WoW Forever Launch Day Checklist

WoW Forever opens on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at 3:00 PM PST, but the race for the best character names started a full week earlier. Early Name Reservation runs from October 27 to November 3 for anyone with an upgrade pack, the beta closed on October 23, and the live client can already be installed in the Battle.net app. Several choices in that window, from your ruleset to the second half of your character's name, can't be changed later. Below you'll find the launch time in your region, a checklist for the days before launch, from your client and account to your name and ruleset, what the beta and name reservation tell us about queues and layering, a plan for your first hour, fixes for the login errors players have already hit, a plan for your first week, the ten mistakes veterans regret most from past fresh launches, and answers to the questions players ask most often.

WoW Forever Launch Time in Your Region

The launch is one global moment, 23:00 UTC, so the servers open at the same minute everywhere. Outside the Americas that already falls on Thursday, November 5.

Blizzard's Korean announcement lists 7:00 AM KST, an hour earlier than the conversion from 3:00 PM PST, while every other regional version points to 23:00 UTC. We show 8:00 AM until Blizzard confirms otherwise. Every other time zone, with a live countdown, is in our WoW Forever release date guide.

Before Launch: What to Settle Before November 4

Most of the work that saves time on launch night can be done in the days before it. Some of it has a hard deadline, so it helps to see the dates in one place first.

The Stress Test and the End of the Beta

The October 21 stress test was open to everyone, with no subscription, game time or beta access needed. It ran on the regional servers WoW Forever will use at launch rather than on the beta hardware, and every character, name and guild made during the test was wiped before name reservation opened. The beta reopened after the test and closed for good on October 23 at 10:00 AM PDT.

Beta characters don't carry over, so the only thing worth keeping from either test is your setup: interface layout, keybinds and addon profiles.

Pre-Download the Live Client Now

The live WoW: Forever client has been available to install since around October 22. It is a separate game version from the beta, so install it now and launch night only needs a small patch.

1. Open the Battle.net app and select World of Warcraft.
2. In the Game Version menu above the Play button, pick World of Warcraft: Forever, not the beta, and click Install.
3. If the beta is still installed, choose the same game folder. Players who did this report that most of the game data is shared and only a small download was left.
4. Keep the beta files until the live client has finished installing, or the shared data gets downloaded again.

Blizzard asks for a 128 GB SSD, a 64-bit Windows 10 or newer and 8 GB of RAM at minimum, and the game also runs on Mac. If the Install button is greyed out, check that the right WoW account is selected in the account menu next to the Game Version, since some launchers default to a starter account.

Check Your Account and Back Up Your Setup

The most common launch-night problem is not a queue but an account. A few minutes this week saves you from finding out at midnight that something is missing:

• Log in to the Battle.net account that holds your subscription and check that your authenticator still works on your current phone.
• Make sure your subscription or game time will still be active on November 4. Forever is included with it, and the upgrade packs are optional.
• If you have more than one WoW license on the account, such as WoW1 and WoW2, check which one owns your pack and game time and select it in the account menu above the Play button. Picking the wrong one is the most common cause of the WOW51900337 error.
• Make sure the Battle.net app is logged in to the same region you play in. If it isn't, the Play button stays greyed out: log out and switch the region with the cogwheel icon on the login screen.
• Update the Battle.net app and your graphics drivers before launch day rather than on the night.
• Back up anything you set up on the beta or in the stress test. Blizzard hasn't promised that beta settings carry over, so export your addon profiles, copy the Interface and WTF folders from the game directory, and take a screenshot of your Edit Mode layout.

Reserve Your Name Between October 27 and November 3

Early Name Reservation comes with all three upgrade packs: the Skyborne Heroic Pack, the Skyborne Epic Pack and the Warcraft Forever Collection. Pre-purchasing a pack is the only way in: beta codes and Invite-A-Friend codes don't include it, but you don't need active game time during the reservation week. You can create and customize up to three characters per WoW account, which means three full characters with their race, faction, look and name, not three names on one character. The limit counts across all rulesets together: two characters on PvP leave room for only one on Normal, Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP. Buying a second pack doesn't raise it, because each pack goes to a separate WoW account, and the limit applies only to the reservation week.

