September 23, 2026: the first read on what players actually made, not what they said they would. A census by Reddit user booclarke, taken September 20 on the PvE ruleset and level-20 characters only, is carried by Icy Veins Emma. The load-bearing numbers, first: 1,173 Undead characters, about 63% of them Paladins. Skyborne follow as the second most popular race on both sides: High Order among Alliance, Windshaper among Horde. And 46% of Dwarves are Shamans, with Dwarf Shaman one of this cycle's new combinations.
What the census actually measures is a beta testing pattern, not launch demand. Level 20 only, PvP ruleset excluded, one day, and the three freshest combos (Undead Paladin, Skyborne faction splits, Dwarf Shaman) are precisely what people queue to try. Undead Paladins winning by that margin reads as novelty pull, not settled preference.
Still useful twice over. It confirms the race/class split Blizzard published is the one players reached for, and it explains why the unofficial Battle Mage discovery keeps surfacing: testers are actively poking the new combos, and Mage-with-arcane flavor is the obvious next experiment.
Caveats travel with the numbers: one ruleset, one level band, one snapshot, self-reported census, no launch read-through. Treat as flavor evidence, not a balance document.
SOURCES: Reddit r/wowforever beta PvE census by booclarke (Sep 20), via Icy Veins Emma (Sep 23).