News
WoW Forever: beta level cap rises to 30 after 1 October downtime
Blizzard will take the WoW Forever beta offline on the evening of 1 October and bring it back early on 2 October with the level cap raised to 30.
Community manager Kaivax announced the downtime on Blizzard's European and American forums in the early hours of 1 October, Central European time. He wrote that Blizzard would take the WoW Forever beta offline for maintenance that evening, and that a few hours later, early in the morning of 2 October, the beta would come back with an updated build that includes changes and fixes, and with the level cap raised to 30. Blizzard said the full details would follow the next day in its beta development notes.
Blizzard did not give an hour for the start of the work, or a figure for how long it would take. Its European post says only "this evening", with the time given in Central European time; its American post says "tomorrow morning" in Pacific time, which is 9 hours behind Central Europe, and it went up there late on 30 September, so both point to the same window. In the UK that is the same evening, 1 hour earlier on the clock. The European post says the beta will return "a few hours later", the American one "several hours later". When Blizzard installed the previous build on the evening of 24 September, the beta was back about 3 hours later; Blizzard has not said whether this round will be similar.
The beta opened with a level cap of 20, and Blizzard said from the start that it would be raised to 30 later in the test. Blizzard's own figures put the time beta players need to reach level 20 at about the same as in Classic Era. The beta runs until 21 October, so the higher cap covers a little under 3 weeks of testing. Blizzard has not listed what else the new build changes, and has not said whether any of it is final for launch.
The beta has had trouble with load as well as with content. Players queued to log in over the weekend of 26 and 27 September, and Blizzard raised the number of players it lets in at once and said it had fixed an issue that was filling the queue. Blizzard has not said whether a higher level cap will change how busy the beta is. WoW Forever launches at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.