Names go first come, first served. The window opened on October 27 at 18:00 CET in Europe and 1:00 PM PDT in North America, and at 07:00 local time on October 28 in Korea and Taiwan, and it stays open until November 3. Pick a ruleset first, because the character is created on it and a name is taken across every ruleset in your region. Have two or three backup combinations ready in case your first choice is gone.

Two bugs from the opening day are worth knowing. The name filter wrongly blocked names containing "con" with the message "That name is restricted", and Blizzard fixed it with the next realm restarts, so try those names again. Oceanic players on the Australian servers have to create their Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP characters before any Normal or PvP character, or those two rulesets disappear for the rest of the reservation. If Roleplay-PvP doesn't show up at all, select another ruleset first, then click Ruleset in the top bar.

Every character in WoW Forever has two names, a Main Name and a Secondary Name, and only the full combination has to be unique in your region. If someone already took the first name you love, a different second name can still make it yours. A few points to keep in mind when you pick:

• The naming filter checks both parts together, so splitting a restricted word across the two names won't get it through.
• Pick the race and class you really plan to play. If you later want the name on another class, you have to delete the character and recreate it, and someone else can take the name in between.
• If you don't like how two names look in the world, you can hide your second name: Esc, Options, Nameplates, then untick My Secondary Name. It still shows in chat.
• A reserved character is not a head start. Everyone, including beta testers and pack owners, starts at level 1 on November 4.

Which pack includes what, from the Skyborne race to the extra Invite-A-Friend codes, is compared in our WoW Forever editions guide.

Exact dates, naming rules and tips for securing a contested name are collected in our WoW Forever realms and name reservation guide.

Pick Your Ruleset With Your Group

WoW Forever has no realms. You pick a ruleset instead: Normal, PvP, Roleplay and Roleplay-PvP open on November 4, and Hardcore follows later. Each ruleset is one huge shared world, so there is no risk of picking a dead server, but the choice decides who you can play with.

You can only group, run dungeons and raid with players on the same ruleset, and battlegrounds are the one place where players from every ruleset meet. On the PvP ruleset your account is locked to one faction. Blizzard also keeps the PvP factions balanced the way it did in Season of Discovery: when one faction grows too large, character creation for it is temporarily restricted with the message "This faction is currently unavailable on this realm due to population imbalance", and Customer Support can't lift it. A living character can't move to another ruleset, so agree on a ruleset and a faction with your friends and guild before anyone rolls, and create your PvP characters early.

If you only have an hour or two a night, think twice about PvP. Every corpse run after a gank comes out of that time, and you can still do battlegrounds, duels and world PvP on Normal whenever you choose to. Our WoW Forever Normal vs PvP ruleset guide compares all four rulesets in detail.

Settle on a Class and a Race

The new race and class combinations make the choice wider than in Classic. Dwarves can be Shamans, and the Skyborne race joins both factions. Decide before launch night, because the first character you level is the one your guild will get to know.

Pick for how a class feels to you rather than for a tier list. The balance is still moving, and a spec that tops the charts in the first month may not stay there. Think about how much time you have: Warriors depend heavily on gear and groups, while Hunters, Warlocks and Mages level comfortably on their own.

To see which classes players enjoy most and how hard each one is to learn, read our WoW Forever most fun classes guide.

For help with the choice, our WoW Forever tier list ranks every spec for leveling, dungeons and PvP, and the WoW Forever race tier list does the same for racials. If you are still deciding between two classes, our WoW Forever class guides explain how each one plays and what changed from Classic.

If WoW Forever is your first classic WoW, our WoW Forever beginner's guide explains how rulesets, quests, talents and the new systems work, so you know what to expect on launch night.

Install Addons With a Forever Build

WoW Forever runs on the modern game client and follows the same addon rules as Midnight. Addons can't read the combat log, so older Classic damage meters and many WeakAuras-style tools don't work at all. Only an addon whose author has released a Forever build will load, so on CurseForge or Wago look for the file tagged Forever. Install only addons that solve a real problem for you, and set them up before launch rather than on the first night.

Which popular addons already have a Forever build, from quest helpers to bag and auction house tools, is tracked in our best addons for WoW Forever guide.

Three jobs that used to need an addon are now part of the game:

• Damage Meter shows damage and healing for your group. Turn it on under Advanced Options and place it in Edit Mode.
• Cooldown Manager moves your key cooldowns and buffs to a spot of your choice. It is off by default; enable it in Options under Gameplay Enhancement.
• Swing Timer tracks your auto attacks, which matters for Warriors, Rogues and anyone who times abilities around a swing.

