We had roadmaps for WoW retail and WoW Classic that Blizz posted a while back. They have even updated now and then.
World of Warcraft retail 2024 roadmap
This week though we got some hard dates for entries, so I thought I would do a bullet points post to go through the upcoming event dates. Is everybody on board?
Of course, we did hear just yesterday that one thing NOT on the 2024 roadmap is BlizzCon. So it goes.
- The Cataclysm Classic Pre-Patch Lands April 30th
I have already posted about this… probably more than once… but I am going to stick it this bullet point timeline just to pad things out a bit and to show what is going on with the parallel WoW tracks over the next month or two. This was the subject of the last WoW Classic roadmap update.
WoW Classic 2024 Roadmap – April 9 revision
This will mean the end of Wrath class specs and the introduction of the foundation of Cataclysm, which will include:
- New Player Races: Goblin and Worgen
- New Race and Class Combinations
- Leveling Updates: Level through a changed landscape in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms from level 1 through 60.
- Class Updates: New Talents, Trees, spells and More
- New Race and Class Combinations
- New Profession: Archaeology
- New Feature: Transmog Collection
- Updated Character and Gear Stats
Look for this on Tuesday next week. There is even an updated post from Blizz about it, in case you missed the last one.
- Plunderstorm Coming to and End on April 30th
April 30th will be the last day to plunder in the retail WoW special event that went live in the back half of March.
WoW retail contains WoW Plunderstorm
The event has reached the point they are calling Plundersurge, where all reputation gains are doubled in an attempt to help you get to whatever goal you were attempting to achieve… assuming you didn’t get there already.
Blizz has even been advertising the Plunderstorm event on the WoW Classic side of the launcher, though I haven’t taken the bait… and am unlikely to in the next few days.
- Dragonflight Dark Heart on May 7th
The final stage of Dragonflight is slated to land on May 7th, closing out the expansion story line and kicking off the count down to the next expansion, The War Within, which is expected to launch before the summer ends.
- Mists of Pandaria Remix lands on May 16th
But wait, there is still something to occupy yourself in retail if you are worried that Dark Heart won’t be all that. The Mists of Pandaria Remix event will arrive on May 16th.
I am still not exactly clear on what this really is, but the following promises were made by Blizz in their post.
- Accelerated Leveling and Content allowing you to take on nearly every quest, scenario, dungeon and raid.
- Create a new WoW Remix character starting at level 10 to adventure through the event up to level 70.
- A mountain of loot: Get powerful items from everywhere— quests, chests, creatures, bosses.
- Customizable items allowing you to power up as far as you can go to take on tougher content.
- Convert unwanted items into Bronze which can be used to upgrade items or purchase cosmetics.
Shintar takes a deeper dive into it over on Priest with a Cause if you need more information.
- Cataclysm Classic Goes Live May 20th
We will finally get the answer to the question “does anybody want to play through Cataclysm again?” in just under a month as Cataclysm Classic will go live world wide.
Can you re-run a cataclysm?
Again, I already have a post with details about this, but it is on the timeline.
I am pretty sure our group will launch into it, at least for a while. What is it, five levels? And we need to get through it to get to Mists of Pandaria in any case… though the whole Mists of Pandaria Remix in retail WoW makes me wonder if Blizz won’t over saturate the panda theme.
Maybe? Or maybe retail players remain disgusted with the idea of WoW Classic and will only go back to Pandaria if they can fly on their dragons or whatever. I don’t know. Retail WoW is a foreign land to me now.
- The WoW Companion App end of life in June or July?
Blizz put up a terse announcement on Wednesday announcing that the WoW Companion App would be “retiring,” as though it had grown old, made it to its pension age, and would be buying a condo in Florida to live out its golden years.
No, this is more like Blizz telling us that the companion app is going to an app farm up state to live with other apps like CCP’s EVE Portal App.
The short text of the statement:
With the release of The War Within™ pre-expansion content update, we will no longer support the WoW Companion App. After this date, players will not be able to update, download, or use the companion app and its features.
We want to thank everyone who has used the app as their companion for their adventures over the years!
So when the pre-expansion hits for The War Within, the companion app is dead. And since that is slotted into the roadmap above in the first half of summer, I expect that will be just another dead icon on people’s phone before August hits.
All of this… save for the companion app announcement… has also served as a vehicle to try to get players to buy things. There are sales on character boosts and what not as Blizz would very much like everybody to get on board
The Ancient Gaming Noob 