No Class Lock: What Bulkhead Has Announced
Wardogs will not assign players to fixed classes. According to Bulkhead's "WARDOGS - TOP QUESTIONS" post published on Steam on February 18, 2026, roles in the game are "totally player-defined." The mechanism behind that is loadout construction: players purchase specialist items to assemble a build rather than selecting a predefined archetype from a menu.
That is the full extent of what the source states about how role identity is established. Bulkhead does not specify in this post what specialist items are available, how they are priced, or what constraints -- if any -- exist on combining them.
Progression Tied to Loadout Choices
The same post connects loadout construction directly to progression. Bulkhead states that building a loadout earns XP across 6 progression tracks -- a figure presented here as a Bulkhead pre-launch number, subject to change as the game develops in Early Access.
The source does not specify what the 6 tracks are, how XP is distributed across them, or whether a given loadout advances all tracks simultaneously or only selected ones. Those details have not been published in this source.
Examples Named in the Source
Bulkhead's post uses "From Medic to Pilot" as illustrative examples of the range of playstyle a player can build toward. The source offers these two as endpoints of a spectrum; it does not provide a full list of specialist roles or confirm how many distinct build directions the item system supports.
What Is and Is Not Clear
To summarize what the source establishes and what it leaves open:
- Established: roles are player-defined through purchased specialist items, not selected from a fixed class list
- Established: loadouts generate XP across 6 progression tracks, per Bulkhead's pre-launch figures
- Established: Medic and Pilot are named examples of possible build directions
- Not yet detailed in this source: the full item catalog, any restrictions on loadout composition, how the 6 progression tracks are named or structured, and how XP is distributed between them
For players accustomed to games that hand you a role at the start of a match, the announced system represents a structural difference worth noting -- but how that difference plays out in practice remains untested and unpublished. Bulkhead may detail these systems further before or during Early Access.
Wardogs enters Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026, from Bulkhead and Team17.