What to know before WoW Forever launches

Launch is November 4, 2026 at 15:00 PST. That is 18:00 in New York and 23:00 in London on November 4, and on November 5 it is 00:00 in Berlin, Paris and Madrid, 08:00 in Seoul and 10:00 in Sydney. For a countdown and any time zone, see our WoW Forever launch time guide.

Other dates that are easy to miss:

It is the vanilla world, with Blizzard continuing to expand it. Forever is a third permanent branch alongside modern WoW and Classic. Blizzard says it is not a mode, a season, or another version of Classic. The level cap stays at 60 forever: the world will grow, rather than character levels.

What is new:

• 9 new dungeons, such as Ruins of Lordaeron above the Undercity, new zones, and more than 1,000 new quests, with the old quests still present;
• the Skyborne race and six new combinations: Gnome Priest, Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock, and Undead Paladin;
• world rulesets instead of servers, account-wide Legacy, and campfires with profession buffs;
• the modern WoW interface: a built-in damage meter, map coordinates, a combined bag, and controller support.

No. Forever is included in the regular World of Warcraft subscription or game time, the same subscription used for modern WoW and Classic. There is no separate base-game purchase or free trial.

Only the Skyborne race, called the sky-born in Russian coverage, is sold separately, along with its starting island, Zephris. Testers disagree about whether that is fair: some call it pay-to-win because Skyborne racials look strong on the beta; others point out that everything else is included in the subscription. These editions unlock the race:

If you are unsure, choose Normal: PvP is optional there. Traditional servers are gone. Each region has one large world per ruleset.

PvP fans expect intense fighting at bottlenecks during the first week, which is precisely why many casual players are choosing Normal.

• Normal: you fight other players only when you enable PvP yourself. Characters from both factions are allowed.
• PvP: you are automatically flagged in contested and enemy zones. Your account is limited to one faction: create an Alliance character and you cannot play Horde on this ruleset.
• Roleplaying: available at launch, though it was not on the beta. Both factions are allowed.
• Hardcore: coming after launch, in winter 2026/27 according to the roadmap. There is no exact date.

A Forever name has two parts: a first name and a surname. Only the combination must be unique across the entire region, such as all EU rulesets. First names can repeat, so an unusual surname can make even a popular first name available.

Name reservation runs October 27 – November 3. With any Skyborne edition, you can create up to 3 characters in advance. Names are first come, first served, with no guarantees. These are the beta naming rules:

• each part must contain 2–12 letters, with no numbers, apostrophes, or hyphens;
• accented letters such as é and ö are allowed, but three identical letters in a row are not;
• Blizzard has not announced whether Cyrillic is allowed, so keep a Latin-alphabet alternative ready;
• there is currently no paid name change. You can hide your surname above your character in the nameplate settings, but it remains visible in chat.

Graphics cards older than AMD GCN 1 (2012), NVIDIA Maxwell (2014), and Intel Skylake (2015) definitely will not run it. This is the only threshold Blizzard has officially specified. Examples that can launch the game include the Radeon HD 7850, GTX 750 Ti and 9xx series, and Intel HD 530; the HD 6950, GTX 760–780, and Intel HD 6000 cannot. Blizzard warns that even the supported examples are well below the minimum requirements.

The Battle.net store reportedly lists 128 GB of SSD space, with HDDs unsupported. Requirements tables on fan sites reproduce Midnight's requirements almost word for word. The game runs on Windows and macOS.

To install: Battle.net app → World of Warcraft → version dropdown above Play → Forever → Install. Only one version of WoW can run at a time on a single account. Blizzard has not yet announced a preload date or client size.

Get these tasks done a week before launch, so all you need to do on launch night is press Play.

• Renew your subscription or game time for November 4 and clear space on your SSD.
• Agree on a ruleset and faction with friends, and prepare a first name, surname, and 2–3 alternatives.
• Choose your class: which class to play in WoW Forever and all classes. Racials were already adjusted on October 15 (Orc Blood Fury, for example, now has a 3-minute cooldown), and they may still change before launch, so do not choose a race solely for its beta numbers.
• Install addons made for Forever. Classic Era addons without a Forever version will not load, Questie is still missing many new quests, and there is no WeakAuras for Forever. See leveling addons (Russian).
• Plan a route: leveling guides (Russian) and quests or dungeons: which is faster?. Cooking is useful immediately: cooked food with Well Fed gives +5% experience from kills.
• Do not buy gold. Blizzard has already banned more than 2,100 accounts on the beta, and GDKP runs are prohibited in Europe. For ways to earn it yourself, see the gold guide.