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Original editorial illustration by RealmList, generated for this article. This is artwork, not game footage or official promotional material.

The date is official. In an announcement posted the evening of September 25 — right after the community stress test we covered in our Reborn feature guide — the Project Epoch Reborn team confirmed the realm goes live on Friday, October 23, 2026, at 4:00 PM GMT. The open test server closed the same day to prepare for launch, and all test progress was wiped. Anyone still leveling on the test build is starting fresh in October.

That makes this the four-week window in which to get everything else ready: client, launcher, account. All of it can be done now, because registration is open and the launcher is already patching files.

Step 1: Get your own 3.3.5a client

Reborn runs on the 3.3.5a client, build 12340 (enUS). The project does not distribute the client and will not link to downloads — you need your own copy, whether that is an old legally obtained install or a backup from another 3.3.5a server.

Practical details:

• A slightly modified client from another server is usually fine. The launcher verifies and repairs the files it manages, so a client you used elsewhere rarely needs a clean reinstall.
• Put it somewhere you own — C:\Games\Epoch on Windows or ~/Games/Epoch on Linux — not under Program Files, which causes permission friction.
• Budget roughly 20 GB of free space for the client plus Epoch's custom patches.

Step 2: Download the launcher

The launcher handles all connection setup. There is no access key and no realmlist.wtf editing — a notable difference from most 3.3.5a projects, and the same launcher-first approach we highlighted in the feature guide.

After extracting, point the launcher at the folder containing Wow.exe and press Update. Downloads resume where they left off, and every file is checksum-verified before it replaces anything — a failed update cannot corrupt your client. When it reports Up to date, you are set (for the current build; expect a launch-day patch).

Linux specifics

• Click the sliders icon in the launcher's top right to open Proton / Wine setup and select your installed Wine or Proton. If you already run WoW through one, select that existing environment.
• If you launch WoW through Steam or Lutris, you can keep that setup: use the archive's epoch-connect helper as a command prefix (Lutris) or in Steam launch options: "/full/path/to/epoch-connect" -- %command%.

Step 3: One account for everything

Registration is open now, and the account is shared between the website and the game — same username and password in both places. If your login fails on launch day, the fix is almost always a site-account issue (or a password reset at the site), not a server problem.

Troubleshooting quick table

What happens between now and October 23

The test server is closed, but the project's unusual transparency continues: the public bug tracker and weekly changelog forums remain the place to watch fixes land, and the team is still recruiting game masters and developers (C++ core, SQL/scripting, Noggit world-building, Lua UI, Blender) through volunteer applications on the site. A roadmap of post-launch content was teased alongside the date and shared with the community on Fluxer, the project's chat platform — worth joining now, since it is also where launch-day issues will be triaged fastest.

One caution for planners: launch-day queue capacity is untested. The 9/25 stress test proved concurrent-load behavior, but a forum question about the launch-day player limit had no answer at publication time. For a free Classic+ realm succeeding a beloved original, an opening-hour queue is the realistic baseline assumption.