World of Warcraft: The War Within Releases in August – IGN

During today’s Xbox Games Showcase, Xbox and Blizzard unveiled the release date for the upcoming expansion to World of Warcraft: The War Within. It’s coming on August 26 of this year.

Today, Blizzard showed off a cinematic trailer, though it didn’t really provide any new expansion details. It focused on the perspective of Xal’atath, a void entity that used to hang out inside a weird cursed knife that some characters were carrying around, who’s intent on bringing about a new Black Empire with herlse fat the helm, and is preparing to muck up Azeroth’s World Soul in the process.

We’ve already gotten several looks at the adventures Blizzard is planning for us in Khaz Algar during our preview of the expansion. We learned that the expansion kicks off by wrecking a beloved in-game location, and did a deep Q&A with game director Ion Hazzikostas about everything we saw. Blizzard and Xbox are apparently “experimenting” with a paid early access period, though players don’t seem thrilled at the prospect.

You can catch up on everything announced at the Xbox Games Showcase right here, as well as everything Sony announced at its recent State of Play, everything we’ve shown as part of this year’s IGN Live, and the highlights from this year’s Summer Game Fest presentation.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.