World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will receive three more content updates ahead of the arrival of the MMORPG’s next expansion, The War Within, in the summer of 2024.
That’s according to Blizzard’s 2024 content roadmap for WoW, which outlines what players can expect to be coming both to the current version of the MMO and the various versions of WoW Classic Blizzard is now running simultaneously.
Dragonflight’s Seeds of Renewal update will be coming in January, adding the ability to run dungeons with NPC companions and bringing Dragonflight’s dragonriding to all of Azeroth. The game’s 10.2.6 patch is a mystery, but is marked on the roadmap by an ominous skull and crossbones. Then, in the spring, Dragonflight Season 4 will kick off, with Blizzard retooling Dragonflight’s existing raids in a way likely similar to that of Shadowlands Season 4 while also introducing new open-world rewards.
It’s with patch 10.2.7 later in Spring 2024 that the build-up to the new expansion truly begins, with the introduction of new story quests relating to The Harbinger–aka the Old God servant Xal’atath–a character that Blizzard has already revealed will have a large role to play in The War Within. That update will also introduce long-awaited Heritage Armor quests for Trolls and Draenei characters, as well as a new holiday event. Alpha testing for The War Within will kick-off in the spring, with beta testing coming during the summer.
The next expansion’s pre-patch, update 11.0.1, will come later in the summer ahead of The War Within’s launch. That update will include the highly anticipated Warbands feature that made a big splash when it was initially revealed at BlizzCon 2023, one that will allow different characters on the same account to share progression and rewards.
The War Within will receive one content update before year’s end, one that will introduce new story content as well as introduce WoW’s 20th Anniversary event, details of which Blizzard is keeping under wraps for now.
On the WoW Classic side of the equation, WoW Season of Discovery will see new content introduced every few months, with a solo-self found mode for Hardcore players coming closer to the spring. WoW Cataclysm Classic will launch during the summer, with multiple content updates to follow before year’s end.
This is the second year Blizzard has posted a detailed roadmap of what the future of WoW looks like. In a blog post, executive producer Holly Longdale said that “promising a thing is a far distant second to actually delivering on that promise,” and that she is thankful to the WoW development team for “seeing it all become real.”
“We remain committed to delivering content in all flavors of World of Warcraft so no matter how you play, you won’t have to look far ahead to know something is right around the corner for you!” Longdale said.
The War Within will be the first expansion in what Blizzard revealed at this year’s BlizzCon to be a three-expansion-long story called The Worldsoul Saga. Warcraft executive creative director Chris Metzen said on stage at BlizzCon that Blizzard would be looking to get The Worldsoul Saga to fans quicker than usual, seemingly hinting at a faster expansion release cycle for Blizzard’s MMO than its usual every-two-years cadence.
