WoW Forever: the beta closes for good on 23 October

Blizzard has put an end date on the WoW Forever beta. A community manager wrote that the team plans to close it for good at 19:00 CEST on Friday 23 October, a little later than the 21 October finish players had been expecting.

Before that comes the stress test. On 21 October the beta goes offline and WoW Forever opens on the regional hardware it will run on at launch. In Europe the window runs from 19:00 to 03:00 CEST, which is 18:00 to 02:00 in the UK and Ireland, so it carries on past midnight into 22 October. North America follows at 17:00 Eastern, and Oceania and Asia get it on the morning of 22 October.

Any player with a WoW account can join and no subscription is needed. In the Battle.net app, pick World of Warcraft, choose the WoW Forever Stress Test version under In Development and install it, then select a test realm once the window opens. The test itself was moved from 19 to 21 October last week.

When the stress test shuts down, every character made on it is deleted, names included, and the beta reopens for its last stretch. Blizzard has said nothing about what happens to characters on the beta itself once it closes.