Launch Time

47:13 World of Warcraft: Forever launches worldwide on Wednesday, Nov 4, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 UTC), at the same instant everywhere: 6:00 p.m. on the US East Coast, 11:00 p.m. in London, and on Thursday, Nov 5, in most of Europe, Asia and Australia. "I'll see you in game on November 4th," Associate Production Director Clay Stone told the What's Next panel at BlizzCon on Sep 12, 2026, and on Oct 29, 2026 Blizzard confirmed both in its launch announcement, "World of Warcraft: Forever Goes Live Globally November 4!", with a table of local log-in times from the Americas to Australia (Blizzard). Forever is included with a World of Warcraft subscription or Game Time; there is no separate box to buy. What to do on either side of that moment is on What to Do First, and the dates around it, from the beta to the first raids, are on Release and Roadmap.

Quick facts

Launch time in every time zone

US daylight saving time ends on Sunday, Nov 1, 2026, three days before launch, so 3:00 p.m. on Nov 4 is Pacific Standard Time (UTC minus 8), as Blizzard's pre-purchase article and its Sep 24 update both say. One line of Blizzard's Sep 12 announcement wrote "3:00 p.m. PDT"; on Nov 4 that label cannot apply, and the PST time is the one to use. Europe changed to winter time on Oct 25, 2026, so the times below are standard (winter) times there too.

British Columbia is the exception on the Pacific coast. It made its last clock change on Mar 8, 2026 and stays on UTC minus 7 all year, a time the province now calls Pacific Time, so its clocks do not go back on Nov 1 (Government of British Columbia). Forever therefore opens at 4:00 p.m. in Vancouver and Victoria, an hour later on the clock than in Seattle. Southeastern British Columbia (Cranbrook, Fernie, Golden) stays on UTC minus 6, which makes it 5:00 p.m. there.

Sydney and Melbourne are on daylight time (AEDT, UTC plus 11) in November and New Zealand on NZDT (UTC plus 13); Brisbane, Perth and the rest of Asia keep no daylight time. Blizzard's own table of Oct 29, 2026 gives the same moment in eight places: 3:00 p.m. PST in the Americas (a label that does not fit British Columbia, above), 8:00 p.m. BRT in Brazil, 11:00 p.m. GMT in the United Kingdom and 23:00 UTC on Nov 4, then 12:00 a.m. CET in Europe, 7:00 a.m. in Taiwan, 8:00 a.m. KST in Korea and 10:00 a.m. AEDT in Australia and New Zealand on Nov 5 (Blizzard). The other rows above are the same instant converted; the table is not a promise that Forever is offered in every country.

Before launch

0:00 Forever ships complete on Nov 4: Blizzard's Launch Dungeons video of Oct 14, 2026 opens on the line that the game "launches with nine new dungeons full of loot and, most importantly, danger". Before that moment a few dates matter to players getting ready.

• Oct 20, 2026: Invite-A-Friend codes. Blizzard emails launch codes from Oct 20 (PST): one with the Skyborne Heroic Pack, three with the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection. An invited friend can play from Nov 4 to Nov 11, 2026 without a subscription or Game Time. The codes do not include beta access.
• Oct 21, 2026: the Stress Test (held). Blizzard opened the World of Warcraft: Forever Stress Test to anyone with a WoW account, on Forever's regional launch hardware, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. PDT in the Americas and Oceania, 19:00 to 03:00 CEST in Europe, and 5:00 to 9:00 a.m. in Taiwan and 6:00 to 10:00 a.m. in Korea on Oct 22, under In Development in the Battle.net app's Game Version menu. Every character, name and guild made in the Stress Test was deleted when it closed, ahead of name reservations.
• Oct 23, 2026: the beta closed (done). Blizzard extended the Beta by two days on Oct 20; it reopened after the Stress Test and closed "forever" at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Friday, Oct 23. Blizzard then took "a few short days" for priority issues before character creation opens on Oct 27, Kaivax wrote.
• Oct 27 to Nov 3, 2026: early name reservation (open as of Oct 31). Any upgrade includes Early Name Reservation, which Blizzard schedules "from October 27 through November 3, 2026, PST". It opens on Oct 27 at 1:00 p.m. PDT in North America and 18:00 CET in Europe, and on Oct 28 at 07:00 in Korea (KST) and Taiwan (CST). Players can create and customize up to three characters in total across all rulesets (two on a PvP ruleset leave one for Normal or Role-Play), with names reserved first come, first served, after installing Forever from the Game Version menu in the Battle.net app (Blizzard); Blizzard warns that "desired names cannot be guaranteed". In the first hours the game refused more names than it should; on Oct 27 Blizzard said a bug in the restricted name list was to blame and that the fix comes with each region's next realm restarts (Blizzard forums). The same day Blizzard warned Oceanic players on Australian servers to create Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP characters before Normal or PvP ones, because of a bug that hid those two rulesets afterward (Blizzard forums). A Forever name has two parts and must be unique across the whole region, because Forever has no realms (see Rulesets). The packs are compared on Upgrades and Editions.
• Nov 2, 2026: poster signing in Irvine. Blizzard is holding a free, ticketed WoW: Forever poster signing with the developers at the Irvine Improv in California two days before launch; tickets went out through TIXR from Oct 27 (Blizzard).
• Install the game. Forever is installed and launched from the Battle.net app on Windows or macOS: install World of Warcraft, then choose "World of Warcraft: Forever" from the game versions, Blizzard's starter guide says. The client has been available since name reservation opened on Oct 27, so installing early is the way to avoid a launch-night download; as of Oct 31, 2026 Blizzard has not announced a separate pre-download date or the final download size. Its shop asks for 128 GB of available space on a solid state drive; the full list and the graphics cards it refuses are on System Requirements.
• Subscription or Game Time. Forever is part of the World of Warcraft subscription, from $14.99 a month in the US as the shop showed on Oct 31 (Price and Subscription). The 30 days of Game Time in the Skyborne Epic Pack start on Nov 4.

