World of Warcraft: The War Within Expansion Release Date

Blizzard is set to launch World of Warcraft’s next major expansion, called “The War Within,” next month. It brings plenty of new features that aim to change the landscape of the company’s popular MMORPG for the better.

Do you want to learn more? If so, strap yourself in! This is everything you need to know about World of Warcraft: The War Within!

World of Warcraft: The War Within Expansion Release Date

The main question that is probably on your mind right now is: “When will the expansion be released?” Well, that is a good one. Fortunately, Blizzard has revealed the official release date for The War Within.

Mark your calendars, World of Warcraft’s next major expansion is going to be launched on August 26 at 3 P.M. EDT (or 12 PM PDT).

The War Within Early Access

Although World of Warcraft: The War Within won’t be out until the last week of August, you can actually pre-order the expansion right now. If you get the Epic Edition, you will not only get some awesome goodies, but you’ll also be able to play the game three days in advance. That’s right! You get to play WoW’s upcoming expansion on August 22 thanks to Early Access!

Aside from Early Access, here are the things that will be awarded to your account if you get the Epic Edition right now:

• Algarian Stormrider Mount

• Upgradable Stormrider’s Attire Transmog Set

• Squally, the Storm Hatchling Pet

• Sandbox Storm Gryphon Toy

• Deepdeller’s Earthen Hearthstone Effect

• Enhanced Level 70 Character Boost

• 1,000 Trader’s Tender

• 30 days of game time

• World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Expansion

The added goodies are actually pretty cool. Trader’s Tender can be exchanged for additional cosmetic items, so if you have the knack of changing the appearance of your character, then you will find this of great value.

The Algarian Stormrider Mount can be customized in a number of ways. Besides that, you can wear the appropriate Stormrider’s attire so that you can be one and the same with your trusty flying mount.

Algarian Stormrider Mount

Then, you have the Level 70 Character Boost, which essentially allows you to explore the other areas of the game without the arduous grind. That is because your character will be at level 70 as soon as the expansion launches in August.

While the Epic Edition is quite expensive at $89.99, you are getting your money’s worth with all of the stuff combined. But really, it is a good deal, especially if you want to play The War Within a few days before everyone else.

Pre-order Bonuses

World of Warcraft: The War Within – New Content and Features

As mentioned earlier, World of Warcraft’s next major expansion is set to shake things up in more ways than one. Do you want to know the new content that is coming in The War Within? Well, here are the best ones that you need to know about:

Warbands

Arguably the best feature that is coming to World of Warcraft: The War Within is the new Warbands System. This is the new account-wide progression system that lets you carry over your items, achievements, and renown and share them among all of your characters.

This system was created as a means of making your life easy, especially if you are the type of person who creates multiple alternate characters (or “Alts” for short).

The gist of the Warbands System is that you focus on in-game progression using only one character and most of the things that you have unlocked, such as map locations discovered, items gained, and achievements completed, will be available on your other characters as well.

Gone are the days when you had to mail items to your alts. That is because you can now gain access to them via the new Warband Bank. This can be accessed by talking to any of the bankers throughout the game.

Warband Bank

Each tab can be purchased for an increasing amount of gold. You start by paying 1,000 gold for the first tab, which should give you about 98 inventory slots to work with. Here is a breakdown of the gold you will need to get all of the five bank tabs:

• 1st Tab: 1,000 Gold

• 2nd Tab: 25,000 Gold

• 3rd Tab: 100,000 Gold

• 4th Tab: 500,000 Gold

• 5th Tab: 2,500,000 Gold

• Total Amount: 3,126,000 Gold

Warbank Bank (Purchase Extra Slots)

Although you need an exorbitant amount of gold to purchase all five slots in the Warband Bank, do not worry. WoW’s upcoming expansion is also going to introduce a new activity that allows you to gain boatloads of currency. More on this later in the article.

Another interesting thing about the Warbands System is that almost any faction that you can get a reputation from will now be shared among all of your characters. This means that you only need to use one character to grind for “Exalted” and then the rest of your characters in your account will enjoy the benefits.

Right now, these are the factions that have been confirmed to use the new system:

• Renown

• Dragonscale Expedition

• Maruuk Centaur

• Iskaara Tuskarr

• Valdrakken Accord

• Loamm Niffen

• Dream Wardens

• Standard

• Wrathion & Sabellian

• Cobalt Assembly

• Artisan’s Consortium

• Azerothian Archives

• Soridormi

It is worth noting that there are certain factions in the game where you still need to grind for reputation on individual characters like the Glimmerogg Racer and Winterpelt Furbolg. This is because it wouldn’t make sense if the reputation for these groups were spread across your roster.