Hunters also have an Auto Attack/Auto Shot setting since the October 15 beta build, which switches between the two for you.

Set Up Your Interface Before You Log In

Settle your layout now, from your beta notes or screenshots, because a UI you have already planned takes a minute to recreate on launch night instead of eating your first evening. These settings make the biggest difference:

1. Open Options, then Action Bars, and turn on the extra bars you need. Most classes outgrow one bar within ten levels.
2. Use Edit Mode to move bars, the minimap and frames where you want them, and save the layout. Bars snap to each other, so drag them apart first. Click a bar to change its orientation, size and number of rows, or to hide one you don't use.
3. Use Quick Keybind Mode from Edit Mode to bind keys by hovering a button and pressing the key.
4. Check that A and D strafe instead of turning your character, under Keybindings, then Movement Keys.
5. Turn on Auto Loot and Combine Bags under Controls.
6. Set your Preferred Online Language under System, then Languages and Social. It decides which players you mostly meet, and you can only change it once every 24 hours.

If your PC struggles, our WoW Forever graphics guide explains which settings cost the most performance.

Queues and Layering on Launch Night

Blizzard hasn't promised a queue-free launch, and every test so far drew more players than expected. When the beta opened on September 17, queues reached 17,000 to 22,000 players with wait estimates of up to 48 minutes, and many players were disconnected right after getting in. That beta ran on limited test hardware in one region, while launch uses the regional servers that already carried the stress test.

Name reservation on October 27 was a closer rehearsal, even though only pack owners could take part. In North America players waited in short queues, were disconnected the moment they reached the front and landed at the back of the line again. The European start was delayed while Blizzard fixed server problems, and for a while every ruleset showed "no realms available". Some players needed an hour of reconnecting before they could create their characters, and from then on everything worked smoothly.

Blizzard itself expects a bumpy first night. Clay Stone, associate production director on WoW Forever, put it this way in a pre-launch interview:

• "I'm not saying there won't be a technological hiccup or two the moment we flip the switch and open everything up."
• "Even with that unexpectedly huge rush on the beta, we were able to get everyone into the game very quickly. I don't want to say it will be the same on launch day, but even if there are incidents, our teams work incredibly fast."

A few habits help if the queue misbehaves:

• Join the queue early, even if you plan to play later. Once you're in, stay logged in rather than taking a break at the character screen.
• If you're disconnected at the front of the queue, reconnect right away and keep trying. On reservation day reconnecting didn't keep your place, but the loop ended for most players within an hour.
• Check the current error before you troubleshoot your PC. Most launch-night errors are server-side and go away on their own, as the login errors section below explains.

How Layering Will Work at Launch

WoW Forever spreads players across layers, copies of the same zone that each hold part of the crowd. Blizzard says layering is here to stay: in a statement on October 23, Clay Stone said that "there will always be some amount of layering that occurs within our high-capacity infrastructure". The same statement promised fixes for groups split up after a boat or zeppelin ride and for large groups entering or leaving a capital city, with more improvements "through launch and beyond".

On the beta those layers behaved differently from Classic. A warning pops up a few minutes before the game moves you, but it still moves you at awkward moments:

• Accepting an invite moves you to the group leader's layer, so invite first and pull second.
• Leaving a group or changing its members can move you to a new layer, and on the beta it sometimes moved the leader too. The mobs around you may then be alive, so don't change your group inside a cave or next to a camp of enemies.
• Neighbouring zones can sit on different layers, so crossing a border can swap you too. On the beta this happened between Durotar and Orgrimmar and at the Great Lift.
• Form your group before you board a boat or zeppelin, and after entering a capital check that everyone is still with you before you split up.
• You can't accept the world refresh prompt in combat. Accept it only when no mobs are nearby.
• Camp buffs only apply after a full minute at the fire. A layer change during that minute loses them.

Launch Day: Your First Hour

The first hour sets up the rest of the week. Players who leave the starting area with a bag, a gathering profession and a campfire recipe level faster than those who rush the first quest chain.

Plan Your Time Off Around the Queues

The servers open at 3:00 PM PST on a Wednesday, which is midnight in Central Europe, and the first night is the one most likely to have queues. Rather than taking launch day off, take Thursday and Friday, November 5 and 6, to get a four-day weekend once the first rush is over.

