The beta runs until October 21, giving Blizzard roughly a month and change to test the version of Azeroth that launches publicly on November 4. Guaranteed beta access comes with the Skyborne Epic Pack and Warcraft Forever Collection, while players without either package can still opt in and hope for an invitation. As we covered when looking at Forever’s paid Skyborne packages, the normal game itself will ultimately be included with a regular WoW subscription. Beta access is one of the extras Blizzard is using to distinguish the more expensive upgrades.
Level 20 Is Enough to Test a Surprising Amount
Twenty levels may sound restrictive, but Forever has placed quite a lot of its new material in that opening stretch. Players can test redesigned class abilities and talent trees, new profession items and the account-wide Legacy System that rewards repeatedly leveling characters.
More importantly, level 20 is high enough to enter Forever’s first two brand-new dungeons.
Hall of Thanes is designed for levels 13 to 18 and takes players beneath Ironforge into the burial chambers of the dwarven monarchs, where Dark Iron intruders have made the sort of archaeological visit that traditionally requires five armed adventurers to correct.
Ruins of Lordaeron covers levels 15 to 20 and finally turns the destroyed city above Undercity into a full dungeon. Blizzard has said the instance revolves around the Forsaken trying to reclaim parts of their old home, while Alliance adventurers approach the location from a rather different angle.
These are two of the nine entirely new dungeons coming with Forever, so Blizzard is effectively using the first beta phase to put a magnifying glass over the earliest part of its promised reimagined level 1 to 60 journey.
The Level Cap Will Rise to 30 Later
The level 20 wall is temporary.
Blizzard plans to raise the beta cap to level 30 later in the test, where it will remain until the beta ends. That second phase opens another new dungeon, Excavation Site: Wetlands, designed for levels 24 to 29 and located around the familiar Whelgar’s Excavation area.
That structure gives Blizzard a useful way to stop testers from immediately scattering across two continents. Everybody begins in roughly the same progression band, the early systems get hammered properly, and only then does the test expand into the next section of Azeroth.
It also means several of the features revealed at BlizzCon remain firmly outside the beta’s reach. Players will not naturally level into the later Forever dungeon catalogue, and this is not a preview of the complete level 60 endgame. Raids such as Hyjal Summit and Barrow Deeps are live-launch content, with Forever’s first raids scheduled to begin opening in December.
This Is Where Forever Has to Prove the Idea Works
The beta is particularly important because Forever is making far more changes than a normal Classic server. Blizzard has reworked dungeon loot and quest rewards across Azeroth, redesigned classes and talent progression, changed professions, introduced Legacy progression and even carried over Modern WoW’s restrictions on computational combat addons.
Those systems all sound sensible when explained during a convention panel.
Now thousands of players get to discover what happens when they collide with one another at level 17 while somebody is attempting to tank Hall of Thanes wearing a green chestpiece from Westfall.
That is the useful part of a beta.
Blizzard has spent the last week explaining what Forever is supposed to feel like: familiar without being solved, slower without becoming tedious, modern without turning into Retail WoW wearing a Vanilla costume.
Today, players finally get to find out whether that balancing act actually works.
They just have to stop at level 20 for a while.
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