World of Warcraft: Forever opens on November 5 at 02:00 Moscow time — that's 23:00 UTC on November 4. Here's where the exact figure comes from and why early reports mentioned 01:00.

Blizzard has confirmed: World of Warcraft: Forever opens on November 5 at 02:00 Moscow time. That's an hour later than some players expected — but a straightforward time-zone calculation gives exactly 02:00 MSK.

Where the time comes from. Global launch is set for 23:00 UTC on November 4. Moscow is UTC+3 with no daylight saving switches, so 23:00 UTC equals 02:00 MSK on November 5.

Why 01:00 showed up earlier. 23:00 UTC is 15:00 Pacific Standard Time (PST) in the US. But in early November the US ends daylight saving time: on the night of November 1 the clocks go back an hour and the country returns to standard time. Until then, the offset from UTC was -7 (PDT) rather than -8 (PST), and 23:00 UTC would have given 16:00 PDT — i.e. 01:00 MSK. After the clock change the offset shifts, and 23:00 UTC becomes 02:00 MSK. That's where the one-hour shift comes from.

In practice

• Log in on November 5 at 02:00 MSK — that's when servers will take their first characters.
• In Central Europe the launch happens at 00:00 CET.
• On the US west coast — at 15:00 local time on November 4.
• If you planned to take the night off for a 01:00 MSK launch, you can move your alarm back an hour. The queues for specific worlds will still start long before midnight — if you're aiming for a particular realm, leave plenty of buffer time.