Retail

Retail is the modern World of Warcraft game including the most recent expansions. Blizzard also uses the development term mainline. These terms distinguish from Classic Era and Classic.

Retail differs from Classic in that new expansions have always changed the game client and world for all players, including those who do not purchase the new expansion. For example, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm redesigned the game's original zones and affected all players from that point forward. By contrast, Blizzard announced at BlizzConline the intent to maintain "Classic Era" servers when advancing the Classic branch to the next expansion.

• The list of expansions and the patch article to determine what content can currently be described as Retail.