Launch Day
Everything between now and the raids opening on 9 December, in the order you have to decide it. What to install before the day, what name reservation does and does not buy you, the two character-creation choices you cannot take back, and an honest hour-by-hour for the first evening. Where Blizzard has not said, this page says so rather than filling the gap from Classic memory.
On this page 9 sections
Source tiers
- Official or client data
- Verbatim reporting, hands-on
- Provisional or placeholder
- Our analysis
The dates Source tier A — official Blizzard or live client data: A
Every date below is from Blizzard's own announcements and pre-purchase article, except where marked.
- 17 Sep → 23 Oct 2026time unannouncedBetaOpened at a level 20 cap, raised to 30 on 1 October, and staying there to the end. Blizzard's article stated the 21 October end date twice, including in the legal footnotes — several outlets carried the 22nd and were wrong — and on 20 October Blizzard extended it to 23 October, 10:00 a.m. PDT. Beta & Editions
- 20 Oct 2026time unannouncedInvite-A-Friend codes emailedOne code with Heroic, three with Epic or the Collection.
- 23 Oct 202610:00 a.m. PDTBeta closed (extended from 21 Oct) — everything is wipedNo carryover of any kind: no characters, no names, no collections, no gold, no title, no head start. What transfers is what you learned.
- 27 Oct → 3 Nov 2026opens 1:00 p.m. PDTEarly Name ReservationFirst-come, first-served. Up to three characters, gated on any paid upgrade — including the $29.99 Heroic Pack, which grants no beta access. Detail below.
- 4 Nov 20263:00 p.m. PSTWorldwide launchLevel cap 60. That is 6:00 p.m. EST and 11:00 p.m. UTC on the same day. The base game is included with an active subscription or Game Time — the packs buy a race, cosmetics and beta access, not the game.
- 4 Nov → 11 Nov 2026time unannouncedInvite-A-Friend windowThe launch codes are usable inside this window.
- 9 Dec 2026time unannouncedRaids unlockBlizzard: “New raids unlock on December 9” — Barrow Deeps (10) and Hyjal Summit (20). Whether Onyxia's Lair (40) opens at launch or on 9 December is disputed. Thirty-five days after launch. World & Raids
- After launchHardcore rulesetBlizzard: “Hardcore will be available sometime after launch.” No season and no date in any Blizzard text since the beta opened. The “Winter 2026” you will see elsewhere is roadmap and press wording, not Blizzard's. Hardcore
- Early 2027SD Skyborne modelsSD Skyborne player models and SD Druid forms, in the first major content patch.
- Spring 2027First major updateTwo raids, two dungeons, two new class/race combos, new quests and a playable area, PvP season refresh. B — from the panel roadmap slide, not Blizzard's recap text.
- Summer 2027Second major updateA revamped iconic raid (unnamed), another new raid, two dungeons, and professions and Legacy updates. B
Blizzard has announced a time of day for two things only: name reservation (1:00 p.m. PDT, 27 October) and the launch. Every other row above is marked time unannounced on purpose — that is a statement about what Blizzard has said, not a gap in this page. The one that matters most is 9 December, because raid night has to be planned around it. A 1:00 p.m. PST figure for 9 December is circulating on countdown sites — it is extrapolated from Season of Discovery precedent, not announced, and this guide will not repeat it as fact.
The “3-day early access with the Epic Edition” claim is contradicted by Blizzard's own article and by the shop comparison table alike. Everyone logs in at the same moment. Nothing you can buy moves your start time, and nothing you did in the beta moves it either. Claims that are wrong.
Pre-downloading Source tier B — verbatim reporting or hands-on testing: B
Blizzard has announced no separate preload, but its name-reservation steps install the game: from 27 October choose World of Warcraft: Forever in the Battle.net app's Game Version menu and press Install (steps). Before that, the only route was the community-discovered launcher flag documented on the Beta page, which forces the Battle.net client to start downloading a product before you have an entitlement for it.
