Wrath of the Lich King Classic Release Time: When Will the WoW Update Be Playable?

Activision Blizzard is currently under investigation following accusations of harassment, discrimination, and fostering a hostile work environment. You can read more about the investigation here.

While fans were undoubtedly excited for the releases of World of Warcraft Classic and The Burning Crusade Classic, the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic feels truly special. Maybe that’s because Wrath of the Lich King is still considered to be the “golden age” of arguably the best MMORPG ever made.

Of course, all the hype in the world won’t do you much good if you don’t know when Wrath of the Lich King Classic actually launches. Thankfully, the WoW team has been pretty clear about when you’ll be able to dive back into the revived version of the beloved expansion.

While some WoW players have already been working their way through Wrath of the Lich King Classic‘s pre-launch patch, the game will officially launch on Monday, September 26/27th. As is usually the case, the exact date you’ll be able to play the game depends on which time zone you’re in.

At present, here are the known Wrath of the Lich King Classic release times in most major regions:

3:00 p.m PDT (September 26)
6:00 p.m EDT (September 26)
12:00 a.m. CEST (September 27)
6:00 a.m. CST (September 27)
7:00 a.m. KST (Septemer 27)
8:00 a.m. AEST (September 27)

If you’d prefer to look at a map of all the currently scheduled launch times, there happens to be one of those available as well:

As you can see, some countries will technically be able to access WoTLK Classic starting on September 26, but that’s only to ensure that those regions’ launch times match the assigned global launch time. In other words, no region will technically be able to access the game ahead of any other region, so there’s no point in trying to play with your profile setting to jump the queues.

Speaking of queues, you should expect the WoTLK Classic launch to be a bit…hectic. While nothing will match the insanity of WoW Classic‘s launch, anyone looking to jump into the expansion as soon as possible should expect to encounter some wait times as well as quite a few other players all trying to complete similar early objectives. Of course, history tells us that you should also probably expect minor launch time delays due to either server queues or backend issues. It’s best to be ready to go as close to launch time as possible, but it will take a minor miracle to ensure that even the majority of WoTLK Classic players are able to start playing the game at the exact moment it is scheduled to be released.

Still, many Classic players will no doubt be willing to wait at least a few minutes longer to jump into this expansion. As mentioned above, WoTLK really was a special moment in WoW history. While nostalgia is obviously a factor in every Classic update, WoTLK‘s status as the best expansion in WoW history isn’t entirely due to romanticized memories. The expansion’s zones, quests, classes, raids, and new/improved mechanics all hit a sweet spot that many players argue even modern WoW expansions have struggled to match.

As with all previous Classic updates, the full WoTLK experience won’t be available at launch. Instead, updates to the game will be released over the next several months on a schedule roughly similar to the original update schedule for the WoTLK expansion (though Classic often receives expedited and modified updates). You can read more about what you can expect from WoTLK Classic at launch (and shortly thereafter) via this blog post.

While some of the magic has arguably been drained from the WoW Classic experience (due to a variety of real-life incidents and questionable design decisions), the Classic experiment has revealed that there were just some things about the old versions of WoW that were just…better. It’ll be interesting to see where Classic goes from here given the series’ post- WoTLK evolution, but WoTLK‘s launch certainly feels like a moment worth celebrating.