WoW Forever: beta players made over 8.8 million characters

Blizzard has published a set of statistics from the WoW Forever beta, which closed on 21 October. In a post on the official World of Warcraft account on X on 30 October, it thanked players for taking part and shared the numbers in an image: 8,862,354 characters were created during the test.

1,889,084 of those characters were Skyborne, the new race that can join either faction, and 612,096 were Undead Paladins, one of the race and class combinations the original game never allowed. Players scored 9,959,014 PvP kills and fought 1,248,125 duels, and Hillsbrad Foothills was the zone with the most PvP.

The deadliest dungeon was Hall of Thanes, the low-level dungeon in the tombs beneath Ironforge and one of the 9 new dungeons. The deadliest creature was the humble Kobold Miner, which the post itself plays up as a village legend. 1,157,204 deaths came from falling.

Earlier this week Microsoft's chief executive called it the largest beta in the franchise's history. These are the first figures Blizzard has put to the test, though they count characters, not players, and the number of testers is still unknown.

WoW Forever launches in Europe at midnight Central European Time on 5 November, which is 23:00 in London on 4 November.