WoW: Forever Beta Extended to 23 October, and Name Reservations Open 27 October for Pre-Purchasers

The World of Warcraft: Forever beta will now run until Friday 23 October at 10am PDT, three days past its original 20 October end date, as Blizzard announced on X and IGN reported. After that, early name reservations open on 27 October, but Blizzard's own announcement limits them to players who pre-purchased a Forever upgrade, a detail that is easy to miss.

This article is built on Blizzard's name reservation and naming posts, with the beta extension and stress test details attributed to IGN, PC Gamer and Eurogamer. Times are converted from Blizzard's PDT and CET figures; checked on 22 October 2026.

What changed this week?

Three things happened in two days. On 20 October Blizzard published the name reservation schedule. On 21 October it ran a launch-style stress test that, according to PC Gamer, was open to any World of Warcraft account, with no subscription or Forever purchase required, while the regular beta servers were offline. Around the same time the beta itself was extended to Friday. IGN adds that beta players had already created more than a million characters.

Who can reserve a name, and how many?

Blizzard's small print says early reservation requires the World of Warcraft: Forever Digital Upgrade or Collector's Edition, meaning the Skyborne Heroic Pack, the Skyborne Epic Pack or the limited-time Warcraft Forever Collection. The benefit applies only to the WoW account the upgrade was bought for. A plain subscription is enough to play from 4 November, but not to reserve names early.

Eligible players can reserve up to three characters in total across all rulesets: two on a PvP ruleset leaves one slot for Normal or Role-Play. The cap applies only to the reservation window. Names are first-come, first-served, and under the two-name system Blizzard described in September, what has to be unique is the full first-plus-second name within your region, not a single name on one realm.

What to do now

• If you are in the beta, use the extra days for testing, not progress: IGN reports that beta characters are deleted at launch.
• Decide your ruleset before 27 October, because PvP slots eat into the same three-character cap. Our WoW: Forever PvP guide explains what the PvP ruleset changes.
• Install the client early: in the Battle.net app, pick World of Warcraft: Forever from the Game Version menu above the Play button, as Blizzard's instructions describe.
• For launch times in more regions, editions and what is new in Azeroth, see our WoW: Forever explainer.

What we don't know yet

Blizzard has not said whether there will be another open stress test before 4 November, nor published results from the 21 October one. The beta has had queues since its first weeks, as we covered when Blizzard raised the beta population cap, so expect the stress test to have been about server load rather than new content.