Coming Back to WoW? Here Is How to Catch Up

The Story So Far

Return to the elven kingdom of Quel’Thalas as Xal’atath’s invasion of Azeroth begins, and the Voidstorm threatens to cover the world in darkness. Catch up on Xal’atath’s dark deeds throughout The War Within, from the destruction of Dalaran to the return of the Void Lord Dimensius. Remember: Midnight is coming.

Catch Up with the Catch Up Experience

“Journey through the Arathi Highlands to help you refamiliarize yourself with World of Warcraft and receive updated gear for your character.”

It can feel daunting to remember where you left off if you’re returning to Azeroth after a spell, especially when you’re confronted with bags full of items you don’t remember, a full quest log, and a variety of talents and icons to get reacquainted with.

But, returning to World of Warcraft has never been easier, and to help players overcome these challenges, we have a returning player experience to help you jump back into Azeroth.

Upon login, you’ll have one of two options— pick up where you left off or start the Catch Up Experience. We recommend joining the Catch Up Experience, but if you want to skip it and jump right in, you can still access it at any time in the Tutorials tab when you open your Adventure Guide (Shift+J).

Choose the Catch Up Experience from the character selection screen (aka your Campsite) to be ported right into the action in the Arathi Highlands to help Thrall and Jaina. We’ll hide your existing quests during this experience to let you focus on getting reacquainted with your character and the game.

At the end of this questline, we’ll get you geared up in appropriate level gear and back into action, and content suggestions for what you can do next that are tailored to your current level.

The War Within Recap

Players who have missed The War Within story, or who need a catch-up, can take part in an accelerated play-through of the expansion. In just a few hours of playtime, this experience will take you through the complete story, beginning on the Isle of Dorn and delivering you to the broken world of K’aresh. Along the way, you’ll be able to view key cinematics and follow the story of The War Within’s main characters. Anyone who wants to catch up on the story before taking the next step into Midnight can enjoy this experience. New players will also level from 70 to 80 this way instead of having to go through the entirety of the content.

Get the Band Together for Warbands

If it’s been some time since your return to Azeroth, you may notice a few changes. The first of which is your character selection screen. With the release of Warbands in The War Within, the character selection screen now shows all characters on your Battle.net account in one convenient location, your Campsite. Here is where you can set your favorite characters, access your Warband Collection, apply Character Services, and customize your Campsite background.

With Warbands, players can enjoy account-wide progression with all characters in their Battle.net® account, regardless of faction, which includes shared renown, a Warband bank, achievements, and more! Additionally, players can learn and share appearances across their Warband of any class or gear type for the characters who can equip them.

Head over to our previously published article on how to get out there and expand your troupe of brave defenders of Azeroth. Happy alting!

Quality of Life: Single-Button Assistant and Assisted Highlight

With combat being such a significant part of World of Warcraft, it can be overwhelming to hop right back into the fray with so many rotations to choose from. Whether you are brand new, returning from a break, or just trying out a new specialization, Single-Button Assistant and Assisted Highlight can help make combat more intuitive and forgiving.

Single-Button Assistant

The Single-Button Assistant simplifies your combat rotation by allowing you to cast abilities with a single button press, making gameplay more accessible and intuitive. It’s a new spell that you can add to your Action Bar that cycles through a prioritized block of spells into a single button on your Action Bar.

Each press casts the next optimal ability based on your current talent choice with a small built-in global cooldown increase between casts, making it ideal for those needing accessibility support or experimenting with a new class.

To set up Single-Button Assistant, open your Spellbook (N), locate the Single-Button Assistant ability in the upper right-hand corner of your Spellbook, then drag it into your Action Bar.

Assisted Highlight

Need a visual cue to point out what damage spell to press next? We got you covered with a subtle nudge in the right direction in the form of a soft glow that highlights the next recommended DPS ability in your rotation. It prioritizes damage abilities only, and you’ll need to manually handle your healing and defensive spells and buffs.

Enabling and disabling Assisted Highlight can be found in the Game Menu by pressing ESC. Go to Options, then to Gameplay Enhancements, where you’ll see the checkbox to toggle Assisted Highlight on or off.

Get up to Speed with User Interface Updates

The User Interface is introducing powerful new features, improved customization options, cleaner raid frames, expanding display-scaling controls and more. You’ll be able to configure how information and damage meters appear within the base UI and customize them to fit your personal play style without the need to download additional add-ons. Learn more about some of the changes and updates to Nameplates, Damage Meters, Boss Alerts, and more in our previously published article.

Dress for Every Situation with an Updated Transmog System

Take your transmog game further with the ability to unlock and save full outfit sets across characters for any occasion. The updated transmog system also provides an additional opportunity for adding more customization and self-expression. You’ll be able to unlock and save dozens of outfits. Unlocking outfit slots will cost gold, but once they are unlocked, switching between saved outfits is free.

Each outfit can be added to your action bar, allowing you to manually update your look any time you want without having to visit a transmog vendor. Whether you’re fighting in a dungeon, exploring a new area, or taking a rest in your house, you’ll be able to dress for the moment. Learn more from our previously published article.

Please note that previously applied transmogs and legacy outfits have been converted into Custom Sets.

Delves: Short Adventures Big Rewards

Explore bite-sized world instances, gain experience, and epic rewards! You can explore alone or with up to four additional friends, along with an NPC companion you customize through their talent tree.

