WoW Forever is live: how launch night went, the first problems players report and what to do now

WoW Forever opened on time on Wednesday 4 November 2026 at 23:00 UTC, midnight CET between 4 and 5 November, after five hours of maintenance. The first half hour was rough, with greyed-out rulesets and short queues; after that, according to players and the press, the game ran smoothly. Here is what Blizzard published, from the launch time post by Kaivax, Community Manager, to the Known Issues topic opened by Vrakthris of Customer Support, and what players report on the official forums, which Blizzard has neither confirmed nor answered yet. This is the situation at 02:15 CET on 5 November.

On time, after five hours of maintenance

• At 18:13 UTC (19:13 CET) on 4 November the community manager confirmed on the US forum that the game launches simultaneously in all regions at 3:00 p.m. PST, with a table of times for the Americas and Oceania. Nothing changed for Europe: midnight CET, as in our launch article.
• From 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET) until launch the game was in maintenance, announced in the Battle.net app according to Mein-MMO and Wowhead: no logins and no character creation. Earlier in the day Blizzard's support account had explained that error WOW51900337 at login "is expected, as the game is not live yet".
• At 23:00 UTC Blizzard News published World of Warcraft: Forever Now Live!. It is the page of the launch article of 29 October, retitled and rewritten as a recap of the game, with the Launch Overview video.
• Blizzard has announced no delay and no emergency maintenance.

The first half hour: greyed-out rulesets

At 23:00 UTC logins opened with short queues: about five minutes at most for the Mein-MMO team, 5 to 10 minutes with positions between 1,500 and 4,000 according to Wowhead. After the queue, though, many players found the ruleset screen greyed out, with nothing to click, or the message "This ruleset is temporarily not available", in a forum topic opened at 23:05 UTC. Wowhead's advice was to queue again; restarting the Battle.net app also leads to a new, short queue.

GameSpot counts "around 30 minutes" of retries before everything worked; the Mein-MMO team was in by 00:20 CET. At 23:30 UTC (00:30 CET) the official @Warcraft account wrote "You can play WoW: Forever starting NOW!". Blizzard has not explained why the rulesets were unavailable at first.

Then, a stable launch

After that half hour GameSpot describes "minimal lag and few issues": the starting zones are crowded, but you can still complete quests, and players on Reddit call it "possibly the best Blizzard launch ever". At 01:13 CET Mein-MMO reported a stable game and a packed night elf starting zone. During the launch the official Twitch channel showed a live map of players levelling up. Neither Blizzard nor any reliable outlet has published player or viewer numbers.

Problems reported by players

These reports come from the official US and EU forums and are not confirmed by Blizzard: by 02:15 CET no community manager or Customer Support agent had answered any of them.

• Character creation "throttled". Since about 23:40 UTC many players who click to create a character get "Creation of that type of character is currently throttled", in North America and in Europe. It mostly hits Horde races on the PvP ruleset, Undead and Trolls above all, but some see it with Alliance characters too, and in Europe with any character. One topic speaks of almost two hours of attempts. Several players think it is another form of the faction limit; others got through by retrying, or by logging into another ruleset and coming back. Blizzard has not said what the message means.
• Horde locked on PvP. The message of the reservation days is back: "This faction is currently unavailable on this ruleset due to population imbalance", in a topic opened at 23:18 UTC that has reached 59 posts. Some get through after a few attempts. On the PvP ruleset an account can only have characters of one faction, so anyone who made an Alliance character there and now wants the Horde has to delete it first: in Europe some players get "character deletion failed".
• Reserved characters missing. Some players who reserved their names cannot find the characters, while the names still show as taken. A few found them on Roleplay-PvP instead of PvP, a mix-up between rulesets like the one Customer Support confirmed in North America at the end of October (our article of 1 November); others say they are on no ruleset at all. Blizzard has not said whether they will come back.
• Skyborne without quests. On Zephras Isle some Skyborne players see no quests at all, not even the first one, even after clearing the map filters and reloading. Players suspect it hits those who bought the pack or redeemed a code just before launch; it is not confirmed.
• Disconnections. Error BLZ51901016, "You have been disconnected", filled a European topic already during the maintenance, when it was expected. Since launch other players report being kicked out every 2–3 minutes or every 5–15 minutes, sometimes with their keybindings reset.
• Smaller issues. Friends in the same group who cannot see each other because of layering; group invites refused because the other player is "playing a different version of WoW", which restarting the game and Battle.net fixed for Mein-MMO; the "Sit near the campfire" objective of the Camping tutorial quest, The Great Outdoors, that does not complete.

Blizzard's answer so far: an empty list

At 23:21 UTC (00:21 CET) Customer Support opened the World of Warcraft: Forever - Info & Known Issues topic on the US forum, pinned and closed to replies. It collects links to the official articles and guides, recommends updating addons and links the pages on resetting the interface and on technical problems. The Known Issues section, however, is empty: there is only an invitation to report anything that is not on the list in the Bug Report forum. Since launch, Blizzard's support account on X has posted no alert.

Check your language settings

Blizzard's only practical tip on launch night came at 23:44 UTC (00:44 CET), and only on the European forum: the community manager suggests checking the settings in Options > System > Languages and Social, shown in a screenshot:

• under Languages, the Text and Audio language;
• under Social, Preferred Online Language and Preferred Account Location, each with its Apply button.

If they are not set to your preferred language, change them, then log out and back in "to improve your in-game experience". The post says nothing more, but the rulesets article explains Preferred Online Language: it lets you meet players who chose the same language, it applies to the whole account and, once changed, it cannot be changed again for 24 hours. Choose calmly, and if you play with friends, all pick the same one. In the same topic one player says that after switching from French to English he ended up on an almost empty layer; it is a single report.

What to do now

• Greyed-out rulesets: queue again, or restart the Battle.net app.
• "Throttled" or faction unavailable: try again later. During name reservation Customer Support said that faction balance is recalculated during the day; logging into another ruleset and coming back worked for some players, not for all.
• Missing reserved characters: check all four rulesets, Roleplay-PvP first, before creating new ones; if they are not there, report it to Blizzard support. The names still show as taken.
• Skyborne without quests: no known fix; report it in the Bug Report forum.
• Addons and interface: update your addons; if the interface misbehaves, reset it as the Known Issues topic suggests.
• The Great Outdoors: according to players and Wowhead, type /sit instead of using the key, or type /sit again while already sitting, then wait the full minute.
• Playing with friends: same ruleset, same faction and the same Preferred Online Language.
• Twitch: four hours of WoW streams watched by 13 November at 01:30 CET earn the Pouch of Violet Dust toy, as explained in our article on Taldramir.

What we don't know yet

• Why the rulesets were unavailable in the first half hour.
• What "throttled" means: a limit on character creation because of the crowd, or the faction lock under another name.
• Whether the missing reserved characters are a display bug or really lost, and whether Blizzard will restore them.
• When the Known Issues list will be filled in.
• How many players logged in at launch.