After 20 years of World of Warcraft, it’s understandable that fans would be looking for something new – or at least, a return to the game’s glory days. While you can never really go home again, it does feel like the next expansion for the MMO offers more of a chance to recapture what made WoW a phenomenon than we’ve had in a while. Some of the changes coming to the game may be here very soon indeed, with a test realm update hinting that the pre-expansion patch will be launching soon.
Ever since The Burning Crusade invaded Azeroth, the true start of an expansion has arrived with the pre-expansion patch. Of course, we’ve come a long way since those days, when all we had to deal with in World of Warcraft was some fairly perfunctory demon killing. Pre-expansion patches now herald change for the MMORPG, with new events and altered systems letting players get their hands on a little bit of the expansion before it officially lands.
Recently hints have been dropping about exactly when version 11.0 will land for WoW. In a splash screen launched back in June we got the apparent confirmation that the patch would launch before Tuesday July 30, and now that’s seemingly been confirmed. Thanks to reporting by Wowhead we now know that the public test realm (PTR) for the game has just been updated – with this version being termed a release candidate.
This means that the likelihood of the pre-expansion patch launching very soon has increased dramatically, as few large changes are expected to hit the PTR before it migrates to live servers. Fans are currently guessing that the patch will land on Tuesday July 23, and that does appear to be a realistic estimate.
The WoW The War Within release date is set for Monday August 26 and by then players will have had plenty of time to familiarize themselves with the new stuff coming their way.
If you can’t wait until then, you can take a look at our guide to the best WoW Addons you can install, as well as our best RPGs you can jump into.
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