It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been in Shadowlands for a year now. WoW Shadowlands is celebrating its first anniversary and we’re looking to see if the expansion can go down in history as the longest running WoW expansion.
Congratulations, Shadowlands. Belated congratulations on its 1st birthday! The 8th expansion of World of Warcraft was released on November 23, 2020. Perhaps Shadowlands will go down in the history of Blizzard’s MMO as the longest running expansion. That’s because the expansion’s (probably) final patch hasn’t even arrived on the PTR yet. This is almost certainly the last major patch of the addon and usually runs for almost a year.
If our calculations are correct, Shadowlands would replace the previous leader Battle for Azeroth as the longest WoW expansion. Below, we take a look at WoW expansions and their durations. Vanilla WoW, by the way, had a runtime of 1,001 days, or nearly three years. The pre-release for North America of 208 days is already included here. Without this pre-release, BfA would be in first place.
1st place: Battle for Azeroth. 2 years, 3 months, 9 days (832 days total).
Battle for Azeroth revived the conflict between the Horde and Alliance after a long time, putting Sylvanas and Anduin at the center of the story. N’Zoth, the Void, and also Queen Azshara played a role in BfA. BfA introduced the Azerite Armor feature, which was not well received at the beginning of the expansion. Towards the end of the expansion, the developers faltered and took their time with the content, which led to the long runtime of the expansion.
2nd place: Mists of Pandaria. 2 years, 1 month, 18 days (778 days total).
The “Panda Expansion” was already controversial when it was announced. Players felt that WoW (buy now) would suddenly become too cutesy; with the Pandaren and the new Monk class. They also said goodbye to the beloved talent trees and switched to a talent matrix. MoP offered enough content from the beginning, maybe even too much content at once. After all, we ended up fighting the final boss Garrosh for a year, but with more and more armor upgrades and the introduction of flexible raids and the restructuring of difficulty levels.
Rank 3 Wrath of the Lich King. 2 years, 24 days (754 days total).
The most popular expansion for many players is still Wrath of the Lich King. During this period, WoW celebrated the highest number of subscribers (over ten million). That was probably due to the story about the Lich King, the great raids and a new class (death knight). However, the end of the expansion dragged on quite a bit, but a buff was introduced for the (penultimate) last raid Icecrown Citadel, which made players stronger week after week.
Place 4th Legion. 1 year, 11 months, 14 days (714 days total)
Legion was also a very popular addon, whose content updates ran more smoothly than in almost any other expansion and offered great raids across the board. Added to this was the new demon hunter class. The expansion focused on our special Legendary weapons, which were at times more or less controversial. The implementation of the Mythic Plus feature is still with us today and has given new meaning to dungeons in WoW. With the Mage Tower, another feature of the expansion returns for a short time. With a running time of almost two years, a lot of time went by during Legion, but according to many players, the last raid Antorus would have deserved a few more weeks of running time.
5th place. The Burning Crusade. 1 year, 9 months, 28 days (667 days total)
WoW’s first expansion opened the portal to Outland and wowed the community. Players could face off against iconic characters from WoW lore such as Illidan, Magtheridon and Kil’Jaeden and travel back in time in the Caverns of Time. PvP players were given the opportunity to compete in the arena for the first time. Blood Elves and Draenei brought Horde and Alliance classes that were previously faction-exclusive (Paladins and Shaman). Another highlight was the ability to fly, which the developers later regretted.
Place 6. Cataclysm. 1 year, 9 months, 18 days (658 days total)
The revision of the old world and the many new, sometimes very funny and complex quests were the highlight of Cataclysm; at the same time Hordler Goblins and Alliance Worgen could play. For the first time in this expansion, players could face off in rated battlegrounds. However, three factors leave Cataclysm as a very bad expansion in the minds of players: the introduction of the LFR, the disappointing last raid Dragon Soul and the too big footsteps of WotLK.
7th place Warlords of Draenor. 1 year, 9 months, 17 days (656 days total)
Warlords of Draenor just got a day younger. Travel to an Alternate Timeline was well received despite the difficulties and frustrations with the Garrison feature. In the course of the expansion, however, there was a lack of content at the beginning and end. The only real feature of the first major patch was a Twitter connection for screenshots, and the last major patch was completely missing. This made WoD the addon with the greatest potential and, with a major patch, could have become one of the most popular WoW expansions of all time. In reality, the expansions of the warlords are now only cited as an example of too little content.
This makes Shadowlands the longest-running WoW expansion
The calculation is simple. The 2 years, 3 months and 9 days of BfA are to be beaten. Shadowlands was released on 11/23/2020. In order to beat BfA by one day, Shadowlands would have to run until March 6th, 2023.
Assuming Patch 9.2 comes out in February 2022 and this last update then runs similar to MoP, WotLK a little more than a year, Shadowlands could make it. The speed with which the data from the PTR for patch 9.2 is being brought to light by dataminers makes a release for January or February 2022 very realistic. The fact that Patch 9.2 will then be active for 13 to 14 months sounds, as of now, but still a bit unlikely.
What is WoW Classic?
World of Warcraft Classic is a true recreation of the original WoW as you know it from 2006. All parts of the game – from combat mechanics and talent trees to character models and zones – have been recreated, contributing to the authentic experience.
Getting Started
All players with an active World of Warcraft subscription or game time on their accounts have access toWoW Classic at no additional cost.
- Open the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App and select World of Warcraft from the menu.
- Select World of Warcraft Classic from the Version menu. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second Account drop-down list. In this column, select the active account you want to play with.
- Click the Install button. The progress bar will tell you when your game is ready to play.
- Click the Play button when the installation is complete.
You will need to select the realm you want to play on from several different realm types. Make sure you choose the same realm as your friends – in World of Warcraft Classic, you can only group with characters that are on the same realm as you!
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