What happens at 3 p.m. PST

7:52 When the servers open, a player who logs in for the first time meets "a mode selector", Blizzard's Deep Dive panel explained: a preset of a handful of settings, any of which can be changed later. Choosing the Classic mode, for example, hides other players' transmog "as soon as you enter the game". Blizzard's New Player's Starter Guide of Oct 28, 2026 calls the choice the Experience Presets, Classic or Enhanced, and says the screen appears only at the first login, so a player who already logged in during name reservation should not see it again at launch; the settings stay under Game Menu > Options. After that come the ruleset (Normal, PvP, Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP; Hardcore arrives after launch), the race and the class. The Beginner's Guide compares the two presets and walks through the first hours.

At launch Forever brings three new zones, more than 1,000 new quests, the nine new dungeons and the new Skyborne race, whose starting zone, Zephras Isle, needs a Skyborne upgrade. No raid is open on the first day: Blizzard's raid overview of Oct 20, 2026 puts the 40-player Onyxia's Lair on Dec 9 with the two new raids, although its explainer of Sep 23 had said Onyxia would be available at launch (Blizzard). Legacy points are capped at 16 at launch.

43:13 The new raids come later. "You will see new raids unlock on December 9th," Clay Stone said at BlizzCon, followed by more raids, dungeons, PvP updates and world content. The two raids of Dec 9 are Hyjal Summit, for 20 players, and The Barrow Deeps, for 10, both for level 60 characters, five weeks after launch.

Queues and servers

20:49 Blizzard built Forever's launch around one change: no realm list. On the Deep Dive panel, lead software engineer Ana Resendez explained that in WoW Classic "players naturally gravitated towards the same realms, creating these massive realms and potentially long queues", that the 2004 game "simply couldn't handle" so many players on one realm, and that Blizzard "can support far more players on a single realm than ever before" today. Forever goes "realmless": a player picks a ruleset, and each ruleset is one large shared world.

38:10 The beta was the rehearsal, and its first day was rough. PC Gamer reported hour-long queues when it opened on Sep 17, 2026. Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones said on the first WoW: Forever Podcast, on Sep 24, that the launch of the beta "was a little shaky at first" but that issues were fixed quickly; European players had trouble because "everyone globally is logging into a single server", which, he said, is "not going to be representative of how our live servers are architected". He expected the game to be "in a very, very good place" by launch.

34:45 Crowds inside the world are split by layering. Asked on the same podcast how many players fit on a layer, the developers answered that it "depends on the zone": the limit is configured per zone, by its size, its place and whether it is "likely to be a PvP flash point", and a new layer spins up when an area passes its threshold.

21:40 Blizzard's engineers said on the Oct 29, 2026 podcast that the problem clips of players vanishing at zone edges were "pretty much erased" by the last days of the beta and the Stress Test, with more fixes due. How partitions, world refreshes and guild placement work is on Servers and Realms.

Blizzard has not said how long launch queues may be, or whether it will cap new characters on launch night, as of Oct 31, 2026. Its ruleset article of Sep 21 does allow one limit: on the PvP ruleset, Blizzard may restrict new characters of one faction for a time to keep the sides balanced. The beta's population cap was raised several times in September because of demand (see Beta), so a busy first evening is likely. The Stress Test on Oct 21 ran on Forever's regional launch hardware and was Blizzard's last open test before launch.

Frequently asked questions

What time does World of Warcraft: Forever launch? World of Warcraft: Forever launches on Nov 4, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 UTC), at the same moment worldwide, as Blizzard's launch announcement of Oct 29, 2026 confirms. That is 6:00 p.m. EST and 11:00 p.m. in the UK.

What time does WoW Forever launch in Europe? At midnight CET, the start of Thursday, Nov 5, 2026, in Paris, Berlin and Madrid; 11:00 p.m. on Nov 4 in London; and 1:00 a.m. on Nov 5 in Athens and Helsinki.

