World of Warcraft's pre-expansion event is now live, unleashing a horde of undead across Azeroth's biggest cities. Like all pre-expansion events, this is your chance to earn some time-limited rewards, like a funny zombie pet, alongside powerful loot that'll jump you straight into Shadowlands if you're not all geared up.
Playing out over the next two weeks up until the launch of Shadowlands on November 23 (24 in Europe), the main draw of the event is a new questline that'll help bridge the narrative gap between the end of Battle for Azeroth and the beginning of Shadowlands. Upon logging in, players are offered a new quest called "An Urgent Request" that takes them back to their faction's capital city, where they investigate the sudden onslaught of undead.
Completing that questline will unlock daily quests in Icecrown, where players can earn a new type of currency to spend on new rewards. Blizzard has a blog post up detailing everything, but I'd recommend checking out Wowhead's excellent guide that has all the details on what to do.
If you're returning to play Shadowlands, you shouldn't sleep on this event, either. The gear that can be bought (or drops from certain bosses) is the equivalent of what you'd get from the normal difficulty version of the current raid, which is pretty sweet. One of the new world bosses even drops a 34-slot bag, which is a must-have for expanding your inventory.
Of course, you can also screw over other players by becoming a zombie. Each main city has a special shipment of crates with a mysterious substance that you can ingest, turning you into the undead scourge. While undead, you become hostile to all other players but friendly to any undead NPCs or players. When I played through the event in the beta a few months ago, I had a blast just running around Stormwind attacking random players.
For more on Shadowlands, check out our comprehensive guide, or our overview of what to do before Shadowlands launches. And if you're new to WoW and this all sounds like gibberish, we have a beginner's guide that'll help you make sense of it.
