World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth Has a Release Date

World of Warcraft has been around for fourteen years, and in that time, it’s had a whopping six expansions - but now, the seventh is on its way. In fact, at Blizzard’s HQ, that aforementioned expansion, Battle for Azeroth, just officially got a release date. August 14.

If you’re wondering what to expect in this new expansion, well, by the sounds of it, it’s returning the MMO back to its PvP roots. Following the defeat of the Burning Legion from the last expansion, the Alliance and the Horde have decided that peace kind of sucks and start fighting again because that’s sort of the foundation of both their cultures and economies. There might be a different reason spelled out in-game but that’s probably just window dressing.

So players will be sailing to some new islands in the middle of Azeroth where most of the fighting will be taking place. In addition to busting up the level cap to 120, players will be leading war parties against rival fortresses in something called Warfronts, where they have to race around gathering equipment, supplies, and soldiers to gain land and push the enemy faction off the island entirely. It’s a complicated system, but I’m sure they’ll spill more details about it as we creep towards launch.

Speaking of, a number of pre-patches will launch before the release date, which will include new story missions that players can follow that will act as a prequel, where players will either re-capture the Undercity or burn down the Night Elf island of Teldrassil, depending on their faction (take a lucky guess on which faction does which).

So… looks pretty cool. There’s no doubt Blizzard will be releasing a lot more information in the coming days and weeks, so be sure to keep an eye out. As for me? I’ll try really hard to ignore it. I fought too hard to get out, man, I can’t get suckered back in now.