World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is the MMORPG Blizzard has kept online since 2004, and the game everything else in the genre still gets measured against. It plays out in Azeroth, the world of the Warcraft series: you pick a side between the Alliance and the Horde, and a class that locks you into a clear group role.

The loop mixes quest campaigns, five-player dungeons with scaling difficulty, raids, arena and battleground PvP, professions, and a server economy that has been running for two decades. Every expansion raises the level cap, opens new zones, and resets gear season by season.

The current version is Midnight, the eleventh expansion and second chapter of the Worldsoul Saga, live since March 2, 2026. It pushed the cap to level 90, added four zones, eight dungeons and three raids, and shipped player housing, the feature people had been asking for since the early years.

Patches land fast: 12.1, Curse of Ula'tek, arrived on August 11, 2026 with The Coiled Isle, the Venomous Abyss raid, and Lairs, instanced world bosses built for 15 to 25 players. That pace has a price. Reviews of Midnight praised the sheer amount of content and flagged bugs and rough edges.

The subscription runs USD 14.99 a month, cheaper on the 3 and 6-month plans, and covers the modern game up to the previous expansion's cap, plus Classic Era and the seasonal servers. The current expansion is a separate purchase on the official store, from USD 57.99 to USD 104.39 depending on edition. The WoW Token lets you pay a month with in-game gold.

It fits players who want a steady supply of group content and don't mind the seasonal reset, with Classic there for anyone who prefers the old rules. If you want a one-time purchase, the model will grate: subscription, expansion on top, and the premium currency Midnight attached to housing decoration. Blizzard hasn't reported subscriber numbers since 2015, so any population figure you read is a guess.