Blizzard opened the World of Warcraft: Forever beta on September 17, 2026, and published a separate GPU requirements notice the same day that will end the conversation early for some players. The beta runs through October 21, the last full day of testing.
The Details
Forever is not a conventional expansion. Blizzard describes it as “a reimagined original Azeroth, where familiar roads lead to new discoveries, the journey matters as much as the destination,” and it sits alongside retail and Classic as a third branch of the game.
The beta opens with the new race and zone, Skyborne and Zephras Isle, two dungeons in Hall of Thanes and Ruins of Lordaeron, and all zone content up to level 20. More zones, dungeons, and a battleground unlock as testing continues.
The GPU requirements post is the one to read carefully, because it is a minimum-architecture cutoff rather than a normal spec sheet. Forever’s new visuals rely on RGBA16F UAV support in compute shaders, which sets the floor at AMD Graphics Core Next 1 (2012), NVIDIA Maxwell (2014), and Intel Skylake (2015). Blizzard’s own examples of unsupported cards include the GeForce GTX 760, 770, and 780, the GTX 8xxM series, the Radeon HD 6950, and Intel HD Graphics 6000. Supported examples go as far back as the Radeon HD 7850 and the GTX 750 Ti.
The awkward part is that a GTX 780 is a stronger card than a 750 Ti in raw terms. This cutoff is about architecture and feature support, not horsepower, so some players with perfectly serviceable older cards are out while weaker but newer hardware is fine.
What This Means for Players
Check your card before you plan an evening around this. If you are on a GTX 700 series card other than the 750 or 750 Ti, you are almost certainly outside the supported set.
Access has more than one route, and one of them is a trap worth repeating: the Skyborne Epic Pack includes beta access, but the similarly named Skyborne Heroic Pack does not. Our guide on how long the WoW Forever beta runs covers the full schedule, the level cap changes during testing, the free opt-in lottery, and the fact that all beta progress wipes before launch.
If you want something else from Blizzard while you wait for an invite, our Diablo 4 Season of Hell’s Legacy guide covers the current season, and our Diablo 4 Switch 2 guide covers the console version.
When and Where
The World of Warcraft: Forever beta is live now on Windows and macOS and runs through October 21. Access to the finished game is included with a standard World of Warcraft subscription or Game Time.