THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED OCTOBER 13, 2026
Short answer: The Forever Open is a 1v1 dueling tournament on the WoW Forever beta, played by level 30 Horde characters on October 17 and 18, with a $100,000 prize pool. Tips Out organizes it, Esfand and Xaryu host it on Twitch, and anyone with beta access can enter. It launched on September 27 with $50,000. The next day TimTheTatman put in another $50,000, so the champion now takes $50,000 and the top player of each class $5,555. Sign-ups closed early, on October 2, because of demand. The full qualifier and finals rules are now posted: six Swiss rounds on Saturday, then a 36-player double-elimination bracket on Sunday.
It is not a Blizzard event. The rules say so themselves: "World of Warcraft Dueling is not an officially supported Blizzard esport."
The key facts
| Detail | The Forever Open |
|---|---|
| Name | The Forever Open (TFO) |
| Organizer | Tips Out, with partners Starforge Systems and RestedXP |
| Hosts | Esfand and Xaryu, on their Twitch channels |
| Dates | Qualifiers October 17, finals October 18 |
| Characters | New Horde characters on the PvP ruleset, level 30 |
| Prize pool | $100,000 (originally $50,000) |
| Sign-ups | Raider.IO, September 27 to October 2, 10am PT (closed early) |
| Entry fee | 15 gold, paid at check-in |
| Qualifier format | Six Swiss rounds in pods of about 36, check-in 9 to 10am CT, play from noon CT |
| Finals format | Top four of each class (36 players), double elimination, best-of-five grand final |
The prize money
The prize pool started at $50,000. Tips Out announced the event on September 27 with "Prize Pool: $50k," and the rules on Raider.IO split it in two halves:
- $25,000 to the champion, who also gets the title "Death's Duelist."
- $25,000 shared by the nine classes, $2,777 per class. If two players of a class tie, their class money is split between them.
On September 28 Esfand posted: "MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @timthetatman for DOUBLING the Tournament prize pool to $100k!!!" The Raider.IO prizes page has since been updated with the new split, so it is now confirmed: $50,000 to the champion and $5,555 to the top-placed player of each of the nine classes. Class prizes are still split evenly on a tie.
Winners have to send the organizers an invoice before they get paid.
How to enter
- Get into the beta. The Raider.IO page says anyone with beta access can register. Access comes from the opt-in on the Forever website or from pre-purchasing the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection. Our beta guide covers both.
- Make a new Horde character on the PvP ruleset after 11am PT on September 27. Anything created before that is not eligible. The surname must be Foreverpvp. That is a hard requirement.
- Register on Raider.IO. Sign-ups were due to close on October 4 but closed early, at 10am PT on October 2, "to accommodate operations limitations." Registration is now shut. Join the tournament Discord and the tournament guild as the sign-up steps tell you.
- Reach level 30 by October 17. See the next section, because right now you can't.
- Check in between 9am and 10am CT on October 17 through Raider.IO, submit your qualifier talent build, and trade the 15 gold entry fee to a tournament admin outside the gates of Orgrimmar. Late check-in is not allowed.
- Lock your talents. The qualifier build locks the moment you confirm it at check-in. Finalists submit a separate finals build by 1am CT on October 18, and it locks at that deadline.
- Stream your own duels on Twitch, YouTube or Kick, including any bag or talent inspection, and keep the VOD. No stream means you forfeit your matches and any prize money.
One catch on step 2. On the PvP ruleset an account can only have characters of one faction, as Icy Veins and others have reported. If your account already has Alliance characters on the beta's PvP ruleset, you can't make a Horde one there. You may need to delete them or use another account.
You can register more than one character during sign-ups, but you compete with one and can't swap once you check in.
The format
Update, October 13: the organizers have published the full "Qualifiers & Finals Format and Rules" on Raider.IO. The main points:
Qualifiers (October 17). Check-in closes at 10am CT and play starts at noon CT. Players are split into Swiss pods of about 36, built so each pod's class mix roughly matches the whole field (so pods are "not purely random"). Everyone plays six rounds with no mid-stage elimination. A win is worth 3 points and a loss 0. If a duel hits the game's built-in duel timeout, it counts as a tie worth 1 point each and is not replayed. Standings go by points, then wins, then Buchholz (the strength of your opponents). The top four of each class advance. If more than four players of one class go 6-0, they play a same-class tiebreak instead of being separated by Buchholz.
Finals (October 18). The 36 qualifiers are seeded by their qualifier results into one double-elimination bracket. The eight lowest seeds play a four-match play-in, and the losers drop to the lower bracket rather than going out. Upper bracket matches are best of three, lower bracket matches are a single duel, and the championship is "one single best-of-five Match" with no bracket reset. Every finalist must run the Raider.IO desktop app with Live Tracking switched on. Raider.IO's timeline has the event running from 17:00 UTC on October 17 to 22:00 UTC on October 18.
How a duel works, from the rules:
- Both players start 20 yards apart, and a referee counts down 10 seconds before you accept the duel.
- You get one to two minutes between duels to heal, buff and drink.
- More than three minutes offline in total and you are disqualified.
- Sixty seconds of inactivity in a duel earns a delay-of-game penalty. Running away or stalling on purpose can get you disqualified.
- Warlocks must check in with an admin before leaving to farm Soul Shards. They can leave once, and they can't touch other players, banks or vendors while they are gone.
- Stealth classes, and Druids, always get the uncontested opener. Warriors get it against everyone except stealth classes. The opener must happen within 25 seconds.
- No pre-HoTs, no pre-placed Hunter traps and no Warlock pre-sacrifice. Power Word: Shield before the duel is fine, and Shamans can start with up to four totems.
