A promotional image from Battle.net for World of Warcraft: Legion (which has since been removed, but you can view below) has leaked ahead of BlizzCon 2015 and reveals an expected release date to be “on or before September 21st, 2016.”
The image also says that by pre-ordering Legion, players will be granted a level 100 character boost and gain access to the new Demon Hunter class “at least seven days” before launch. As the image also reveals, there will be a $50 standard edition of Legion, as well as a $70 digital deluxe edition. The digital deluxe edition will come with the game plus an in-game Illidari Felstalker mount, a mini-pet, and additional content for other Blizzard games like StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, and Heroes of the Storm.
Legion was announced at Gamescom in August, revealing that the expansion would take players to a new area called the Broken Isles, raise the game’s level cap to 110, and more. Blizzard will also be introducing a new PvP progression system and customizable artifact weapons for each class specialization.
Speaking of class specializations, Blizzard has said that one of its goals in Legion is to dehomogenize the classes and their specializations, and make them unique from one another, something that has been lacking in the game for several expansion packs.
To learn more about Legion’s development, check out these tidbits of information from senior game designer Jonathan LeCraft, who spoke about Legion’s development at a DragonCon panel in September.
It was recently revealed that World of Warcraft’s subscriber count had dropped to 5.5 million as of Sept. 30 and that Activision Blizzard would no longer be revealing the game’s subscriber count to the public.