World of Warcraft Forever was announced at BlizzCon 2026, and Blizzard president Johanna Faries called it by the name players have been using for years. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, this is Classic Plus,” she said as the cinematic ended on the Opening Ceremony stage. It launches November 4, 2026, with a beta starting Thursday, September 17, and Blizzard says it will run as a third version of the game alongside modern WoW and Classic.
How it was announced
Faries set it up right after the Warcraft 3 Forsaken Kingdom segment. “It’s time to talk about something new. Maybe address some of the rumors out there, because we know a lot of you love that nostalgic flavor of vanilla,” she said. “So what if we take vanilla and really plus it up?”
The cinematic opens on a shooting star over an old-style map of Azeroth, with a narrator promising “lands unexplored, forgotten secrets, and new horizons.” It follows a dwarf and his bear from a snowy mountain to green plains, past a city under a purple dome, into a cavern with a hooded figure, up to an island chained in the clouds, and out to a view of the planet from orbit before the logo.
The date and the beta
The date came seconds later, with a countdown reading 52 days behind her and “November 4, 2026” on the side screens. “You only have a little bit of time to rally your friends, your newbies, your former crew, anyone you want to live in Azeroth with,” Faries said. “I’ll say that again, November 4th. November 4th, everybody. So beta starts this Thursday, and if you’re here, you could play Forever on the show floor.” No beta card was shown, and how to get into the beta was not explained. The date has its own short post.
What Classic Plus means, as stated on stage
Faries called Forever “your new permanent home” and “a new beginning that never ends,”. “We’re giving you another way to play WoW that’s friendly, familiar, and new. It’s going to live right alongside our modern and Classic games,” she said.
The pitch is vanilla first. “Forever is focused on what made vanilla so memorable in the first place. The world as the main character,” she said, adding that players “will carve your own path” and that “there’s no rush here. It’s the journey that counts, not the destination.”
After the features trailer, Faries placed it in the timeline: after the fall of Lordaeron in Forsaken Kingdom but before Molten Core, “essentially, year one of vanilla WoW. But the future is untold.” That trailer’s feature list is covered in a separate post.
What the stage did not cover
Price and subscription model were not mentioned, including whether Forever needs its own subscription. Platforms were not listed. Whether existing Classic characters carry over, or everyone starts fresh, was not addressed.