The beta for the second WoW Classic expansion has also been running for quite a while now and there hardly seems to be any serious problems. Why is this important right now?

Wind of wisdom active in retail

Following a last-minute announcement on Tuesday evening, Blizzard has re-activated the Wind of Wisdom buff in the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands as part of the weekly server maintenance as of today (Wednesday). Until the start of the fourth Shadowlands – Season , this will grant all characters between level 10 and 59 an experience point bonus of a whopping 50 percent from all sources.

When is ‘Joyous Journeys’ coming?

Blizzard has appeased the Classic community after yesterday’s announcement that retail gamers will get a big experience point bonus starting as early as today, revealing that they have not forgotten about it. More concrete details about this were not given at first. But actually, this isn’t even necessary, because we’ve already known the answer to the question of what TBC players will get for a month.

In a blue post on the American World of Warcraft forums, WoW Community Manager Kaivax announced that they wanted to celebrate the victory over Kil’Jaeden and the Burning Legion together with the fans, as well as provide preparation for the adventures in Northrend.

The global buff “Joyous Journeys” is intended for this purpose, which grants all characters an XP bonus of 50 percent from all sources during its active time – the same bonus that is also available in retail as of today.

But when does it start? This is the crucial question, to which even the aforementioned Bluepost only gives us hints. Joyous Journeys should remain active for about six to eight weeks and be activated a few weeks before the 3.4.0 pre-patch. Exciting: The buff should be available until the launch of WotLK Classic.

From this, we can conclude that by the time you see “Joyous Journeys” in your buff bar, it will still be about two months until the release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. The buff will also be available on the “Fresh Start Realms” that Blizzard will be launching for WotLK Classic, so that you can still unlock many levels during the expansion’s pre-patch. You can then also use it in the associated pre-patch events such as the zombie plague or time-limited bosses like Balzaphon in Stratholme or Tenris Murkblood in Karazhan.

On June 22, 2022, Kaivax spoke of an activation of the event buff “in the coming weeks.” While we only find the experience point bonus in Retail today (Wednesday), Classic could follow suit at any time. Should WotLK Classic be released in September, as some of the community suspects, the Joyous Journeys XP bonus would have to be activated within the next four weeks at the latest.