THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED OCTOBER 22, 2026
Short answer: if you bought a WoW Forever pack, your Invite-A-Friend Launch Codes started arriving by email on October 20. The Skyborne Heroic Pack comes with one code, and the Skyborne Epic Pack and Warcraft Forever Collection come with three. A friend who redeems one gets WoW Forever free from launch on November 4 through November 11, 2026, with no subscription or game time. The code doesn't give them the Skyborne race, beta access, name reservation or game time. If an email never showed up, players report that every code is listed in the purchase's entry in your Battle.net transaction history. The codes went out in batches, so many buyers spent October 20 and 21 holding one or two codes out of three and asking the forums where the rest were.
What a friend gets
Blizzard's pre-purchase announcement says the codes let friends "join World of Warcraft: Forever during launch week, from November 4 through November 11, 2026," and that "Eligible invitees can redeem the code through Battle.net to access World of Warcraft: Forever without a subscription or game time during the launch-week window." Its footnote adds that the dates are PST and that the offer "Excludes gift purchases. Other restrictions apply."
Blizzard's support article on the codes is behind a Battle.net login, but players have quoted it in two forum threads, a month apart, with matching wording. The key lines:
- The account the code is redeemed on gets WoW Forever for the first week after launch, November 4 through November 11, 2026, "without an active subscription."
- "Invite-A-Friend codes do not grant access to the new race and their starting zone quests."
- "Invite-A-Friend codes are not game time and do not grant access to any other version of World of Warcraft."
- "Invite-A-Friend codes do not grant access to the WoW: Forever beta."
So a friend on a code plays one of the eight original races, starts in a regular starting zone, and has seven days. After November 11 they need a subscription, or a pack with game time, to keep playing.
Launch is 3:00 p.m. PST on November 4, which is the early hours of November 5 in most of Europe. That's why German outlet MeinMMO described the free week as November 5 to 12. It's the same window.
| Pack | Invite-A-Friend codes |
|---|---|
| Skyborne Heroic Pack | 1 |
| Skyborne Epic Pack | 3 |
| Warcraft Forever Collection | 3 |
Our Heroic vs Epic pack breakdown has the rest of what each pack includes.
What it doesn't do
No name reservation. Early name reservation runs from October 27 to November 3 and lets you reserve up to three character names. Blizzard's Vrakthris answered this directly on October 7: "No. To be eligible for Early Name Reservation (there isn't any early access associated with that), you need to own one of the packs, Skyborne, Collection, or Collector's Edition." A friend on a code makes their characters at launch like everyone else, which is worth knowing if they have a name they care about.
No Skyborne. If your friend wants to play the new race, they need a pack of their own.
No beta. The beta closes for good at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Friday, October 23. The codes were never beta keys.
Missing codes
The first emails landed on the afternoon of October 20, Pacific time. Codes are sent one per email, as Gfinity noted from Blizzard's wording, so an Epic Pack buyer should get three separate emails. Several threads ("Missing Friend Codes?", "Haven't Received Friend Codes" and "Invite-A-Friend Launch Code - Only received 1") filled up with players holding one or two codes. Some reported the second email arriving 20 minutes after the first, and others were still short a day later.
The fix players found: open your Battle.net account's transaction history and view the pack purchase. Several players said all three codes were listed there even when only one email had arrived, and one said, "Found my missing 3rd code!" Blizzard hasn't commented in those threads, so treat this as a player tip. It worked for every reply we saw from Epic Pack buyers. One player who had also bought the physical Collector's Edition said no codes showed for that purchase, only for the Epic Pack. If that's you and nothing has arrived by launch week, open a support ticket.
Don't post your codes in public
Players with no one to give codes to have started giving them away. A few have done it sensibly, asking for a BattleTag and sending the code privately. At least one forum thread posted raw codes in the first message, which means the first stranger to copy each one gets it, and the rest of the thread finds them already used.
If you want to give spares away, send them privately to someone you've picked. Don't sell them or trade them for gold. Blizzard has been tough on anything that looks like real-money trading in Forever (see our RMT and bans report), and a code bought from a stranger has no guarantee it hasn't already been redeemed.
Questions Blizzard hasn't answered
Does buying a pack during the free week stack the time? A player asked on October 22 whether a friend should wait until November 11 to buy the Collection, or whether its 30 days of game time get added after the free week. No answer yet. Blizzard's shop page says pack game time is credited at launch, which suggests it starts running on November 4 regardless of a code. If your friend is sure they'll stay, the safest choice is to buy before November 4 and skip the code, which also gets them Skyborne and name reservation.
Who counts as "eligible"? Blizzard's wording is "eligible invitees" and "other restrictions apply," without a public list. Some guides claim an account that already owns a Forever pack can't redeem a code. That would make sense, but we couldn't confirm it from a Blizzard source, so give codes to friends who haven't bought anything.
What happens to the friend's characters after November 11? Blizzard hasn't said. Blizzard's free trials have usually left characters on the account until you subscribe, but nothing published for Forever spells it out.
For the friend
Seven days is enough to get a character into the 20s if they play most evenings. Point them at the WoW Forever hub for the basics and the best race for each class if they're stuck on a pick. If they can't decide at all, the class randomizer will choose for them.
Sources: Blizzard, Pre-Purchase World of Warcraft: Forever Upgrades and Begin Your Next Journey in Azeroth (September 2026, checked October 22, 2026); Blizzard Support, What access does the Invite-A-Friend code grant (login required; wording as quoted by players in Invite a friend codes, where are they? on September 17, 2026 and Beta Key + name reservation on October 20, 2026); Blizzard forums, Vrakthris in WoW Forever Invite-A-Friend Launch Codes question (October 7, 2026); Blizzard forums, Missing Friend Codes? (October 20 to 21, 2026), Haven't Received Friend Codes (October 20 to 21, 2026), Invite-A-Friend Launch Code - Only received 1 (October 21, 2026) and If using Friend Code for Forever, would buying the collection add time to the end of the 7 days? (October 22, 2026); Blizzard, Claim Your World of Warcraft: Forever Character Names (October 20, 2026); Kaivax, Heads Up: WoW Forever Stress Test on October 21 (October 20, 2026); Gfinity Esports (Alexandria Lopez), World of Warcraft: Forever: how to get and use Invite-a-Friend codes (October 20, 2026, updated October 21); MeinMMO, WoW Forever Stress Test live ticker (October 21 to 22, 2026).