2026-09-26
AIE Community, WoW Classic, WoW Forever

alea iacta est in Forever

World of Warcraft Classic History

The first reboot of World of Warcraft Classic was in the fall of 2019 and we were ready for that launch, joining in with other communities excited about the prospect of starting anew in Azeroth. In June of 2021, the Dark Portal opened again to give us access to Outland with The Burning Crusade Classic. We continued with the launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic in September of 2022 where Alea Iacta Est continued strong including an active raiding team (led by Shrimpiclese) to relive that raiding journey to defeat Arthas. The Classic path continued through Cataclysm Classic (2024) and Mists of Pandaria Classic (2025). It is not yet clear if that thread of Classic gameplay will continue with Warlords of Draenor or subsequent expansions for the original World of Warcraft game.

Classic Variants

Along the way to Mists of Pandaria Classic, there were other experiments from Blizzard. At the launch of The Burning Crusade Classic, we were given the opportunity to leave a clone behind in a “Forever Vanilla” version of Classic that remained at level 60 with the original version, this has become known as Classic Era and is still available today. Seasonal launches began with the release of Season of Mastery in November of 2021 and ran for two years until February, 2023. In August of 2024, Blizzard launched official Hardcore Classic servers as a response to demand from the community who were already playing this style with the help of a popular plugin, Hardcore.

In November of 2023, the Season of Discovery server was launched and progressed through eight phases of highly experimental changes to the classic world: phased leveling caps, new roles for some classes, as well as never before seen dungeons and raids. These experiments had the community buzzing about a possible “Classic Plus” version of the game. The announcment at Blizzcon 2026 of the upcoming launch of a new version of WoW: World of Warcraft Forever followed the rumours but most of the community did not expect it to be available in Beta the following week and the live launch of the new game scheduled so early on November 4th, 2026.

AIE in World of Warcraft Forever Beta

There are no realms on World of Warcraft Forever. There will be four ‘playstyle’ mega-servers:

  • Normal (PVE), this is where our current guilds on Beta live.
  • PVP, we have no presence here currently.
  • RP (Roleplay), we have no presence here currently and decide we would not want to see members names force-changes for not being in the roleplay of the universe.
  • Hardcore, this is currently not available and will not be available until some time after launch.

We have already created guilds in the Beta server on the ‘Normal playstyle‘ mega-server, we do not have a presence currently on the PVP playstyle.  If you have access to the Beta via a pre-purchase or receiving an invite code, please ask for invites in the #wow-forever channel on the Alea Iacta Est Discord server:

  • alea iacta est aeternum (Alliance side)
  • alea iacta est semper (Horde side).

Various community officers and players with the ‘Veteran’ title in-game are able to invite you. Please remember that all progress on the Beta server will be wiped for the live launch of the game on November 4th. Currently there is a level 20 cap for player progress which will eventually be raised to level 30. When the game launches live, our current plan is to create the same guilds on both Alliance and Horde side for the ‘Normal playstyle’ mega-server.

We look forward to seeing you in game as well as in the #wow-forever Discord chat!