World of Warcraft: Forever is Blizzard’s permanent Classic+/year-one reboot of early Azeroth, revealed at BlizzCon 2026 and locked to street on November 4, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. PST (6:00 p.m. ET). First-party What’s Next and Deep Dive panel recaps now flesh out systems, rulesets, and the post-launch raid clock without changing the street stamp.
Beta begins September 17, 2026 (PST framing in Blizzard’s roadmap). Launch access remains tied to an active World of Warcraft Subscription or Game Time; optional Battle.net upgrade packs sit on top of that sub requirement. This desk will not invent a free open beta or a standalone no-sub Forever SKU, and will not invent separate-client vs in-client packaging language.
Confirmed launch scope still includes new and reimagined regions, over 1,000 new quests across levels 1–60, a new battleground, nine new dungeons, two new raids (with raids unlocking December 9), and new playable race Skyborne. Deep Dive adds the day-to-day systems that make Forever feel alive: Camping (Basic Campfire campsites with profession-crafted objects and short sit-to-buff downtime), 600+ new profession recipes across level ranges, and the Legacy System for alts.
Legacy points are earned from Legacy Challenges and are shared across characters, while each character spends separately in its own trees (Professions, Adventure, Resourcefulness at launch). At launch each character can spend up to 16 points and players can earn toward roughly 65 Legacy Points for a cosmetic/prestige reward track — not a competitive power race. The system is meant to reward the leveling journey without Hardcore’s permanent-death pressure.
Forever goes realmless: instead of picking a classic realm list first, players choose a ruleset — Normal, PvP, Roleplaying, and Hardcore. Blizzard’s Deep Dive is explicit that Hardcore is available after launch, not as a day-one ruleset claim. Cross-ruleset grouping is not supported; factions remain separate. Collections and Legacy Points are account-wide across rulesets, with Hardcore as the enclosed exception described by Blizzard.
Transmog is opt-in/opt-out: players can disable it so they only see equipped gear, and Classic Mode at first launch disables transmog automatically while still allowing appearance collection for later. Combat and itemization stay Classic-paced; six new race×class combinations are confirmed — Gnome Priest, Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock, and Undead Paladin.
Why it matters: Forever is the ceremony’s nearest commercial mega-announce — street in roughly six weeks — and the Deep Dive finally names how alts, camping, professions, and realmless rulesets will work without inventing pricing tiers or client packaging. For adjacent live Blizzard-family calendar coverage on RCG, see Modern Warfare 4 beta dates set for August, full game launches October 23 — different IP, same desk habit of locking clocks without inventing SKUs.
What we are not saying: no Hardcore-at-launch invent, no separate-client vs mode invent, no free open beta, no standalone no-sub Forever SKU, and no invented full zone/race ability matrix beyond the confirmed lists.
US readers should mark November 4, 2026, 6:00 p.m. ET as the street unlock, treat beta from September 17 as the first-party open window, put raids on December 9, and keep Forever distinct from modern expansion teases such as The Last Titan.
