After 20 years, World of Warcraft has proven it can stand the test of time. From massive highs to deep lows, WoW has found a way to be one of the rare MMOs that fans can’t get enough of. And with the launch of its latest expansion, The War Within, and the new focus on saga style storytelling in The Worldsoul Saga, WoW is entering its third decade on a very high note. Celebrating 20 years of a game is no small task. Yet, Blizzard is pulling out all the stops to make a mid-season patch and the 20th-anniversary event one to remember.
Making an entire patch devoted to the anniversary isn’t something to scoff at. Especially in today’s day and age of WoW, where the mid-season patch has evolved from just being one for major balance updates and reworks, it also brings new major content. This has slowly evolved as the WoW team at Blizzard has grown, allowing resources to be allocated to more than just expansions and X.1 patches.
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This came to a head during Dragonflight, where we got new story updates, a mega-dungeon (a new staple of the X.1.5 update), and occasionally new events. That all leads to the question: What exactly are they doing differently this time for an anniversary event? In the past, anniversaries usually felt like just a minor incentive to log back in for a quick treat.
From little toys to new pets to bringing back world bosses, that was what players normally expected for any quinquennial anniversary event. For those, we got updates of new raids for a limited time, like Molten Core and the return of Ragnaros for the tenth anniversary, Onyxia’s Lair for the fifth, and a special Chromie-based raid for the fifteenth, where we fought some of the biggest bads from Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. Again, these events popped up for a month or two and disappeared after they were done.
For 20 years, though, Blizzard is taking all the past anniversary events and cranking it up to eleven. With the release of 11.0.5, the anniversary event will kick off right away and last until the release of 11.1, whenever that is. And on that day, players will log in to find many new things to do. Firstly, the Caverns of Time outdoor area will be completely changed to be a celebration fairground devoted entirely to the history of Warcraft. Allies and enemies, old and new, will be there to celebrate. There will be new events akin to the Darkmoon Faire for players to compete in for fun rewards and even more events for friends and guilds to complete. The whole amount could have been played off as an X.1 patch with how much it’s bringing.
More significantly, three major updates are coming in 11.0.5: Classic timewalking dungeons, the Blackrock Depths raid rework, and the return of the infamous Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event. That all is on top of the hero talent reworks, balancing updates, and new rewards like modernized Tier 2 gear sets. Classic timewalking is incredibly cool to see coming to the timewalking weekly rotation.
When Cataclysm happened, almost every classic dungeon was reworked to match the current story or be modernized to 2010’s standards. In other words, a select few dungeons can be replayed among those that retail players haven’t seen unless they boot up World of Warcraft Classic, which can’t be played with the current version of WoW.
This, along with the timewalking dungeon rework that changes how level and stat scaling works, means that we can experience The Deadmines, Zul’Farrak, Dire Maul, and Stratholm as level 80s with all of our new abilities and gear. This includes the gear from the “new” 10-15-man raid, Blackrock Depths. Storywise, this dungeon should be the one reworked for the event. It’s the old dungeon where we tried to save Moira from her supposed kidnappers, the Dark Iron Clan. And where we learned that she enjoys living among the Dark Iron Dwarves and gave birth to Dagran. Both of whom are now major players in The War Within‘s story.
The original dungeon was massive for its time, with a whopping twenty bosses to beat. Now, it will have eight bosses modernized with new mechanics and visuals with a Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulty. While this sounds fun overall, the limited raid sizes are disappointing. Besides Raid Finder and Mythic difficulties, raids can have a range of ten to thirty players in a group with scaling difficulty based on size. While I understand that having thirty players in what used to be a dungeon could be chaotic, why not loosen the reins and let us go wild?
Raid groups of sizes over fifteen who want to do anything together will have to split and choose who wants to attend and who needs to sit out so that they can clear it. Plus, there isn’t an excuse to limit the raid size when Raid Finder allows twenty-five players to enter each wing. I’m unsure if Blizzard is anticipating people not logging on for this event as they wrap up what they’ve wanted to do for the season or if interest may be lower for this particular raid. Both are awful excuses that I hope they didn’t consider when placing this arbitrary limit on the raid.
Then, there is the return of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event. A classic event that hasn’t been seen since in any capacity in WoW since, well… Classic. This event was legendary. The entire realm came together in Silithus to breach the gates of Ahn’Qiraj and stop the silithid threat led by the Old God, C’thun. Very few lucky individuals were even awarded an extremely rare mount and title for being the one to bang a gong for that server during a war event.
Its return is very different, though. Through Chromie, we will see different invasions as a scenario event in Silithus. While it will not live up to the glory of the original event, having a similar experience for smaller groups in bite-sized chunks will be a fun way to spend time as Season 1 of The War Within winds down. Plus, it should be an excellent way to get currency to unlock some of the super sweet cosmetics and mount rewards.
There are several downsides to the anniversary event—namely, the sheer amount of currency to unlock all that you want. Getting to a point where you may be unlocking rewards at a steady pace will require a pretty good commitment of initial time to unlock the ability to gain Bronze Celebration Tokens, the event-specific currency, from repeatable activities. You won’t get this achievement in the first week based on the current PTR values. Maybe not even the second or third week, either.
While this iteration of the Anniversary celebration is slated to return annually, it is disappointing that people may not get all they want without logging on weekly for the whole patch period. On the other hand, it is a good incentive to log on to an alt and level them through the event. There’s an increase in experience gain buff to complete everything you must do each week to hit the “max” allotment without grinding too much. I just want my tier sets, titles, and mounts without devoting an even more obscene amount of time than I already do playing this game. Is that too much to ask?
Regardless of the downsides, patch 11.0.5 is the anniversary event World of Warcraft deserves. With everything it brings, from unique rewards, like my favorite, the Blizzard Employee Tenure cosmetics, to the return of fun experiences, 11.0.5 may be the most jam-packed mid-season patch we’ve ever gotten. And what a way to celebrate 30 years of Warcraft and, more amazingly, 20 years of World of Warcraft. It’s just raising the bar of what players may expect moving forward with what new patches will bring in The War Within and The Worldsoul Saga.
World of Warcraft: The War Within is available now on PC.
