I've played through every single expansion launch event in World of Warcraft's history. I started playing in fall of 2006, and given BC's relatively late arrival compared with the overall expansion launch schedule (normally they come out in late summer or fall of even-numbered years, but BC didn't come until January of 2007, after Vanilla had been out for over two years) I wasn't actually max-level for it, but I was able to see and be killed by the demons assaulting major cities.
Expansion launches are big deals for WoW. They're the official closing of the book on the past two years' (or in War Within's case, only one-and-a-half, making it the shortest expansion in WoW's history) story and the big excitement-building thing for the game's next era. We get class changes (sometimes, as we're seeing in 12.0, giving us somewhat incomplete versions of the classes, especially the new Devourer spec) and in the latter years of WoW, this is when we get the various stat-squishes (or Shadowlands' level squish).
But these are ephemeral events - even if you group them all together, an expansion launch event tends to go on about six weeks, or a month and a half. If expansions come out roughly every two years, that means that these events all together make up only 1/16th of the game's overall schedule.
Furthermore, expansion events, because they're tailored to the individual expansion, are something that we truly won't experience for more than those six weeks. This creates a couple of funny incentives:
It should have some reward that is unique and can be a reminder of having experienced it, but the rewards also shouldn't be so unique that people will feel really bummed out if they missed it.
It should be memorable and fun, but it also shouldn't take too much development time, because it's only going to be going for a short time.
We've had some really exciting and memorable events, and a few that were perhaps not quite as well-regarded. I thought, as a WoW elder, I'd go down memory lane and see how well I can recall those we've gone through:
Burning Crusade:
As alluded to before, WoW's first expansion saw Doom-Lord Kazzak, who would later become a world-boss in Hellfire Peninsula, leading demonic assaults on capital cities (I remember Ironforge was definitely one of the targets, though I can't recall if it was all six existing ones or just that and, like, Orgrimmar. Back in Vanilla, due to its convenient location and before they added Stormwind Harbor in Wrath, Ironforge was actually the real Alliance capital). Now, there was also an event at the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands, but I was too low-level to get there at the time (by the time the expansion came out, I think my highest-level character was only 30 or so, and you needed to be 58 to go to Outland).
Wrath of the Lich King:
Ah yes, I remember flying around Shattrath, seeing people angrily debating the recent electoral win of Barack Obama, while we had a couple quests. The Alliance, I believe, was primarily concerned with helping I think the Argent Dawn while the Horde was dealing with totally-well-intentioned Grand Apothecary Putress to try to create a cure to a zombie plague.
The event combined what had been the patch-launch event (they did this back in Vanilla) for the Naxxramas patch (1.3 or 1.4, I wasn't playing yet) with its Scourge Invasions of various zones, but the big new thing was the Zombie Plauge, where, whether you were flagged for PvP or not, character of both factions could get infected and infect both other players and NPCs after turning into ghouls. I remember literally hiding out in the basement of the Darkshire Inn on my Warlock alt hiding out from the zombies - a bit of enforced RP that was honestly pretty cool. There were some who complained about how it disrupted gameplay, but wasn't that the point? Of course, the patch also saw the return of Varian Wrynn to Stormwind and the addition of Stormwind Harbor, which made travel to Darnassus and the Exodar much easier (you used to have to go to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands).
I believe there was some kind of event in major cities, which included Garrosh challenging Thrall for his role as Warchief, only to be interrupted by the Scourge.
Cataclysm:
This was probably the biggest pre-launch event just because so much of the game changed, and it had to come in kind of two segments: first was one that fully needed the old Vanilla world, in which the Horde had an event to take back the Echo Isles for the Darkspear Trolls, while the Alliance had an event to take back Gnomeregan (I believe the Gnomes' faction in the Alliance is now just "Gnomeregan," but in Vanilla-through-Wrath, it was the Gnomeregan Exiles). We also had elemental invasions - certain areas across the world (I think excluding Outland, though there was a story quest to go meet Thrall there). Finally, there was also a quest that had you infiltrate a doomsday cult with sandwich-board signs on them that seemed to be new recruits into Twilight's Hammer.
We also brought Magni the Titan tablets that would wind up turning him into his diamond (apparently Thraegar) form, which was interpreted as his dying until he reawakened before Legion. I think this all happened before the revamp went live, which we then had available for maybe a month before the expansion actually launched, so I remember spending a lot of time leveling up my Tauren Paladin.
Mists of Pandaria:
I think this remains the smallest launch event. Scenarios were the exciting new feature for Mists of Pandaria, and the destruction of Theramore was a major event to kick off the expansion (and explain why Jaina went from biggest advocate of peaceful coexistence with the Horde to the Alliance's biggest hawk,) so we got early access to the Fall of Theramore scenario. And... that was it.
