World of Warcraft’s Midnight expansion is launching on March 2nd of next year, and WoW players only just got the housing part of it a few weeks ago, so you had to figure the actual formal prepatch wasn’t all that far away. In fact, if you guessed January 20th, you guessed correctly, per Blizzard’s announcement this afternoon.
“The first shadows of the Void fall upon Azeroth as the Midnight Pre-Expansion Content Update goes live January 20,” Blizzard says. “Players can explore the new User Interface (UI) updates, experiment with new combat design changes across all classes, walk the path of the Demon Hunter Devourer, and more.”
It’s gonna be a packed month for WoW, as we also know the 20th Anniversary servers get the Burning Crusade pre-patch on January 13th.
The news comes just as Blizzard president Johanna Faries chatted up the video game experts at *checks notes* Variety dot com, specifically to tout how “huge” 2026 will be for Blizzard, owing to the company’s 35th anniversary. In fact, the topic she spends the most time on is the return of BlizzCon next year, which is apparently selling much better than the last live version.
“[T]o see even the early response and announcing our ticket sales has been a tremendous indicator that there’s a lot of demand to come back together as one,” she says.