To make things even easier, the first character you use to grind for faction reputation will receive an appropriate first-time bonus reputation. This helps alleviate the need to spend countless hours just to reach Exalted in a given group!

Warband First-Time Bonus

Keep in mind that legacy reputations will not adopt the new system, at least, at the time of writing this article. You can still hold out hope that Blizzard will change this once the expansion goes live next month.

While it is true that most of your items can be accessed within the Warband Bank, the same cannot be said for currencies. To prevent the issue of spending currency on the wrong character, Blizzard has implemented a way for you to easily transfer currency from one character to another. This can be accessed via the aptly named “Currency” tab in the main UI.

Currency Transfer UI

Almost all of the shareable currencies have a 1:1 conversion, with the exception of several, including:

• Soul Ash: 5:6 (83.33%)

• Soul Cinders: 5:6 (83.33%)

• Cosmic Flux: 5:6 (83.33%)

• War Resources: 10:13 (76.92%)

One of the most common problems when leveling an alt is the gear you are going to use. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply transfer items within your bank that your alt characters can just pick up? Well, in the upcoming expansion, you will obtain items that have the “Warband until Equipped” tag.

These items, as you can probably tell, can be placed in the Warband Bank for your alts to use. Once they are equipped, they will turn into Soulbound items just like other items in the game.

Why is this helpful? Because “Warband until Equipped” gear can be obtained by grinding, farming, or via quest/faction rewards. If your main character cannot use it, then let your alts equip it to gain power!

An Example of a “Warbound until Equipped” Item

Delves

Are Mythic Dungeons too hard for you? Are legacy dungeons just not cutting it? If the answer to these questions is yes, then we have some good news for you! In The War Within expansion, there is a new type of content called Delve.

Delves are 1-5-player dungeons where you can gain incredible amounts of EXP, gold, and transmog items. Remember what we said about farming gold? This is the content we are talking about!

Once The War Within expansion goes live, it will introduce four new zones that contain Delves. These zones are Hallowfall, Azj-Kahet, The Ringing Deeps, and the Isle of Dorn. You can find all of the Delve locations below:

There are several important things that you need to know about Delves. For one, Delves offers dynamic content that can change over time to keep things fresh. If this particular Delve required you to use an enchanted candle to navigate through the darkness, the next day might need you to utilize or do something else entirely.

Furthermore, Delves has narrative tie-ins. For the first season, you will be accompanied by Brann Bronzebeard – a dwarven NPC that you can configure to be a damage dealer or a healer.

Brann Bronzebeard (Delve Companion)

To make things more dynamic, Delves not only requires you to defeat enemies, but it also needs you to use your wits to solve puzzles and whatnot.

In addition, Delves has a reputation system, where you gain exclusive rewards simply by completing these 5-player dungeons multiple times. Some of the rewards include schematics for the new customizable flying mount, the Delver’s Dirigible!

Delve Reputation System

New Customizable Flying Mount – The Delver’s Dirigible

Delves have tiers of difficulty, which you can configure at the entrance. There are about 11 tiers in total, with the first three being available immediately once The War Within goes live. Tiers 4 to 11 will be available at the launch of Season 1 on September 10.

Delve Tiers

Lastly, you will earn Resonance Crystals when you complete Delves. These are a new type of currency that can be exchanged for certain rewards, including airship schematics and new cosmetic items. Talk to Reno Jackson in Uldum to trade your Resonance Crystals.

Resonance Crystals

Airship Schematics (and other items for Resonance Crystals)

New Race: The Earthen

Since The War Within is a major expansion, you can expect it to have some groundbreaking features and improvements. And, true enough, it will introduce the game’s first neutral allied race, The Earthen!

New Race: The Earthen

You can play as The Earthen when you reach level 40. Being a neutral race, you can actually select this one regardless of whether you are in the Alliance or the Horde.

To be able to select this race, you must complete the main campaign in The War Within expansion. On top of that, there are a few side quest chains that you need to accomplish, including:

• Mourning Rise in Isle of Dorn

• Hope, an Anomaly in Isle of Dorn

• Broken Tools in The Ringing Deeps

The Earthen race can choose all of the classes in the game, except for the Death Knight and the Evoker.

Now, you are probably wondering what separates The Earthen race from the other races in World of Warcraft. Well, let’s explore their racial traits, shall we?

Azerite Surge allows you to invoke the power of Azerite to deal a considerable amount of fire damage to your foes. It lets you heal allies as well. Although it has a lengthy two-minute cooldown, it can still be helpful in situations where a burst of damage can kill an enemy who is on the brink of death.