If you were in the beta, you have already done the expensive part. The beta client shipped under the product code wow_classic_beta:
& "C:\Program Files (x86)\Battle.net\Battle.net.exe" --game=wow_classic_beta --install
Download size, which Blizzard never announced: ~14–16 GB if you already have Retail installed, ~64–69 GB if you do not. Both figures are widely reported from the live pre-install. The shared-files explanation is itself corroboration that Forever is a Mainline-family client.
This puts files on disk, not an entitlement — it has never let anyone play early and it will not on 4 November.
wow_classic_beta is the beta's product code, not the live game's. Blizzard has not published the launch product code, the final install directory or the TOC suffix — they are on this guide's unknowns list and have been since the beta opened. So the flag above is a beta instruction. Whether the same trick pre-seeds the launch build, and under what code, is unconfirmed. Plan to open the launcher on the morning of 4 November and let it patch, rather than assuming a trick has already done it.
Name reservation — 27 October to 3 November Source tier A — official Blizzard or live client data: A
An eight-day, first-come-first-served window gated on any paid Forever upgrade. The $29.99 Skyborne Heroic Pack grants no beta access but does grant reservation, which makes it the cheapest route in if the name is all you want. Blizzard, verbatim: “Early Name Reservation will be available from October 27 through November 3, 2026, PST, included with any upgrade purchase. You can create and customize up to three characters during this period.”
| What it buys you | What it does not |
|---|---|
| A name, banked before launch night, on up to three characters | Any earlier start. There is no head start and no early access |
| Customisation, not just the name — Blizzard's wording is “create and customize” | Beta access. Heroic reserves names and does not admit you to the beta |
| Character-creation decisions made calmly instead of in a launch-night queue | A guaranteed login slot. Nothing has been said about queue priority for anyone |
Characters in Forever carry two-part names — a first name and a last name — and Blizzard says the full name is unique per region. That removes the thing the scramble was ever about, which was a global pool of single tokens being exhausted in the first hour. Reserve a name because you want that specific name, not because you are afraid of losing it.
Blizzard's Create a Name of Your Own article (21 September) answers it: the full name is unique, and either part can be shared — its own example is three characters all surnamed Brightvale. So all three reservation slots can carry one family surname. Blizzard publishes no length limit per field; both parts are filtered together, so splitting a restricted word across them does not pass. You can hide your own surname on nameplates (Options → Nameplates → My Secondary Name); it still shows in chat. This section previously recorded the question as unresolved. Corrections.
Blizzard has since filled the two gaps this page used to list: reservation opens at 1:00 p.m. PDT on 27 October, and you do it in the game client, by installing WoW: Forever from the Battle.net app and creating characters — step by step. The three characters are a total across all rulesets. Because the barbershop is confirmed present, nothing about appearance needs to be finished inside the window.
The character-creation choices you cannot take back Source tier A — official Blizzard or live client data: A
Realmless has moved the weight around. The old launch-day question was which server, and it was answered socially — you went where your friends were. Forever deletes that question and replaces it with a harder one.
There are no realms. At creation you pick a ruleset: Normal (PvP requires mutual consent), PvP, Roleplaying, or Roleplay-PvP (added 22 October). Hardcore is a fifth and arrives only “sometime after launch”.
Blizzard: “Each ruleset functions more like its own large ecosystem than a single traditional realm. This is not one giant realm for everyone” — and cross-ruleset grouping is not supported, though battlegrounds may include players from other rulesets (never Hardcore). Factions stay separate on top of that.
🔴 The PvP ruleset allows one faction per account, with Season of Discovery-style temporary creation limits for faction balance. Normal and Roleplaying allow both factions.
🔴 You cannot switch rulesets — Blizzard's answer is to make a new character. The only transfer described is the Hardcore one-way valve: a dead Hardcore character can move to any other ruleset, and nothing flows back in. The launch-night ruleset pick is permanent. Rulesets.
Decide before you log in
- Ruleset — see above. It is for good.
- Faction — Horde and Alliance still cannot group, at all, and on the PvP ruleset the whole account is one faction.
- Race and class pairing — six new combos exist (Gnome Priest, Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock, Forsaken Paladin), and racials were rebuilt to two active and two passive per race and reworked again on 15 October: the weapon passives became weapon-free crit stats (Human Ruthless, Orc Savage, Dwarf Earth Fury), Orc Blood Fury moved to a 3-minute cooldown and Skyborne haste rose to 3% A. Races · race per pairing.
