Do You Need to Complete WoW: Dragonflight to Play The War Within

With The War Within expansion just a month away, current and returning players alike may be wondering if they need to hurry up and finish off the campaign for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight in order to access the new content when it releases. And it’s a serious consideration too, since there’s lots of content of catch up on and if you have multiple characters that time investment can skyrocket very quickly. So without further ado, here’s whether you need to finish the Dragonflight campaign to play the new World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within.

Do You Need to finish the Dragonflight campaign to start The War Within?

The short answer is no, you do not need to finish Dragonflight in order to access The War Within‘s campaign. When the expansion goes live, you will receive a quest directing you to begin the new campaign automatically, as long as your character is level 70 and you own the expansion.

You may, however, still want to finish the campaign anyway for a number of reasons. Firstly, as mentioned before you will need a level 70 character to begin the campaign and story quests are a good way to get lots of EXP while unlocking new features. Secondly, the pre-expansion patch (or pre-patch) that launches on July 22, 2024, will introduce a series of quests setting up the expansion, and completing Dragonflight is a requirement for those. They won’t be a requirement for starting The War Within but they will set you up with some more context and likely some extra loot for your troubles, so they are well worth doing.

So that’s what you need to know ahead of the new expansion, be sure to check out Siliconera’s other World of Warcraft guides like how to fix the “Character With That Name Already Exists” error or the Phase Release Times for the Season of Discovery.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is immediately available for PC and Mac, while The War Within expansion launches on August 26, 2024. Owners of the Epic Edition will get Early Access to the expansion beginning on August 22, 2024.