World of Warcraft (WoW) is a 2004 massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Windows and macOS. Set in the Warcraftuniverse, World of Warcraft takes place within the fictional planet Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2001 and was released for the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, World of Warcraft has had eleven major expansion packs: The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), Shadowlands (2020), Dragonflight (2022), The War Within (2024), and Midnight (2026). The next expansion, The Last Titan, was announced in 2023 and revealed at Blizzcon 2026 for a late 2027 release.
World of Warcraft was inspired by other MMORPGs, particularly EverQuest, but addressed accessibility by changing mechanics around dying and grouping. A player can create a character avatar and navigate an open game world in third- or first-person view, explore the landscape, fight various monsters, complete quests, and interact with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. While the game encourages players to work together to complete quests, enter dungeons, and engage in player versus player (PvP) combat, it can also be played solo, without interacting with others. The game primarily focuses on character progression, in which players earn experience points (XP) to level up their character to make them more powerful, obtain better equipment by defeating monsters and completing challenges, and buy and sell items using in-game currency, among other game systems.
World of Warcraft was a major critical and commercial success upon its original release in 2004 and quickly became the most popular MMORPG of all time, reaching a peak of 12 million subscribers in 2010. The game had over one hundred million registered accounts by 2014, and by 2017 had grossed over in revenue, making Warcraft one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time. The game has been cited by gaming journalists as the greatest MMORPG of all time and one of the greatest video games of all time, and has also been noted for its long lifespan, continuing to receive developer support and expansion packs over 20 years since its initial release. In 2019, a vanilla version of the game titled World of Warcraft: Classic was launched, allowing players to experience the base game without any expansions by bringing the original game assets into a modernized client-server framework. Additional content for Classic was later released, including versions of some expansions. World of Warcraft: Forever, a separate third branch of the game that expands upon its original 2004 setting and gameplay with new content and storylines, is scheduled for release in November 2026.
Gameplay
Starting a character or play session As with other MMORPGs, players control a character avatar within a game world in third- or first-person view, exploring the landscape, fighting various monsters, completing quests, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. Also similar to other MMORPGs, World of Warcraft requires the player to pay a subscription by using a credit or debit card, using prepaid Blizzard game cards or using a WoW Token purchased in-game. Players without a subscription may use a trial account that lets the player's character reach level 20, but has many features locked.
To enter the game, the player must select a server, referred to in-game as a 'realm'. Each realm acts as an individual copy of the game world and falls into one of two categories. Available realm types are: Normal – a regular type realm where the gameplay is mostly focused on defeating monsters and completing quests, with player-versus-player fights and any roleplay are optional. RP (roleplay) – which works the same way as a "Normal" realm, but focuses on players roleplaying in character.
Before the introduction of World of Warcraft's seventh expansion "Battle for Azeroth", both "Normal" and "RP" servers were each divided into two separate categories: PvE servers and PvP servers. This has since been removed after the implementation of the "War Mode" option, which allows any player (of level 20 and higher) on any server to determine whether they want to actively participate in PvP combat or not, by enabling War Mode in two of the game's capital cities.
Realms are also categorized by language, with in-game support in the language available.
Players can make new characters on all realms within the region, and it is also possible to move already established characters between realms for a fee.
Races and factions
To create a new character, in keeping with the storyline of previous Warcraft games, players must choose between the opposing factions of the Alliance or the Horde; Pandaren, which were added in Mists of Pandaria, do not commit to a faction until after the starting zone is completed. Characters from the opposing factions can form cross-faction groups and engage in most types of instanced content, such as raids and dungeons, together. As of patch 10.1, 'Embers of Neltharion', characters can also join guilds of the opposing faction. The player selects the new character's race, such as orcs or trolls for the Horde, or humans or dwarves for the Alliance. Players must select the class for the character, with choices such as mages, warriors, and priests available. Most classes are limited to particular races.
Ongoing gameplay As characters become more developed, they gain various talents and skills, requiring the player to further define the abilities of that character. Characters can choose two primary professions that can focus on producing items, such as tailoring, blacksmithing or jewelcrafting or on gathering from resource nodes, such as skinning or mining. Characters can learn all three secondary skills: archeology, cooking, and fishing. Characters may form and join guilds, allowing characters within the guild access to the guild's chat channel, the guild name and optionally allowing other features, including a guild tabard, guild bank, guild repairs, and dues.
