WoW: Forever beta draws busiest response in veteran developer's 17 years at Blizzard

World of Warcraft: Forever has drawn so many players to its test version that a long-serving Blizzard developer called it the busiest response he has seen in 17 years at the company.

WoW Classic developer Josh Greenfield said on Twitter/X that the beta had posted "the craziest numbers I've seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost eight years on classic", according to Eurogamer. Fans flooded the beta after it opened, IGN reported.

Forever is a vanilla-flavoured spin-off built by the WoW Classic team. Vanilla here means a stripped-back version modelled on the early years of Warcraft, the long-running online fantasy game where thousands of players share the same world.

The beta, an early test version open to players before release, began on 17 September. The game has a scheduled global launch date of 4 November 2026, according to Blizzard.

Greenfield said he was so excited about the response that it was hard to sleep. "We've got something really special here," he added.

World of Warcraft senior game producer Tom Ellis also posted on Twitter/X to explain why the beta struggled to meet demand. The posts did not give a player count, only the team's account of heavy traffic and queues.

For players, this means a crowded start to the test. Queues and login pressure are common when a beta opens, and the team is now working through that early surge before the November launch.