No World of Warcraft launch has ever had as many people online at once as World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard says. The new edition opened on 4 November, and the studio also counts more returning players than at any earlier launch.
The official World of Warcraft account announced the record on 7 November. “Congratulations everyone, you made HISTORY!” it said, thanking players. Blizzard has not published the actual player counts, so the claim comes without a number.
A second piece of good news came from Holly Longdale, Blizzard’s executive producer and vice president for World of Warcraft. In a post on X she wrote that no launch in 15 years has brought in this many brand-new players, meaning people who are seeing Azeroth for the first time.
Blizzard only revealed the project at September’s BlizzCon. Before that, fans had pieced together hints from a “wow 2” tag on colours in the company’s site code and guessed at a Classic Plus game. Its first major hotfix arrived on Friday and ended a bug that let flag carriers move so fast they tipped PvP battlegrounds such as Warsong Gulch in the Horde’s favour.
Blizzard’s launch-day post says three raids open to level 60 characters on 9 December, Onyxia’s Lair among them. The same post presents Forever as a third way to play, next to modern World of Warcraft and the Classic versions, rather than a replacement for either. Blizzard has not said what the concurrent-player record is, or which earlier launch it passed, so the claim is the studio’s word until it publishes figures.
