World of Warcraft’s next big expansion is just a couple of months away now. Legion will launch on August 30, but before then there is the tradition of the pre-patch period. This is when Blizzard bring all the new systems, class changes and other global enhancements to the current version of the game, before the new areas and levelling experience opens up.
It’s a sort of send off for the previous level cap, and generally involves lots and lots of blatently broken things that Blizzard haven’t balanced for, as it will only be life for four to six weeks. The first testing phase for this patch is now available on the public test realms.
Everything we know about the Legion release date and more.
All the details on what’s contained within have been posted over on Battle.net, while if you want to get playing you’ll need this support article. Be warned that it does require a whole new version of the game to be downloaded and installed, so you might be waiting a while before you can play if your internet isn’t up to par. It’s also fairly buggy at the moment as the servers just went up, and have been unstable since they did so.
For those that aren’t in the Legion beta, it’s the first shot they’ll have at the new talents, spells and class designs coming in the expansion. This includes totally redesigned specialisations like Outlaw Rogue and Survival Hunter, representing a shift to something approaching WoW 2. It’s a whole new game, so get in there and explore.
The testing phase usually lasts a few weeks, and it’s been confirmed that the patch is made to hit live servers 4-6 weeks before the expansion comes out. The earliest it could go is therefore a month from now, so you have plenty of time to experiment with things – and wait for the servers to actually work.