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WoW Classic Launches August 27, 2019. Beta Starts May 15th
Blizzard announced this morning that WoW Classic will launch on August 27th, 2019. The beta starts May 15th!

Be sure you have opted in for beta!


Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Mark your calendars: WoW Classic goes live worldwide August 27! Whether your battle cry is “For the Horde!” or “For the Alliance!”, there’s no shortage of adventure awaiting you in the vast continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.

See below for details on the exact time you can log in and experience the origins of World of Warcraft.




Classic WoW Testing Schedule
Beginning May 15, select WoW players will be invited to participate in a small-scale, focused closed beta test. Players will also get a chance to help put our servers and technology through their paces in a series of stress tests running from May through July—you can opt in now through Account Management and select the WoW Classic beta. Subsequent stress tests will extend the opportunity to even more players. Level caps will also be in place to ensure we’re emphasizing the “stress” in “stress test”

—we want to push our tech to the limit, and that means a critical mass of players in close proximity.

Stress Test Schedule*
Stress Test 1: Wed May 22–Thurs May 23
Stress Test 2: Wed Jun 19– Thurs Jun 20
Stress Test 3: Thurs Jul 18– Fri July 19
*Dates of each stress test are subject to change.

To fill our pool of beta and stress test participants, we’ll be choosing dedicated players who meet select criteria from both the WoW Classic beta opt-in and the standard Warcraft beta opt-in. Participants will also need to have an active subscription or active game time on their Battle.net Account. While opting-in to the beta is the primary way to make sure you’re in the running to join the test it doesn’t guarantee an invitation to the closed beta test. We may also consider additional factors such as how long a player has been subscribed to the game so that we have the right mix of players to ensure great feedback toward making WoW Classic the very best experience for the community.

Create Your Character
If you’re eager to claim your character name in WoW Classic, take note: we’ll be opening character creation on Tuesday, August 13.** Players with an active subscription or game time on their account will be able to create up to three characters per World of Warcraft account. We’ll have more information on realm names closer to launch, but rest assured—you’ll have plenty of time to figure out your plans for realm domination!

*To align with other regions, the Americas will launch slightly ahead of August 27 in local time.
** To align with other regions, the Americas character creation will occur slightly ahead of August 13.
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Classic Launches August 27th, Beta May 15th started by Stoy View original post
Comments 211 Comments
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Castration View Post
    no need to prove it to you just so you can cry while we play, dude.
    So you dont have beta, gotcha man, pathetic that you need to lie about being the only person on the internet who got beta yesterday, even the content creatyors have not been invited yet.
  1. Akka's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by korijenkins View Post
    Nobody cares now, nobody will care then.
    So few people care that you're here shitposting about it
  1. Castration's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    So you dont have beta, gotcha man, pathetic that you need to lie about being the only person on the internet who got beta yesterday, even the content creatyors have not been invited yet.
    like i said before, believe what you want... you can just enjoy waiting, while others like myself, are already playing.

    and yes... they have... man.
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Castration View Post
    like i said before, believe what you want... you can just enjoy waiting, while others like myself, are already playing.

    and yes... they have... man.
    Asmongold not on beta, no beta in launcher
    towelliee not on beta, no beta in launcher
    nobbel not on beta, no beta on launcher
    taliesin no beta, not on launcher
    MR GM no beta, its not on his launcher

    it is seriously pathetic that you think lying about having beta while literally no one else does makes you special.

    oh look i have beta!
  1. Castration's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    Asmongold not on beta, no beta in launcher
    towelliee not on beta, no beta in launcher
    nobbel not on beta, no beta on launcher
    taliesin no beta, not on launcher
    MR GM no beta, its not on his launcher

    it is seriously pathetic that you think lying about having beta while literally no one else does makes you special.

    oh look i have beta!
    ok then, believe what you want... continue to rage about something you don't have... i don't mind at all. back to it for me.
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Castration View Post
    ok then, believe what you want... continue to rage about something you don't have... i don't mind at all. back to it for me.
    Just sad, go watch some Tseries buddy.
  1. Castration's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    Just sad, go watch some Tseries buddy.
    naw, back to classic beta for me.

    enjoy waiting.
  1. The Stormbringer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by supermany2 View Post
    When does the Beta start?
    Today, friend. But it sounds like invites may come in waves or be limited. Still, look forward to stress tests!

