ForeverDB

WoW Forever launch night: your first hours in Azeroth

Blizzard's picture for New Player's Starter Guide: Welcome to World of Warcraft: Forever

· ForeverDB

WoW Forever opens at 23:00 UTC tonight. What happens when you first log in, the keys and habits Blizzard's starter guide teaches, and what to do if you can't get in.

Corrected 5 November 2026: we wrote that our data only covered levels up to 30, the beta's cap, until launch. It already covered the whole game up to level 60.

WoW Forever opens in a few hours: 3:00 p.m. PST, 11:00 p.m. in the UK and midnight in central Europe. This is the third of our launch articles, after what to sort out before launch and how to choose your class. It covers the first hours: logging in, your first steps, and what to do if the login doesn't work.

Before the doors open

  • Open the Battle.net app early and let it finish any update, so you aren't downloading at the moment the servers open.
  • Have your password and authenticator to hand.
  • Keep the server status page open. It checks Blizzard's login server every minute and shows what Blizzard has posted.

What the first login asks

  1. Your experience preset, Classic or Enhanced. It's only asked once, and every setting it changes can be changed again under Game Menu, Options. Blizzard suggests Enhanced if you're not sure.
  2. Your ruleset: Normal, PvP, Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP. Characters you reserved last week are already on theirs.
  3. Character creation: faction, race, class, HD or SD models, and your two names. You can hide your second name over your head under Options, Nameplates, My Secondary Name, but it still shows in chat.

Your first steps

Blizzard's starter guide is written for new players, but its habits are worth keeping even if you played in 2004:

  • An exclamation mark over a character means a quest, and a question mark means one is ready to hand in. L opens the quest log, M the world map, P your spellbook, C your character and K your professions.
  • Make an inn your home: innkeepers sell food and drink and can set your Hearthstone.
  • If you die, walk back to your body from the graveyard. The Spirit Healer can bring you back on the spot, but it damages your gear and can give you Resurrection Sickness, which greatly weakens you for a while.
  • Grey items are only worth selling. Repair at vendors with an anvil icon, and check the Buyback tab if you sell something by mistake.
  • Learn flight paths as you pass flight masters, and save coin for training, bags and travel.

Forever adds camps as well. A Cooking Basic Campfire becomes a shared camp, nearby players can each add one profession-made Camp Feature (up to three), and sitting or crafting there for at least a minute gives you their buffs. Our camping page lists every feature.

A busy first night

Every starting zone will be full tonight. From past launches, a few things help: group up with other players on the same quest instead of racing them for each kill, leave a crowded zone for the other starting area of your faction, or spend the first hour on a profession or in a quieter corner and come back later.

These tips are general advice from past WoW launches, not something Blizzard has said about Forever.

If you can't get in

  • Check the server status page first: if the login server is down, nothing on your side will help.
  • Our errors page reads the game's own log and explains the common errors from the beta.
  • For password, authenticator or locked-account problems, start with "Can't Log In?" on Blizzard Support's account recovery page. If you think your account was hacked, Blizzard says to secure your computer and email first, then ask for the account back and change your password.

ForeverDB on launch night

Our data comes straight from the game client and covers every level up to 60. If launch brings a new client build, we'll read it and post what changed. The ForeverDB Companion is ready for launch, and tomorrow's article covers your first week: levelling, professions, the new dungeons and what comes next.

Still deciding? Vote in the class poll on our forum and see what everyone else is rolling.

Sources

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