How many evenings does it take to reach level 60 WoW Forever? Nobody knows yet, and the sites that give a number say so themselves. The beta stopped at level 30 and the game only opens on November 4 at 3 pm PST (midnight in Paris): nobody has timed a full 1-60. What we have are estimates, from 50 to 200 hours depending on who writes them, a simple calculation to turn them into dates, and a deadline that already angers players: the December 9 raids. I will update this article with the first real times.
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Every number below comes from third-party sites, and several of them sell boosts or guides. I quote each one with its date and its limit. As for the leveling itself, its dungeons and its surprises, I covered those in my beta report on leveling, so I won’t repeat it here.
Estimated hours for level 60 WoW Forever
The most quoted figure comes from LFCarry, revised on November 4 with no change: about 150 hours of play for the 1-60 following quests. The site breaks it down as 20 hours for 1-20, 50 for 20-40 and 80 for 40-60, including 44 for the last stretch alone: from 50 to 60, each level would cost about 4.4 hours. It also says a good Classic player reaches 60 in 100 to 150 hours: the low end you see sold as an « optimized route » comes from there, not from a measurement on Forever.
LFCarry sells boosting, and it covers itself: « Nobody has a measured Forever 1 to 60 yet. » The other estimates are less careful.
- wowforever.games (September 17): 100 to 120 hours for a first character, 60 to 80 for an experienced player, 50 to 65 for a speedrun built on dungeons. The site calls it a « theoretical analysis ».
- ExpCarry (September 19): 80 to 130 hours for an experienced solo player, 130 to 200 for anyone who wants to do everything. The site calls them « editorial estimates, not official Blizzard figures ».
- wowforeverguides.com publishes no duration at all.
The 50-65 hour speedrun dates from before October 1, and it counts on dungeons. Yet Blizzard cut the bonus XP from dungeon quests in half that day, according to Classic WoW Forever. I file that number under optimistic, nothing more.
What speeds up leveling
There is no global XP bonus. According to Classic WoW Forever, the 1 to 60 experience curve stays the same as Classic, after a comparison claiming otherwise was retracted. A few levers remain.
- Rested XP: it builds up when you log out in an inn or a capital city, and each monster you kill then gives more until the pool runs dry. The Well Rested legacy talent, visible on our legacy tree, fills the pool faster and raises its ceiling: 4% per rank, up to 20% at rank 5.
- Food: 5% extra XP on monsters killed, not on quests, according to WoW4EverNews (September 25).
- The cozy sleeping bag, from level 14: 1% per minute of rest up to 3%, for two hours, after a three-minute break.
- The camp tent, reserved for leatherworkers, which fills the rest pool up to only 5% of a level.
- A single run through each dungeon in your level range, then back to quests, as LFCarry advises.
The order of magnitude matters more than the list. To reach level 60 WoW Forever, these bonuses add up only at the margin: WoW4EverNews points out that neither the tent nor Well Rested forms a permanent multiplier. Classes weigh more. LFCarry puts the mage and the hunter about 8% under the average time, and the warrior about 12% over it.
One beta shortcut is gone. The Alliance quest Applejack Still, just outside Stormwind, gave XP for every turn-in of four apples bought from a vendor: 170 XP per turn-in for a level 21 character. Josh « Aggrend » Greenfield, Senior Game Designer at Blizzard, confirmed the loop was fixed before release, according to Guided.news (November 1). Leave it out of your route.
What slows you down
The first brake is the pace Blizzard wants. According to Timesaver.gg, a solo fight is tuned to 10 to 15 seconds per monster, and there is no group finder and no paid boost at launch. The site concludes that Forever is not faster than Classic. The 1,000 new quests open more routes, not less XP to earn.
Then the curve steepens. The 80 hours of the 40-60 stretch weigh more than the first 70 hours combined, and that is where the rested XP pool pays off most: save it for that stretch if you level several characters. Launch, finally: everyone hunts the same monsters. Full servers cost time, and no estimate puts a number on them. Blizzard planned a fix in its November 2 development notes: creatures respawn faster in many areas, fastest in the starting zones, then less and less as you level. The October 1 patch also showed that these rules are still moving, as detailed in our article on level 30.
