Overview
- Blizzard extended the public WoW: Forever beta through Friday, a change announced on Wednesday to give testers more time before servers shut down for the weekend.
- A limited stress test open to anyone with a World of Warcraft account runs today on a separate server that starts everyone fresh, and regular beta servers will be taken offline for the duration of the event.
- Players do not need an active subscription or to have purchased WoW: Forever special editions to join the stress test, but progress from the stress-test server will not carry over to the beta or launch characters.
- Blizzard set a name-reservation window in North America to begin October 27 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern for eligible purchasers, allowing up to three reserved character names across rulesets, and confirmed a November 4 launch with nine new dungeons and a first raid trio unlocking December 9 with Onyxia requiring attunement.
- The paid, opt-in beta has repeatedly strained test infrastructure, prompting capacity increases and telemetry-driven tuning of Legacy account features and progression as Blizzard works to reduce queue times and improve launch-day stability.