WoW’s 20th Anniversary Event is Here

My fellow denizens of Azeroth, World of Warcraft’s 20th-anniversary event is upon us. This event may already be live depending on when you’re reading this article. Blizzard Entertainment seems quite intent on making this anniversary event the biggest in WoW’s history, which is why I’m here to provide you with a rundown of what you can expect. In fact, this anniversary celebration will comprise an entire semi-major content patch for WoW, namely Patch 11.0.5. There will be some things I won’t mention in this article for brevity’s sake, but I’ll include links to all those extra details. Let’s begin!

World of Warcraft’s 20th-anniversary event is scheduled to begin after weekly maintenance concludes today, October 22nd, 2024 in North America. To the best of my knowledge, the festivities will be available from today through sometime on Monday, January 6th, 2025, according to Blizzard’s official patch notes. At the time of writing, Blizzard estimates that WoW will be down for maintenance from 7 AM to 3 PM Pacific Time, but I’d strongly suggest taking that with a grain of salt based on precedent. As is tradition, the party will be set up right outside the Caverns of Time in Tanaris.

You can quickly and easily get to the Caverns of Time by taking portals present in Stormwind and Orgrimmar if, like me, you don’t feel like manually flying out there from wherever your characters might be. This “celebration hub” is where you’ll find all the anniversary event’s quest givers, reward vendors, and staging areas for a plethora of optional activities. You’ll find things like “Fashion Frenzy” and “Mount Mania,” events where you can show off your best transmog sets and mounts to other players, respectively. The decorations for this event will change every four days to represent any one of Azeroth’s continents and the inhabitants thereof.

Additional festivities you might find fun are the “Storyteller’s Stage,” where you and your fellow players can speak to Lorewalker Cho in order to relive “epic tales from Azeroth’s history, complete with audience participation,” to quote Blizzard directly. There will also be more casual, potentially less involved ways you can enjoy yourself, like an ice rink and ridable balloons. With all of that mentioned, now we’re getting to the “meatier” parts of what this anniversary event has to offer to all who are interested. For instance, how about a classic dungeon that’s been reworked into a raid that you can conquer while leveling your characters?

The Blackrock Depths dungeon has been reimagined to fit that bill during this event. Groups of 10 to 15 players will be able to battle through this raid and face off against eight bosses and five mini-bosses. This new version of Blackrock Depths (“BRD”) will be available on Looking for Raid (“LFR”), Normal, and Heroic difficulties. LFR will be available to characters level 30 and up, even if you don’t own The War Within expansion. However, you will need to own The War Within to go through BRD on Normal and Heroic difficulty because these require you to be level 80.

If this version of Blackrock Depths isn’t quite enough to sate your Timewalking thirst, you’re in luck: Another part of the 20th-anniversary event will see the introduction of six new Timewalking dungeons from vanilla World of Warcraft. These dungeons are as follows: The Deadmines; Zul’Farrak; Dire Maul East; Dire Maul West; Stratholme (Living); and Stratholme (Undead). Timewalking will also be made available to characters level 10 and higher with the launch of this update, and will be “a bit harder than before,” according to Blizzard. Specifically, Blizzard says these Timewalking dungeons will be “somewhere between Normal and Heroic” difficulties.

If you’ve participated in any of WoW’s past anniversary events, you might be pleased to know that the Korrak’s Revenge player-versus-player event will be coming back again this year. In case you’re unfamiliar, this event is intended to evoke memories of the Alterac Valley battleground as it was in vanilla World of Warcraft, back when a single match in this battleground could potentially take hours to complete. Players can find faction-specific armory crates near where they spawn in to Korrak’s Revenge in order to equip a transmogrified set of PvP gear from Classic WoW, for the sake of furthering the doses of nostalgia.

Continuing on the subject of nostalgia, WoW’s 20-year veterans might remember the opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event back in vanilla WoW. If that applies to you, you may be interested in trying out a new scenario intended for groups of 10 to 20 players, called “Chromie’s Codex: Gates of Ahn’Qiraj” which will be part of this event. Players can help the Bronze Dragonflight’s emissary, Chromie, correct the timelines and ensure that there are no discrepancies in regards to what actually happened during the original opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event by, for example, removing significant baddies like Tichondrius and Kel’Thuzad.

