How to Get into the WoW Forever Beta

The WoW Forever beta runs from September 17 to October 21, 2026. There is no opt-in lottery and no press-key giveaway announced. Access comes with a purchase, and only two of the three upgrade packs include it. This guide lists exactly what to buy, what it costs, what is in the beta, and how to use the five weeks well.

Which packs include the beta

The cheapest route into the beta is the Epic Pack. Because it includes 30 days of game time that starts on launch day, its effective cost over the Heroic Pack is about $15 if you were going to subscribe for November anyway.

How to get in

1. Buy the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection from the Battle.net shop while logged into the Blizzard account that holds your WoW subscription.
2. Open the Battle.net app on or after September 17. World of Warcraft: Forever Beta appears as a version under World of Warcraft, the same way Classic and Cataclysm Classic do. Install it from there.
3. Log in with the same account. Beta characters are separate from your live characters and will be wiped before launch.

A subscription is still needed to play the beta client, as with every WoW test. Buying a pack on a second account does not grant beta on the first.

What is playable

Blizzard has not published a beta content list. The BlizzCon demo, which this site's data comes from, was capped at level 38 and included the new starting experience on Zephras Isle, the rebuilt talent trees for all nine classes, camping, and the first Legacy challenges. Expect the beta to open more of the 1–60 path over the five weeks and to change numbers as it goes; the demo tooltips will be compared against the beta client and corrected here where they differ.

Use the beta to test a build, not to level

Beta progress does not carry over. The useful thing to bring out is knowledge: which leveling talents feel right, whether a new 31-point talent is worth the trip, and which race's racials matter for your class. A few concrete suggestions:

• Open your class in the talent calculator, load the leveling build, and follow its pickup order on the beta. If a talent disappoints, right-click it out and the link you save will remember the new order.
• Toggle the Classic diff (the C key) to see which talents changed wording. The reworked ones are where the beta is most likely to move numbers.
• If you can be a Skyborne, roll one; the pack you bought unlocks the race in the beta too, and the starting zone is the only fully new 1–10 experience in the game.
• Try the new race and class combinations. An Undead Paladin or a Dwarf Shaman on the beta tells you more than any preview.

Invite-A-Friend codes

Every pack includes launch codes (one with Heroic, three with Epic and the Collection), emailed from October 20. A friend who redeems one can play Forever from November 4 to 11 without a subscription. The codes are for launch week, not the beta.

If you are not buying a pack

You still play on November 4 with a normal subscription. You skip the Skyborne, the cosmetics and name reservation. The release date guide has the full timeline, and the calculator and reference pages here need no purchase at all.