WoW Forever Stress Test (October 19)

Blizzard community manager Kaivax announced the WoW Forever Stress Test on Oct 15 (Thu), 2:24 PM.

Please join us for the WoW Forever Stress Test on October 19.

On that day, we will first take the WoW Forever Beta offline, and we will then open WoW Forever on the regional hardware that it will operate on when the game goes live.

On October 19, the Stress Test will begin at Oct 19 (Mon), 10:00 AM for players in the EU region, and at Oct 19 (Mon), 2:00 PM for players in the Americas+Oceania, Taipei and Korea.

Any player with a WoW account is eligible to participate. No active subscription is needed.

Once you’re in, make a character, do a few quests, trade some items, chat, and group up with others to really put the game through its paces. This is a highly valuable event, since you’ll participate in our discovering of issues that would have otherwise happened on launch day.

WoW Forever will be available on production realms for a few hours, and then when we shut down the Stress Test, all characters will be deleted* and we will re-open the Beta.

*This is a complete wipe; names and everything else will be completely removed.

Thank you very much for joining us. We’ll see you there!

What this means for players

• The Beta goes offline shortly before the Stress Test begins, and you cannot play the Beta while the test is running.
• Start times differ by region: Europe at Oct 19 (Mon), 10:00 AM; the Americas, Oceania, Korea and Taiwan at Oct 19 (Mon), 2:00 PM.
• No beta access, subscription or Game Time is needed, only a WoW account. It is the first chance to play on the hardware the game will launch on.
• Characters, names and guilds made during the test are all wiped when it ends, so nothing you create there carries over to launch.
• Blizzard’s news post says the test may end earlier or run later as needed, and the Beta is expected to return shortly after it ends.
• The same post notes that October 21 is the last full day of beta testing, and that pre-purchasers get Early Name Reservation from October 27 through November 3 (PDT), first come, first served.

How to join

• Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.
• Open the Battle.net desktop app and let it update if needed.
• Select World of Warcraft, then in the Game Version menu above the Play button choose World of Warcraft: Forever Stress Test under In Development and select Install.
• Once it is installed and the test begins, select Play, choose an available test realm and create a new test character.

Full details are in Blizzard’s news post Join the World of Warcraft: Forever Stress Test ↗.