World of Warcraft Forever Is the Biggest WoW Launch in History

Even during the beta, World of Warcraft Forever was shaping up to be huge, with an unprecedented amount of testers. Over the weekend, Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft Forever had the biggest launch in WoW history.

The news came over X/Twitter, where the official World of Warcraft account posted that Forever was the biggest launch in WoW history, both in terms of peak concurrent players and the number of returning players. Keep in mind that this history includes Wrath of the Lich King and Warlords of Draenor, both of which had huge launches – though the latter didn't exactly maintain it.

WoW Forever didn't just break records by dragging old players in and convincing them to resub. Holly Longdale, Blizzard's executive producer and vice president for World of Warcraft, posted her own statistic , saying, "Another statistic is filling our hearts – we are seeing the most NEW players for a WoW launch in 15 years!" That means WoW Forever has brought more players in than any WoW expansion since Cataclysm first launched 16 years ago in 2010.

Congratulations everyone, you made HISTORY! WoW: Forever has achieved: 🔹The biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players 🔹The highest number of returning players in WoW history This is all because of you, the players. From all of us, THANK YOU! — World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) November 7, 2026

Congratulations everyone, you made HISTORY! WoW: Forever has achieved: 🔹The biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players 🔹The highest number of returning players in WoW history This is all because of you, the players. From all of us, THANK YOU!

Scrolling through Longdale's replies, it's clear that people are loving WoW Forever. There are a ton of fans talking about how they played all weekend, like Dungeons and Dragons senior game designer Joey Haeck , who posted a picture of himself on a Zeppelin leaving Orgrimmar, saying, "Congratulations to the whole Forever team! I'm having a blast on every packed zeppelin and every open vista."

While we here at IGN don't have a full review yet, our early review is positive, with reviewer Len Hafer talking about her beta experience , saying, "I ended my beta journey at level 13, gazing out across the dusty plains of Westfall, because I didn't want to spoil too much for myself before the big day. But from what I have seen so far? I think they might have done it. They made me believe I can go home again – and that home is somewhere I want to spend more time, with new surprises to discover. Let's see if they can keep it up for 47 more levels. Watch this space for updates in the weeks to come."

While it's obviously been a huge success, Blizzard had been cooking World of Warcraft Forever on the back burner for a while, only pulling the trigger on its full development after it saw how successful Season of Discovery was back in 2023 . Even with the massive load of players logging in at launch, WoW Forever had an extremely smooth launch , thanks to running on a massive amount of hardware . There was even a race to max level, which took three whole days before someone hit the level cap of 60 .

Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She's been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra