World of Warcraft The War Within, WoW’s Most Ambitious Story Arc to Date, Launches August 26; Pre-Orders Live Now

World of Warcraft The War Within, WoW's most ambitious story arc to date, will be released on August 26 and can now be pre-ordered.

Blizzard and Microsoft announced the release of World of Warcraft's 10th expansion during today's Xbox Showcase. To announce the release date, Blizzard released a new trailer for the expansion, which we've included below. As announced last year, the War Within is the first entry in the new Worldsoul Saga. As said, pre-orders are now open for the upcoming expansion, and those who purchase either the Epic Edition or physical collector’s edition will get early access to the expansion three days early on August 23.

Related Story The War Within Q&A – WoW Devs Dive Deep Into Every Aspect of the Expansion

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise and the 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft, Blizzard is introducing the $25 USD limited-time “Welcome to Azeroth” bundle, which includes a level 60 character boost, 60 days of game time, and the Dragonflight expansion.

World of Warcraft: The War Within will be released for PC on August 26 globally. Back in November of 2023, we had a chat with Lead World Artist Kristy Moret and Associate Design Director Maria Hamilton. Be sure to check out that Q&A here. More recently we joined a roundtable Q&A session featuring WoW Production Director Michael Bybee, Sean McCann (Senior Content Designer), and several colleagues from the press to talk about the War Within expansion. We've included a small part of the Q&A session below:

"Just to jump in there a little", said when asked about the new Warband feature. "The intent is that at max level, you will be able to do a variety of content and get gear that will be Warbound. The specific quantity of gear is something that we're still going to tune in all of our testing. I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that you won't be able to max gear your character doing the max level content, but may be able to get items that are a little bit lower item