- Language preference — an account-wide setting (Options → Languages and Social) with a 24-hour cooldown on changes. Whether it is a hard partition or a soft bias is unannounced.
Do not agonise over these
- Appearance. The barbershop is confirmed present.
- Transmog on or off. The mode selector is a first-login flow rendered as Classic or Enhanced, and it is changeable later at an NPC.
- Your name's availability. Two-part names, unique as a full name; either half can be shared.
- Weapon proficiency. Trainable at any Weapon Master for 10 silver — but see the trap below.
Weapon skill survives in Forever, and you cannot equip a weapon type you have not trained. Two capitals cannot teach Staves at all: Ironforge and Undercity. An Undead caster has to reach Orgrimmar or Thunder Bluff for staff proficiency — a zeppelin ride, not a walk across the city — and on Alliance, Staves are Stormwind or Darnassus only.
This matters more than it did in Classic because caster weapons now grant spell damage from around level 10, so a staff is a live damage slot rather than a stat-stick. (Wands are the exception: since 24 September they no longer gain damage from spell damage.) ⚠️ Weapon Master locations are Classic 1.12 and have not been verified in Forever — a Wowhead NPC search returned an empty index, which is not the same as evidence they moved. Weapon skills.
Launch-night load, honestly Source tier D — our analysis: D
Layering exists — Blizzard's beta known-issues post says changing party composition “may transfer players to a different world instance”, and since 1 October party leaders are no longer moved. A So a busy launch will be split into world instances, and joining a friend's group can pull you onto theirs. 🔴 What Blizzard has not described is any population cap, instance cap or login-queue mechanic. Anybody telling you what the queues will look like is guessing, and so is anybody telling you they will not exist.
What follows is reasoning, not reporting.
| Actually helps | Does nothing |
|---|---|
| Having the client patched and the launcher open well before 3:00 p.m. PST. A download that starts at 3:01 is a download you watch instead of a game you play | Spending more. No pack grants early access or any stated queue priority |
| Reserving your character between 27 Oct and 3 Nov. Blizzard says you create characters in that window, so the creation step is already done — though Blizzard has not explicitly stated the reserved character is waiting on your list at launch | Beta play. Nothing carries over, and names are not reserved by having played |
| Deciding ruleset, faction, race and class in advance — the decisions above are the ones people burn twenty minutes on at a character screen | Classic addons. Wrong ecosystem entirely. CurseForge now has a “Forever” flavour (game version 1.60.1), so look there |
| Knowing your first hour's route so you are not reading a guide while the starting zone empties | Logging in at 2:59. Nothing about pre-queue behaviour has been described |
One structural point worth holding onto: Forever's stated pacing is 10–15 seconds to kill an ordinary creature, with no level scaling and no flying. A crowded starting zone in a game at that pace is a slower problem than a crowded starting zone in Retail, because tagging and respawn contention hurt more when each kill is long. If your first hour is miserable, the cheapest fix is a different starting zone, not a different day.
Hour by hour — day one as a Mage Source tier D — our analysis: D
The plan below is written for a Frost Mage, because that is what this guide's author levelled in the beta and expects to main at launch. Times are PST. The mechanical claims inside it are sourced on the Levelling page; the schedule is analysis, and the further out it goes the more it is a sketch.
