What is World of Warcraft?

World of Warcraft, often shortened to WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game made and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Windows and macOS. It takes place on the world of Azeroth, about four years after the story of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

Blizzard first showed the game in September 2001 and released it in North America on November 23, 2004, the tenth anniversary of the Warcraft series. Europe followed on February 11, 2005. More than 20 years later it still gets new expansions and updates.

You create a character and move through an open world in third- or first-person view. You explore, fight monsters, take on quests and talk to NPCs and other players. Most of the game is about growing your character: you earn experience to gain levels and collect better equipment from enemies and challenges.

• Two sides to choose from: the Alliance and the Horde (see Alliance and Horde).
• 24 playable races: 14 core races and 12 allied races.
• 13 classes, each with its own specializations (see Classes Overview).
• 14 professions: 11 primary ones for gathering and crafting, plus Cooking, Fishing and Archaeology.
• Group content such as dungeons for up to five players and larger raids, plus PvP in battlegrounds, arenas and the open world.

The game rewards playing together, but almost everything outside the hardest end-game content can also be done alone.

Eleven expansions have added new lands, systems and higher level caps. In 2020 Shadowlands squished levels, so the cap dropped to 60 and then started climbing again. The full dated list is in the Timeline.

Midnight, the eleventh expansion, came out on March 2, 2026, after early access began on February 26. Players return to Quel'Thalas, the blood elf homeland, to defend the Sunwell from the Void. It raised the level cap to 90, added the Haranir as an allied race and brought player housing, where every player can own and decorate a home.

Today there are three separate branches. This wiki covers the main, modern game unless a page says otherwise.

• The modern game (often called retail): the current expansion and all earlier ones, updated with every patch.
• World of Warcraft Classic (2019): the original game rebuilt as it was before the expansions, later joined by versions of some expansions.
• World of Warcraft: Forever (2026): a separate third branch that builds new content on top of the original 2004 setting. It has its own rules and is not part of the modern game.

The game is played with game time (a subscription). A free trial lets a character reach level 20 with many features locked. With active game time, all expansions up to Dragonflight are included; only the newest one is bought separately.