If you are unaware, invoking spells become more powerful the longer you cast them. For the Azerite Surge, the spell gains the following properties:

1. Deals fire damage

2. Heals allies hit by the effect

3. Deals additional fire damage to the enemy with the highest health (that was hit by the effect)

The Earthen seems to be a race of gatherers because they possess the “Hyper Productive” trait, which increases Finesse by 2%. Finesse, for the uninitiated, refers to the chance of obtaining more materials when gathering.

Surprisingly, this new allied race can ingest minerals and gain certain buffs, such as:

• Emerald: Haste

• Ruby: Critical Strike

• Amber: Stamina

• Sapphire: Versatility

• Onyx: Mastery

Imagine playing as an Earthen Rogue and you use Ingest Minerals to gain additional critical strike chance by consuming some rubies. This provides you an avenue to improve your character depending on the class you have chosen.

The Earthen is a race that is not to be trifled with. They are a hardened bunch because of their Titan-Wrought Frame – a racial trait that increases the base armor of their equipped items by 10%. That may not seem much, but do keep in mind that this is per item equipped, so you can just imagine the armor you can gain by taking into account all of your pieces of gear.

As a cherry on top, the Wide-Eyed Wonder allows you to gain 100% additional exploration EXP when you discover a new location.

The Earthen Racial Traits

Hero Talents

Do you need more power? If so, you’ll be happy to know that The War Within is bringing the new Hero Talents to World of Warcraft!

So, what are Hero Talents? They are an extension of your existing talent tree that provides more powerful nodes than the ones that you already have.

Most of the classes in the game have three different Hero Talent Trees, with the exception of the Druid (with four), and the Demon Hunter who only has two.

You can refer to the table below for all of the Hero Talent Trees that have been revealed thus far:

Just like your regular talents, Hero Talents can be allocated by spending the appropriate talent points, which you can get simply by leveling up. That said, you will start getting Hero Talent points by level 71 and you gain an additional point until level 80 (for a total of 10 points). If you are unhappy with your current tree, you can respec your Hero Talents the same way you do with your regular talents.

The Hero Talents begin and end with a Capstone Talent, which is more powerful than the other nodes in the tree. Since you only have 10 points to allocate, you have to select the nodes that you think will benefit your character based on your playstyle and preferences.

Hero Talents (Shaman)

Flying

At the launch of World of Warcraft: The War Within, two types of flying will be introduced. These are not new, by any means, but rather, they have just been renamed from previous systems.

Anyway, the first type of flying is called Skyriding. This is the new name for “Dragonriding” or Dynamic Flight, which was first introduced in the Dragonflight expansion. Basically, this allows you to move your flying mount swiftly, enabling you to reach your desired destination much faster than the regular flying method.

Even though Skyriding is more useful as it helps you save a lot of time while flying around, you might still prefer the old flying method. If that is the case, you can opt for Steady Flight instead.

As the name implies, Steady Flight is just the new term being used for the old flight system, where you move slowly but surely toward your destination.

Almost all of the flying mounts in the game are capable of Skyriding. You can easily spot that by hovering over the “Mounts” UI. Besides that, you can switch between flying modes in the said user interface. Switching between modes requires you to be dismounted, so only do this if you are in a safe spot. It takes about five seconds for the switching process to complete.

Mount UI (Skyriding Mounts)

If you have played Dragonflight before, you know how complicated the Dragonriding talent tree was. Thankfully, Blizzard has made an overhaul to the Skyriding UI that essentially simplifies the entire tree, making it more navigable.

Skyriding Talent Tree (New UI)

Transmogs

There are certain pieces of gear in World of Warcraft that provide an assortment of incredible stats, but their looks leave much to be desired. The good news is that you can take advantage of the Transmogrification System to change the appearance of your character to something more palatable.

Also known as Transmog, the game’s upcoming expansion makes some really significant changes to the system.

First of all, you can now loot most transmog items even though these items cannot be used by your current character. It still follows the rules of loot priority wherein characters that can use those items are generally favored to get them over those who cannot.

For example, if you are playing a Priest and there is a cloth item up for grabs, you will get priority over that item than, say, a Warrior. Of course, if you already have that item in your Transmog UI, it will be rewarded to the said Warrior instead.

Transmog UI

However, there are still class-specific transmog items, which can only be rolled by specific classes. If you absolutely need to acquire a Druid-only transmog, you have to play your Druid character in order to get it.

Transmog Sets

It is important to note that the previous rule of transmog item type also applies in The War Within. What we mean by this is that Priests and Warlocks still cannot use plate armor transmogs, and the same goes for Warriors and Paladins in that they cannot wear cloth armor transmogs as well.

Additionally, all the members of your Warband can equip common transmog items, with the exception of class-specific ones. These changes will surely keep things interesting, especially since Transmogrification enables you to change the appearance of your characters to your liking.