Much of World of Warcraft play involves the completion of quests. These quests are usually available from NPCs. Quests usually reward the player with some combination of experience points, items, and in-game money. Quests allow characters to gain access to new skills and abilities, as well as the ability to explore new areas. It is through quests that much of the game's story is told, both through the quest's text and through scripted NPC actions. Quests are linked by a common theme, with each consecutive quest triggered by the completion of the previous, forming a quest chain. Quests commonly involve killing a number of creatures, gathering a certain number of resources, finding a difficult to locate object, speaking to various NPCs, visiting specific locations, interacting with objects in the world, or delivering an item from one place to another to acquire experience and treasures.
While a character can be played on its own, players can group with others to tackle more challenging content. Most end-game challenges are designed in such a way that they can only be overcome while in a group. In this way, character classes are used in specific roles within a group. World of Warcraft uses a "rested bonus" system, increasing the rate that a character can gain experience points after the player has spent time away from the game. When a character dies, it becomes a ghost—or wisp for night elf characters—at a nearby graveyard. Characters can be resurrected by other characters that have the ability or can self-resurrect by moving from the graveyard to the place where they died. If a character is past level ten and they resurrect at a graveyard, the items equipped by the character degrade, requiring in-game money and a specialist NPC to repair them. Items that have degraded heavily become unusable until they are repaired. If the location of the character's body is unreachable, they can use a special "spirit healer" NPC to resurrect at the graveyard. When the spirit healer revives a character, items equipped by the character at that time are further degraded, and the character is significantly weakened by what is in-game called "resurrection sickness" for up to ten minutes, depending on the character's level. This "resurrection sickness" does not occur and item degradation is less severe if the character revives by locating its body, or is resurrected by another player through spells or special items.
World of Warcraft contains a variety of mechanisms for player versus player (PvP) play. Players on player versus environment (PvE) servers can opt to toggle "War Mode" themselves, making themselves attackable to players of the opposite faction. Depending on the mode of the realm, PvP combat between members of opposing factions is possible at almost any time or location in the game world—the only exception being the starting zones, where the PvP "flag" must be enabled by the player wishing to fight against players of the opposite faction. PvE (called normal or RP) servers, by contrast, allow a player to choose whether or not to engage in combat against other players. On both server types, there are special areas of the world where free-for-all combat is permitted. Battlegrounds, for example, are similar to dungeons: only a set number of characters can enter a single battleground, but additional copies of the battleground can be made to accommodate additional players. Each battleground has a set objective, such as capturing a flag or defeating an opposing general, that must be completed to win the battleground. Competing in battlegrounds rewards the character with tokens and honor points that can be used to buy armor, weapons, and other general items that can aid a player in many areas of the game. Winning a battleground awards more honor and tokens than losing. In addition, players also earn honor when they or nearby teammates kill players in a battleground.
Some of the challenges in World of Warcraft require players to group together to complete them. These usually take place in dungeons—also known as "instances"—that a group of characters can enter together. The term "instance" comes from each group or party having a separate copy, or instance, of the dungeon, complete with their own enemies to defeat and their own treasure or rewards. This allows a group to explore areas and complete quests without others interfering. Dungeons are spread over the game world and are designed for characters of varying progression. A typical dungeon will allow up to five characters to enter as part of a group. Some dungeons require more players to group together and form a "raid" of up to forty players to face some of the most difficult challenges. An unofficial community-driven event has developed from raids: the Race to World First (RWF), in which guilds race to be the first to defeat every boss in a new raid on Mythic difficulty, the hardest difficulty level the game offers for dungeons and raids. Among the indicators of how widely followed Races to World First are include Esports organization Team Liquid sponsoring a guild based in North America that has won multiple such events.
Setting World of Warcraft is set in the same universe as the Warcraft series of real-time strategy games and has a similar art direction. World of Warcraft contains elements from fantasy, steampunk, and science fiction, including gryphons, dragons, elves, steam-powered automata, zombies, werewolves, other horror monsters, time travel, spaceships, and alien worlds.