News
Older Blizzard news and blue posts about WoW Forever, newest first, each summarized in our own words with a link to the original.
KaivaxBlizzard's 24 September update to the known-issues list moved two quest problems to resolved and added ten new issues. Most are things the Cooldown Manager cannot track yet, such as pet cooldowns, 
Arcane Blast and item enhancements. Changing a party can also move players to a different world instance.
KaivaxA new beta build puts the Cooldown Manager up for testing and brings many class fixes and tuning changes. Gamepad options and starting-zone quest fixes come with it.
KaivaxBlizzard took the beta offline on 24 September for maintenance and to deploy a new build, expecting at least a couple of hours of downtime. Development notes and an updated known issues list were promised afterwards.
The WoW Forever Collector's Edition is on pre-purchase from the Blizzard Gear Store, and a September 24 update to the article notes more English copies. Orders from that restock are expected to ship and arrive in February 2027, after the November 4, 2026 launch, and the Gear Store allows one copy per household. The box holds physical collectibles and a Warcraft Forever Collection digital code.
Blizzard posted episode 1 of its WoW Forever series on 24 September, with Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield, Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones and two content creators. The designers discuss the Skyborne, layering, beta performance, the bronze interface and how dungeon quests and gear rewards change leveling.
Blizzard's overview video sets out what Forever is and the reasoning behind it. It lists over 1,000 new quests, one new playable race, four zones, nine dungeons and two raids, all new, and says Forever is a completely additive adventure that replaces neither Classic nor modern WoW. The emphasis is on the levelling journey, with account-wide rewards that make it matter across all your characters, and on content after maximum level: new dungeons, quests, zones and trade skill recipes, plus the two raids. The video credits Season of Discovery as the spark, since its reimagined zones full of secrets drove the community to document what was hidden, and it says members of the Classic team developed the concepts for years. The new zones are shown through the Riverglades, reached by a fork in Redridge Mountains that used to be a dead end. Alliance players meet the Brotherhood of the Horse, last seen in Warcraft II, Horde players meet the Bolder'ok ogres, and the Twilight's Hammer is the threat. Hyjal is the finale of levelling and the home of both new raids. The video also mentions a mixed Horde and Alliance camp forced into an uneasy peace after being trapped together. The Skyborne, known to their people as the Shen'dorei, are the new race. 
Walk on Air turns a fall into a controlled glide, and they can side with either the Horde or the Alliance. New combinations shown are 
Dwarf 
Shaman, 
Gnome 
Priest, 
Human 
Hunter, 
Orc 
Mage, 
Troll 
Warlock and Forsaken 
Paladin. Every class's kit is tweaked so every specialisation is viable in combat, and every class gets something new. Group play begins early, with dungeons starting around level 15. Most raids are designed for groups of 10 or 20 players. The video says the 40-player Onyxia's Lair is available at launch, and that more of that kind of raid can be expected occasionally alongside the 10 and 20-player updates. Barrow Deeps is an eight-boss raid beneath Mount Hyjal. Blizzard's roadmap, however, opens every raid, Onyxia included, in December.
KaivaxBlizzard said on 23 September that increased weather effects were coming soon to the beta.
Blizzard explained the Legacy System, an account-wide progression track where finished challenges earn Legacy Points for perks and cosmetic rewards. There are sixty-five challenges in six categories, each worth one point shared by all non-Hardcore characters on the Blizzard account. Each character spends those points on its own perks across three trees, up to 16 points per character at launch, and the account's total also unlocks a toy, a pet, a tabard and a mount.
KaivaxBlizzard acknowledged a beta bug where the 0.5-second cast before a Hunter's 
Auto Shot or a wand shot was much shorter than intended, so players did not need to stand still as long. A fix was expected in an upcoming beta build, hopefully the following week.
KaivaxBlizzard released beta client WoW Forever 1.60.1 Build 69977 with fixes for Mac display and stability and for two gamepad problems. Testers update it from the Blizzard desktop app after leaving the game. Blizzard said the next full weekly update was coming on September 24.