What is allowed and what is banned
Allowed: every baseline class ability, your own class self-buffs, Legacy points, equippable pet trinkets such as the Dog Whistle, and every consumable that is not on the banned list. The new format rules tightened buffs: "Only class self-buffs are permitted," so buffs from other classes are out.
Banned (format rules, October 13):
- Student Fodder, Flash Bomb, Magic Dust and Slumber Sand.
- Furbolg Medicine Pouch, Truthseeker's Bow, Green Whelp Armor and Goblin Sapper Charge.
- Fire, Nature, Frost, Arcane, Holy and Shadow protection potions.
- Non-equippable pet summons such as Spider Swarm.
- Holiday buffs and consumables, including the Wickerman buff.
- Campfire buffs, and any world or quest buff, including Blood Shard buffs.
Having a banned item in your bags during a match is grounds for disqualification, and referees can inspect your bags and talents before or during the event. Clear them out before check-in.
The level 30 cap
When the tournament was announced the beta was still capped at level 20. That problem went away on October 1, when the level 30 build went live, which gave entrants a bit over two weeks to level and gear. The beta itself ends on October 21. The BiS lists cover every spec at the current cap, and the library books give every class a free neck.
The row over gold and Legacy
The tournament had been public for about a day when two forum threads took off. An EU thread titled "The $50k Duel Tournament" and a US thread called "Gold buying rules" (231 posts by September 29) made the same complaints:
- Gold showed up fast. Posters said streamers were traded large amounts of gold right after the announcement. One pointed to a streamer receiving more than 500 gold across two level 1 characters on stream, on a beta where the cap is 20.
- Legacy points are allowed. The EU thread argued that the Legacy system favours people who can level several characters and professions before October 17, which most players with jobs can't. The rules permit Legacy points.
Blizzard's community manager Kaivax answered in both threads on September 28:
Real money transactions (RMT) are not acceptable in World of Warcraft, and we're taking steps to address RMT in the WoW: Forever Beta, and of course, when WoW: Forever goes live and beyond. It's important to know that while we have always actioned RMT seller's accounts as quickly as possible, we will increasingly take action against buyers' accounts.
He added that players should be "very cautious" about accepting gifts from strangers, and that recipients who "knew or should-have-known" gold was not legitimate could face account action too. The post is about gold buying in general. Blizzard has not said anything about the tournament itself. It fits what Blizzard said at the September 17 Q&A, when it banned GDKP and warned gold buyers.
Update, September 30: the row now has a name. Blizzard removed about 520 gold that level 1 characters had traded to the streamer Ziqo, leaving his mage with 9 silver, but did not ban him. The US thread has passed 1,400 posts. We cover the trades, Blizzard's stance and the fake "account closed" clip in our dispatch on Ziqo's gold.
Update, October 12: a week out, the talk is about mages. The October 8 build gave every tester 16 free Legacy points, Xaryu called mages "cracked" for the tournament, and a "Nerf mages already" thread passed 400 replies. See are mages overpowered in WoW Forever?
Update, October 13: the mage thread has turned into a wider complaint that the beta is being balanced around the tournament. "WoW forever is already ruined," posted on October 11, had 129 replies and over 400 likes by Tuesday morning. Its opening line: "Pandering to streamers nerfing and buffing around a level 30 dueling tournament is just a complete joke." A Reddit post on r/classicwow, "This 100k Tournament has kind of destroyed the heart of WoWF," made the same case. The evidence people cite is circumstantial: the Truthseeker's Bow was moved to level 40 in the October 8 build and is also on the tournament ban list, and Penance was cut in the same build after a week of complaints about Discipline priests in level 30 PvP. Plenty of replies push back. One of the first in the forum thread: "Good thing it's not even started yet which means it's not ruined." Blizzard hasn't responded to the claim. In its TechRadar interview it said class changes in beta will be batched and checked against its design pillars, and that it plans balance passes "once per week" after launch. We covered that interview in what Blizzard told TechRadar.
Who is behind it
Tips Out runs dueling events. It organized the Classic Duelers League and OTK's Hardcore Mak'gora in 2023, which the Raider.IO page says drew more than 2,500 players. Esfand and Xaryu hosted that one too. Registration is on Raider.IO, and Starforge Systems and RestedXP are listed as partners.
Before the official announcement, a post on X on September 24 previewed the event and said "there are already plans for a Level 60 tournament" if this one goes well. The organizers have not said so themselves, so file it under rumour.
Where to watch
The main broadcast is on Esfand's and Xaryu's Twitch channels on October 17 and 18. Every competitor has to stream their own view, so there will be plenty of co-streams, and our WoW Forever live page lists every Forever stream that is on at any moment. If you want to know which classes Forever buffed before picking one to duel with, start with the class tier list and the talent calculator.
Sources: Raider.IO, Qualifiers & Finals Format and Rules and Prizes (read October 13, 2026); Blizzard forums, WoW forever is already ruined (October 11, with replies); Reddit r/classicwow, This 100k Tournament has kind of destroyed the heart of WoWF. (October 10); TechRadar Gaming, WoW: Forever's classes won't be modernized (October 10); Raider.IO, The Forever Open event hub, format and rules, regulations and code of conduct (read September 29); Tips Out on X, official announcement (September 27); Esfand on X, announcement (September 27) and prize pool doubled (September 28); ForeverChanges, duel tournament guide (updated September 29, source of the reported $50,000 and $5,555 split); ForeverDB, The Forever Open (September 27); Blizzard forums, The $50k Duel Tournament (EU) and Gold buying rules (US), including Kaivax's September 28 replies; Icy Veins, WoW Forever's PvP realms come with a major faction restriction; Hozitojones on X, tournament preview (September 24).