Beta
How to get into the WoW Forever beta
The beta runs September 17 to October 21, 2026. There are exactly two ways in, one free and one guaranteed, and it is worth understanding what you are actually buying before you reach for the second.
The free route
Opt in from the official WoW Forever page. You sign in with the Battle.net account your WoW licence is on and hit the request button. That is the whole process, and it costs nothing.
The catch is that it is a lottery, not a queue. Blizzard adds players in waves across the test, so opting in on day one does not put you ahead of anyone, and plenty of people who opt in never get pulled. If you want to be playing on the 17th specifically, this is not the route.
The guaranteed route
Two packs include guaranteed access for the full duration of the test. The cheapest of them is the Skyborne Epic Pack at $59.99.
Skyborne Epic Pack
$59.99The one that actually buys you something time-limited. If you want to be in on September 17 rather than hoping for a wave invite, this is the floor.
Warcraft Forever Collection
$79.99Twenty dollars over the Epic Pack for Warcraft III: Reforged and a campaign. Worth it only if you actually want those; it adds nothing to Forever itself that the Epic Pack does not already give you.
Limited time, through January 11, 2027
The full pack comparison covers what else each one includes, and which of the extras are actually worth the gap in price.
Two things to know before you pay for it
It opens at level 20, not 30
Most coverage is repeating a flat level 30 cap. Thirty is the ceiling for the test, but it is not where the test starts: Blizzard’s Clay Stone and Nora Mills said in a developer interview that the beta opens at 20 and the cap rises to 30 after roughly two weeks. If you buy in for day one specifically, that is the first third of the levelling game, not half of it.
The launch cap is 60 either way, so the beta shows you none of the endgame. Raiding is doubly out of reach: both raids open on December 9, five weeks after launch.
Your beta character does not come with you
Beta progress is not expected to carry over to the live game. Treat the test as a preview, not a head start, and do not grind it as though the time banks.
So is it worth buying in?
Honestly, only if you want to play it now for its own sake. The pack does not give you a launch advantage: the characters are wiped, the cap is half the real one, and the subscription you already pay covers Forever from November 4 anyway.
The one part of a pre-purchase that is genuinely time-critical is unrelated to the beta. Early name reservation runs October 27 to November 3, and names are first come, first served. If you care about claiming a specific name on a brand-new server population, that is the deadline that matters, and the cheaper Heroic Pack covers it without paying for beta access you may not use.
Last verified 2026-09-17 against Blizzard’s pre-purchase announcement and reporting on the beta opt-in process. Beta dates are confirmed. The level 20 opening cap comes from a developer interview with Clay Stone and Nora Mills rather than a written Blizzard page; Blizzard has not published a wave schedule or a date for the raise to 30.