Players will be able to battle six world bosses in Tanaris during the 20th-anniversary event. This includes two new world bosses, the Sha of Anger and Archavon the Stonewatcher. These two bosses in particular have a chance of dropping their infamously difficult-to-obtain mounts for lucky players when they’re slain. The four “usual” Anniversary Event world bosses — Doomwalker, Lord Kazzak, Azuregos, and the Dragons of Nightmare — will also be returning alongside the pair of newcomers. All characters level 15 and higher can help fight these world bosses in exchange for level 30 and higher loot drops.

Next up comes the part of this extravaganza that has me the most excited. Every character class’ unique Tier 2 sets of raid gear from way back in WoW’s past have been modernized as part of this event, with “updated modeling and VFX,” to quote Blizzard. Classes that didn’t exist when Tier 2 raid gear was prevalent — Death Knights, Monks, Demon Hunters, and Evokers — will receive their own transmog sets in the same vein as the modernized sets for classes that were around back then. The sets for the newest classes are themed around notable NPCs representing those classes, like Chen Stormstout for Monks.

Moving on, four cosmetic back appearances from Warcraft III will be purchasable via the in-game Trading Post through the month of November, one appearance for each of the four playable factions in Warcraft III. However, it should be noted that since these are in the Trading Post, players will have to purchase these items with Trader’s Tender and not the limited-time, event-specific currency they’ll receive from participating in activities that are part of the 20th-anniversary festivities. Furthermore, these items will presumably no longer be obtainable starting December 1st due to how the Trading Post works. Get them while you can!

As the anniversary event progresses, players will be able to earn an event-specific currency called Bronze Celebration Tokens. This is the currency you’ll use to purchase virtually all of the rewards and other goodies on offer during the anniversary event’s two-month-long span. There will be weekly quests obtainable from the anniversary event’s location that will be the best source of these tokens, though this currency can also be earned from weekly activities that are part of The War Within Season 1.

Players can also earn Bronze Celebration Tokens by participating in things like defeating world bosses, completing the Chromie’s Codex scenario, doing battle in the Korrak’s Revenge battleground and completing quests you can find therein, and slaying bosses within the Blackrock Depths raid. Bronze Celebration Tokens will be transferable among all characters in your Warband, so you won’t have to worry about playing one character long enough to earn sufficient tokens to buy all the goodies you’ve got your eye on. Speaking of rewards, the vast majority of things you could get from past anniversary events will be returning this time around.

Since the introduction of the playable Dracthyr race alongside the launch of the Dragonflight expansion, Dracthyr characters have only been able to play as the Evoker hero class. However, this will change once Patch 11.0.5 goes live: Dracthyr will now permanently have access to the Warrior, Priest, Mage, Monk, Hunter, Rogue, and Warlock character classes in addition to their existing Evoker class. If this news has you tempted to level a new Dracthyr, or really any other new race/class combo, this event is, conveniently enough, just about the perfect time to do so.

I say that for multiple overlapping reasons. Namely, as soon as the 20th-anniversary event starts, all characters will be granted a passive 10% bonus to experience and reputation gains for the event’s duration. Additionally, you can also gain yet another 10% buff to reputation and experience from a daily quest, though this one only lasts for 12 hours at a time. These buffs stack with the Warband experience buff, which can be up to 25% depending on how many level 80 characters you have, as well as the 10% buff to experience and reputation you can get from riding the Darkmoon Faire carousel whenever that event is also active.

That just about covers it folks! As I said at the beginning, there are things like significant changes to many classes and specializations that I didn’t cover here for the sake of brevity. If you’d like to read up on any of that to see how, if at all, your favorite classes and specs might be changing, you can have a look at Blizzard’s full patch notes for this update right here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to farm Bronze Celebration tokens for the foreseeable future – that modernized Tier 2 Paladin set has got my name written all over it!