Quality of Life Improvements

World of Warcraft is a pretty old MMORPG at this point. However, it does receive plenty of quality-of-life improvements in every expansion, and the same is also true for The War Within. Here are the QoL changes that you can expect in the upcoming expansion:

Updated Map UI

The map user interface has received an overhaul. It is now filled with different icons that tell you something important, including events, NPCs, and quests, among many others.

Updated Map UI

Class Changes and Revamped Talent Tree

The talent trees in WoW can certainly be daunting, particularly for new players. In the upcoming expansion, you will find that they have received a revamp as well. You can still see plenty of talents that branch out from the starting point, but at least they are now easier to navigate and understand.

New Talent Tree UI

Essentially, most of your abilities have been made baseline, meaning, they are available right from the start. Additionally, talent trees now feature only a limited number of multi-point nodes and you can now see their pathing much clearer now compared to before.

Spellbook Now Within Reach

Your spellbook contains all of your passive and active abilities. Previously, they were placed in a different category that required you to press a hotkey that is distinct from your Talent Tree. 

Now, the Spellbook UI is just right next to the Talent Tree, so all you really need to do to switch to the appropriate user interface is a simple click of your mouse.

Spellbook UI

New Camera Options

World of Warcraft can be pretty hectic at times. You can easily get bombarded with so much information, making camera angles an important thing to master.

Although it works really nicely for the most part, there are certain times when the camera is just too wonky due to some obstructions.

In The War Within, you can expect new camera settings that address the issue of obstructions. The “Show Silhouette When Obscured” setting shows your character in a shadowy silhouette, particularly when they are hidden by an object like a tree or a wall.

Shadowy Silhouette

Silhouette When Obscured Option

There’s another new camera option that forces the in-game camera to stay zoomed out even if the view of your character is obstructed. This is quite helpful when raiding dungeons or fighting in tight spaces, where the camera would normally zoom in, which could mean life or death in certain situations.

Right now, the camera zoom-out feature is available only as a console command in The War Within beta. If you’d like to try it, press the “Enter” key and paste the following:

cameraIndirectVisibility [0,1]

Take note that the feature can be nauseating at first because the camera zooms out quite fast when the console command is typed in. Hopefully, Blizzard implements a much easier way to enable this feature because it is helpful for a lot of people.

FAQ

When Will the Expansion Be Released?

World of Warcraft: The War Within will launch on August 26 at 3 P.M. EDT (12 P.M PDT). However, you can gain Early Access if you pre-order the Epic Edition today for $89.99.

Is There a Pre-Patch for The War Within?

Yes, definitely! But, at the time of writing, Blizzard has yet to formally announce a release date for the Pre-Patch. 

Be that as it may, eagle-eyed community members have spotted that there will be an event on July 30. Given that the expansion launches in the last week of August, July 30 is the most likely date for the Pre-Patch release.

For those who do not know, a pre-patch allows you to enjoy the features and improvements right before the actual launch of the expansion. Historically, a WoW pre-patch is released a month before the expected arrival of major content, so this goes in line with what has been the case for a very long time.

Keep in mind that you are only getting ahold of the features and improvements and not the actual story content and dungeons.

What is the Best Edition to Purchase?

If it is very important for you to gain Early Access, then purchasing the Epic Edition is a no-brainer. However, the Heroic Edition ($69.99) is not bad at all, considering that it is much cheaper, and still provides you with 750 Trader’s Tender, the Algarian Stormrider mount, and the Stormrider’s Attire transmog set.

If you do not care for these things and you simply want to get the content at the cheapest possible price, then go for the Base Edition, which is available for just $49.99.

Final Thoughts

The War Within looks like one of the best expansions for World of Warcraft to date. It brings plenty of quality-of-life changes, including a revamped talent tree, an updated map UI, and improved camera options, among many others.

If you are into creating plenty of alternate characters, then the new Warbands System is a godsend. Being able to progress through the game simply by using one character can save you a lot of time, thus allowing you to enjoy what the expansion has to offer without having to go through the arduous grind all over again.

Delves provide you with fresh ways to get gear and gold. They also provide avenues for you to collect new cosmetic items to make your characters look awesome without compromising stats.

Speaking of which, the significant changes to the Transmog System are pretty awesome. Gone are the days when you had to use a specific character just to obtain some transmog items. Although some remain to be class-specific, at least the option of rolling for them will be available to you.

Then, you have The Earthen – the game’s first-ever neutral Allied Race. You can select this new race regardless of your main faction (Alliance or Horde). They are a sturdy bunch who have a penchant for gathering materials and bolstering their defenses when needed.

With all of that said, which of the new content are you most excited about in World of Warcraft: The War Within?