    Stress Test Schedule*
    Stress Test 1: Wed May 22–Thurs May 23
    Stress Test 2: Wed Jun 19– Thurs Jun 20
    Stress Test 3: Thurs Jul 18– Fri July 19
    *Dates of each stress test are subject to change.
  1. Stockers's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Valhalladin View Post
    Doesn’t help lol 26th going into 27th or 27th going into 28th?
    Do you not know 24 hours clocks?

    2358hrs... is the 26th...

    2359hrs... is the 26th...

    0000hrs... is the 27th...

    0001hrs... is the 27th...

    At midnight, aka 0000hrs the day changes.
  1. Helgrimm's Avatar
    I knew when they said summer, it'd be at the far end of it. September is basically Autumn.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Cassidin View Post
    I'll be very surprised if they will be empty..... There wont be nearly as many classic servers as live servers and I strongly suspect there will be four types of players on them:


    • Dedicated hard-core classic fans (who will be frustrated with things they see as not true to vanilla - but will still play regularly).
    • Players who want to play again what they played years ago - many of these will level a bit or even up to 60 and maybe raid a bit - but then will move on to something else - but many of these will still come back every so often for their "fix"
    • Players who never played vanilla and want to see what it's about. I don't expect many of these to be dedicated classic players - but some will likely. Most will try it and decide its too slow progress and give up - but that's fine they will have at least seen what it's about.
    • Players who want to go to classic just to find fault with it. most of these will only log in a few times and can pretty much be ignored as irrelevant.

    Of these player types - with the lower number of servers and the combination of players who log in occasionally and the dedicated players there will likely still be plenty of players to keep a limited number of servers up and running.

    What I do expect may happen is to merge some servers after its been up and running a year or two and the number of players more closely represented once the "gimmick" of it dies down.
    It will probably be like OSRS; the games still quite alive when the average people online at a time is only like 80k.
  1. Castration's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    Just sad, go watch some Tseries buddy.
    ooohh it's so good... make sure you tick the Opt-in box for classic so you can join the rest of us playing right now while you sulk in the corner.
  1. Vrinara's Avatar
    Not looking forward to Classic tbh. I will play, but tbh.. Idk what class I want to play.. Vanilla's class stuff just makes me Shake my head. But who knows? It might grow on me. All I know is. I look forward to RPing.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    I don't get it either mate.

    Just let people enjoy stuff. If we could do it 20 years ago with Nintendo and Sega we can do it nowadays lol.
    The people coming here and saying "Oh classic will fail, You losers suck, Blah blah blah, I'm a scared little kid over the internet." are just hating to hate. I would say they are people in mama's basement, but with some of their spelling? They make me think they are 12 year olds. While, I am not looking forward to classic, just because I honestly never liked Vanillas class design. I will try it to get away from Retail fora little.
  1. tikcol's Avatar
    Worst date possible. I start work that day coming from a 2 week vacation. I'm so sad rn I might go full emo
  1. Castration's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    Just sad, go watch some Tseries buddy.
    you should really play with us, if you were invited, which i guess you weren't. :'(
  1. Valhalladin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Stockers View Post
    Do you not know 24 hours clocks?

    2358hrs... is the 26th...

    2359hrs... is the 26th...

    0000hrs... is the 27th...

    0001hrs... is the 27th...

    At midnight, aka 0000hrs the day changes.
    Yes I know how a 24 hour clock works generic forum poster.

    Some companies, including the one I work for use 00:01 to signal a new day and 00:00 to mean the previous day. I didn't write a post to ask how a clock works thank you.
  1. Otaka's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Eh, I having played them all.. yea i probably put classic above bfa... but it's still below wod. Wrath cata and mop had some of the best class game play ever, vanilla's class and spec game play was horrible, but it was better then what we had at the time.

    And I will never enjoy leveling... didn't enjoy it in Vanilla, don't enjoy it today, end game is the only part of the game I enjoy.
    How can you claim wod had good class design? it was literally the era of homogenization... every class had everything so there was no class prestige and the only thing you had going for your class was different animations and lore perspective.
    This all began in Wotlk and continued up to legion when they started focusing on class fantasy more.

    DPS rotation and gameplay pretty much was identical to every class and spec between cata-wod. The FEEL of the gameplay wasnt any different between casters nor were they any different between melee classes, even if you had 2 hander compared to dualwielding.
    I tried maining enhancement shaman in wod and the things that made the spec special were not even part of the main damage in raids... windfury for example did a total of 3% of my total damage in a boss fight. Where as in vanilla the main damage component for enhancement was windfury, that was its prestige that no other class had. (not that they were dpsing in raids back then but the class-prestige was there)

    Class fantasy/gameplay is not only about raid dps rotation... thats elitist talk. The real fantasy what people care about is what you have/can do that other classes dont have/cant do.

