WoW Forever raids: Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit, Onyxia's Lair

All three raids open on the same day: 9 December 2026. They are not tiers released in sequence — they arrive together, at three different sizes, which is an unusual structure and the most interesting design decision Blizzard has published about Forever's endgame.

Only Onyxia's Lair is known content. The Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit are new, and both are entered from Mount Hyjal, the new endgame zone. The Barrow Deeps is the tunnel network joining the night elves' barrow dens, where they kept prisoners they had nowhere else to put. Hyjal Summit is the mountain after Archimonde's defeat, still fouled by what he left behind — a different raid from the later expansion's Battle for Mount Hyjal, which replayed the battle itself.

The encounter names are public because the beta's Legacy Challenge list names every one: there is a Legacy Point for clearing each raid, and the challenge spells out what a clear means. The lists below are in the order the challenge gives them, which is not necessarily the order you fight them in.

Raid size changes the experience more than difficulty tuning usually does. At ten players, an individual's mistakes are visible and consequential. At forty, they are absorbed by numbers and what matters instead is reliable attendance. Twenty sits between the two and demands both, which makes it the hardest of the three to prepare for.

It also changes the economics of a carry. A ten-player group can be assembled on a weeknight; a forty-player group is a rota. That is why prices across the three differ by a wide margin and why delivery reliability, rather than skill, is what separates sellers at the top end.

Onyxia's Lair has been cleared by more players than almost any instance in Warcraft. The lair sits under Dustwallow Marsh, the fight runs three phases, the second fills the cave with whelps, and the deep breath that ends careless raids is a twenty-year-old in-joke. For a buyer, that familiarity is worth money: sellers do not have to learn this one.

Sellers take raid bookings now and the opening lockout fills first. Because nothing can be run before 9 December, a pre-booking carries scheduling risk rather than financial risk — payment sits in escrow until the run has actually happened.

• Agree the loot rules in writing before paying: 'every drop for your class', 'a fixed number of items' and 'nothing but the clear' are three different products
• Agree which lockout by date, not by week
• Ask what happens if the run is rescheduled — on a forty-player raid it will sometimes happen
• Check whether the seller is selling a seat in a scheduled run or a clear organised around you