dungeons and end with General Drakkisath in the upper spire.

So a full Onyxia group is 40 players who each finished the chain first.

Launch week

• Name reservations. From October 27, players can reserve names for their first three characters, Blizzard's official WoW account posted on October 20.
• Beta extended. The beta now runs until 10 AM PDT on October 23.
• Open stress test. A stress test ran on October 21 at 2 PM PDT, moved from October 19, and needed no subscription, Game Time or beta access.
• Wiped after. Stress test characters, names and guilds are wiped before reservations open, per the WoW news site Warcraft Tavern.
• Beta showcase. Blizzard also showed snowy weather in Dun Morogh, lightning before storms and a player-versus-player (PvP) podcast episode about attacking enemy capital cities.
• Unknown parts. Blizzard says the level 30 to 60 journey goes to "parts of Azeroth previously unknown".

Riot's WoW Veterans

An engineering manager on Riot's MMO who used to work on WoW is publicly cheering Forever's launch.

• Who he is. Orlando Salvatore, a senior engineering manager on Riot's MMO, lists his past on X as "Prev at @Warcraft & @CallOfDuty".
• His post. On October 18 Salvatore wrote: "Up next: WoW team ships WoW Forever".
• The other launch. The same post congratulated "my friends at IW, HMS, and ATVI for MW4", calling it "a critical W".
• Not the only one. Brian Holinka, WoW's former lead PvP designer, is a principal game designer on Riot's MMO, as we covered when Forever capped its PvP ranks.

Salvatore's post says nothing about Riot's game. It does show the people building it are watching this launch.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

Forever's raid plan answers group-size and gating questions Riot has not answered for its own game.

• Three sizes. Blizzard runs 10, 20 and 40-player raids side by side. Riot has never said what group size its MMO is built around.
• Friction kept. Keeping the Onyxia attunement tests how much gating MMO players will accept in 2026.
• Weekly pace. Weekly resets set how fast a guild progresses. Riot has said nothing about raids at all.
• Launch load. Name reservations, a longer beta and an open stress test are load work every new MMO faces, and Forever's layering, which splits players into copies of the world shows what goes wrong.
• Feel over numbers. Blizzard spent launch week selling weather and capital-city PvP, not endgame numbers.
• Same playbook. Riot's MMO team includes WoW veterans like Holinka and Salvatore, so Forever's reception is feedback on what they bring.

Our read. If Onyxia's Lair fills on December 9 with the chain still in front of it, players will take friction for scale. If guilds stick to the Barrow Deeps, that answers it the other way. Riot has shown nothing, and its MMO's scope is unrevealed, so the comparison is ours.

Your Take

Reported from Blizzard's raid overview, MMORPG.com and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours. Analysis by RuneGrove.