The Skyborne, or shen'dorei, are a new playable race in WoW Forever who pick the Horde or the Alliance at character creation. Their story starts on Zephras Isle, a level 1-12 starting zone. Horde 
Windshaper Skyborne can be Shaman and Alliance High Order Skyborne can be Mages; both sides can also be 
Druids, Hunters, 
Rogues and 
Warriors, with druid forms made for the race.
KaivaxReplying to a detailed player report of eight Mac graphics bugs, each tied to one setting, Blizzard thanked the reporter and said several analyses and possible fixes for Mac issues were already in progress.
Blizzard listed the races, class combinations and racial traits of WoW Forever, led by the new Skyborne race on both factions. Horde Windshapers can be Shaman and Alliance High Order Skyborne can be Mages, and new pairings include Orc Mages, Troll Warlocks, 
Undead Paladins, Human Hunters, Gnome Priests and Dwarf Shamans. The article lists each race's racial traits with their numbers, and Blizzard says some of them were reworked for Forever.
KaivaxBlizzard asked players locked out of a beta character with a 'name already exists' message to report the character name and the last time they played it successfully, to help narrow log searches. A Senior Game Producer wanted to restart beta realms that day, and Blizzard said it was gathering information to be sure of the cause and fix.
KaivaxBlizzard confirmed a fix for a stuck event in the quest A Firm Response, which blocked Windshaper Skyborne on Zephras Isle after Lorthuna spawned near the Shrine of Akir. An earlier fix did not work, but the 21 September fix did, and testers were seen completing the quest.
KaivaxBlizzard opened a forum thread to gather official WoW Forever material from its BlizzCon reveal in one place. Every later post in it is an embedded video with no written text, so the thread itself states nothing about the game.
Characters in WoW Forever have two names, and only the full pair has to be unique within a region, so a first name can be shared. The second name can be hidden in the game world but still shows in chat, the code of conduct for names still applies to both parts read together, and Blizzard says Early Name Reservation is planned for October 27 through November 3, 2026, for eligible upgrade purchases.
WoW Forever replaces the realm list with rulesets: you choose Normal, PvP, Roleplaying or Hardcore, and each one is a single large community. Grouping, dungeons and raids stay inside one ruleset, but battlegrounds can mix players from all of them except Hardcore, which Blizzard says will arrive some time after launch. On the PvP ruleset each player can make characters for one faction only, and a language preference helps you meet players who share it.
KaivaxIn a thread about being unable to launch WoW Forever, Blizzard pointed out that the WoW Forever discussion forum is open to everyone with an active WoW subscription, not only beta testers.
KaivaxFor players told their operating system does not meet the minimum specs to install WoW Forever, Blizzard pointed to its GPU requirements article. At launch, GPUs based on certain older architectures far below the minimum hardware requirements will no longer be supported.
KaivaxA player reported that two WoW accounts under one Blizzard account could not both log in: the second login disconnects the first and no account selector appears. Blizzard asked whether adding a separate test-region account would bring up a choice of account at login.
KaivaxA day after the beta opened, Blizzard added five issues to its known-issues list. Queueing 
Heroic Strike, 
Cleave or 
Raptor Strike turns off the spell queue window, 
Bear Form multiplies armor from buffs and consumables, and the Cooldown Manager is still unfinished.
Blizzard's WoW Weekly roundup for 18 September covers BlizzCon 2026, where World of Warcraft: Forever was announced, and says the WoW Forever beta is now live. It also points to a recorded Q&A with the development team on modern WoW and WoW Forever. The rest of the roundup is about modern WoW and its shop.
KaivaxBlizzard opened the WoW Forever beta with a list of known issues. They range from a Barber Chair Lua error and friends being switched off to wrong Glancing Blow values and pet stats missing from the character sheet. Several were already marked as fixed in the next beta build.