Warlords of Draenor:
Things were primarily contained to the Blasted Lands, where we fought Iron Horde incursions into the zone, but we also go access to part, but not the entirety, of the revamped Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon. For those who did not play before then, UBRS used to actually be part of the same instance as Lower Blackrock Spire, as one of the old level-cap Vanilla megadungeons (LBRS is still basically a mega-dungeon).
Legion:
Probably the best-remembered launch event, we got a few things here: first off, if you had the expansion, you could create a Demon Hunter and play through their starting experience early, hitting level 100 (the pre-launch level cap) by finishing it. But for everyone else, we got the Legion Invasions.
These were actually a lot more free-form than what we'd get afterward. A zone, I think Hillsbrad Foothills, Dun Morogh, Westfall, Azshara, Northern Barrens, and I think Tanaris, would get invaded by the Burning Legion, and everyone in the zone could spread out and kill demons all across the zone, eventually summoning a big legion commander boss that would drop good loot.
I don't really think it was much more than that, but something about the way it worked just... worked really well. For one thing, Legion saw massive class overhauls that brought in a lot of fun mechanics, so it was fun to test those out. But I also think that because the demons' activity across the zone was so omnipresent that you could kind of choose the style of demon-fighting you wanted. There were legion structures you could fight your way into, but also, I remember just being on a road in western Westfall and taking out a pair of felguards there - it felt like you could have both the giant epic battles and the scrappy hero-versus-the-monster fights at the same time.
Battle for Azeroth:
This one was a little bifurcated. The War of Thorns was a multi-stage series of quests in Darkshore, which culminated in the burning of Teldrassil, and one of the genuinely most affecting uses of the UI for storytelling I've seen in the game (for the Alliance, at least) where you were tasked with saving 100 Darnassus citizens, but only given the time to get, at most, like 30 before the smoke overtook you.
We also had some, if I recall correctly, some repeatable stuff in Silithus, fighting the other faction for control of Azerite. But the more memorable stuff was the one-and-done story quests.
Shadowlands:
Much as the Wrath launch event took some elements of the Scourge Invasion event from vanilla, Shadowlands brought back the Zombie Plague, though I guess given how much easier it was to spread out with so many expansions having come around, it didn't feel as pervasive as the first time.
Other than that, there was an event in Icecrown in which various Scourge rares would pop up. The biggest deal, as I recall, was that you could get a larger bag than would be available until I think Dragonflight or even War Within.
Dragonflight:
Here, we had the elemental invasions, which were more wide-spread (I can't recall every zone they were in, but I know Badlands was the one I most often went to, also I think Northern Barrens again). I can't recall if we could create Dracthyr Evokers yet or if we had to wait for the expansion's proper launch - I'd guess the former. Naturally, we wouldn't get the Augmentation spec until later in the expansion (I'm guessing they intended it for launch but still needed to figure out how it would work).
War Within:
Hey, fairly recent, right? This was the one with the memories of Azeroth, found in Dragonblight, Searing Gorge, and... was it Un'goro Crater? Or Tanaris again?
I actually liked this style of event because there was real variety in the memories that popped up, with different objectives.
Midnight:
Well, this one is currently going on. It's probably the smallest event since Mists of Pandaria, with a very short quest involving the Twilight Blade and then just the rare spawns that pop up in Twighlight Highlands. You can get a bunch of Champion level gear pretty easily, though in this new era of Delves, I mostly have Hero-level gear on the characters I really play (and that's a fair number: see name of blog).
What's interesting is that this is the first expansion in which the primary territory of the expansion will be at least partially revamped old, existing zones. While Cataclysm was a big revamp, the high-level content all took place in new zones. I think the closer parallel might be Warlords of Draenor, whose world was a glimpse into the past of Outland (though also technically an alternate universe... boy did that expansion have conceptual issues). With Quel'thalas and Zul'Aman, we're getting a fresh look at areas that were added to the game 19 years ago, and not really changed much since. (Before Cataclysm, I remember taking my Orc Warrior to Eversong and Ghostlands to level just because compared to Vanilla, the questing was better. But it truly does show its age quite a lot at this point).
Of course, showing us that revamp early wouldn't really make sense - these are not to be the leveling zones for low-level Blood Elf characters, but full endgame (for now) zones to take us to level 90.
Twilight Highlands does make a certain degree of sense given that it's the home territories of the game's most prominent big evil void-worshipping cult (though one would think after the defeat of Cho'gall that they might have vacated the area, or maybe the Wildhammer Dwarves would have kicked them out by now). Still, I'm surprised that they've limited the event to just this one zone. For Shadowlands it kind of made sense given that the rift into the Shadowlands was formed right over Icecrown Citadel, but the void invasion is coming in over Quel'thalas.
Again, there's some logic to not putting too much effort into a launch event. But this one is probably going to be less-remembered than others.
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