When is The War Within patch 11.1 release date — and what’s in it?

World of Warcraft’s next expansion The War Within is releasing on August 26, 2024 — with early access starting on August 22 — and we already know that patch 11.0.5 is also scheduled to come out this year. Presuming the Dragonflight patch cadence is maintained (and as of now there’s no reason to think it won’t be) then we should expect patch 11.0.7 and patch 11.1 to follow afterwards and to be the first two patches of 2025. As we anticipate the arrival of patch 11.0.7 in early January, we forecast the arrival of The War Within patch 11.1 to occur the week of March 11, 2025.

Patches have consistently arrived on average 8-9 weeks since the start of Dragonflight and all indications are that this schedule will continue in The War Within. While we’re expecting a slightly larger interval between patch 11.0.5 and patch 11.0.7 due to the end-of-year holidays, there are no similar reasons for a delay between patch 11.0.7 and patch 11.1. As this patch will include The War Within Season 2 and the second raid tier of the expansion it is expected to be on the PTR for testing a little longer than its immediate predecessors. While it is feasible for it to arrive the week before or the week after, the week of March 11 feels like a strong compromise. We’ll have a better sense of the timings, however, when post-launch patches start to arrive on the PTR.

What might be in patch 11.1?

Barring a radical change in the patching approach, it’s relatively easy to predict what players will get to experience in patch 11.1. For starters Season 2 is likely to begin a week or two after the arrival of the patch and a new Season typically means a lot of new content: new raid, new zone, new faction, new dungeons in the Mythic+ rotation, new rewards, new quests and of course new transmog. Outside the Season-related events it’s hard to know at this point what else could be present in the patch. Patch 10.1 added Cross-Faction Guilds and the new Gear Upgrade System so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we’ll see some system changes arrive with the patch. The 2025 Road Map should provide a better view when released, and of course the closer we get to patch go-live the more information will be ascertained.