One Week Until Battle For Azeroth

Technically, thanks to the global launch, it's really more like six days. On the west coast we're getting it at 3PM on Monday.

If the Beta represents how the expansion will go live, then it looks like the Battle for Lordaeron that launched today will be the equivalent of the Broken Shore battle - something we can currently do as a launch event but that will also be what characters who just hit 110 will get. The stuff in Ashenvale and Darkshore (and for Alliance, Darnassus) will not be available, though, so make sure you do those quests to get the Teldrassil Hippogryph and the Undercity Plaguebat mounts (doing it on one character is enough for both, but as always I recommend doing both sides.)

Alliance and Horde will then split up and go to their respective continents. Both involve a scenario-like involved quest. Alliance heads directly to Kul Tiras with Jaina, and then has to deal with the problems of coming back to Kul Tiras with a figure people refer to with terror as the "Daughter of the Sea." Horde players are sent on a rescue mission to get Saurfang out of Stormwind, but in the process make contact with the Zandalari and escape the city on a Zandalari ship, going to Zandalar instead of back to Orgrimmar, where they begin their questing on their continent.

Players will primarily quest through the three zones of their respective continents on the way to 120, but they'll have a few opportunities to start the "War Campaign" by doing a few short quest chains that take them to each of the other continent's zones before the level cap.

At 120, the War Campaign continues and content opens up fully on both land masses. I'll confess I haven't done a ton at the level cap in the Beta (I actually only did much on the Alpha) but it appears that the two Mythic-only dungeons, which serve as large culminations of each continent's storylines, will need to be unlocked through questing (though hopefully it won't take as long as it did to get Arcway and Court of Stars opened up.)

Uldir isn't launching until next month, so the main thing to do will be leveling, and then at the cap doing War Campaign stuff. After finishing the 8.0 War Campaign and hitting certain reputation thresholds, you'll be able to unlock Dark Iron Dwarves and Mag'har Orcs as new allied races. Zandalari Trolls and Kul Tiran Humans are likely coming in 8.1.

Still, I think the best plan of action is to get your favorite characters leveled up, do story quests on at least one character (probably per faction,) and then it'll be Mythic Dungeons as the top content for about a month.

I'm a little sad to be leaving behind Legion, but all good things must come to an end (and I of course am happy to have something new.) There's a lot of story left to tell in Battle for Azeroth, and I can only hope it'll be good (if they somehow, some way have a redemption plot for Sylvanas, they better do it better than Grommash, whose triumphant status at the end of Warlords made very little sense to me.)

To prepare, I actually think my best advice would be to take a break. Unless you're still grinding rep for the Lightforged and Void Elves, which might feel less rewarding when you have to go back to old content.

I'll hand it to Blizzard that Legion kept me playing up until the next expansion - even Wrath had me step away for a couple months before Cataclysm was out. But that's as good a reason as any to take some time off from WoW and save up your enthusiasm for the new stuff.