Warlords of Azeroth opens a level 60 realm with no factions and full-loot zones

Warlords of Azeroth went live on 21 August 2026. It is a fresh AzerothCore realm on the 3.3.5a client, hard-capped at level 60, with no Death Knights and no factions. "This launched today. It is day one, and it will show in places," its developer wrote on Reddit that morning.

Every server they had played on, the developer wrote, kept the world safe and put the danger in an instance. They wanted the opposite.

Three risk tiers

The 48 zones fall into three tiers, and a coloured message tells you which one you are in every time you cross a border.

Safe (17 zones): the capitals and starting zones. Nothing drops and PvP can't start.
Dangerous (20 zones): most of the levelling world. Dying costs the gold you carry, but your gear stays on you.
Highly Dangerous (11 zones): Stranglethorn Vale, both Plaguelands, Burning Steppes, Winterspring, Silithus and more. Dying drops your gold and up to eight items, worn gear first, into a chest that anyone can open for five minutes.

Only items of green quality or better can drop, and looted gear is unbound, so it can be sold on. Nothing drops between players on the same connection, from someone who has just died, when the killer is ten or more levels above you, or in battlegrounds and dungeons.

Guilds, crafted PvP gear and no shop

Horde and Alliance group, join the same guilds, trade, mail and talk together, and everyone is flagged for PvP outside sanctuaries
Seven of the Highly Dangerous zones have three capture points each. A guild that holds a zone farms more gold there and takes a toll on every coin outsiders loot inside it
Blacksmiths, leatherworkers and tailors craft the Field Marshal's PvP sets, a different one for each class, and every piece needs materials from nine trades. There is no honour grind and no quartermaster, and raid gear was toned down so that crafted gear is what people fight in
PvP deaths have no corpse-run delay
There is no cash shop, and nothing on the server is for sale

Since launch

Players still need their own 3.3.5a client (build 12340, enUS). The site now also offers a Windows launcher that installs the realm's patch and sets the realmlist, and the patch can still be placed by hand. The developer lists what is not finished yet: crafted PvP gear covers only the head, shoulders and chest so far, the Death Knight button still shows at character creation although the server refuses it, and capital cities and guards are still hostile to the other faction. The realm's Discord had 23 members on 4 October.

Source: the developer's launch post on r/WoWPrivateServers (21 August 2026) and warlords-of-azeroth.com.