Raid tiers will add as little power as possible
New raid tiers in World of Warcraft: Forever should add as little power as possible, so gear lasts longer. Clay Stone, Associate Production Director at Blizzard, said so on the Friends Per Second podcast. He also talked about dungeons, addons, the economy and resistance gear.
Growing sideways
Blizzard wants to expand the world horizontally, says Stone. Tradeskills are a big part of that, and much more is planned for them. The Legacy system can add rewards and perks for reaching certain goals in the game. Between raid tiers there is a little vertical progression, but the team keeps it as small as possible.
Dungeons and addons
Spamming dungeons over and over is not how the original designers meant the game to be played, according to Stone. “It’s about the journey” is one of the core pillars, and the team wants players to meet each other. Nine new dungeons arrive at launch, spread across the whole leveling journey.
Quests gave too much experience and monsters a little too little, Stone admits. Players who want to spam dungeons can still do so, but the game nudges them out into the world.
Addons that play the game for you are not welcome. The encounters of Forever are far simpler than those of Retail: a dungeon boss has two mechanics. Players do not need an addon for that, says Stone. As in Classic, preparation matters almost as much as execution.
Gold, Alchemy and resistance gear
The team learned from recent releases how to steer the economy, Season of Discovery in particular. It can change spawn rates or put items on a vendor. 
Black Lotus on a vendor, for example, should never sell for more than the vendor price.
At level 60, gold should come from regular play, close to enough to take part in the activities. The goal is to take away the pain points, not all of the grind. Blizzard takes a very strong stance against buying gold with real money.
Stone hesitates to use the word “weekly”. Players will get gold for taking part in systems they were already doing anyway. How often that happens is not decided yet.
Blizzard is also looking at a rework of Alchemy, so the tradeskill becomes less critical for raiding. Players will probably not need to craft resistance gear at the start. That could change later.
Skyborne, Oceanic realms and more
The talks with the community led to SD models for the Skyborne and a second look at their Druid forms. That conversation goes on, about the gear models of the Skyborne among other things.
Oceanic players get their own data centers at launch, to keep the ping low. In a group with North American players, the group leader decides which server everyone connects to, as in Retail. The new server structure should feel almost like an Oceanic megaserver, with the feel of a small realm.
Seasons are planned only for PvP. The response to controller support has been “incredible”, says Stone.
Source: Wowhead