| When | Goal | What you are actually doing |
|---|---|---|
| Morning of 4 Nov | Client ready | Open the launcher and let it patch. Confirm the Forever entry in the Game Version drop-down above Play, under the World of Warcraft tile — that is where the beta lived. Install no addons. |
| 2:30 p.m. | At the login screen | Nothing left to decide. Ruleset, faction, race, class and name all settled days ago. |
| 3:00 p.m. — hour 1 | Level ~1–6 | Starting-zone quests, nothing clever. No talent points until 10, so there is nothing to optimise yet. Take the Enhanced or Classic mode pick and move on — it only governs transmog and it is changeable at an NPC. |
| Hour 2–3 | Level ~10 | First talent point → Improved Frostbolt, five ranks deep. Start reading every caster quest reward properly: weapons grant spell damage from about this level, which is new, and the old habit of ignoring a staff upgrade is now costing you damage. |
| Hour 3–4 | Weapon training + a profession | If your capital cannot teach Staves, this is the trip — 10 silver, and worth doing before a staff drops rather than after. Pick professions now if you want Camping: camp objects unlock at profession skill 20, which is a first-evening target, not a first-week one. Camping. |
| Evening, hour 4–7 | Level ~13–16 | Improved Frostbolt 5/5 by 14, then Frostbite (15–17), then Ice Shards toward Ice Lance at 20 — the full order is on the Mage talent page. The loop is Frostbolt at max range → Frostbolt → Frost Nova on the close → Blink back → finish. You should end most fights near full health; if you are drinking every second pull, you are letting things reach you. |
| Late, if the night runs long | First dungeon | Hall of Thanes (13–18) under Ironforge, or Ruins of Lordaeron (15–20) in Tirisfal. Take every quest first: dungeon quests still pay bonus XP on top of normal quest values, though Blizzard halved that bonus on 1 October and raised dungeon kill XP ~20% on 8 October. The stated intent is that dungeon XP per hour roughly matches questing — a run is a fair alternative, no longer a jackpot. There is no dungeon finder, and meeting stones list a group but do not summon — budget the walk. |
Eleven points gets you Ice Lance, which does +200% damage to Frozen targets (cut from +300% on 15 October) for 45 mana, instant, at 30 yards. Frostbolt chills → Frostbite roots → Ice Lance lands for triple. That combination did not exist in Classic and it is the single biggest change to how Frost feels. Everything before 20 is travel time to it.
The first week Source tier D — our analysis: D
- Level 20 → 30, and the second milestone. The 16-point talent row is new in Forever, bought at level 25 (points are level − 9), and only beta testers, from 1 October, ever spent points in it. Whatever tier lists appear in week one, no credible spec ranking or DPS estimate exists — Icy Veins' own say “coming soon”, and most of what search returns is hosted on sites this guide does not cite.
- Excavation Site: Wetlands (26–31) and City of Dalaran (28–33) are the next two dungeons in range, both tested in the beta. Alliance gets into Dalaran with a key from Image of Archmage Modera outside; Horde earns a Dalaran Sewer Key through a Tarren Mill quest chain B. The Excavation Site's boss Shadetooth drops the Greenhouse Blueprint.
- Legacy. Account-wide points from Legacy Challenges, spent per character across three trees. 65 points account-wide, of which 29 can be earned on any single character, and 16 spendable per character at launch; overflow feeds a cosmetic reward track. A respec exists. When the 16-point cap rises is unannounced. Legacy.
- Camping. A cooking fire becomes a campsite with vendors, repairs, profession workspaces and one-hour buffs — you sit, sleep, kneel or lie down near the fire for a minute (crafting while you wait is allowed). Three crafted objects per fire, one per nearby player. Camping.
- Don't plan a mount at 40 the way you used to. Forever uses the TBC model: the cost moves into riding training. Wowhead's Forever data prices Apprentice Riding at 100g (40) and Journeyman at 1,000g (60) Source tier B — verbatim reporting or hands-on testing: B; whether the training also grants a mount is unconfirmed, so keep about 40g more for a racial mount.
- AoE grinding opens up for a Mage from the mid-30s, and it is the fastest XP and gold in the game when done well. Forever quietly dulled two safety nets: Improved Flamestrike grants crit rather than a stun chance, and Blast Wave dazes rather than stuns. Expect it to be less forgiving than Classic guides describe.
