World of Warcraft has roughly 60 raid instances across its entire history, counting every expansion from Classic onward. Most expansions ship three to four raid tiers. At any given moment the live game has one or two current raids you can progress, while every raid from previous expansions stays open forever as legacy content you can walk into solo or with a small group.

Raids by era — the rough count

  • Classic (Vanilla): around 9 raids, including Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj (both the 20- and 40-player versions) and Naxxramas.
  • The Burning Crusade: around 8, from Karazhan up to Sunwell Plateau.
  • Wrath of the Lich King: around 9, including the re-tuned Naxxramas, Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel.
  • Cataclysm onward: most expansions settle into a tighter pattern of 3-4 raids each — an opening tier, a middle tier and a final tier where the expansion's main villain dies.

Exact totals shift depending on how you count. Do the two Ahn'Qiraj instances count as one raid or two? Is a single-boss instance like Obsidian Sanctum a raid tier? Blizzard has also retired and reworked raids over the years. That's why the honest answer is "about 60," not a precise figure someone can hand you.

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How many raids are current right now?

Usually one, sometimes two during a tier overlap. A modern expansion season centres on a single current raid that everyone progresses through Normal, Heroic and Mythic difficulty, plus Raid Finder for solo-friendly runs. When a new raid opens, the previous one stays fully playable but stops being the gearing priority.

That means "how many raids should I care about" has a much smaller answer than "how many exist." For current progression, it's one raid and its four difficulties.

How many bosses are in a typical raid?

Modern raids run 8 to 12 bosses. Older ones swing wildly — Icecrown Citadel had 12, while some Wrath-era instances had a single encounter. A full clear of a current raid on Normal is a two-to-three hour job for an organised group, faster once your gear outpaces the tuning.

Can I still do old raids solo?

Yes, and this is where most of that 60-raid catalogue actually gets used. Legacy raids scale down enormously for max-level characters, so soloing content from two or more expansions back is routine. Players farm them for mounts, transmog sets and achievements rather than gear. A few late-expansion Mythic raids stay genuinely difficult solo for several years after release.

Which raids are worth doing today?

The current tier, for gear and progression. Then anything with a mount you want — old raids drop some of the rarest mounts in the game, and weekly lockouts mean farming them is a long-term project. Everything else is optional history you can clear at your own pace.

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