World of Warcraft Forever is officially WoW’s biggest launch ever, and it’s not even close

Blizzard says World of Warcraft: Forever has had the biggest launch in the franchise’s history, attracting more players than any previous WoW release. The record includes surpassing the 2019 launch of WoW Classic, showing strong demand for a permanent return to the game’s earlier style.

Launched on 4 November, Forever recreates Azeroth as it appeared in 2004 while adding new storylines, quests, races and dungeons. Blizzard has not disclosed an exact concurrent player count, but says it has seen the most new players for a WoW launch in 15 years. The launch ran on 3,924 virtual machines, with 251,136GB of memory and 70,480 CPU cores; the longer-term test will be whether players stay after the initial nostalgia fades.