Launch night playbook

Forever launches 2026-11-04 at 3:00 pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern, 23:00 UTC. There are no realms to pick, so the only decisions that can split the guild are ruleset and faction, and both are hard walls. Name reservation opens a week earlier for anyone with a paid pack. Blizzard has published no queue plan, no layer count and no realm count, so this playbook plans for both a smooth night and a bad one. The overview has the leveling rules this plan assumes.

Decide ruleset and faction as a guild before 10-27. One vote, hard deadline. Nothing else matters if this splits. verified that the walls are hard
Name reservation 10-27 to 11-03 Pacific, up to 3 characters per account, paid packs only, first come first served. Names are first plus second, unique per region on the pair. verified
Log in before 3 pm Pacific and sit on the character screen. Expect a queue; each ruleset is one ecosystem so a queue is for the whole ruleset. unverified as prediction
Group with your pod immediately. Grouping shares tags and pulls you onto one layer. Guild membership does the same once the guild exists. unverified for the layer mechanics
First 3 hours: 3 to 4 starter quests, walk to the second hub if the camp is unplayable, hearth at the first inn, First Aid plus two gathering professions, bank every blue, log out in an inn.
Skip: dungeon repeats, mob grinding, “Forever addon packs” from random sites, saving for a mount on vanilla prices.

Fixed dates and facts

When	What	Evidence
10-27 to 11-03, Pacific	Early Name Reservation. “Fully log in to the character creator to build, customize, and save names for up to 3 characters per account.” Any paid pack qualifies (Skyborne Heroic Pack, Epic Pack, Warcraft Forever Collection). Opening hour on 10-27 unpublished	verified
11-04, 3:00 pm PST	Launch. 6 pm ET, 23:00 UTC. Daylight time ends 11-01 so this is PST, not PDT	verified
12-09	Barrow Deeps (10), Hyjal Summit (20), Onyxia’s Lair (40) open. No attunements	verified
Unannounced	Server Slam open-access window before launch	verified as planned, date unknown

Rulesets replace realms: Normal, PvP, Roleplay at launch; Hardcore later. One mega-population per ruleset per region. “You can only group up with other players on the same faction and same gameplay style.” verified See Hardcore and join the guild.

Name reservation rules

Official rules from Blizzard’s “Create a name of your own” post and the forum announcement: verified

Every character has a first name and a second name. Both required.
“Your full character name needs to be distinct within your region, rather than only within a single realm.” “Ana Forever” and “Ana Stormwind” can coexist.
Splitting a banned word across the two parts “will not necessarily make it valid.” Names impersonating Blizzard staff are banned.
The second name can be hidden on nameplates via Options, Nameplates, “My Secondary Name”. It still shows in chat, and mail must use the full two-part name. Beta had mail failures from people typing one name. verified
Name length limits per field are unpublished.
lfcarry claims the earliest-created character keeps a contested name. unverified

What this means. Because uniqueness is on the pair, “popular first name plus unusual second name” is nearly guaranteed. The two-part system removes name-sniping panic; do not burn reservation slots on vanity.

Guild plan for 10-27 to 11-03.

Everyone with a paid pack reserves their main, a bank alt, and one backup. The GM also reserves the guild-bank alt and a backup-GM character.
Blizzard Watch reads 10-27 as “early name reservation and character creation”, so expect full character creation (race, class, looks, ruleset, faction), not just a name lock. Pick ruleset and faction correctly the first time. verified
Post names in the Discord thread; that thread becomes the invite list.
Free-edition players cannot reserve. They should have three backup name pairs ready for 11-04.
If the guild wants a visible family identity, agree on a shared second name. Remember the pair must be unique, so two members cannot share both names.

Queues: what is known

Blizzard has published no realm count, no layer count, no queue plan. The realmless design is a “mega-realm” made possible because “technology [has] improve[d]… to handle all those players in one location.” verified
The 09-17 beta launch had long queues, disconnects, slow looting and emergency restarts. Senior Game Producer Tom Ellis published a post-mortem naming three bottlenecks: Battle.net metering misfiring on two regional connections (expanded to eight), Oracle database statistics going stale (fixed with automated reanalysis), and empty map instances not shutting down (fixed, more world servers added). unverified as relayed by masterofwarcraft.net; the forum post itself was not located.
Since each ruleset is one ecosystem, a queue is a queue for the whole ruleset. Classic 2019 had multi-hour queues from per-realm caps; a single mega-realm with sharding either has no queue or one enormous one. Plan for both.

Queue tactics.

Log in before 3 pm Pacific and sit on the character select screen. Whoever gets in first sits in voice and reports.
Do not log out to “fix” lag. A logout on launch night is a return to the back of the line.
If there is a disconnect wave, wait it out in voice rather than hammering the login; the beta post-mortem says the metering system was the bottleneck.

Layering and pods

What is known about layers: unverified unless tagged

Players are placed on a layer at login. Grouping moves you to your party’s layer. Guild membership places you with guildmates without grouping. Chat channels span layers. (outof.games explainer citing the panel)
Beta: per-zone sharding with a “you will be moved” message every few minutes, breaking chat and PvP fights, quest mobs vanishing mid-fight. No blue reply in either forum thread. verified as player reports
The friend-invite button was greyed out on a fresh beta character but /invite name worked. verified as player report
No guild-scale test yet of whether five friends stay on one shard. In Classic 2019, party members were pulled onto the leader’s layer on invite; expect the same.

Pod rules.

Before 10-27, assign pods of 2 to 3 by timezone and play hours. Each pod gets a tank-capable and a heal-capable class where possible. See the overview for composition.
The moment you are in, /invite your pod by full two-part name. Grouping shares kill credit and quest-mob tags and pulls you onto one layer. Contested tagging is staying; shared tagging is not being added. unverified for tagging
Expect to lose sight of guild members who are not in your party until the guild charter is signed. Form the guild as early as the signature count allows so everyone lands together.
Guild charter: signature count and cost unannounced. Vanilla was 10 signatures, 10 silver. Use a /join custom channel until then. vanilla baseline

The first three hours

Before 3 pm Pacific

Character created during reservation if you have a pack. If not, three backup name pairs written down.
Addons installed from CurseForge, Wago or GitHub only. Questie Forever and Leatrix at minimum. Addon folder for launch unconfirmed; beta uses _classic_beta_. See addons.
Voice channel open.

0:00 to 0:30

Create the character. Do not skip the intro. Take the first 3 to 4 quests at the starting camp.
Every starting camp will be a 50-player mob on the first boar. Blizzard’s 10 to 15 second kill design plus contested tagging makes this slower than 2019, not faster.
/invite the pod immediately.

0:30 to 2:00

If the first camp is unplayable, walk to the second hub (Goldshire, Kharanos, Dolanaar, Razor Hill, Bloodhoof Village, Brill) and take the level 5 to 6 quests. Also over-farmed, but less so.
Skyborne on Zephras Isle have the emptiest starting zone in the game because it is paywalled. A real argument for pack owners.
Group-kill everything. Kill XP splits, but at level 3 the tag is worth more than the XP.

2:00 to 3:00

Set the hearthstone at the first inn.
Learn First Aid at level 5. Healing Potions moved into First Aid in Forever, so bandages are the solo leveler’s mana. verified per the professions baseline; see professions.
Pick two gathering professions (Herbalism plus Skinning, or Mining plus Skinning). Skill up while leveling, sell everything, craft at 60. The salvage and Comprehension systems unlock late.
Bank any blue. Set bonuses pair leveling items with endgame items.

End of night

Log out in an inn so the rested clock runs.
If a Legacy pool exists at launch (unclear whether beta Legacy carries over; beta is wiped), first point into Well Rested. unverified

What to buy

Bags, before anything else. The 48-slot bank and 8 bank-bag slots help, but bag space at level 15 is the binding constraint. verified for the bank numbers
Class trainer every 2 levels. Do not out-level abilities.
A stack of drink and food for casters at the vendor; do not rely on drops on a night when a hundred people share every mob.

What to skip

A second dungeon run. Kill XP is 9 to 18 per elite. One run with quests, then leave. verified
Mob grinding. Slow by design.
Gank-farming on PvP ruleset. Level.
Saving for the mount on vanilla prices. Cost unannounced and moved into training. verified
“Forever addon packs” from any site that is not CurseForge, Wago or GitHub. Scam vector. Woweternity and similar list fake Forever addons.
Vanity name reservations. The pair system makes sniping pointless.
Hardcore as the guild ruleset. It does not exist on 11-04. See Hardcore.

Days 2 to 7

Pods run Hall of Thanes (Alliance) or Ruins of Lordaeron (both, best for Horde) once with every quest in hand at 15 to 16. Then Deadmines, WC and SFK once each. See dungeons.
Form the guild in-game as soon as signatures allow.
Quest. The meta is quest.

Weeks 2 to 3

Riverglades is the guild rendezvous at 35 to 45. Farholde Keep (Alliance) and Rog’mar (Horde) both have flight points; Powderfuse Port has a boat to Tanaris for the 45+ crowd. See new zones.
First 60s from the no-lifers are plausible in the week of 11-16 to 11-23; the bulk of raiders should aim for 60 by 12-09. See launch timeline and raids overview.

Unknown as of 2026-09-24

Blizzard’s layering plan for launch, and whether party invites reliably pull friends onto one layer.
Whether there is a login queue at all, and how large.
Opening hour of name reservation on 10-27; per-field name length limits; whether reserved-but-unplayed names are ever released.
Guild charter signature count and cost.
Whether beta Legacy points survive the wipe.
Live addon folder name.
Server Slam dates.