World of Warcraft Classic (or WoW Classic) is almost upon us and today Blizzard has tweeted the official WoW Classic release date, as well as more information regarding stress testing of servers and creating your characters ahead of the game’s launch.

Players can create up to three characters ahead of the WoW Classic release, with plans for that to occur on Tuesday, August 13th, while the full game will have a global launch on August 26 and 27.

Blizzard has also revealed a stress test schedule (call it a beta if you want), and times for the testing are subject to change but can be found below:

STRESS TEST SCHEDULE*

• Stress Test 1: Wed May 22–Thurs May 23
• Stress Test 2: Wed Jun 19– Thurs Jun 20
• Stress Test 3: Thurs Jul 18– Fri July 19

See the official WoW Classic release tweet announcement:

The drums of war thunder once again.

World of Warcraft Classic goes live worldwide August 27!
⚔️ https://t.co/Gyrz4hQqcn pic.twitter.com/WxuOZZhNak

— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) May 14, 2019

For us East-coast Australians, that means we’ll be able to jump in to WoW Classic at 8AM on the 27th, which works out to 3PM in Los Angeles and 6PM in New York, in case you were wondering. Check out the global WoW Classic release map here:

A global launch ensures players won’t experience ganking the moment they hit Darkshore or Stranglethorn Vale, though that was half the fun when the game originally launched at the end of 2004. Back in those days Blizzard didn’t have simultaneous worldwide launches, and in fact Australians were locked out of the Outlands portal for the first expansion The Burning Crusade for almost a full 24 hours while Americans got a good head start.

To read the official post about the launch and testing schedule, head to the official World of Warcraft website here.