World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard’s rebuilt take on the game’s original Azeroth, launched on November 4 without a separate price tag. Anyone already paying for World of Warcraft can log in and play it. The one part of the launch that costs more is its headline addition, a new playable elven race called the Skyborne.

Blizzard’s launch announcement says access “will be included with your World of Warcraft Subscription or Game Time,” and the Battle.net Shop listing says the same thing in plainer words: a subscription or game time “grants you access to WoW: Forever.” The game sits alongside modern World of Warcraft and WoW Classic rather than replacing either.

What a subscription already covers

The base game is a full climb from level 1 to 60 across the original continents. Blizzard’s post marking the launch lists more than 1,000 new quests, nine new five-player dungeons spread across levels 13 to 60, and new or reworked areas including Mount Hyjal and the Riverglades, which alone carries more than 150 new quests.

The raids are the part still on a timer. Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit and Onyxia’s Lair all unlock on December 9, according to Blizzard’s raid overview, and they are built for level 60 characters. Onyxia’s Lair has an extra gate: every member of the group has to carry the Drakefire Amulet, which comes from a faction questline.

What the Skyborne pack adds

The shop’s fine print is direct about where the line falls: “Access to Skyborne Race or the Zephras Isle starting experience questline requires purchase of Skyborne Heroic Pack or higher edition.” Zephras Isle is the Skyborne’s own starting zone, covering levels 1 to 12, so a player who wants the new race buys both at once.

Kotaku reported the race sits behind a $30 purchase, and that the developers it spoke to declined to discuss monetization. Two larger editions stack on top of the Heroic Pack. The Skyborne Epic Pack adds 30 days of game time, and the Warcraft Forever Collection adds Warcraft III: Reforged and its new Forsaken Kingdom campaign. The shop has the Collection on sale through January 11, 2027.

What it means for a subscriber

For someone who already pays monthly, the shop listing names only one paid gate: the Skyborne. It lists no extra purchase for the levelling, the dungeons or the December 9 raids, so the Heroic Pack is for players who want the new race specifically. The 30 days of game time in the Epic Pack only matter to someone not currently subscribed, since the shop notes that play beyond that window “requires a Subscription or additional Game Time.” The same page pitches the game at Windows PCs, naming machines built on NVIDIA’s RTX Spark chip.

The level cap is the claim to read carefully. Blizzard’s own pages describe adventuring “to level 60” and a world built to “grow for years to come,” but none of them calls 60 permanent. Tim Jones, the lead Classic designer, told Kotaku, “we have a level 60 cap. We are going to continue to build content horizontally for players.” Ion Hazzikostas, Blizzard’s vice president and senior game director, told PC Gamer of Forever’s slow gear curve, “This is a system that can last for a long, long time.” Both describe a plan to grow sideways rather than upward. Neither is a promise that the cap will never move.

Featured image: World of Warcraft demo stations at BlizzCon 2013 (representative; not WoW: Forever). Photo: instaSHINOBI / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0; resized.