What time does WoW Forever launch in Vancouver? At 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov 4, 2026, not 3:00 p.m. British Columbia stopped changing its clocks in March 2026 and stays on UTC minus 7, so World of Warcraft: Forever's 3:00 p.m. PST is 4:00 p.m. there.

What time does WoW Forever launch in Brazil? At 8:00 p.m. BRT on Wednesday, Nov 4, 2026, Blizzard's launch table says.

What time does WoW Forever launch in Australia? On Thursday, Nov 5, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. AEDT in Sydney and Melbourne, 9:00 a.m. in Brisbane and 7:00 a.m. in Perth. New Zealand gets World of Warcraft: Forever at noon NZDT.

Is the launch time PST or PDT? PST. US daylight saving time ends on Nov 1, 2026, so 3:00 p.m. Pacific on Nov 4 is PST, UTC minus 8, as Blizzard's pre-purchase article says.

Do I need to buy World of Warcraft: Forever? No. World of Warcraft: Forever is included with a World of Warcraft subscription or Game Time; the Skyborne packs are optional upgrades.

Can I make my character before launch? Yes, with any World of Warcraft: Forever upgrade: early name reservation runs from Oct 27 to Nov 3, 2026, PST, for up to three characters, created and customized, with names first come, first served.

Will there be queues at launch? Blizzard has not said. The World of Warcraft: Forever beta opened with hour-long queues on Sep 17, 2026; Blizzard says the live game uses realmless rulesets and per-zone layers, unlike the single server the beta ran on.

When do the raids open? On Dec 9, 2026, five weeks after launch: Hyjal Summit (20 players), the Barrow Deeps (10 players) and Onyxia's Lair (40 players), per Blizzard's raid overview of Oct 20, 2026.

What do I see the first time I log in to WoW Forever? The Experience Presets screen, Classic or Enhanced, then the ruleset, then character creation. The presets screen appears only once, at the first login, and each of its settings can be changed later under Game Menu > Options.

Is there a pre-download for WoW Forever? Blizzard has not announced a separate one as of Oct 31, 2026, but World of Warcraft: Forever can already be installed from the game versions in the Battle.net app, where players have reserved names since Oct 27.

What time does name reservation start? Oct 27, 2026 at 1:00 p.m. PDT in North America and 18:00 CET in Europe; Oct 28 at 07:00 KST in Korea and 07:00 CST in Taiwan.

Sources

• World of Warcraft: Forever Goes Live Globally November 4!, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 29, 2026
• Permanent daylight saving time, Government of British Columbia, read Oct 31, 2026
• Name Reservation Issue for Oceanic Players, Blizzard Entertainment (Kaivax), World of Warcraft forums, Oct 27, 2026
• All About Tech ft. @Shobek | Episode 6 - The WoW: Forever Podcast, World of Warcraft, Oct 29, 2026 (video)
• New Player's Starter Guide: Welcome to World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 28, 2026
• Now Live! Get Your Ticket to the WoW: Forever Poster Signing at the Irvine Improv, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 28, 2026
• Overly Restrictive Name Check and Fix Incoming - October 27, Blizzard Entertainment (Kaivax), World of Warcraft forums, Oct 27, 2026
• Thank You For Testing the WoW Forever Beta, Blizzard Entertainment (Kaivax), World of Warcraft forums, Oct 23, 2026
• World of Warcraft: Forever Raid Overview: Locations, Raid Sizes, and Attunement, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 20, 2026
• Claim Your World of Warcraft: Forever Character Names, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 20, 2026
• Pre-Purchase World of Warcraft: Forever Upgrades and Begin Your Next Journey in Azeroth, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 12, 2026
• Carve a New Path with World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 12, 2026
• Pre-Purchase the World of Warcraft: Forever Collector's Edition (updated Sep 24), Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 24, 2026
• Choose Your Ruleset in World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 21, 2026
• Join the World of Warcraft: Forever Stress Test, Blizzard Entertainment, Oct 15, 2026, updated Oct 16, 2026
• Heads Up -- WoW Forever Stress Test on October 21, Blizzard Entertainment (Kaivax), World of Warcraft forums, Oct 20, 2026
• World of Warcraft: Forever players are reliving 2004 with hour-long queue times to get into the highly-anticipated beta, PC Gamer, Sep 17, 2026
• World of Warcraft: Forever - What's Next Panel | BlizzCon 2026, World of Warcraft, Sep 13, 2026 (video)
• World of Warcraft: Forever - Deep Dive | BlizzCon 2026, World of Warcraft, Sep 13, 2026 (video)
• What is World of Warcraft: Forever?, World of Warcraft, Sep 23, 2026 (video)
• Unpacking Beta Launch ft. @Xaryu | Episode 1 - The WoW: Forever Podcast, World of Warcraft, Sep 24, 2026 (video)
• Launch Dungeons | World of Warcraft: Forever, World of Warcraft, Oct 14, 2026 (video)