Your arrival date at 60 based on your pace
Here is the raw calculation for level 60 WoW Forever, with no breaks and no queues: you play the number of hours per week shown, starting November 4. The columns use three durations: 150 hours (LFCarry), 100 hours (the low end of the Classic range) and 60 hours (the optimistic speedrun). Dates are accurate to within a day.
| Your pace | 150 h | 100 h | 60 h |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 h per week (1 h a day) | April 3 | February 12 | January 3 |
| 14 h (2 h a day) | January 18 | December 24 | December 4 |
| 21 h (3 h a day) | December 24 | December 7 | November 24 |
| 35 h (5 h a day) | December 4 | November 24 | November 16 |
| 56 h (8 h a day) | November 23 | November 17 | November 11 |
One landmark: the three raids open on December 9. Barrow Deeps for 10 players, Hyjal Summit for 20 and Onyxia’s Lair for 40. The date appears in the raid preview Blizzard published on October 20, and its launch overview video repeats it on November 3. At 3 hours a night and 150 hours, you hit 60 on December 24, two weeks later. To arrive ready for the opening, you need to aim for about 35 hours a week, or a 100-hour route played 21 hours a week.
December 9 called too soon: what the forum is asking for
Players on the US Forever forum ran the same numbers, and they want a delay. The thread « Dec. 9th Raid release is WAY too soon », opened on November 2, had 217 replies and 3,900 views on November 4. Its opening post fits on one line: « Give us a little bit more leveling breathing room. »
An older thread, « Please delay the raids », opened on October 8, has passed 330 replies. Its author does the math: if level 60 WoW Forever takes 200 hours, you need to play 5.7 hours a day, every day, to be ready on December 9. A third thread, opened on the morning of November 4, starts from LFCarry’s 150 hours, lands on 4 hours a day and suggests January 4.
The most followed thread is about something else. « Are we just forgetting about Dungeon XP? », opened on October 31, has passed 1,300 replies and 1,380 likes. It asks for the dungeon XP from before the beta cut, which I covered in our article on the dungeon XP cut. Its core argument fits in one heading: « Anything past the first run is a massive XP loss ». According to the author, an evening of dungeons with friends on Discord barely gives any XP anymore, and tanks and healers end up leveling alone in the open world.
The author also recalls why the cut exists: to curb boosting, those groups where a high-level player pulls others through dungeon after dungeon. According to the post, Blizzard has since reduced the area damage of spells like Blizzard and Consecration, and makes a group lose XP when it brings along a character of too high a level. The cut would then have no reason left to exist.
On Blizzard’s side, no reply in these threads. Its November 2 notes only talk about balance: « we don’t plan on making big tuning changes between now and the opening of the raids next month ». The studio refers to that opening as a fixed deadline.
My take: the forum is aiming at the wrong target
The date holds up. In 2019, WoW Classic opened Molten Core and Onyxia on day one; Forever gives five weeks. A raid does not disappear: someone who plays two hours a night will do it in January, and all they will have missed is the race. That race concerns guilds chasing the top spots. For them, reaching level 60 WoW Forever in 34 days on a 150-hour basis means about 4 hours 25 minutes of play a day. It is hard, and it is their choice.
The real grievance is dungeon XP. The cut targeted boosting, but it hits people who play in groups first: tanks and healers, and the group of friends who log in at night to run two dungeons. It is also what makes the race to December 9 painful, because it sends everyone to level solo in the open world, on the same monsters. If Blizzard gives ground on one point, my bet is on that one, not on the date. I say it as a bet: the studio has announced nothing of the sort.
What a route guide changes to these dates
I found no measured figure on how much time a route addon saves. What it removes is wasted time: looking for the next NPC, hesitating between two quests, backtracking. If you play 3 hours a night and lose half an hour finding your way, your date moves by several days. That is the ground covered by RestedXP WoW Forever, whose contents, prices and limits I detailed in my article on the leveling guide.
It is no use if you want to read every quest text, or if you play one hour a day: the time saved finding your way would be drowned in an already slow pace. And its Forever routes for 35 to 60 will come out after launch. To prepare the rest, our dungeons and raids page lists the game’s instances. LFCarry revised its page on November 4 without changing its figure, and promises to check it against the live game during launch week.
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