“A bunch of little brats! Sort it out yourselves!”—if that line still makes you laugh, the December 9 roadmap card will probably make you laugh even harder: Onyxia’s Lair (40-player) is right there on the list. But behind the joke is a fact that applies to every WoW Forever player: from the November 4 launch to the December 9 raid unlock, you have only five weeks. In five weeks you need to level, gear up, sort out gold, and then walk into three raids of very different sizes.
This article is not going to simply repeat dates you have already seen elsewhere on the roadmap. It answers a more practical question: what you actually need to prepare before December 9, and how to think about third-party options when “not enough gold” becomes a real problem—including why MMOEXP deserves a place on your comparison list, but not an unconditional recommendation.
What Actually Opens on December 9: Three Raids, Three Thresholds
First, let’s break down the real size of these three raids, because the preparation pressure is completely different for each.
Barrow Deeps (10-player, 8 bosses) is the one you can reach first. It sits beneath Mount Hyjal, with three entrances located near Mount Hyjal, Winterspring, and Blackwing Lair, and it is designed as entry-level 10-player raid content. Eight bosses means it should not torture a group too much, but it is where you get your first raid-level gear. For players who just hit max level and are still mixing dungeon blues, Barrow Deeps is the raid you should enter on the night of December 9.
Hyjal Summit (20-player, 13 bosses) is the largest of the launch raids in terms of scale. Thirteen bosses is more than Barrow Deeps’ eight, and Blizzard explicitly lists it as a separate raid challenge in its “old systems” article. A 20-player size means a higher grouping barrier, and 13 bosses means a longer progression cycle. If your goal is to push Hyjal Summit in launch week, then before December 9 your gear and consumable stockpile need to be a tier above those of players who only plan to run Barrow Deeps.
Onyxia’s Lair (40-player, 1 boss) is the most unusual of the three. It is listed on the December 9 card, and its scale follows the classic 40-player setup, but Blizzard has not clearly said whether this is a brand-new raid or a returning one. Entering Onyxia’s Lair requires completing the Drakefire Amulet quest line. The Alliance and Horde routes differ, and both pass through parts of Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire. In other words, the key to Onyxia’s Lair is itself a prerequisite task—it is not something that only “unlocks” on December 9. You need to finish the quest chain ahead of time.
In the Five-Week Window, the Tightest Resource Is Not Levels—It’s WOW Gold
Five weeks from November 4 to December 9 sounds like enough. But WoW Forever’s gold pressure has one key difference from original Classic: the launch economy is almost empty. Training skills, buying bags, learning professions, buying mounts, and raid consumables are all competing for the same wallet. A PC Gamer experiment during the beta also illustrates this from the side: three people started with 20 silver and spent two hours “making money” through various methods, and the process was not elegant.
Blizzard revealed in an interview a signal that is favorable to players: in WoW Forever, players will earn significantly more gold than in original Classic; the development team has more experience managing the economy, and it has even capped Black Lotus at 50 gold. But “earning more” does not mean “not tight early on.” Before December 9, your gold priorities are actually clear: first secure riding skill and basic consumables, then raid potions, and only after that consider bind-on-equip gear and transmog. If you spend your gold on unnecessary BoEs during the five-week window, you will probably find on raid night that you cannot afford flasks.
After GDKP Is Banned, Gold’s “Uses” Become Narrower
One rule you must know in advance: GDKP is banned on North American and European servers. Blizzard’s reason is to protect the social experience and prevent players with fewer resources from being pushed out of content. That means you cannot rely on “working in a raid for a payout” to feed your early investment. Loot distribution authority returns to the group, and the names of tier sets and legendary items have not all been announced. For ordinary players, the impact of this rule is direct: your gold reserves before December 9 can only come from normal in-game methods. There is no shortcut.
If You Are Considering Third Parties: MMOEXP Is Worth a Look, but the Risks Must Be Put on the Table First
At this point, one realistic issue is unavoidable: in a five-week window, some players simply cannot squeeze out enough time to farm gold. So “buying a little gold” becomes a real search demand. The reason people search for Cheap WoW gold is that the gold gap before raids is structural, not because individual players “don’t know how to play.”
