WoW Forever Talents Talent calculator for World of Warcraft: Forever Patch notes 3 Nov the shaman, hunter and warlock changes are in

Hyjal Crater

Arena for 5 a side, levels 1–60, rated · New in Forever · read from the Forever client, build 1.60.1.70755. All instances →

Since build 1.60.1.70425 the client says two different things about this map. Its map row now types it 0, an open-world map, where every earlier build typed it 4, an arena, and the same build gives it its first named area, Hyjal Crater. Its one remaining queue row, Mak'gora Arena, still queues for it as a rated, five-a-side arena; the Hyjal Crater row beside it is gone. Its terrain files say how big it is: built edge to edge, on more ground than Alterac Valley. None of it is evidence for the rest, and none of it says what Forever will do with the map.

What the client says

  • Not typed as an arena any more.Its map row is typed 0, the client's number for an open-world map (an arena is 4, a battleground 3). Only its queue row below still files it as an arena.
  • Rated.Its queue row carries a rated team size of 5, the only arena row in the build that does. Of the build's nine queue rows, two carry one: this one and Battle for Gilneas at 10. None of Classic Era's four rows does.
  • Five a side.It is queued under its own name and as “Mak'gora Arena”. Levels 1–60.
  • Built edge to edge.All 35 of its terrain tiles have scenery on them, 8,744 placed objects and 58 buildings in all. That is 4.4× the built area of Warsong Gulch and 2.1× Alterac Valley's. The size says how much was made, not what it is for.
  • Not yet dressed for a player.The client stores it under a number, with no loading screen, no named areas and no description text. The ground is built; what is missing is what a player sees around a map.

What it does not say

  • What “rated” means in Forever.The row states a team size and nothing else about rated play.
  • What the queue is for.Rated five-a-side is what the row describes. Whether Forever ships an arena, and in what form, is not in these tables, and Blizzard's BlizzCon PvP panel named no arena, only the Darkspear Islands battleground and a larger PvP system teased without detail.
  • Why the map row changed.The client retypes the map from arena to open world and leaves one arena queue pointed at it; no table says what either change is for.
  • Why the map is this size, or this dense.Measured on this page; explained nowhere in the client.
  • What flag 8 means.The bit is set on the Mak'gora Arena row; the Hyjal Crater row that lacked it is gone since build 1.60.1.70425. Its meaning is nowhere in the tables.
  • The slash command and perks reported elsewhere.Neither string is in any table read here, so neither is repeated as fact.
  • Anything the server decides.Objectives, scoring, start positions and rewards are set by the server, not the client tables, and so is whether the queue can be entered at all.

Each line is read from the Forever client, build 1.60.1.70755: the map and queue tables for what it is, its terrain files (measured on build 1.60.1.70425) for how much of it was built.

The queue row

Pointed at map 2995. Every field below that is not zero. Until build 1.60.1.70425 a second row, 1168 (Hyjal Crater), pointed at the map as well; it read the same apart from its level band (none stated) and its flags (0).

Field1169 (Mak'gora Arena)
Instance type4 (arena)
Rated players5
Players a side5
Level band1 – 60
Groups allowedyes, up to 5
Flags8

Flag 8 was the one field the two rows did not share.It is set on Mak'gora Arena and was not on Hyjal Crater; the only other rows carrying that bit are the three battlegrounds in the random pool. What the bit means is stated nowhere, so that is a shape, not a definition.

What else the client carries for it

Read from the tables around the map row, each block only where the build has something: nothing here is typed in. What the server decides (prices, vendors, scoring) is not in these tables.

Items named for it

7 items Forever added that carry the map's name. Where each is bought or won is server-side; Wowhead's Forever database fills from players' uploads, so a link may answer "not found" for a while.

How much of it was built

A map's terrain is stored as tiles, each 533 yards square. Counting only the tiles with something actually built on them (which leaves out the empty ground a map pads its edges with) gives each battleground's real built area. Warsong Gulch is the yardstick.

Hyjal Crater5 a side4.4×
Darkspear Islands15 a side3.0×
Alterac Valley40 a side2.1×
Battle for Gilneas10 a side1.1×
Warsong Gulch10 a side1.0×
Arathi Basin15 a side0.9×

Built area as multiples of Warsong Gulch. Every tile of every map was read, not sampled.

End to end3,733 yardsAbout 9 minutes on foot, 4 mounted
Built tiles35 of 357×5 grid, 3,733 × 2,667 yards
Scenery placed8,74458 buildings, 41 ground textures

One caveat, because this is the figure most worth quoting. Built area is where terrain work exists, not where a player can walk. Alterac Valley's mountains are built ground to a level designer and a wall to everyone else. What this establishes is how much was made, not how much is playable, and not what the map is for, which only its queue rows say, and the card above states.