If you do have to work on launch day, a remote desktop app on your phone lets you start the queue on your lunch break, so you're through it by the time you get home.

Get Through the Crowded Starting Zone

On launch night every quest mob in Elwynn Forest, Durotar and the other starting zones will have a crowd around it. Inviting players who are working on the same quest is the fastest way through.

If the crowd is too thick, a few tricks from past fresh launches keep you moving:

• Skip a quest target that a dozen players are waiting for. Kill 10 to 15 mobs of your level for the same experience and come back when the spot clears.
• Leave the starting area as a group. Five players at level 1 or 2 can handle mobs a few levels higher outside the first valley, where nobody else is fighting over them.
• Below level 10 there is no resurrection sickness, so a death costs only a short run back or a trip to the spirit healer.
• On past launches Mulgore and Tirisfal Glades were usually the quieter starts, while Elwynn Forest and Durotar were the busiest. Skyborne players start on Zephras Isle, which was one continuous zone without layer borders on the beta.
• Stay on voice chat with your friends, so you notice quickly when a layer change splits the group.

Your First-Hour Checklist

These five steps take a few minutes each and pay off for the whole leveling journey.

1. Pick up your starting zone's free bag quest. Humans get the Book Bag from Book Return, Orcs and Trolls get the Handmade Leather Bag from Carry Your Weight, and every other race has a similar quest by level 7.
2. Train a gathering profession in your starting area. Herbalism, Mining and Skinning level up while you quest, so you never have to go back to old zones. Buy a Skinning Knife or a Mining Pick from the general goods vendor and turn on tracking by the minimap.
3. Train Cooking and First Aid in the first town. Cooking builds campfires, and a Linen Bandage heals you between pulls without drinking.
4. At level 5, take The Great Outdoors from the NPC by the tent and campfire outside your starting area. It unlocks camping. A Basic Campfire Kit needs 1 Cooking skill, one Simple Wood and Flint and Tinder, and the Cooking trainer sells both.
5. Set your Hearthstone at the first inn you reach and log out there, so the character banks rested XP while you're offline.

Every free starting bag by race, plus the early pouches that drop from mobs, is listed in our WoW Forever bag guide. You don't always need your own fire: any player's campfire works for you without a group, and towns often have one burning already. How campfires, camp objects and their buffs work is covered in our WoW Forever camping guide.

WoW Forever Login Errors and How to Fix Them

Name reservation already showed which errors players will see on launch night. Most of them come from the servers rather than your PC, so the fix is often to wait a few minutes and try again. The table below covers each message, what it means and what helped players on the beta and on reservation day.

A few errors from the beta may come back after launch patches. If the game is stuck on "Retrieving character list" or shows WOW51900328 after an update, restart the Battle.net app and run Scan and Repair from the cogwheel next to the Play button. If the launcher says the client is out of date (WOW51900309), close any running game process in Task Manager so the app can apply the update. A disconnect on a loading screen (WOW51900319) after a hearth or flight was usually fixed on Blizzard's side.

Your First Week: Bank Alt, Professions and Legacy Points

The first raids don't open until December 9, five weeks after launch, so the first week is not a race to 60. It is the best time to set up the things that pay off for months: a bank alt, a profession plan and your first Legacy Points.

On December 9 three raids open at once: The Barrow Deeps for 10 players inside Mount Hyjal, Hyjal Summit for 20 and Onyxia's Lair for 40. Onyxia's Lair needs the Drakefire Amulet from a faction attunement chain, so start it as soon as you reach the level. How gear and progression work from level 1 to the first raids is explained in our WoW Forever gearing and progression guide.

Park a Bank Alt in a Capital City

Bag space is the first wall every character hits, and a bank alt solves it for a few minutes of walking. Create a second character on the same ruleset and faction as your main, ideally on the first evening, and run it to Stormwind City or Orgrimmar. From Northshire the walk to Stormwind City takes about three and a half minutes; from the Valley of Trials to Orgrimmar it is closer to seven. Log out next to the bank and a mailbox, where the auction house is also a few steps away: in the Trade District of Stormwind City and the Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar. If you cut across from Northshire to save time, watch out for level 6 mobs on the way. Night Elf players can park the alt in Darnassus, which got a mailbox right next to its auction house on the beta.