The reason MMOEXP deserves a place on your comparison list is that its verifiable information is relatively complete—not because it is “safe.” Its WoW Forever gold page lets you filter by server and faction, order by amount of gold, displays a Trustpilot rating, and offers 24/7 support, order tracking, and multiple payment methods (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, etc., depending on region). Third-party reviews give it a trust score of around 76, while also recording a key fact: the platform itself acknowledges on its boosting page that operations carry a risk of detection by the official game company. Another independent scanning tool gives a more conservative judgment, mentioning that one antivirus engine flagged the domain as phishing and that users have reported incomplete delivery or account issues.
So the correct way to use it is as a “reference point,” not a “default option.” If you do decide to go third-party, MMOEXP at least provides comparable prices, trackable orders, and contactable customer service, which is easier to evaluate than an anonymous seller with no public information. But you must also accept one premise: Blizzard’s crackdown on RMT is real, not decorative. During the WoW Forever beta, the official team had already banned more than 2,100 gold-buying accounts and nearly 1,600 gold-selling/bot accounts, totaling close to 4,000 accounts closed for RMT-related activity. The trade warning system will also warn you when you are unsure about the source, and receiving “gold of unknown origin” can likewise trigger account penalties.
In other words: the “cheap” in Cheap WoW gold does not include account risk in the sticker price. If you just want to cover riding skill and flask money before December 9, the safest path is still to prioritize content with clear gold returns during those five weeks. Third parties can only be a choice you make after being fully informed, not a way to pretend the risk does not exist.
The Legacy System Will Remember Every Raid You Run
There is also a mechanic that is easy to overlook: raid challenges count toward the Legacy system. The launch version has 65 Legacy challenges, and the raid category explicitly lists “defeat Onyxia,” “defeat all 13 bosses in Hyjal Summit,” and “defeat all 8 bosses in Barrow Deeps.” That means every raid progression step after December 9 is not just one week’s gear gain, but long-term account progress. Each character can invest at most 16 Legacy points at launch, and a single character can earn at most 29 points through their own activities.
The practical guidance from this information is direct: do not treat raids as content that “ends after this week.” Boss kills in Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit serve both gear and Legacy progression, and the Onyxia kill is also on the Legacy challenge list. Preparing prerequisite quests and basic gear during the five-week window is not just for one night of raiding—it is so that every future reset has something to gain.
A December 9 Checklist You Can Actually Follow
Week 1 (November 4–November 10): Lock in a main character, prioritize leveling, and learn only one profession direction that directly serves raid consumables. Cap gold spending at riding skill and bags; do not touch BoEs.
Weeks 2–3 (November 11–November 24): Start the Drakefire Amulet quest line for Onyxia. This chain involves Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire, and the earlier you start, the less likely it is to collide with raid progression. At the same time, use dungeons to fill out Barrow Deeps entry-level gear.
Week 4 (November 25–December 1): Concentrate gold on flasks, potions, and basic enchants. If you are considering third-party gold, this is the last “still in time” decision window, but you should calculate the ban risk together with the value of your account, rather than looking only at the price per thousand gold.
Week 5 (December 2–December 9): Confirm raid times with your guild or fixed group, make Barrow Deeps the first target, and decide Hyjal Summit progress based on the team’s actual gear situation. Schedule a separate Onyxia quest confirmation and make sure the amulet is in your bags.
The December 9 roadmap card really does make people laugh—Onyxia and two new raids are crammed onto the same card, and the discrepancy between Blizzard’s “two new raids” statement and the three entries on the card has not been fully explained. But after the laughing stops, the five-week countdown is real. Raid preparation in WoW Forever has never been something that starts on December 9. Whether you ultimately choose to farm gold yourself in-game or take a look at MMOEXP as a third-party reference point before deciding, checking off the prerequisites on the list matters more than anything else.