World of Warcraft: Forever players are reliving 2004 with hour-long queue times to get into the highly-anticipated beta

WoW: Forever, Blizzard’s modernized twist on WoW Classic, launched a beta today, but most people have only experienced a login screen so far.

Following a live Q&A, Blizzard turned the WoW: Forever beta servers on. The queue times weren’t too bad to start: I had about a nine-minute wait when I first logged in. But once it finished, I was disconnected and kicked to the back of the line for another, even longer queue.

It appears I’m not the only one who has made it past the queue only to be disconnected and prompted to start the whole process over again. Players and streamers are all reporting similar issues, although some people have successfully made it in.

Blizzard acknowledged the issues on X: “We’re working through some final issues, and we expect the doors to open soon.”

There doesn’t seem to be any trick to the queue. You just need to wait it out and pray that it lets you past the initial login screen.

WoW: Forever is the first version of WoW that doesn’t use realms, or servers, in the same way as the others. Instead of picking a realm, you pick a ruleset (normal, PvP, or Roleplay) and join the same server as everyone else. Blizzard did it this way to help preserve the social aspect of the original MMO. This might also be why the queue times are so rough.

Wowhead and others have been busy datamining the game’s files for new details. You can already go through all the new class talent trees and peek at some of the reworked armor sets. It might be worth taking a look while you wait to get in, or, if you’re like me and don’t want to spoil everything, cross your fingers and hope you can play a little before the risk of long queues gets even worse on the weekend.

There will be plenty of time to play the WoW: Forever beta, however. It’ll stick around until October 21 before Blizzard fixes it up for its November 4 launch.