When is patch 8.2.5 coming out? This week!

We knew it was coming soon, but Blizzard finally confirmed that patch 8.2.5 will be going live on September 24. That means Goblins and Worgen in the audience don’t have much time to wait before their update models hit the live realms!

When we first published this article, patch 8.2.5 had just gone on the PTR, and we wanted to know when we’d get to access the content on live for ourselves. Based on previous patches and other clues, we speculated when that would be. Turns out we were right.

Battle for Azeroth’s development cycle

When we speculated about patch 8.2’s release date, we also had a good idea of its timeframe. It followed the development pattern for this expansion so far, and we had the upcoming raid as well as an American holiday to provide clues that narrowed it down. The development cycle in Battle for Azeroth has given us a patch roughly every three months. Patch 8.2.5 looked to be following the same pattern, which indicated we would see it sometime in late September or early October.

Once the PTR comes up, patches tend to stay on it for about two to three months. Patch 8.1 was on the PTR for about three months, while patch 8.1.5 and patch 8.2 lasted two months. The .5 patches are minor in comparison to the full numbered patches, so we didn’t expect it would stay on the PTR longer than two months. Patch 8.2.5 went on the PTR at the very beginning of August, and spent just under two months being tested before release.

Other releases provide date clues

While we didn’t have a raid release to pinpoint the patch date, other releases and events gave us further clues and a timeframe when the patch could come.

We knew it wouldn’t come out any earlier than September. Blizzard said they would never deploy updates to retail WoW and WoW Classic at the same time. With WoW Classic releasing at the end of August, we wouldn’t see any major content for retail WoW until after that. Even PTR updates stopped while WoW Classic launched and continuously added servers to deal with the massive interest in the game.

We also knew that the patch would be live by the middle of November, due to the inclusion of WoW’s 15th Anniversary content on the PTR. BlizzCon is taking place at the beginning of November and it seemed unlikely that they would want to deploy a patch in the two weeks between BlizzCon and the anniversary event. Blizzard also isn’t going to want to deal with patch bugs and hotfixes the week of and the week before BlizzCon, so that eliminated late October. This left us with mid October at the latest for the patch to deploy.

TL:DR, expect a new patch every couple months

Late September to early October was our best guess for patch 8.2.5 to come out, which turned out to be pretty spot on. While you’re waiting for Tuesday, check out everything patch 8.2.5 will bring.