Name reservation opens October 27, and you only get three characters for the whole week

The beta closed on October 23 after five weeks. Blizzard says the days between now and launch go on focused work on priority issues and the game service itself, and the next thing on the calendar is for players: the names.

When it opens

Early Name Reservation runs from October 27 to November 3, right up to the eve of the November 4 launch.

Region	Start
Europe	27 October, 18:00 CET
North America	27 October, 1:00 p.m. PDT
Korea	28 October, 07:00 KST
Taiwan	28 October, 07:00 CST

Three characters, and that is the whole budget

This is the detail to read twice, because it changes how you plan the evening. During the reservation period you can create and reserve names for up to three characters in total across all rulesets.

Blizzard’s own example: if you create two on a PvP ruleset, you have one left for a Normal or Role-Play ruleset. The cap applies only to Early Name Reservation, not to the game afterwards — but during the week that matters, it is three.

So decide in advance which three names you actually care about, and which rulesets they belong in. With Roleplay-PvP added to the lineup there are now five rulesets competing for those three slots, and cross-ruleset grouping is off, so a name parked in the wrong ecosystem is a name you will not play.

It needs a purchase

Reservation is a pre-purchase benefit, not something a subscription gets you. It requires one of:

• the Skyborne Heroic Pack
• the Skyborne Epic Pack
• the limited-time Warcraft Forever Collection

Two conditions come with it. The benefit applies only to the specific WoW account the purchase was made for, which matters if you have several. And names are first come, first served — Blizzard says plainly that a name you want cannot be guaranteed.

To be clear about the thing people keep mixing up: playing Forever at launch needs only a subscription or Game Time. Buying nothing costs you the early name grab, not the game. Our pre-purchase breakdown has the tiers.

Do this before Tuesday

1. Install the client now. It is already downloadable — here is the route, and the fix for a greyed-out Install button.
2. Check which WoW account you are logged into, since the benefit is account-specific.
3. Pick your ruleset first, names second. The ruleset decides who you can group with for dungeons and raids.
4. Have backups ready. First come, first served on a launch of this size means your first choice may be gone.

What else is coming before launch

Blizzard says the podcast continues next week, and all five episodes so far are up: beta launch with Xaryu, speed running classes with sodapoppin, dungeons with the devs, the PvP episode, and the end-of-beta special.

Our launch page tracks the dates, and the class pages and talent calculator are already on the final client’s data if you want to plan the character behind the name.