World of Warcraft: Forever just concluded \u201cthe largest beta in franchise history\u201d according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.<\/p>\n
Nadella said this on today\u2019s Microsoft Q1 earnings call, but did not provide further context. Forever\u2018s beta was accessible by any player who pre-purchased one of the Forever premium bundles, which started at $60. This isn\u2019t necessarily an indicator of sales numbers, though, as you could also sign up to participate in the beta for free, and Blizzard had full control over how many people were given access that way. There was also a free stress test day, and it\u2019s unclear if Nadella\u2019s assessment also includes that.<\/p>\n
Regardless of such context, it\u2019s a notable milestone. Blizzard has recently bundled beta access with both the\u00a0War Within and Midnight expansions, opening it up to players who want to pay for it. Previously, it was purely an opt-in-and-pray-Blizzard-picks-you process.<\/p>\n
Unofficial tool ClassicPlus.io<\/a> suggests that over one million characters were created during the beta, and developer Josh Greenfield called the turnout \u201cthe craziest numbers I\u2019ve seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost 8 years on classic.\u201d<\/p>\n Man, it was hard to sleep last night, I was so excited. Beta has been\u2026 crazy. The craziest numbers I’ve seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost 8 years on classic.<\/p>\n We’ve got something really special here.<\/p>\n \u2014 Josh Greenfield (@AggrendWoW) September 18, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n World of Warcraft: Forever was announced at BlizzCon earlier this year after months of rumors as a sort of \u201calternate universe\u201d World of Warcraft, set in the world of the original game but taking different twists and turns with its plot, mechanics, and content. The beta ran from September 17 through October 23, and the full game launches on November 4, available to anyone with an existing World of Warcraft subscription. The release has been highly anticipated by the community, following high praise both for the original World of Warcraft Classic launch several years ago as well as the popular Season of Discovery game mode within it, which served as a sort of proto-WoW: Forever for a limited time. I played in the beta, and I also think it\u2019s pretty great<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World of Warcraft: Forever just concluded \u201cthe largest beta in franchise history\u201d according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[50112,74,97878,376501],"class_list":["post-898287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-blizzard","tag-technology","tag-world-of-warcraft","tag-world-of-warcraft-forever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}