WoW Forever launches 4 November at 3pm Pacific — every date before it, from Blizzard

World of Warcraft: Forever comes out on Wednesday 4 November 2026 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific time — 6 p.m. on the US east coast, 11 p.m. in the UK, and midnight in Paris and Berlin, where it is already 5 November. Access is included with your World of Warcraft Subscription or Game Time, so nothing extra has to be bought to play it.

Four other dates matter before then. Invite-A-Friend codes start arriving by email on 20 October, the beta closes on 21 October, early name reservation runs from 27 October to 3 November, and the first new raids unlock on 9 December. Every date below comes from Blizzard’s own posts. Where those posts disagree with each other — and on the launch time they do — we show both and say which one holds.

When does WoW Forever come out?

At one moment, everywhere. Blizzard’s pre-purchase post gives a single global time — “November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST” — rather than the staggered regional unlocks WoW uses for a content patch. Everyone logs in at the same instant, which means the calendar date you will see depends on where you live. For most of Europe, Asia and Australia it is Thursday 5 November.

The Sydney row is not ours alone: iTWire, writing for Australian readers, put the launch at 10 a.m. AEDT on Thursday 5 November, which is the same instant.

Is it 3pm PDT or 3pm PST?

It is 3 p.m. Pacific standard time, and the confusion is Blizzard’s own. Its BlizzCon announcement says the game “launches November 4 at 3:00 p.m. PDT globally”, and two paragraphs later on the same page that it “launches globally on November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST”. Taken literally, those are an hour apart: PDT would be 22:00 UTC, PST is 23:00 UTC. A conversion from the first sentence gives a UK time of 10 p.m. — an hour early.

The way to settle it is to notice that Blizzard uses the labels loosely. The same pre-purchase post dates the beta “September 17, 2026, PST”, a day on which California was on daylight time. Read both labels as “Pacific time” and the answer follows: on 4 November the Pacific coast is on standard time, so 3 p.m. there is 23:00 UTC. Two of Blizzard’s three posts print PST for the launch, and the What’s Next recap is one of them.

Every WoW Forever date between now and launch

The raid date is the least repeated line in Blizzard’s whole run of Forever posts. It sits at the end of the panel recap: “New raids unlock on December 9, followed by more raids, dungeons, PvP updates, world content, additional quests throughout the level 1–60 journey, Hardcore, a revamped iconic raid, and major updates”. Five weeks after launch, in other words, the endgame grows for the first time.

Do you have to buy WoW Forever?

No. Forever is part of the same subscription as modern WoW and Classic; there is no box to buy. What Blizzard sells are three optional upgrade packs, and its own articles list what is in them but not what they cost — the prices sit on the Battle.net Shop. Warcraft Tavern, reporting the announcement on 12 September, put them in one sentence: “The Skyborne Heroic Pack is $29.99 USD, the Skyborne Epic Pack is $59.99, and the Forever Collection is $79.99.”

Three details are easy to miss. The new Skyborne race is not free: Blizzard’s footnote, quoted by Warcraft Tavern, says it “requires purchase of Skyborne Heroic Pack or higher edition”. The Collection adds Warcraft III: Reforged, the Forsaken Kingdom campaign and two figurine decor items for housing in modern WoW, and it is only on sale through 11 January 2027. And the 30 days of Game Time in the bigger packs start on launch day, not on purchase.

How does WoW Forever name reservation work?

From 27 October to 3 November, anyone who bought an upgrade pack can create and customise up to three characters, with names given out first come, first served. Blizzard is explicit that “desired names cannot be guaranteed” — reservation gets you in before launch traffic, not a promise of the name.

The reason names matter more than usual is that Forever has no realms. Every character carries two names instead of one, and, in Blizzard’s words, “your full character name needs to be distinct within your region, rather than only within a single realm”. A common first name stays usable as long as the pair is unique. The old trick of taking your name on a quieter server does not exist here.

Instead of a realm you pick a ruleset. Method’s guide lists Normal, PvP, RP and Hardcore, notes that “Hardcore is not available at launch”, and says the PvP ruleset allows characters on one faction only per region — a choice worth making before the reservation window, not after.

Can you still get into the WoW Forever beta?

Only by buying the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection, and only until 21 October. The Heroic Pack does not include it, and neither do Invite-A-Friend codes, which Blizzard says “do not include beta access”. The beta has grown in steps: a Blizzard forum post signed by Kaivax announced a maintenance after which it would return “with the level cap raised to 30”, up from the 20 that iTWire reported for the first phase.

Two things about the beta are reported rather than stated by Blizzard in the posts we read. iTWire says beta progress does not carry over to release, which is how every WoW beta has worked, and that a McDonald’s beta-code promotion in Australia has run out of codes, with existing holders told to redeem by 20 October. Plan as if you start at level 1 on 4 November.

What is WoW Forever, in Blizzard’s own words?

A third, permanent version of World of Warcraft that sits beside modern WoW and Classic. It is set after Warcraft III: Reforged’s Forsaken Kingdom campaign and before Molten Core; players return to the original continents and level to 60. Blizzard’s opening-ceremony summary counts “three new zones, over 1,000 new quests, nine new dungeons, two new raids, the new Skyborne race”.

The same recap names the pieces. The two raids are Hyjal Summit, with 20-player encounters, and the Barrow Deeps, a level-60 ten-player raid. The new regions include Mount Hyjal, Shen’dralas and the Riverglades, and the Skyborne start on Zephras Isle, levels 1 to 12; Horde Skyborne can be Shaman and Alliance Skyborne Mage. The design rules are spelled out too: “no flying mounts, no level scaling”, plus official gamepad support and a choice between modern and Classic visuals.

The one genuinely new system is for people who level more than one character. Blizzard’s deep-dive recap describes Legacy Points, earned from challenges such as levelling a particular class and shared across all your alts, while each character spends them separately in three trees — Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness. At launch a character can spend up to 16 points and the account can earn up to 65; points beyond a character’s spending cap feed a cosmetic reward track instead. Camping is the other addition: campfires crafted in the open world that other players can stop at, add to through professions, and share buffs from.

What happens after launch?

PvP is rebuilt around the original honour ranks. Blizzard says rank points have a weekly cap, that rewards climb from a tabard at rank 1 to epic weapons at rank 14, and that honour buys two PvP sets per class, one blue and one epic — with new sets filling gaps such as separate healer, melee and caster gear for Shaman. The new battleground, the Darkspear Islands, is a 15-versus-15 capture-point map for levels 30 to 60 off the coast of Dustwallow Marsh; Blizzard’s post does not say whether it is open on day one or later.

Past 9 December the roadmap turns into a list without dates: more raids, more dungeons, Hardcore, and “a revamped iconic raid” that Blizzard has not named. That is the honest edge of what is known today. Everything up to launch week has a date and a source; everything after the first raids is a promise, and we will treat it as one until Blizzard puts a date on it.