Where to park the alt, how to set up its bags and how to move gold and items between characters is covered step by step in our WoW Forever bank alt guide.

While you level, mail the alt everything you want to keep but can't carry: cloth, herbs, ore, leather and gear for later. Because every name in Forever has two parts, type the alt's full name when you send mail, or it can land on someone else's character. If you plan to play long term, it is worth splitting storage across several alts by type, such as one for cloth and one for herbs, instead of piling everything on one character.

Give the bank alt Enchanting, and green and blue items that sell for little can be broken down with Disenchant instead of going to a vendor. Adding Tailoring turns the cloth you mail into bags: three Bolt of Linen Cloth and three Coarse Thread make two Linen Bag at once. On the beta, training a craft up to 150 skill needed character level 10 and going past 150 needed level 20, so the bank alt needs a few levels before its crafts go far.

Start Your Professions Early

Gathering pays from the first hour, while crafting pays from the first week. A character with two gathering professions can simply sell everything for gold, but most players do better feeding the materials to their own crafters.

The pairings that work are the classic ones: Herbalism feeds Alchemy, Skinning feeds Leatherworking, and Mining feeds Blacksmithing and Engineering. The three secondary professions are worth taking on every character. Cooking builds campfires and makes food that now grants stats, First Aid gives you a Linen Bandage early on and healing potions such as the Minor Healing Potion, and Fishing supplies the cook.

The first days of a fresh launch are also the best time to make gold. The market hasn't settled, so useful items regularly sell far below their value, and crafting cooldowns fetch high prices from players who need them. Keep an eye on the auction house rather than only listing your own goods.

Recipes, trainers and the camp object each profession unlocks are covered in our WoW Forever professions guide.

Use Alts to Earn Your First Legacy Points

Legacy Points are account-wide, and each Legacy Challenge pays one point the first time your account completes it. The quickest ones in the first week are classes and crafts: each of the nine classes pays a point at level 25, and each of the six crafting professions pays one at 150 skill. That is 15 points before any character reaches level 30. A second Mage or a second Tailoring character adds nothing, so every alt should be a different class with a different craft.

Rested XP makes this cheap. Every character resting in an inn or a capital city earns rested XP while you play someone else, and a character that has rested for a week logs back in with more than a level's worth of bonus experience waiting. Leaving each alt in town after a short session and leapfrogging them up is far faster than leveling them one at a time. A Camp Tent from a Leatherworking player also tops rested XP up to 5% of a level for everyone sitting nearby.

Once the account has its first point, the Legacy window opens with the Y key. For an alt-heavy start, Working Overtime raises your chance of a skill-up from any tradeskill by 10% at full rank, and Well Rested makes rested XP build up 20% faster with a 20% higher cap.

The full route, with the order of classes and crafts, is in our WoW Forever Legacy Points farming guide. If you would rather have one character ready for the December raids while you play alts, our WoW Forever leveling service takes a character from 1 to 60 for you.

Pick One Talent Build and Keep It

Talent resets were nearly free on the beta, but that was a temporary testing price. On the live servers the cost climbs every time you reset. Dual spec currently unlocks at level 40, and Blizzard said on its October 10 podcast that it is still discussing the right level, possibly 30. Until it unlocks, choose one build that can quest and still fill a role in dungeons, and stick with it.

Our WoW Forever talent calculator lets you plan the build before you spend a single point.

10 Mistakes to Avoid at the WoW Forever Launch

Veterans of every fresh Classic launch tell the same stories about what they would do differently. Most of these mistakes cost nothing on day one and a lot by the time the raids open.

