The Forever Open is the first big duel tournament of World of Warcraft: Forever: one-versus-one duels between level 30 Horde characters on the beta, for a $100,000 prize pool. Tips Out, Esfand and Xaryu run it with Starforge Systems, RestedXP and other partners, and it is open to anyone with beta access. Registration closes on October 4 at 18:00 UTC, the qualifiers start on October 17 and the finals end on October 18. Here is how to enter, what you can win and the rules that matter when you build your character, from the tournament's pages on Raider.IO.
Dates
| Step |
When (UTC) |
| Registration opens |
September 27, 18:00 |
| Registration closes |
October 4, 18:00 (11 a.m. PT, 8 p.m. CEST) |
| Levelling and gearing |
until October 17, 17:00 |
| Check-in on Raider.IO |
morning of October 17 |
| Open Qualifiers |
October 17, from 17:00 |
| Finals |
October 18, until 22:00 |
The organisers will set the format of the qualifiers and the finals closer to the event and announce it on the tournament's Discord.
How to register
- Get into the beta. Sign up on Blizzard's WoW Forever page, or buy the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection, which include it. Our beta access guide has the details.
- Create a brand-new Horde character on the PvP ruleset. Characters created before registration opened, on September 27 at 11 a.m. PT, are not eligible. Its last name, the Secondary Name of Forever's two-part names, must be Foreverpvp.
- Register it on Raider.IO before October 4 at 18:00 UTC. A second character has to be created during the registration period and registered on its own.
- Join the tournament's Discord, the Forever PVP server, and read its rules-and-guidelines channel: the format and every announcement land there.
- Level it to 30. The beta's cap rises from 20 to 30 with the build that follows the October 1 maintenance; our level 30 guide covers what that unlocks.
- Check in on Raider.IO on the morning of October 17 to keep your spot, and be ready to stream.
The $100,000 prize pool
- Champion: $50,000.
- Best-placed player of each class: $5,555 each for the top Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock and Warrior, split evenly if two players tie.
The September 27 announcement spoke of $50,000; the prize page now lists $100,000 in all, the class prizes coming on top of the champion's share. The tournament's admins pay the winners, not Raider.IO. With a prize for every class, the best Paladin or Shaman wins money even if a Rogue takes the title.
Banned items and buffs
All consumables are allowed except:
- Magic Dust and Slumber Sand;
- the Furbolg Medicine Pouch;
- Fire, Nature, Frost, Arcane, Holy and Shadow Protection Potions;
- holiday buffs and consumables, such as the Wickerman buff or Candy Corn;
- campfire buffs;
- world buffs and any temporary buff from open-world objectives or quests.
Only your own class's buffs count: you can buff yourself with items and consumables once the duel has started, as long as they don't come from another class. Legacy points are allowed. Your bags and talents can be inspected before and during the event.
How a duel runs
- Both players stand on the duel flag, then walk 10 yards in opposite directions, 20 yards apart in all. No mounting before the duel, and an admin counts down 10 seconds before you accept.
- Openers: stealth classes, Rogues and Druids, get the first offensive action uncontested; Warriors do too, except against a stealth class. Wait more than 25 seconds and you lose it. Two stealth classes have to find each other, with no opener granted.
- No Heal over Time cast before the duel, no Hunter trap placed in advance, no Warlock demon sacrificed beforehand. Shamans may start with up to four totems down.
- One minute between duels to heal, buff and drink. If a duel times out, it is replayed, with food and water capped at three for the rest of the match.
- Sixty seconds of inactivity costs you a delay penalty; fleeing a duel, or forcing an opponent to flee, means disqualification. You can't leave the duelling area, not even to hearth and repair.
- You can be offline three minutes in total before you are disqualified. Warlocks may leave once, after checking in with an admin, to collect Soul Shards.
You play one character through every duelling stage and keep one talent build per stage, and you may have to submit it 24 hours before that stage begins. You must stream your matches on Twitch, YouTube or Kick and keep the VOD for review.
Preparing a level 30 duelist
Our reading of the rules against the beta client, not the organisers' advice:
- Talented, a Legacy perk, starts your talent points at level 5 instead of 10: up to 26 points at level 30 instead of 21. It needs 5 points spent in the Adventure tree first, so maxing it takes 10 Legacy points. High Alert detects stealth as if you were two levels higher, and only battlegrounds switch it off, not duels. Plan both in our Legacy planner, and see where points come from in our Legacy challenges guide.
- Level 30 brings key spells: Kidney Shot for Rogues, Intercept and Berserker Stance for Warriors, Feign Death and Lacerate for Hunters, Grounding Totem for Shamans, the Felhunter for Warlocks. Every class's list is in our class spells.
- Horde races only: Orc, Undead, Tauren, Troll or Windshaper Skyborne. Forever changed several racials; compare them in our racials guide and lock in a build in our talent planner.
The tournament comes three years after the OTK Hardcore Mak'gora, which drew more than 2,500 players on the Hardcore Classic servers. The WoW Forever beta stays open until October 21, three days after the finals.
