The release of World of Warcraft: Forever brings a third — or, depending on how you count them, a sixth or seventh — way to play World of Warcraft to everyone with a WoW subscription. Joining the modern game and the Classic servers, Forever is based on WoW as it was at launch in 2004, but with new content, rebalanced classes, graphical enhancements, and lots of modernization.
You’ll be able to delve into WoW as it felt like 22 years ago, but never actually was, this week on Nov. 4 (or Nov. 5, depending on your time zone). Here’s when World of Warcraft: Forever releases in your time zone.
World of Warcraft: Forever release times in your time zone
World of Warcraft: Forever is released globally on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 6 p.m. EST. Here’s when that is in your time zone:
- 3 p.m. PST on Wednesday, Nov. 4 for the west coast of North America
- 6 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 4 for the east coast of North America
- 8 p.m. BRT on Wednesday, Nov. 4 for Brazil
- 11 p.m. GMT on Wednesday, Nov. 4 for the U.K.
- 12 a.m. CET on Thursday, Nov. 5 for Western Europe
- 8 a.m. JST on Thursday, Nov. 5 for Japan
- 10 a.m. AEDT on Thursday, Nov. 5 for the east coast of Australia
What to expect from World of Warcraft: Forever
WoW: Forever is a kind of retro remix of WoW, based on the content and design philosophy of the classic game but with some new stuff, some modernizations, and some changes.
The core of Forever is the original nine character classes and eight playable races, split into two warring factions who can never communicate with each other or group up together: The Horde and Alliance. All the adventuring zones, dungeons, raids, and cities of the original game are present across its two massive continents.
All this, however, has changed:
- The Skyborne race — a group of blue-skinned high elves who live on a sky island far above Azeroth. They can join either the Horde or Alliance.
- Several new adventuring zones, dungeons, and raids, plus new and rebalanced quests throughout the world
- A hard level cap of 60 that Blizzard has promised never to increase. The idea is to focus the game on the leveling journey rather than the race through the endgame
- An engine revamp that revitalizes the original graphics with lush new lighting, time-of-day, weather, fog, and water effects
- A modernized and customizable UI
- Official gamepad support
- Redesigned character classes with new talent trees and rebalanced specializations
- Camping, a new social system that grants players buffs for hanging out together
- “Megaserver” online infrastructure which makes it much easier to play with friends
Access to WoW: Forever is included in a World of Warcraft subscription, but the Skyborne (and access to their starting zone) are sold separately.