World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic was 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 between World of Warcraft Classic and WoW: The Burning Crusade Classic will be slightly different to the one seen in The Burning Crusade’s 2007 retail release. Here’s a breakdown of how WoW Classic will be transitioning to The Burning Crusade Classic, and the options available to players.
The Pre-Patch World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic is due to release some time in 2021. Before then, two major things will happen. First, Classic servers will be created which preserve the current Vanilla WoW Classic experience as it is. At the same time, the current Classic servers will be updated with expansion pre-patch for The Burning Crusade.
When the pre-patch arrives, players will have the choice to stay on their current Classic server as it enters WoW’s first expansion, or to move their character to a Vanilla Classic server. They will be able to choose this for each of their characters currently on a Classic server. It will also be during the Burning Crusade Classic pre-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 before The Burning Crusade Classic drops.
For players who don’t want to go through the grind of Vanilla Classic’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 in Hellfire 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 the Vanilla Classic servers where level 60 is still the cap. Boosted characters will start with blue dungeon gear and a basic level 40 mount.
Changes And The Raid Release Schedule
While Blizzard was sure to promise that as few changes would be made as possible to the Vanilla Classic experience when it launched in 2019, the developers have already talked about some of the key changes coming to The Burning Crusade Classic.
Spell-batching, where servers process spells in batches rather than individually, will be removed from The Burning Crusade Classic in 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. Whether Illidan Stormrage wants to admit it or not, players are far more prepared this time around.
While WoW's Burning Crusade raids will become available in roughly the same order as they were in The Burning Crusade, The Burning Crusade Classic will 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 from Classic to The Burning Crusade Classic will have quite a different feel to the original transition to the first expansion. Hopefully, however, Blizzard is able to recapture the feeling of The Burning Crusade just as it did with WoW Classic.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic releases 2021.