The World of Warcraft: Forever beta census shows which classes and races players are picking: warriors and hunters lead the way, humans dominate the Alliance and the Forsaken lead the Horde — while the paladin, newly available to both factions, sits at the bottom.

Where the numbers come from

Blizzard doesn't publish official beta stats — the data was collected by WoWCensus, a third-party scanner. By October 1 it had counted 21,766 unique characters across the two beta realms through 1,545 scans. It's a sample rather than every live character, but it's enough to see the overall picture. A separate counter on r/classicwow is still scanning: the number of created characters there is significantly higher because it also includes characters players create on different servers as alts.

The most popular classes

Warrior and hunter are the usual leaders of Classic: both are versatile and don't demand much know-how at low levels. Paladin closes out the list, even though in Forever it's available to both factions for the first time — early in the beta plenty of players rolled paladins on the Forsaken side, but the interest faded fast.

| Место | Класс | Персонажей | Доля | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Warrior | 3,646 | 16.8% | | 2 | Hunter | 3,138 | 14.4% | | 3 | Shaman | 2,809 | 12.9% | | 4 | Priest | 2,526 | 11.6% | | 5 | Mage | 2,169 | 10.0% | | 6 | Rogue | 2,091 | 9.6% | | 7 | Warlock | 1,823 | 8.4% | | 8 | Druid | 1,796 | 8.3% | | 9 | Paladin | 1,768 | 8.1% |

Alliance and Horde play differently

In Forever shamans and paladins are available to both factions, but players pick them the old way: Horde goes for shamans, Alliance for paladins.

• On the Alliance every fifth character is a warrior (19.7%), while shaman is the rarest class (5.5%).
• On the Horde shaman is the most popular class (19.6%), almost four times more than on the Alliance. Priest has climbed high — it's often paired with Forsaken (1,021 characters, 8.9% of the faction).

The most common Alliance combo is human warrior (793 characters, 7.7%), and on the Horde it's Forsaken priest (1,021 characters, 8.9%).

The most popular races

• Alliance: humans (31.8%), High Order Skyborne (19.6%), night elves (17.7%), gnomes (16.9%), dwarves (14.0%).
• Horde: Forsaken (27.4%), orcs (20.0%), trolls (18.7%), Wind Weaver Skyborne (18.5%), tauren (15.3%).

Humans nearly fill out the Alliance; on the Horde the Forsaken lead. The Skyborne — Forever's new race — together account for 19% of the sample: second place on the Alliance, fourth on the Horde.

PvE realm and PvP realm: different shapes

• PvE realm (17,159 characters): the Horde takes it by numbers, 57.5% vs. 42.5% for the Alliance.
• PvP realm (4,607 characters): the Alliance fills two-thirds (66.1%); the most common combos are human paladin and orc warrior. The PvP sample is four times smaller, so these numbers are less reliable.

What these numbers don't show

• It's a sample: only characters the scanner actually saw make it into the census — the longer a player is online, the higher their chance of being caught.
• The beta caps at level 20: players try things out and roll a lot of alts they won't actually play at release.
• WoWCensus only scanned talents for 873 players — that's too few to judge the popularity of talent builds.
• By the November 5 release the picture will almost certainly have shifted.

In practice

• If you play a rare class — paladin on the Horde, druid or warlock — the queue into dungeons may be shorter, with fewer people wanting to play them in groups.
• If you play a popular one (warrior, hunter) — there's more competition for a slot in groups, but also more demand for the roles you need in raids.
• By release the numbers will shift: once level 60 opens up, some players will return to the "Classic" picks and prune the alts they rolled during the beta.
• Picking a class just because it's popular is a bad idea: the tier list and class descriptions matter more than what the majority is playing.