While it causes me terrible psychic harm to admit, World of Warcraft is almost 20 years old. Earlier today, Blizzard released a video detailing its plans for WoW’s 20th anniversary event, where it’ll be bringing back classic dungeons, kicking off time-warping public events at the gates of Ahn’Qiraj, modernizing some of the finest armor sets of yesteryear, and generally making millions of Vanilla WoW players feel as though they’re at risk of crumbling into dust.
First up on the festivities is the return of Blackrock Depths. The sprawling, multi-wing, subterranean dungeon was a beloved—or reviled, depending on who you ask—fixture of early WoW life, and it’ll be returning for the 20th anniversary as a 10 to 15-player raid. It’ll have eight revamped bosses and five minibosses, and will be runnable in LFR, Normal, and Heroic difficulties. If you’ve never been, expect lots of dwarves, elementals, and struggles with the map.
Next, we’re headed back to the opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj with the help of some bronze dragonflight time travel. Joining forces with Chromie, players will queue up to relive a major moment of WoW’s history while battling some unexpected forces who’ve bled through from other points in the timeline, like the Legion, Kel’Thuzad, and more.
(Image credit: Blizzard)
Continuing on our jaunt through WoW’s past, we’ll also see classic WoW dungeons join the rotation for Timewalking—a periodic in-game holiday where players can complete dungeons from previous expansions to earn current-day loot and cosmetics. Deadmines, Zul’Farrak, both Dire Maul wings, and both Stratholme wings—Rivendare’s Charger is in the loot pool!—will be available in Classic Timewalking, which will join the ongoing Timewalking schedule after the 20th anniversary event. Timewalking is also getting a vendor refresh, meaning you’ll have more cosmetics to spend all those Timewarped Badges on.
The yearly anniversary event is getting some changes, too. The attractions and activities are being moved to the entrance of the Caverns of Time, so we’ll all have to do a lot less trudging up and down that long spiral ramp. Weekly quests will include contests to show off your transmog wardrobe and mount collections. Alongside the usual stable of returning world bosses, Pandaria’s Sha of Anger and Lake Wintergrasp’s Archavon the Stone Watcher will be roaming around Tanaris with Doomwalker.
And of course, there will be plenty of rewards to earn. Completing the main quest for the WoW 20th anniversary event will award the Coldflame Tempest, a new armored ice phoenix mount. It’s based on real-life “service reward” swords and shields given to veteran World of Warcraft devs; in-game transmog versions of those swords and shields will be available for purchase with a new currency that can be earned from weekly anniversary event quests, alongside a new Lil’ Dreadlord pet.
(Image credit: Blizzard)
You might want to save those tokens, though, because you’ll need plenty of them for another reward on offer. Blizzard’s artists have modernized the Tier 2 armor sets that dropped back in Vanilla WoW’s Blackwing Lair raid, bringing back some of the finest fashion World of Warcraft has ever offered. Classes that didn’t exist at the time will have new armor sets based off of historic WoW figures, too. The Tier 2 sets are extremely iconic; I still see paladins rocking the Judgment set from 2005 in 2024. Looking at these armor sets helped convince me to convince my parents to pay for my WoW subscription back when I was 11 years old, so I’m eager to get the glow-up versions.
WoW’s 20th anniversary also coincides with the 30th anniversary of the greater Warcraft series. To honor that bigger birthday, the November trading post offerings will include faction crest back slot transmogs commemorating each of the Warcraft 3 factions: orcs, humans, night elves, and the Scourge.
For more info, check out the full anniversary event details on the Blizzard blog. We don’t have a specific date for when the event will go live, but it’s safe to say it’ll kick off sometime before the date of WoW’s actual 20th anniversary on November 23, 2024.
