It looks like Dungeons & Dragons’ next major product announcement may have come a little earlier than Wizards of the Coast intended. Roll20, one of D&D’s key digital partners, briefly published a blog post on their website stating that pre-orders for an official D&D crossover with World of Warcraft were live.
The post has since been taken down, but not before the announcement was spotted and shared widely – with preview imagery still visible on the page for a short time after removal. EN World was the first place I saw covering the the story.
The leak comes just days before a major D&D panel scheduled for Gen Con, where a formal announcement is widely expected. Wizards of the Coast has not yet confirmed the product, and we’ll update this article if and when they do.
What do we know so far?
Based on the leak, it appears that a full crossover product is in the works, not just a cosmetic tie-in. Given that D&D has been leaning more heavily into crossover products in recent years, with previous collaborations including Stranger Things, Minecraft and Rick and Morty, this would represent one of the biggest crossovers in the game’s 50-year history.
What makes this particularly interesting is the suggestion that the product will include bespoke rules and subclasses rather than simply repackaging existing content. That would put it in a different league to the more casual crossover sets we’ve seen so far, and much closer to the model popularised by Magic: The Gathering’s Universes Beyond range.
A relationship with a long history
The connection between D&D and World of Warcraft runs deeper than many players might realise. World of Warcraft previously had its own tabletop RPG, published by Sword & Sorcery Studios, which was compatible with D&D 3.5E. Meanwhile, WoW’s influence on game design was significant enough that D&D 4th Edition borrowed its framework of at-will, per-encounter and per-day abilities directly from the MMORPG model.
The relationship goes both ways, of course – World of Warcraft drew heavily on D&D’s fantasy conventions when it launched, so a full-circle crossover product has a certain logic to it.
While WoW’s player numbers have declined from their peak of around 12 million, the game still commands an estimated 2 million active players – a substantial audience that could bring a wave of new players to the tabletop.
Whats next?
A formal announcement is expected at Gen Con’s D&D panel this Thursday. With the leak already out in the wild, Wizards of the Coast may choose to get ahead of it before then. We’ll be covering the announcement as it happens, so keep an eye on Dungeon Mister for the latest.