Delves can be found across the zones of The War Within and Midnight. These replayable, seasonal, role-agnostic adventure experiences offer a new way to enjoy the leveling and endgame progression alongside traditional Dungeons, Raids, and PvP, delivering quick combat, puzzles, platforming challenges, and bosses to defeat.

As you progress, you can find chests and supplies with impactful special abilities and powers for immediate use that can help you in the Delve.

The Delves tab is located in your Journeys hub, and you can also configure your Delve companion directly within the Delves section of Journeys, streamlining the process.

Learn more about the Delves in Midnight and The War Within.

From Dragonriding to Skyriding

Dip, dash, and dive through the skies with Skyriding (previously known as Dragonriding) and Steady Flight. No more needing to watch your fuel gauge, the dependency on Vigor has been removed in Skyriding and replaced with six shared charges to use with Surge Forward and Skyward Ascent.

Skyriding has also been expanded to a plethora of flying mounts in your Warband Collection tab (Shift+P) to carry you through the skies of Azeroth, and they’ll be noted as “Skyriding”. Ground mounts in your collection will continue to stay grounded, but most flying mounts will be able to use Skyriding, save for a select few, such as the Otterworldly Ottuk Carrier, some fish mounts, and brooms.

There are many great guides to help teach you more about Skyriding, but if you want to learn the basics, this one is a good start. Before long, you’ll be showing off your aerial prowess in the skies of Azeroth and beyond.

Lorewalking with Lorewalker Cho

Now that you’re familiar with the basics, maybe you want to know more about what’s going on and who the main players are in the cosmic chaos surrounding Azeroth right now. Who’s Xal’atath? What are the Ethereals? And, what about the Elves?

Lorewalker Cho has plenty of tales to tell and is always looking for a listening ear. Meet him in Stormwind, Orgrimmar, or Dornogal to experience iconic lore moments in Azeroth. Players level 10 and above can explore three storylines carefully curated by Lorewalker Cho to learn more about the origin of the Blood Elves and the Void Elves, Xal’atath, the Ethereals, and The Lich King.

Each storyline consists of previous quests and a few new ones. Each quest series provides additional rewards beyond gold and experience for completing it, including:

• Tome of Silvermoon Intrigue Housing Decor Item: A blood elf-themed book with a matching bookmark!
• Echo of Xal’atath, Blade of the Black Empire Toy: Call upon your memory of Xal’atath. Her voice will occasionally echo with glee when you kill a foe.
• K’aresh Memory Crystal Toy: Take on the appearance of a K’areshi.
• Royal Visage Toy: Remember the tale of Arthas Menethil. You take on his visage. “Prince… or King?”

Story Mode

Experience the game’s rich storytelling without the challenges of traditional raid mechanics. Story Mode opens the opportunity to follow the questline and enter the raid to enjoy the narrative at your own pace—allowing you to face the final boss in the encounter either solo or with four other friends. This mode is available in Dragonflight and The War Within raid encounters only.

Before you jump into Dragonflight and The War Within raids, you must fulfill a couple of prerequisites to unlock the Story Mode: you must reach the maximum level first and complete the entire story campaign of Dragonflight and Khaz Algar.

Journeys

Engage with World of Warcraft content in a meaningful way thanks to a brand-new feature tab in the Adventure Guide—Journeys—with a significant update to how you track your in-game progress, once Midnight launches.

The Journeys aims to be your one-stop shop to help keep your Renown, Delves, and Prey progress more intuitive and streamlined, and there’s even a shortcut to check out your Great Vault rewards.

In short, Journeys is a place for centralized progress tracking, consolidating all your progression-related information, making it easier to see how far you’ve come in activities and culture reputation within Midnight and previous expansions.

Adventure is Calling you Home

Coming back home to Azeroth wouldn’t be complete without a cozy corner to call your own. Midnight opens the door and throws out the welcome mat with Housing.

In Housing, everyone gets a home—no lotteries, no costs, no upkeep required. Share your home across your Warband, decorate, and visit friends (even your frenemies across faction lines).

Your house is all your own, so create the home of your dreams with cozy nooks to legendary showcases of your adventures across Azeroth. All you need to know about making yourself at home can be found in our previously published article.

Returning to Azeroth with Account Recovery

As heroes across the world return to answer the call, you may need assistance logging into your account. Can’t Log In? Our service can help you recover access to your account in multiple ways—you can reset your password, unlock an account, remove an authenticator, and more. If our system doesn’t recognize your email address, our support article can help you. If you no longer have access to your account and suspect your account was hacked, follow these steps to secure your computer, request a restoration, and attach an authenticator to your account for a more secure Blizzard account.

If you’re stuck or require additional assistance, Contact Support to connect with a helpful Game Master.

Getting Started

1. Download the Battle.net desktop app for Windows or Mac and create your account.
2. Open the Battle.net desktop app and select World of Warcraft from the menu.
3. Under the Version menu, select World of Warcraft. You’ll see a second dropdown for each account if you have more than one World of Warcraft account. Select the active account you wish to play on from that column.
4. Click the Install button. The progress bar shows when the game is available to play.
5. Once the installation is complete, click the Play button.

You’ll need to select the realm you want to play on from the available realm types. Make sure you pick the same one your friends play on—in World of Warcraft Classic, characters can only group with others on the same realm!

If you’re looking for a group of like-minded players, you can head to the New Guild Listings forum to begin your search.

Don’t wait for Midnight’s launch; the returning player experience and The War Within recap are available now. Pre-purchase Midnight from the Blizzard Shop today to join in the next chapter of our journey. Learn more about the new expansion in our information round-up.