WoW’s 15th Anniversary Event is Now Live

It’s that time of year again, folks. November is once again upon us, and its arrival means two major things for the denizens of Azeroth. This time of year means that BlizzCon has recently concluded, and that it’s once again time to celebrate another year of World of Warcraft’s existence and relative prosperity. To that end, the game’s fifteenth anniversary celebration event has officially begun. Within this article, I’ll provide all the necessary details to help you take full advantage of this event’s perks.

In order to participate in the event, players need to do little more than simply log in and access an in-game mailbox. Every character, regardless of level, has been mailed an anniversary celebration package. This parcel contains several goodies designed to get players in the celebrating spirit. Firstly, the anniversary package contains the Lil’ Nefarian battle pet, which I’m sure is meaningful to those of you who frequently take part in pet battles.

Additionally, as I’ve previously suspected, the celebration package also contains a single-use item which grants its users a 15% buff to all experience and reputation gains. Bear in mind that because this item is single-use, its effects persist until the end of the event. My intuition tells me that its effects will also remain active in the event that your character dies, although I didn’t test this theory while I was recording footage to acquire the screenshots present in this article.

Personally, I definitely prefer this new version of this particular anniversary event perk as opposed to the version that was distributed in previous years. The older version was a reusable item whose effects only lasted an hour at a time; this meant I frequently forgot to re-apply its effects whenever my character died or the item’s timer expired at inopportune times. Thankfully, it seems that forgetting to use the item won’t be a concern this time around due to its basic “set it and forget it” nature.

This anniversary event also contains two major aspects that might appeal to those of you who consider yourselves hardcore raiders and/or fans of player-versus-player combat. Firstly, characters of a sufficient level will be able to queue via the Raid Finder interface for any of three event-specific raid wings. These limited-time raids allow players to battle a total of nine of the most notable bosses from the Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and The Burning Crusade expansions. These wings contain three bosses from each of the aforementioned expansions.

Players who defeat all nine of these bosses during the anniversary event will receive the Obsidian Worldbreaker mount, which is strongly modeled after Deathwing’s appearance. Secondly, those of you who prefer PvP encounters will be able to queue for a special battleground to which the game refers as both “Korrak’s Revenge” and “Alterac Valley of Olde.”

Participating in this battleground will allow you to accumulate a special currency exclusive to this anniversary event; you can redeem this currency for what are apparently “higher-resolution” versions of the Alliance’s Stormpike Battle Charger mount and/or the Horde’s Frostwolf Snarler mount. I’m sure some players who enjoy battlegrounds and PvP combat will be enticed by these mounts, but I’m equally confident that many players might merely enjoy the ability to play within a version of Alterac Valley that’s reportedly based on its older iterations.

If you plan to take advantage of both of these events in order to acquire all three special mounts, you’ve got plenty of time. According to an official post from Blizzard, this year’s anniversary event will remain active until January 7th, 2020 in the Americas, January 8th on European realms, and January 9th on Asian realms. Having said all that, I leave today’s final word to you, dear reader. How do you plan to celebrate WoW’s momentous fifteenth anniversary? Do feel free to sound off in the comments below!