Pastways
Your Warcraft timeline
What is Pastways?
Pastways reconstructs your history with World of Warcraft from Blizzard's public API and places it alongside the history of Warcraft itself. It is not an achievement tracker, a collection checklist, or an Armory replacement. It is a visual history of your achievements and time in the game.
How dates are handled
- Dates come from Blizzard. Achievement dates are the completion timestamps Blizzard records. Pastways never estimates or infers a date.
- Everything is shown in UTC. A Pastway you share shows the same dates to you and to whoever you send it to, which would not be true in each reader's local timezone.
- Never finer than a minute. Blizzard's timestamps are rounded inconsistently between characters, so claiming seconds would be false precision.
- “Earned”, not “you earned”. Much of WoW's achievement history is account-wide, and Blizzard's data does not reliably distinguish a character's own completion from an account-level one. Things are worded to match what the data actually proves.
- An unknown date is never guessed. Mounts, for instance, carry no acquisition date in Blizzard's data. Pastways would rather show nothing than invent a plausible date.
- Data is not live. Battle.net can lag a day or two behind the game, and Pastways caches on top of that.
How achievements are grouped
The charts can colour an achievement two ways: by the expansion that was current when it was earned, or by the expansion it belongs to. Clearing Shadowlands raids in 2026 is Shadowlands content earned during Midnight. The original 2004 game counts as an expansion too, and is called Classic, Blizzard's own name for it.
When Blizzard's achievements don't say which expansion they belong to, Pastways sorts them by expansion, PvP, or Game-wide based on the following rules:
- An expansion
- Achievements for the content that came with it: its dungeons and raids, zones, quests, reputations and delves, and features made for that expansion alone, such as Garrisons, Torghast and Island Expeditions.
- When the name says so
- For dungeons, raids, delves and Feats of Strength, an expansion named in the achievement itself counts: “The War Within Keystone Master: Season One” is The War Within. A Keystone season counts for the season's expansion, whichever dungeon it was in.
- PvP
- Player vs. Player achievements, and PvP Feats of Strength such as Gladiator titles.
- Game-wide
- Everything else: professions, pet battles, world events, collections, Remix events, and Feats of Strength that name no expansion. Expansion features that are designed to carry on across expansions, such as Skyriding and Lorewalking, count as Game-wide, while Torghast counts as Shadowlands, as it is bound entirely to that expansion.
Release dates
The Warcraft release markers on each timeline, and where each date was checked. Regionally staggered launches record the North American date.
| Release | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Warcraft: Orcs & Humans | Wikipedia: Warcraftchecked 15 Aug 2026The first Warcraft game. Real-time strategy for MS-DOS, two campaigns, and the war that everything since has been a consequence of. | |
| Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness | Warcraft Wiki: Warcraft II: Tides of Darknesschecked 15 Aug 2026The Second War. Naval combat, flying units, and the game that made Warcraft a household name in strategy. | |
| Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal | Warcraft Wiki: Timelinechecked 15 Aug 2026The expansion to Tides of Darkness. The Alliance follows the Horde back through the portal to a dying Draenor. North American release. | |
| Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos | Warcraft Wiki: Timelinechecked 15 Aug 2026Four races, hero units and a story that introduced Arthas, Thrall and Illidan: the characters World of Warcraft was later built around. United States release. | |
| Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne | Warcraft Wiki: Timelinechecked 15 Aug 2026The expansion that put Arthas on the Frozen Throne, and set up every Lich King story that followed. United States release. | |
| World of Warcraft | Wikipedia: World of Warcraftchecked 15 Aug 2026Released in North America and Australia on the franchise’s tenth anniversary. Europe followed on 11 February 2005. | |
| The Burning Crusade | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026 | |
| Wrath of the Lich King | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026Introduced the achievement system. Blizzard’s record of a player’s history generally cannot begin before this date. | |
| Cataclysm | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026 | |
| Mists of Pandaria | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026 | |
| Warlords of Draenor | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026 | |
| Legion | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026 | |
| Battle for Azeroth | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026Launched 13 August in the Americas, 14 August in Europe. | |
| Shadowlands | Wikipedia: World of Warcraft: Shadowlandschecked 15 Aug 2026Launched 23 November in the Americas, 24 November in Europe. | |
| Dragonflight | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026Launched 28 November in the Americas, 29 November in Europe. | |
| The War Within | Wikipedia: World of Warcraft: The War Withinchecked 15 Aug 2026 | |
| Midnight | Wowpedia: Expansionchecked 15 Aug 2026 |
Imagery and video
Box art shown on release markers is Blizzard's, used to identify the releases it depicts. Achievement icons come from Blizzard's own media endpoints. Cinematic links point to videos on Blizzard's official YouTube channel, and each was checked to confirm the uploader. Some older cinematics aren't on that channel, so their links open a YouTube search instead.
Links to other sites, including those searches and patch notes, lead to content Pastways doesn't control, and Pastways isn't responsible for it.
Supporting Pastways
Pastways is free, and everything it shows from Blizzard will stay free. If it has given you some enjoyment and you'd like to help with the site's maintenance and continuity, you can support it on Ko-fi. It keeps the site running.
Contact
Suggestions, problems, or questions about Pastways are welcome at contact@pastways.net.