How to Catch Up in World of Warcraft before The War Within

A new expansion is always a tempting time to join or rejoin World of Warcraft, as a new story begins and exciting features are added. But considering the game is approaching 20 years of age, getting caught up on everything can be a daunting task without help. So whether you last played several expansions ago, or are completely new to the series, here’s how to catch up on WoW ahead of the launch of The War Within.

How to Catch up on WoW‘s story ahead of The War Within

The War Within is set to be the first in the WoW Worldsoul saga, so it will be much easier to catch up on the story now than it will be one or two expansions in to the trilogy. With that said, the easiest way is to take advantage of the many WoW Youtube channels providing lore recaps ahead of the expansion. You can find plenty with a simple search, but here’s a few from Bellular, Nobbel87, and Platinum WoW to get you started.

There’s also the recently released catch up cinematic hitting the major beats from as far back as the Legion expansion. You can access this by talking to either Thrall and Jaina, if you’ve completed the Visions of Azeroth questline, or Khadgar if you’re not high enough level for that. You’ll be directed to both upon logging in during the pre-patch Radiant Echoes event.

Finally, you could always take the time to play through the expansions yourself, as most old expansions are now freely available. The most important is probably Battle for Azeroth which deals with the Worldsoul concept a lot, or Shadowlands which has some important development for Anduin Wrynn the King of Stormwind, who is set to be a major player in the expansion. There’s also the most recent campaign, Dragonflight, that sets up the Dark Heart macguffin that looks to be important and introduces antagonist Xal’atath’s return, though the downside is the most relevant parts are towards the end of the story. If you really want more context on Xal’atath and the void, you could also play through Legion as a Shadowpriest (whose Artifact Weapon is Xal’atath herself!) and complete the Void Elf recruitment scenario at the end of that.

How to get yourWoW characters Ready before The War Within

Thankfully there is very little catch up involved in getting at least one World of Warcraft character eligible to start The War Within on launch. This is because the only hard requirements are owning the expansion and having a level 70 character, and even the cheapest option to purchase the expansion also includes a level 70 character boost. Choose a class, race, and name and boost them to 70 to be good to go.

Now if you want multiple characters ready at launch, you’re going to have to put in slightly more work. You could hit two birds with one stone by levelling using the timeline feature to experience the story of previous expansions as stated above. However, the current WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria provides a faster way to level up new characters by creating them as Timerunners.

This is an option you can select when making a new character, and will essentially lock them to the Pandaria expansion for the duration of the event, after which they will become normal characters. The remix mode grants Timerunner characters a legendary item called the Cloak of Infinite Potential, and by collecting Spools of Eternal Thread this cape can be upgraded with a staggering amount of stats, including bonus experience gain. This combined with the scaling that allows lower level characters to be able to participate in high level content means you can repeatedly clear Heroic Dungeons to earn a ludicrous amount of experience within a short amount of time. As you do so, you will also accrue Bronze which can be used to purchase mounts and sets of cosmetic gear from a variety of vendors. You could also level through questing and experience the Pandaria story, which is quite good, however some of the scaling has made certain quests nearly impossible to complete.

Then there’s gear. Now when the expansion launches all the expensive and enchanted gear the end-game players have will very quickly be replaced by green rarity items from quests, so this is not something you need to worry too much about. If you’re using the enhanced level 70 boost you will be given a set of gear with that, anyway!

However, if you want to give yourself just a little step up you could get yourself a set of Item Level 480 gear by playing the Radiant Echoes event. You can get a full set of equipment from simply completing event objectives, or spend Residual Memories to pick out that specific piece you’re missing or looking for. What’s more, you could even do this as you level normally, simply set a timer for when the event is about to begin and remember to travel to Dalaran before it starts. You won’t be able to equip the items until level 70, but you can save them for later or put them in your Warband Bank for your other characters. This means that even though Timerunner characters can’t take part in the pre-expansion event, you can still save up some gear for when they rejoin the main timeline.

So there’s some options for how you can catch up on WoW ahead of the launch of The War Within. If you enjoyed this guide, consider checking out Siliconera’s other articles on how to start the Radiant Echoes pre-patch event, or on whether you need to complete the Dragonflight campaign to start The War Within.

World of Warcraft is immediately available on PC and Mac, while The War Within expansion launches August 26, 2024.