The 35 days to 9 December Source tier A — official Blizzard or live client data: A
Launch to raids is five weeks, and Blizzard has removed most of the traditional reasons to rush.
| What is settled | What it means for the five weeks |
|---|---|
| No attunements for the new launch raids. Devs Ana Resendez and Clayton Stone, asked directly; some raid content may still need items carried in | There is no weeks-long key chain to start for Barrow Deeps or Hyjal. Onyxia's Lair is the one raid with a traditional attunement at launch (Aggrend, official podcast ep. 3) B — start that chain early |
| One difficulty, always. No heroic, no mythic, no scaling: “the difficulty will always be the same” | You can out-level and out-gear it. Arriving at 9 December slightly late costs less than it would in Retail |
| Fixed sizes: 10 / 20 / 40, one raid at each, no flex | A 10-man forms trivially. If you only have five friends, Barrow Deeps is still reachable |
| Lockout lengths: unannounced | Nothing to plan a schedule around yet. Watch for the blue post |
| No WoW Token and no paid character boosts — “no plans”. GDKP runs are not allowed, and Blizzard closed nearly 4,000 gold-buying and gold-selling accounts during the beta | The only way to be 60 on 9 December is to have played to 60 |
The realistic target is level 60 with a dungeon set and a profession that pays for repairs, not a world first. Forever's pacing is deliberately slow, downtime is the thing that actually decides levelling speed, and a corpse run in a world with no flying is five to ten minutes you do not get back.
Unknowns — what Blizzard has not stated
Everything in this section is genuinely unannounced as of 9 October 2026. It is listed so it does not quietly get filled in from Classic memory or from a confident-sounding aggregator. The guide's full list is on the Unknowns page.
| Question | Status |
|---|---|
| Population caps or instance caps at launch | Nothing said Layering itself is confirmed; how many per ruleset, and what happens when they fill, is not |
| Login queue behaviour, or any queue priority | Unannounced No pack claims it either |
| Whether reserved characters appear on your list at launch | Strong inference only Blizzard says you “create and customize” them, which implies they persist — but no statement covers the handoff to 4 November |
| Time of day name reservation opens on 27 Oct | Answered 1:00 p.m. PDT (Blizzard, 20 October) — how to reserve |
| Time of day raids unlock on 9 Dec | Unannounced A 1:00 p.m. PST figure on countdown sites is extrapolated from Season of Discovery, not stated by Blizzard |
| Where reservation happens — client or website | Answered In the game client: install World of Warcraft: Forever from the Battle.net app, choose a ruleset, create the characters (Blizzard, 20 October) |
| Name length limit per field | Unannounced (Whether surnames can be shared is answered: they can) |
| Paid transfers — to or from Classic Era, or between “super districts” | Unannounced The client carries paid-transfer APIs; what they will be used for is not stated. Switching between Normal, PvP and Roleplaying is answered: you cannot |
| Whether the language preference is a hard partition | Unannounced |
| The launch product code, install directory and TOC suffix | Unconfirmed wow_classic_beta serves the beta; nothing states what serves the live game |
| How big the addon ecosystem is on day one | Starting CurseForge now has a “Forever” flavour (game version 1.60.1) and the first ports have shipped. Addons & API |
| Raid and dungeon lockout lengths | Unannounced |
| Whether Onyxia's Lair opens at launch or on 9 December | Disputed Its attunement is answered: the only traditional raid attunement at launch B |
| The legendary reward Blizzard said it was excited to reveal | Still unrevealed |
| Riding skill — the level it unlocks and what it costs | Partly answered TBC model, cost moved into training; Wowhead's Forever data gives Apprentice 100g at 40 and Journeyman 1,000g at 60 Source tier B — verbatim reporting or hands-on testing: B. Whether training grants a mount is unconfirmed |
| Hardcore's date, or even its season | Unannounced Blizzard: “sometime after launch”. Nothing more |
| Guild mechanics | Nothing Forever-specific announced Guild charters existed in the beta; that is all |
| Auction House scope — per ruleset? per faction? | Unannounced |
| Whether the Server Slam carries any reward | Unannounced It is the only route by which anything beta-side could plausibly reach a live account. Carryover |
Launch weeks generate fabricated detail faster than anything else — hidden achievements, secret rewards, “confirmed broken” specs, day-one tier lists. This guide has already caught and named one outright fabrication circulating about the beta. If a claim about launch day is not traceable to a Blizzard post or to the client, it belongs in the list above rather than in your plan. Corrections.
Synced to the knowledge base (400.10.1, 400.10.3, 400.50.3, refreshed 9 Oct) · Last updated 9 October 2026 · launch is 4 November 2026, 3:00 p.m. PST