WoW: Forever's first 24 hours, by the numbers
WoW: Forever went live at 23:00 UTC on November 4, and the WoW Census addon was scanning from the first minute. By the same time the next day, it had recorded 153,980 unique characters across 11 realms in the US and EU, along with 7,343 guilds that already had at least one member. Most players were still in the starting zones: about 71% of the characters we saw were level 1–9, and only 3,632 had reached level 20. A handful pushed past level 30 on day one. These are characters our addon saw, not a server population count, but it's a large enough sample to show what launch day looked like.
The biggest story is the new races. High Order Skyborne made up 16.6% of the Alliance characters we saw, ahead of Gnomes (13.8%) and not far behind Dwarves (19.4%) and Night Elves (20.0%). On the Horde side, Windshaper Skyborne took 15.0%, close behind Trolls (16.3%) and Tauren (17.0%). The classic favorites still lead: Humans are 30.1% of the Alliance, and Undead are a full third of the Horde at 33.6%, nearly double Orcs, the next most common Horde race. We compare races within each faction rather than across the whole server. How long we scanned each faction changes the raw totals, but it doesn't change the mix inside a faction.
Classes are spread far more evenly than races. Every class is between 9% and 14% of its faction. Hunters (13.9%) and Druids (13.5%) are the most popular Alliance picks. On the Horde side, Shamans lead at 13.7%, against just 10.0% on the Alliance. Alliance players lean toward Mages and Paladins, while the Horde has more Warlocks, Rogues and Warriors. We'll keep scanning as people level up and settle on their mains. Follow along at wowcensus.io/forever to see whether the Skyborne novelty holds up and how the class mix shifts once people start reaching max level.