Burning Crusade Classic What We Know?

Blizzcon 2021 or Blizzcon Online just wrapped up on Saturday. There is so much new information for World of Warcraft:Classic Fans from the whole event. So without further ado let’s break it down and go over what we know so far about The Burning Crusade Classic!

Burning Crusade Release Date?

Currently no Release Date has been confirmed, Blizzard is doing the Ambiguous 2021 Launch. While they are aiming for this year, which could mean summer, could mean fall. All we can do is keep an eye out for it, we do know that World of Warcraft:Classic launched August 2019 (can’t believe it’s been two years) which was a 6 Phase system with 3-4 months per phase!

Release Patch

The patch they are going with is the Patch 2.4.3 for release. What this means is talents, items and spells will all be their 2.4.3 versions. First riding mount level will be dropped down to Level 30 (I didn’t realize this happened then). This was also when Vanilla experience values got tweaked making it easier to level. The other thing the attunement process for Bringing Crusade will be the original difficulty, meaning you need to have Revered Reputation to get the Heroic Keys and get attuned for raids! Check out the Q&A Below!

Phases and Seasons Changing for Burning Crusade?

Blizzard is planing on a five phase system, with certain Raid Release Schedule. This could also change how Arena Season will drop and when whether Phase 1 or Phase 2. Another interesting change is Season 3 will drop with Black Temple, but Hyjal will also launch at same time (originally was released at launch). While Season 4 will launch with Sunwell Plateau!

Your Classic Character’s Future!

I Can See The Future! Well maybe not so much. One of the important things asked at Blizzcon 2021 is how will The Burning Crusade Classic roll out and how will it affect our current characters on Classic. So at the time of Pre-Patch a “snapshot”will be taken of the character. After servers come back up you will be granted the choice to:

  • Stay on your current realm and change nothing. The realm itself will progress to Pre-Patch and eventually Burning Crusade just like original Vanilla (well sorta)
  • Transfer off of the current Realm to a “Classic Era Realm”which will stay on Phase 6 Naxxaramas Patch. Meaning you will forever be in Vanilla/Classic.
  • Players can also pay a fee, of which is not known how much at this time to clone the character so it will be both on the Classic Era Realm and on the Burning Crusade Classic Realm. So you can play which era without releveling.

In addition to transfer and cloning options, Blizzard stated there will be no limit of amount of Gold your character and bring over to the Burning Crusade. Which could cause some problems with the economy.

Blood Elves and Dranei

After servers come back up for Pre-Patch you will be able to create Blood Elves for the Horde and Draenie for the Alliance. Which means Alliance will have their space goats, and shamans and Horde will finally have Paladins again. When the original game launched you couldn’t make Blood Elf of Draenie until the Patch went live. So this is a smart choice from Blizzard.

Level 58 Boost for Burning Crusade Classic

This next bit is a bit controverseral and I personally think it’s the wrong move. Blizzard will be allowing one character boost to level 58 per account.

  • Can only be used on Burning Crusade Realms, not on Classic Era.
  • Can not be used on Blood Elves or Dranei!
  • One Per Account.

Pre-Nerf

As I stated before they will be doing patch 2.4.3 and not any other patches. Blizzard explicitly stated they will tuning the bosses harder closer to how they originally were before they nerfed them. Burning Crusade originally had bosses nerfed for being to hard with health values lowered to help playerd. However, due to years of the game being out and understanding (and i am sure because people have had years to try on Private Servers) Blizzard has decided to bring back the Pre-Nerf Bosses. Is this a sign of maybe harder bosses on retail as well?

As an example: M’uru initially had a lot of spell pushback, which was causing players to exclude spellcasters from their groups. We fixed this issue pretty quickly, and it’s something we’ll still include as a change when this boss becomes available in Sunwell Plateau—but the decrease to his health will likely revert to its original state. Players have asked to engage with the initial versions of bosses so they can see if the benefit of experience allows them to defeat bosses they previously struggled with, and we want to provide them with that opportunity.

Patrick Dawson

Paladin Seals

This is a big one for me as I normally play Paladin. Blizzard has announced at max level (70) Seal of Blood and Seal of Vengeance will be usuable by Horde or Alliance. Previously Alliance Paladins got Seal of Vengeance and Horde Paladins got Seal of Blood.

Seal of Blood did more damage than than the alliance version which mean Horde Blood Elf Paladins were more competitive. So this change was to bring over all balance to the game. While I like no changes in theory something like this is overall a good thing in my honest opinion.

Arenas

In the original itteration of The Burning Crusade if you did Arenas, your team size was locked to 2, 3 and 5. What this means is if one night someone had to work, or something came up you can’t do PvP for the night because your team isn’t complete. What Blizzard is doing going to double the size so in other words, 4,6,10.

So you will be able to have alternates in case your teamate can’t make it. Blizzard also revealed their won’t be Battlegroups which was a Hardware flaw back in the original Burning Crusade. Instead it will be region wide, everyone vs everyone in Arena. New problem Blizzard still needs to address is how to handle Rank 1 titles and Leaderboards.

Looking For Group

In the original Burning Crusade there was a Looking for Group tool. It was not as refined as the current Dungeon Finder tool. However, it did allow you to look for Dungeons and Raids. While Blizzard will bring this back and semi-modernize they will not make it an automated group formation tool.

Leatherworking Buff Changes?

Leatherworking Drums of Battle was an essential requirement for guilds durring the Burning Crusade similar to Engineering. Of course this is the top raiding guilds who care about min-maxing. Blizzard is debating how to handle this whether making it a debuff on players when used or possible doing a Raid wide buff. Freeing up more possibilities for players, we will have to wait and see what comes of this.

Fresh Classic

So while we are getting Burning Crusade Classic, it doesn’t look like we will be getting a Fresh Classic Servers. Meaning the servers/realms start over from day 1 and everyone is at same advantage. While the Classic team may consider this in the future at the current time it seams to be on the table.

SomeChanges vs NoChanges

While with the original Classic there was huge movement for #NoChanges. At this time it seems Blizzard is ok with #SomeCHanges as long as it doesn’t change the core of the game. While it seems to be some Quality of Life Changes let’s hope they don’t add things from Later expansions that may make things easier.

Beta Opt-In Burning Crusade Classic

You can now Opt-In to the Beta for The Burning Crusade Classic. Many where wondering how Blizzard was planning to roll out the Beta to the community, it seems they are doing it through the same Opt-In System they did for Shadowlands. If you are interested click here!

Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition Owners

If you currently own the Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition you will recieve your Netherwhelp Pet similar to how Classic got their Collector’s Edition Pets!

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About Kenneth Schuetz

Rane is the Co-Founder of MstSage Entertainment. He started MstSage Entertainment in 2005 along with Rek MstSage while they were in high school. In 2007 the site went on a short hiatus while Rane was in the Army. He now enjoys writing articles, playing games, and streaming. You can follow him @RaneMstSage on Twitter.

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