The Forever beta was not supposed to still be open on Friday.
Kaivax posted a blue note on the Blizzard forums on the evening of October 20, at 20:30 UTC, in a thread titled "Heads Up -- WoW Forever Stress Test on October 21". It contains two things nobody had published before: the end times for tonight's stress test, and a two day extension to the beta.
We plan to close the WoW Forever Beta … forever at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Friday, October 23.
The ellipsis is the joke, and the extension is the news.
The full window
Blizzard's October 15 post gave start times only. Kaivax's post gives both ends, and the test is four hours long in every listed timezone:
| Date | Timezone | Start | End |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 21 | CEST | 19:00 | 03:00 |
| October 21 | BST, IST | 18:00 | 02:00 |
| October 21 | EDT | 5:00 p.m. | 9:00 p.m. |
| October 21 | CDT | 4:00 p.m. | 8:00 p.m. |
| October 21 | PDT | 2:00 p.m. | 6:00 p.m. |
| October 22 | NZDT | 10:00 a.m. | 2:00 p.m. |
| October 22 | AEDT | 8:00 a.m. | Noon |
| October 22 | Taipei | 5:00 a.m. | 9:00 a.m. |
| October 22 | Seoul | 6:00 a.m. | 10:00 a.m. |
The row people will argue about is the New Zealand one. A player pointed out that 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. lands in the middle of an Australian and New Zealand working day, which is a thin sample for a stress test in that region.
The hardware line is the actual news
Kaivax opens with: "Tomorrow, October 21, we will take the WoW Forever Beta offline and we will then open WoW Forever on its proper regional hardware."
That means the beta testers have been playing on something other than the real deployment. Tonight's test is the first run on the hardware players will actually be on, and everything else in the post is about that run: a real region, a real login, real queues.
The rest of the announcement is a repeat of the official stress test terms, with one wording change. The earlier post said the test window "may end earlier or run later as needed". Kaivax now publishes a fixed four hour window per region, and states that "any player with a WoW account is eligible to play the WoW Forever Stress Test. No active subscription is needed."
The join steps are unchanged: graphics drivers up to date, Battle.net app installed and updated, World of Warcraft selected, Game Version menu above the Play button, World of Warcraft: Forever Stress Test under In Development, Install, then Play, pick a test realm and create a new test character.
The wipe and the reopening
Kaivax on the characters: "When we shut down the Stress Test, all Stress Test characters, including names, will be deleted and we will re-open the Beta."
The official post phrased the same rule as characters, names and guilds being wiped from the test servers. Either way, the test realm is a scratch realm, and the beta is the thing that comes back.
Why the extension happened
The thread makes the reason plain enough. Several players said they had been worried the beta would be taken down the next day, and one put it as "that is too … Soon". The Duel Tournament that ran in the beta gets its own cheer from at least one participant.
The extension gives two more beta days at a level cap of 30, and it lands two days before name reservation opens. It does not move name reservation (October 27), launch (November 4, 3:00 p.m. PST) or the raid date (December 9).
One question the thread raises and the post does not answer is whether a public test realm will follow. Players asked whether there would be a PTR, partly on behalf of addon developers. Kaivax did not say in the announcement, and we are not going to fill that silence with a guess.
What to do with the next two days
The beta reopens after tonight's test and closes Friday at 10:00 a.m. PDT. That is a weekend of beta access, and it is also the last beta access there will be, because name reservation on October 27 and launch on November 4 are the next doors. Anything you want to test on a beta character, test it before Friday morning.
SOURCES: Kaivax's blue post "Heads Up -- WoW Forever Stress Test on October 21", published on the Blizzard World of Warcraft forums at 20:30 UTC on 20 October 2026, read from the thread's own JSON at us.forums.blizzard.com. The window table, the eligibility wording, the install steps, the character wipe and the October 23 close are the post's own words. Related: our stress test report from October 17 and the updated launch timeline.