When is the WoW Dragonflight patch 10.1 release date? May 2!

The World of Warcraft development team has announced an ambitious patch plan for Dragonflight in 2023, with patch 10.1 “Embers of Neltharion” the third of six patches scheduled to go live before the end of the year. With patch 10.0.5 released on January 24 and patch 10.0.7 arriving on March 21 and the PTR starting up we can start to get a sense of when it’ll be released — although now the developers have confirmed that the Embers of Neltharion will go live the week of May 2.

Patch 10.1 is the first major patch of Dragonflight and will mark the beginning of Season Two, bringing with it a new raid, a new zone for questing, changes to the Mythic+ dungeon pool, and the start of a new PVP Season and the opportunity to earn its associated rewards. In addition, patch 10.1 will be bringing Cross-Faction Guilds, some updates to the new Profession system as well as more tweaks to the User Interface

The key determiner of the release date will be the amount of time on the PTR for each patch; even with patch 10.1 deploying to the PTR before patch 10.0.7 goes live it should still take 7-9 weeks of testing, maybe even longer since it’s a major patch. In addition we should expect each season to last roughly six months as that matches the desired expansion release cadence of every two years (with the underlying expectation that there will be four seasons, with the fourth season a “fated” season like in Shadowlands). While these factors turned out to be mostly true, the patch is releasing on the early side with only five months for Season One and seven weeks on the PTR.

Patch 10.1 is hitting the PTR on March 9 shortly before patch 10.0.7 goes live. Unlike the other patches on the roadmap there is no season designated for the arrival of the patch, but with patch 10.0.7 coming on March 21 and a likely minimum of two months of PTR a prediction of late May shouldn’t be far off. This would also be six months after the release of Dragonflight keeping the Season cadence operating as expected. It is possible that Cross-Faction Guilds will throw a wrinkle into the proceedings, though, so a test cycle that stretches into June wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. However, Blizzard was able to exceed our expectations and have the patch ready for May 2, shortening the season and the PTR in order to make that date.

Originally published December 27, 2022. Updated April 3.