World of Warcraft: Forever looks like it could be a smash hit after the launch of the beta was overrun with eager fans, surprising even Blizzard itself.
Blizzard’s ended last weekend’s BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremony with the announcement of World of Warcraft: Forever, a “Classic Plus” MMO developed by the World of Warcraft Classic team, and set during the first year of World of Warcraft.
While Forever doesn’t launch until November 4, the beta was made available this week, and it was flooded by players. Those who did manage to get in faced disconnects. And then actually playing the game was tough due to extreme lag with looting and accepting quests. Hardly ideal.
World of Warcraft Classic developer Josh Greenfield took to X / Twitter to provide some insight into the popularity of the beta.
“Man, it was hard to sleep last night, I was so excited,” Greenfield said. “Beta has been… crazy. The craziest numbers I’ve seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost eight years on classic.
“We’ve got something really special here.”
That suggests significant interest in Forever, beyond even the launch of Classic itself. As a grizzled veteran of World of Warcraft’s early years, I remember well the brutal login queues most players would face when the groundbreaking MMO launched late 2004 and early 2005. Forever is rekindling those memories for me.
So, what’s going on with those queues? World of Warcraft senior game producer Tom Ellis took to X / Twitter to offer an explanation that acts as a fascinating insight into what goes on with the launch of an MMO. The upshot is this is a beta, and usually World of Warcraft betas don’t see this sort of interest.
“AHMAGERD, this game is 20 years old, how do you still suck at this!?! a. Heh, fair enough, short answer is, this is our BETA PTR environment stack, it’s not a Production stack by a long, long, long, long, long, long shot. Betas for WoW aren’t usually huge meter movers so this environment just isn’t that powerful. This led to the first problem you saw today,” Ellis explained.
If you’ve got even a casual interest in online game infrastructure, Ellis’ post is worth a read. Ultimately, though, Blizzard sorted out the problems and the Forever beta is now running smoothly.
“Marked live once again and you all poured in without fuss,” he said. “Right now things are incredibly smooth for the first few hours of a public beta, Classic teams watching and fixing anything blocking that comes up but we’re otherwise pretty much done for the night, enjoy!”
And that’s what players are doing. I’ve seen multiple posts from fans praising the new visuals (in particular, the improved lighting), new sound effects (that rain!), and, from those who were there back in the day, the nostalgia-fueled trip down memory lane.
Wesley Yin-Poole
Director, News
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].