Hellfire Citadel Raid Schedule (With Non-Specific Dates)

6.2 is coming soon - possibly next week - and with it the new raid (and possible end raid for Warlords of Draenor) will be coming.

As usual, we're going to get a staggered release, especially of the LFR difficulty, so that pre-made raiders have a chance to try the place out without feeling forced to run LFR as well (and so that LFR raiders don't burn out on the whole thing immediately.)

We don't have specific dates yet, because the patch's release has not been official announced, so it's broken down by weeks-after-the-patch.

Week 1 (with 6.2)

Normal and Heroic Modes Open

Week 2

Mythic Opens

Raid Finder Wing 1 (Hellfire Assault, Iron Reaver, Kormrok)

Week 4

Raid Finder Wing 2 (Hellfire High Council, Kilrogg, Gorefiend)

Week 6

Raid Finder Wing 3 (Shadow-Lord Iskar, Socrethar the Eternal, Tyrant Velhari)

Week 8

Raid Finder Wing 4 (Fel Lord Zakuun, Xhul'horac, Mannoroth)

Week 10

Raid Finder Wing 5 (Archimonde)

Interestingly, this schedule changes things up slightly from how we have gotten previous raids. If I recall (could be wrong here,) the first LFR wing usually comes in Week 3, with the second in Week 4. This means that we'll be able to get into LFR earlier, but we'll have two weeks of doing the first wing before we can move on to the second. So it's two weeks per LFR wing.

If the patch drops next week, that means we'll have Normal/Heroic on Jun 23rd, Mythic and Wing One June 30th, Wing Two July 14th (Bastille Day!) Wing Three on July 28th, Wing Four on August Eleventh, and Wing Five on August 25th.

Hellfire Citadel will certainly be our raid for the summer, and probably into the fall as well.

After that point, though, we really don't know what's next for WoW. Personally, I've been in a bit of a WoW lull. We're still not sure if this is, in fact, the final raid of Warlords or if there will be something later. On one hand, Gul'dan is screaming to be a raid boss, but on the other hand, how would a Gul'dan raid differ from this very heavily demonic one?

Believe it or not, we're actually only a few months out from Blizzcon, at which we are 99% guaranteed to find out (if we haven't already) about WoW's 6th expansion. But unless they're ready to release it in the space of three months or less after that, we're going to want some other content in Draenor to tide us over - Blizz definitely wants to avoid another Siege of Orgrimmar situation. If they can't release the next expansion soon, and there is no third Draenor tier, it'll be even worse. Hellfire Citadel might be Warlords' climax, but its place in the schedule compared to previous expansions is that of the middle tier - Throne of Thunder and Firelands were "summer after launch" raids for their respective expansions.

But let's not dwell on the doom and gloom of the future. We're finally getting some real new content in Draenor very soon. Let's dwell on the doom and gloom of Tanaan Jungle!