    Its only your problem if you dont enjoy leveling... thats a huge part of the game.
    Personally I usually dont play a game if i dont enjoy it for the first 5 mins... i dont like wasting my time before getting to the fun part so if i didnt like leveling i wouldnt even play WoW... luckily i do, just not in BFA (or cataclysm tbh) since its way too easy and has no challenge unless i handicap myself.
    Thats why over the years people have developed the mental attitude about fun starting at max level, in a way its true but its nowhere near black and white/yes or no when it comes to classic.
    In BFA its pretty much true... but then again its a different game.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Otaka View Post
    How can you claim wod had good class design? it was literally the era of homogenization... every class had everything so there was no class prestige and the only thing you had going for your class was different animations and lore perspective.
    This all began in Wotlk and continued up to legion when they started focusing on class fantasy more.

    DPS rotation and gameplay pretty much was identical to every class and spec between cata-wod. The FEEL of the gameplay wasnt any different between casters nor were they any different between melee classes, even if you had 2 hander compared to dualwielding.
    I tried maining enhancement shaman in wod and the things that made the spec special were not even part of the main damage in raids... windfury for example did a total of 3% of my total damage in a boss fight. Where as in vanilla the main damage component for enhancement was windfury, that was its prestige that no other class had. (not that they were dpsing in raids back then but the class-prestige was there)

    Class fantasy/gameplay is not only about raid dps rotation... thats elitist talk. The real fantasy what people care about is what you have/can do that other classes dont have/cant do.

    Its only your problem if you dont enjoy leveling... thats a huge part of the game.
    Personally I usually dont play a game if i dont enjoy it for the first 5 mins... i dont like wasting my time before getting to the fun part so if i didnt like leveling i wouldnt even play WoW... luckily i do, just not in BFA (or cataclysm tbh) since its way too easy and has no challenge unless i handicap myself.
    Thats why over the years people have developed the mental attitude about fun starting at max level, in a way its true but its nowhere near black and white/yes or no when it comes to classic.
    In BFA its pretty much true... but then again its a different game.
    Don't know where you got WoD class game play being good... there's a period there: "but it's still below wod. Wrath cata and mop had some of the best class game play ever"

    And I played day one til the end of vanilla, leveling was never the fun part for me... ever, it was doing Raids, it was doing dungeons, it was getting awesome items like Benediction and Rhok, it was all the end game stuff.

    I did have 6 or 7 60s though, I'm just really good at slogging through shit to get to the fun part.
  1. ablock87's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cavox View Post
    Are they paying a sub on a private server? BRs will play the worst garbage if it's free. But please, continue thinking a 15-year old game will be a success in 2019.
    I play Super Metroid to this day and it's over 25. But keep thinking age is any indication of good gameplay.
  1. ringpriest's Avatar
    It's nice that it's releasing, but why in the middle of summer, damn it?! I've been looking forward to this since it was announced, and I'm not going to have time to play until winter! Ah well.
  1. Felixon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Akka View Post
    I'll never understand how people can manage to say in the same breath "people have forgotten what Vanilla was like" and "people play private server".
    It's like their brain is so damaged it can only hold "I don't like Vanilla herp derp" idea in it, and everything that could support their point is okay, even if self-contradictory or factually wrong.
    You drew two different sentences out of context. I wrote,that there are two groups of people - the ones,who are complaining,that some crappy private realm was closed and those,who are simply nostalgic about the game,though have forgotten what was it really like back then. I also wrote,that there are people,who don't understand (because they didn't play the game back then) or have forgotten (because they didn't play that version of the game for more than a decade) what it really took back then to raid - not a single word about a private realm players.

    Now,because of the fact,that you are uncapable to read a post properly and are capable only to draw the line between two sentences you saw in whole text,ignoring the other facts stated in it,thus making some kind of silly assumptions,you think,that you have a right to call me brain damaged? Who the hell you think you are? What gives a right to offend me? The fact,that you have been registered here for 11 years,thus you think you're proving that you're a hardcore,old-school "I know what it really was back then,SHUT UP who has other opinions" knowitall? I don't care if you played since World of Warcraft beta,that doesn't give you a right to offend anybody on this forum.

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