World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classicwas announced at BlizzConline 2021 last week. Veteran and new players alike will be able to journey back through the Dark Portal to face the demonic Burning Legion in the broken world of Outland.
Naturally, the transition betweenWorld of Warcraft ClassicandWoW: The Burning Crusade Classicwill be slightly different to the one seen inThe Burning Crusade’s 2007 retail release. Here’s a breakdown of howWoW Classicwill be transitioning toThe Burning Crusade Classic, and the options available to players.
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The Pre-Patch World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classicis due to release some time in 2021. Before then, two major things will happen. First,Classicservers will be created which preserve the currentVanilla WoW Classicexperience as it is. At the same time, the currentClassicservers will be updated withexpansion pre-patchforThe Burning Crusade.
When the pre-patch arrives, players will have the choice to stay on their currentClassicserver as it entersWoW’s first expansion, or to move their character to aVanilla Classicserver. They will be able to choose this for each of their characters currently on aClassicserver.It will also be during theBurning Crusade Classicpre-patch that the two new playable races -the Blood Elves and the Draenei- will become available to players. This is intended to allow players who want to roll one of these races a chance to level up beforeThe Burning Crusade Classicdrops.
For players who don’t want to go through the grind ofVanillaClassic’s questing experience, Blizzard will be offering a way to boost to level 58, which is the Dark Portal’s entry requirement and the lowest level players can be to start questing inHellfire Peninsula. However, players will only get one boost per account, and this will not be applicable to Blood Elf and Draenei players. The boost will also not be allowed on theVanilla Classicservers where level 60 is still the cap. Boosted characters will start with blue dungeon gear and a basic level 40 mount.
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Changes And The Raid Release Schedule
While Blizzard was sure to promise that as few changes would be made as possible to theVanilla Classicexperience when it launched in 2019, the developers have already talked about some of the keychanges coming toThe Burning Crusade Classic.
Spell-batching, where servers process spells in batches rather than individually, will be removed fromThe Burning Crusade Classicin order to avoid player latency issues.Raids which were later nerfed to make them more accessible will not be nerfed in order to prevent raids becoming too easy too quickly for experienced guilds. WhetherIllidan Stormragewants to admit it or not, players are far more prepared this time around.
WhileWoW’sBurning Crusaderaidswill become available in roughly the same order as they were inThe Burning Crusade,The Burning Crusade Classicwill have 5 phases causing some raids to be released together than had more staggered releases in the retail patches. The current schedule is as follows:
Phase 1:Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, and Magtheridon’s Lair raids open.
Phase 2: Serpenshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep raids open, and Arena Season 1 begins.
Phase 3: The Battle of Mount Hyjal and The Black Temple raids open, and Arena Season 2 begins.
Phase 4: Zul’Aman raid opens and Arena Season 3 begins.
Phase 5: The Sunwell raid opens and and Arena Season 4 begins.
This release schedule is subject to change based on player feedback, however. The transition fromClassictoThe Burning Crusade Classicwill have quite a different feel to the original transition to the first expansion. Hopefully, however,Blizzardis able to recapture the feeling ofThe Burning Crusadejust as it did withWoW Classic.
