World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the "Warcraft" fantasy universe. "World of Warcraft" takes place within the "Warcraft" world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous "Warcraft" release, "." The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the "Warcraft" franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, "World of Warcraft" has had seven major expansion packs released for it: "", "", "", "", "", "", and "".
World of Warcraft
Blizzard routinely applies older expansions to all accounts as new expansions are released. On June 28, 2011, "The Burning Crusade" expansion was automatically applied to all previous "Warcraft" accounts at no cost. On September 19, 2012, the same thing was done with the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion, and on October 15, 2013 the "Cataclysm" expansion was also applied. On October 15, 2014, "Mists of Pandaria" was applied to all accounts following the release of Warlords. On May 17, 2016, "Warlords of Draenor" was applied to all accounts to coincide with the release of the Warcraft movie that gives a 30-day trial of the game.
All "The Burning Crusade", "Wrath of the Lich King", "Cataclysm", "Mists of Pandaria" and "Warlords of Draenor" content is now effectively part of the original game, with all new "World of Warcraft" accounts automatically including these expansions upon creation. As of the pre-patch release of "Battle for Azeroth" in July 2018, all expansions up to "Legion" are included in the base game.