WoW Forever Server Status: Realms Open 4 November

WoW Forever is in pre-launch. The beta closed for good on 23 October at 10:00 AM PDT. The servers come back for name reservation on 27 October and open for play on 4 November at 3:00 PM PST, which is 23:00 UTC.

Name reservation opens on 27 October at 1:00 PM PDT in North America and 18:00 CET in Europe, and on 28 October at 07:00 local time in Korea and Taiwan. It runs to 3 November and holds up to 3 characters in total across all rulesets. Reservation comes with the Skyborne Heroic Pack, the Skyborne Epic Pack and the Warcraft Forever Collection. Every name rule is in the name reservation guide.

All regions open at the same moment: the afternoon and evening of 4 November in the Americas, midnight in central Europe and the morning of 5 November in Asia and Oceania. US clocks fall back on 1 November, so launch day runs on PST. Europe moves to winter time on 25 October.

Install the client before launch day. Update your drivers, open the Battle.net app, pick Forever in the Game Version menu and press Install. Access comes with a World of Warcraft subscription or Game Time. The full launch calendar is in the release date guide.

Forever has no realm list. At character creation you pick a ruleset, and each ruleset is 1 broad world for every player who chose it. Blizzard built it this way so nobody has to guess which launch realm will stay busy.

Ruleset	How it plays	Opens
Normal	Quests and exploring, PvP when you choose it	4 Nov
PvP	Open world PvP, 1 faction per account	4 Nov
Roleplaying	In-character play	4 Nov
Roleplay-PvP	In-character play on PvP rules	4 Nov
Hardcore	Kept apart, even in battlegrounds	After launch

You group, run dungeons and raid with players on your own ruleset. Battlegrounds can mix rulesets, except Hardcore. Horde and Alliance stay apart, and characters cannot hop freely between rulesets, so pick yours before name reservation. Collections and Legacy Points are shared across rulesets, and nothing earned elsewhere flows into Hardcore.

How to choose between the 4 is in the realmless guide.

Forever runs on high-capacity regional hardware and splits busy zones into world instances, often called layers. A layer is a full copy of the zone with its own share of players. The game places you by friends and familiar players, by language and by PvP balance.

Before launch Blizzard is improving layering at 2 moments: arriving by boat or zeppelin after a loading screen, and large groups entering or leaving a capital city.

Login queues on launch night

On 27 September Blizzard fixed a beta fault that was filling the login queue. At the Classic launch in 2019, Blizzard asked players on realms marked Full or High to move to new realms to avoid the longest queues. In Forever each ruleset is 1 broad world, and layering spreads the crowd across copies of each zone.

Be at the login screen at 3:00 PM PST with the client installed and your name reserved. Your route from level 1 is in the leveling guide, and the addons that load on day 1 are in the addons guide.

A booster can be at that login screen for you. Book your 1 to 60 now and the Pro starts the moment the realms open.

How to change layers

Invite a friend to a party, or accept their invite. The game can then move you into their world instance. When the refresh world prompt appears, accept it out of combat.

1. Realm Status page. Blizzard’s Realm Status page on the World of Warcraft site lists each server as up or down. Pick your region at the top of the list.
2. Maintenance notices. Blizzard announced beta maintenance on its official WoW Forever boards. On 15 October it gave 15 minutes of notice and took the beta down at 1:15 PM PDT for a new build.
3. The ruleset screen. While the servers are closed, the game lists each ruleset as unavailable.

Error BLZ51901016

BLZ51901016 shows up when you are disconnected or the game is stuck retrieving the realm list. Blizzard links it to a connection issue or a PC below the system requirements. Its fix list, in order:

1. Check the system requirements.
2. Update your drivers and operating system.
3. Reset your user interface.
4. Reset your network devices.
5. On wireless or a slow line, optimize the connection.
6. Close every other application.

Every player on a ruleset shares 1 broad world, so each region’s players sit in 4 big pools at launch. Inside a pool, your layer decides who you meet. Friends, language and PvP balance set that layer.

Set your language before launch: press Escape, then Options, System, Languages and Social, and pick a Preferred Online Language. It covers the whole account and can change once every 24 hours.

The PvP ruleset allows 1 faction per account. To keep Horde and Alliance close, Blizzard can pause new characters for 1 faction for a while, as it did in Season of Discovery.

Launch week adds players. Invite-A-Friend codes from the upgrade editions give friends access from 4 to 11 November. Roleplayers who want PvP get their own Roleplay-PvP ruleset at launch, which Blizzard announced on 22 October.

Your Pro levels the character from the opening hour on the ruleset and faction you pick, while you are at work or asleep.