Despite World of Warcraft being a game that was originally released back in November 2004, it is still, for the most part, surviving the test of time. There have been a handful of expansions in the past (almost) two decades and many players cannot remember the exact order of them. Prima Games is here to sort that problem out.
Chronological Order of WoW Expansions
Below, you will see the exact release order of all World of Warcraft expansions:
The Burning Crusade (January 2007)
It took a while for the first expansion to be released. In eyes of many players, The Burning Crusade is the best expansion for World of Warcraft ever made. It brought a lot of Quality of Life changes, great PvP stuff (introduction of Arena, etc.), and insanely interesting lore pieces for PvE fans. Private TBC servers have forever been a thing along with Vanilla servers.
Wrath of the Lich King (November 2008)
In our opinion, this expansion came too fast. There was so much stuff to do in TBC and another half a year wouldn’t have harmed it. However, it seems that Blizzard wanted to roll out one of the best expansions ever made. It was indeed revolutionary, for both casual and hardcore players. WotLK was the first expansion that started catering to a more casual audience, making the game more inclusive for people who can’t spare to have WoW as a second job (yes, shots fired). Death Knights came into the picture and nothing was ever same again.
A lot of Internet fights break out often about which expansion of WoW is the GOAT: TBC or WotLK.
Related: Is WoW Dragonflight Epic Edition Collector’s Set Worth it? – Answered
Cataclysm (December 2010)
Cataclysm… was game-changing. In all of the good ways and bad ways. This is the first expansion that got legitimate hate.
Of course, Cataclysm brought radical changes in the game that were also positively received by the community. Proof of this is the fact that Cataclysm had the most subscribed players of all time – over 12 million! WotLK had about 10 million at its peak.
Related: Is WotLK Classic Down? How to Check WoW WotLK Classic Server Status
Mists of Pandaria (September 2012)
An expansion that brought us Pandaren as playable characters and introduced Monk as a new class. We had Pet Battles so you could play some weird Pokemon spinoffs within the game.
Warlords of Draenor (November 2014)
Alternate Universe Vacation? Why not. Also, in this expansion, we saw the first Graphics Quality upgrade.
Legion (August 2016)
We’ve got Artifact weapons here, Demon Hunters, and most of the action happened on the Broken Isles.
Battle for Azeroth (August 2018)
Zandalar and Kul Tiras were introduced, alongside item scaling (because the numbers went mad during Legion).
Shadowlands (November 2020)
RIP Darnassus and Undercity.
Dragonflight (November 2022)
Dragonflight is the latest, ninth expansion. Dragon Islands are the main center of happenings in this expansion. The user interface and Talent System have been remade. Dracthyr is a new playable race, and Evoker is a new class that can only be played by them. Naturally, like Pandaren, you can choose whether you want to side with the Horde or the Alliance. Professions have received great Quality of Life changes as well.
