As seen on X (via @sz_mediagroup), a special drone show took place in Shenzhen, China, themed around World of Warcraft to honor the game's 20th anniversary.
It was an epic display with the drones recreating characters from the game like Arthas, Xal'atath, Chen Stormstout, and Alexstrasza, before forming a dragon from the Mists of Pandaria expansion and a logo of World of Warcraft's 20th Anniversary.
Calling all WoW fans! 🌌Sylvanas takes over the night sky in an epic World of Warcraft-themed drone show in Shenzhen, China.📷 航拍深圳@Warcraft @Warcraft_ES @Blizzard_Ent @mats_myrvold @Darkladycosplay @DanielOlimac pic.twitter.com/jUt9q8sAq0July 17, 2025
Around the same time, the operator of World of Warcraft's Chinese server operators, NetEase, hosted a livestream celebrating the game's 20th anniversary as well.
The stream opened with a ceremony of developers from Blizzard Entertainment thanking the Chinese fanbase for their support before discussing future content updates for the Chinese version of the game.
The first news update is that Chinese players will be able to speed level their characters through the World of Warcraft Classic: Cataclysm expansion, so they will be ready in time for World of Warcraft Classic: Mists of Pandaria.
Chinese players are still playing catch-up in Wrath of the Lich King Classic due to being held up by a brief shutdown of the game's servers as a result of Activision-Blizzard cutting ties with NetEase before renewing them.
While Mists of Pandaria Classic will be released for most of the world on July 21, 2025, China will be getting its hands on it between the Winter of 2025 and early Spring of 2026.
As an added bonus, Chinese players will have an opportunity to earn mounts and experience community events they weren't able to during the shutdown.
Additionally, NetEase has promised that World of Warcraft: Classic will get new "plus-like" content as a replacement for Season of Discovery (as it will not be returning due to time constraints and technical limits) that will be available in China and the rest of the world in the future.
NetEase has also announced that China will be getting a special server exclusive to that country in November 2025 called the Titan Reforged Server. This server combines the content from vanilla World of Warcraft, The Burning Legion, and Wrath of the Lich King into a single game mode.
It is described as a "raid rush" where players will have accelerated levelling, so they can take on various past raids, which have been rescaled to Lv. 80.
All classic gear, tier sets, and reputations will scale for this server, and all class talents, spells, and abilities will use their Lv. 80 versions to help give players a fighting chance at beating these buffed-up raids.
Blizzard then announced that Chinese players will be able to play the highly anticipated, upcoming Legion Remix event, which is set to release globally sometime this year at an unspecified date.
All that is known about this event so far is that it will function similarly to Mists of Pandaria Remix, where it allows players to relive the Legion expansion with insane new powers and gear.
However, Blizzard Entertainment has mentioned that Legion Remix will include a Diablo-inspired, new tier of open-world difficulty called "Shattered Timeline". All we know about this difficulty mode is that players will be taken to an alternate timeline of Legion where "everything went worse".
Considering that the default version of Legion's plot involved a giant Burning Legion invasion, the deaths of several high-profile characters, and Sargeras piercing Azeroth with a mountain-sized sword, I can't imagine how things could get even worse from that.
But we'll have to wait and see to find out.
Blizzard Entertainment also states that Chinese players will get to experience World of Warcraft: The War Within's third major patch update at the same time as the rest of the world on August 14, 2025. There will be a preview of a new 12-month subscription bundle featuring new mounts and pets (with China getting an expanded version with extra goodies).
The livestream then concluded with Blizzard Entertainment sharing heartwarming stories of several Chinese players and developers, while announcing that proceeds from charity pet sales, plus an additional one million yuan, will be donated to the AiEr Foundation to support children with hearing impairments.
The World of Warcraft is starting to heat up in the lead-up to World of Warcraft: Midnight
We're less than a month away from the grand reveal for World of Warcraft's next expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, which will take place at Gamescom on August 19, 2025. The reveal show will show off this upcoming PC title's opening cinematic, gameplay details, public demos for player housing, and much more.
I can't wait to see what exciting adventures await us in the next chapter of World of Warcraft's ongoing Worldsoul Saga, as I had a lot of fun with World of Warcraft: The War Within.
It's pretty cool that Chinese players will be able to get their characters in time for Mists of Pandaria Classic, as I'd imagine that expansion is pretty popular in China due to being largely inspired by Chinese myths and culture.
That being said, I am so jealous that Chinese players will be getting exclusive access to this Titan Reforged Server. The idea of fighting the Lich King, rebalanced to fight Lv. 80 sounds awesome. I missed out on fighting him when Wrath of the Lich King first came out in 2008, so I never got to experience how difficult he was back then.
Hopefully, the Titan Reforged Servers will be made available worldwide in the future so we can all relive World of Warcraft's earliest, classic raid bosses rebalanced so that they'll pose a threat again, even to Lv. 80 players.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