1. Committing to a guild before you've seen it play. A new Discord, a big name and a lot of promises often turn into a guild where half the roster never shows up. Join communities and group with people, but wait a week or two to see who actually logs in, who performs and whose schedule fits yours before you commit.
2. Leveling an alt before your main. Players who level a gold-making alt first often arrive late to their guild's first raids and end up at the back of the queue for weapons. Level the character you want to raid with first. If you plan to play an alt seriously alongside it, a second account lets you run both at the same time.
3. Vendoring trade goods. WoW Forever adds more than 600 new recipes, so nobody knows yet which cloth, herb or ore will turn valuable. Mail materials to your bank alt instead of selling them for copper.
4. Buying leveling gear on the auction house. Quest rewards and dungeon drops replace leveling greens within a few levels. Save your gold for things that last, such as bags, profession materials and your mount, and only buy gear when the price is a clear bargain.
5. Chasing full pre-raid gear in the first weeks. The first raids open on December 9, and the last few upgrades cost far more time than the first ones. Get most of your pre-raid set, then put the rest of your time into professions and alts.
6. Rolling on the PvP ruleset because it sounds exciting. World PvP is fun when the fight is fair and costly when you only have two hours to level. You can still do battlegrounds, duels and premades on Normal, and you can't move a character to another ruleset later.
7. Picking a class for the meta. Balance in WoW Forever is still moving, and the strongest spec in the first month may not stay there. Choose the class you enjoy pressing buttons on, because you'll be playing it for a long time.
8. Logging out in the open world. A character that logs out in an inn or a capital city earns rested XP; one that logs out in the field earns almost nothing. With alts, rested XP adds up to whole levels.
9. Taking launch day off. The servers open at 3:00 PM PST on a Wednesday, and the first night is the most likely to have queues. Days off on November 5 and 6 get you more playing time.
10. Resetting your talents on a whim. The price climbs with every reset on the live servers. Plan your build before you spend points, and save experiments for when dual spec unlocks, currently at level 40.

Most of these come down to patience, which suits a version of the game built to last rather than a seasonal server that ends in a year.

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More WoW Forever Guides

These guides go deeper into the decisions and systems from this checklist.

WoW Forever Launch FAQ

These are the questions players ask most often in the last weeks before launch.

When does WoW Forever launch?

On Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at 3:00 PM PST. That is 5:00 PM CST, 6:00 PM EST, 11:00 PM GMT, midnight CET going into November 5, and 10:00 AM AEDT on Thursday, November 5, in Sydney.

When does name reservation start, and who can use it?

Early Name Reservation runs from October 27 to November 3, 2026, and comes with any of the three upgrade packs. Beta access on its own doesn't include it. It opens at 18:00 CET in Europe and 1:00 PM PDT in North America on October 27, and up to three characters can be reserved across all rulesets together.

Do I need to buy WoW Forever to play?

No. An active World of Warcraft subscription or game time is enough. The upgrade packs are optional and add the Skyborne race, early name reservation and other extras.

Can I make both Horde and Alliance characters?

On the Normal and Roleplaying rulesets, yes. On the PvP ruleset your account is locked to the faction of your first character there.

Can I be blocked from creating a character on the PvP ruleset?

Possibly. Blizzard plans to temporarily limit new characters on whichever PvP faction becomes too large, as it did in Season of Discovery. Rumours that a reserved name protects you from this are not confirmed, so create your PvP characters early and agree on a faction with your group.

Do beta characters carry over to launch?

No. The beta closed on October 23 at 10:00 AM PDT, and every character starts at level 1 on November 4, beta testers included.

Can I play with friends in another region?

No. Each region has its own rulesets, and names are unique within a region, so you and your friends need to play in the same one.

Will there be login queues on launch night?

Plan for one. The beta opened with queues of up to 22,000 players, name reservation had queue and disconnect loops in North America and a delayed start in Europe, and Blizzard itself expects "a technological hiccup or two" when the servers open.

Can I pre-download WoW Forever before launch?

Yes. In the Battle.net app, select World of Warcraft, pick World of Warcraft: Forever in the Game Version menu above the Play button and click Install. Choose the live version, not the beta.

What does error WOW51900337 mean in WoW Forever?

"Access to this realm requires an account with valid access license" means the WoW account you selected has no access to Forever. Pick the WoW account that owns your pack or game time in the account menu above the Play button. After launch, an active subscription or game time is needed.

Why does it say "That name is restricted"?

Either the name is on Blizzard's restricted list, such as a major lore character, or both parts together form a blocked word. On October 27 a bug also blocked every name containing "con", and Blizzard fixed it with the next realm restarts, so try those names again.

Do I need addons to play WoW Forever?

No. The game has its own Damage Meter, Cooldown Manager and Swing Timer. Addons still work if their authors have released a Forever build, but they can't read the combat log.

Do I have to rush to level 60?

No. The first raids open on December 9, five weeks after launch, so there is time to level, run dungeons and build up professions at your own pace.