What falls out of that

  1. A five-a-side queue on more ground than the forty-a-side battleground

    Alterac Valley fits forty players a side into 17 built tiles. Hyjal Crater has 35, for five.

  2. The only PvP map in the build with nothing left empty

    Every other map pads its grid with bare ground: Darkspear Islands builds on 24 of its 25 tiles since build 1.60.1.70170 (7 before it), Warsong Gulch on 8 of 16, Alterac Valley on 17 of 35. Hyjal Crater builds on all 35.

  3. Dense landscape, light on structures

    8,744 pieces of scenery, almost two and a half times Alterac Valley's 3,554, the most on any other map, over 41 ground textures, but only 58 buildings, fewer than Alterac Valley's 70 or Darkspear Islands' 91. It was dressed as a place, not as a course with objectives on it.

Scenery and buildings are placement counts, read from every tile of each map.
MapQueueBuilt tilesvs Warsong GulchSceneryBuildingsTextures
Hyjal Crater5 a side35 of 354.4×8,7445841
Darkspear Islands15 a side24 of 253.0×2,4619125
Alterac Valley40 a side17 of 352.1×3,5547019
Battle for Gilneas10 a side9 of 161.1×2,031387
Warsong Gulch10 a side8 of 161.0×1,1151911
Arathi Basin15 a side7 of 160.9×3,287266

Built, but never dressed for a player to see

What the map has

  • All 35 tiles resolve to real terrain, around 310 KB each
  • Objects placed, ground textures painted
  • Its world-map and minimap art were baked
  • Identical, tile for tile, in builds 1.60.1.69893, 1.60.1.69913 and 1.60.1.70009; build 1.60.1.70425 places 12 more buildings and 12 fewer pieces of scenery on the same 35 tiles than 1.60.1.70291 did
  • One named area since build 1.60.1.70425, Hyjal Crater itself

What it has none of

  • No loading screen
  • No points of interest
  • No description text on either faction's side
  • No world map entry to display the art that was baked

The obvious reading of that last one is wrong.Battle for Gilneas has no world map entry either. Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Darkspear Islands all do. So the missing map is not peculiar to Hyjal Crater: it puts Hyjal Crater and Gilneas at the same earlier stage, with Darkspear Islands the finished one of the three maps Forever added.

No arena interface was built for Forever

The client lists 103 interface files with “arena” in the name against Classic Era's 84, which looks like new work until the twenty extras are read out: loading screens for the Battle for Azeroth, Zuldazar, Mechagon, Bastion, Enigma, Centaur and Undermine arenas, the retail 2v2 / 3v3 / 5v5 achievement icons, the garrison sparring arena, and the arena enemy frame. Every one is a retail asset the newer engine carries. The same control on the interface atlases gives eight more, all generic frame edges.

Put plainly:nothing in the client's interface files was authored for a Forever arena. And the names barely exist: across every table read, Mak'gora appears in exactly one row and Hyjal Crater in two.

The evidence, tile by tile

For anyone who wants to check the numbers rather than take them. Each square is one 533-yard terrain tile as the client stores it, shaded by how much scenery sits on it; a dashed square is ground with nothing built on it. This is where every figure above comes from.

Show the terrain grids
Hyjal Crater5 a side · 35 of 35 tiles built
Darkspear Islands15 a side · 24 of 25 tiles built
Alterac Valley40 a side · 17 of 35 tiles built
Battle for Gilneas10 a side · 9 of 16 tiles built
Warsong Gulch10 a side · 8 of 16 tiles built
Arathi Basin15 a side · 7 of 16 tiles built
nothing built 1–99 pieces 100–299 300–599 600+— hover a tile for its exact counts

SOURCES — the built-area figures on this page are read from the World of Warcraft: Forever client, build 1.60.1.70425: each map's own terrain files, every tile of every map, with a tile counted as built when a doodad or a building is placed on it. Nothing here is taken from another site. Reproducible with node scripts/measure-map-terrain.mjs --json.

★New in Forever · map 2995 Sources: Forever client build 1.60.1.70755 · Forever client build 1.60.1.69893 · Forever client build 1.60.1.70425 · BlizzCon, 12 September 2026

Every instance

Dungeons & Raids

51 instances
With a level set, doors you cannot enter yet lock and instances near your level light up.

5 group size, 10v10 players a side 28 Group Finder level, entry level with a plus, or a battleground's level band Confirmed raid Blizzard has confirmed for Forever Announced announced, not in the client yet Not confirmed 40? in the client from Classic, not announced ★ new in Forever ◆ changed