Since World of Warcraft: Classic was announced, fans and players have wondered what the next step for the title would be. Given that the title was meant to recreate the Vanilla WoW experience, there was a rather limited amount of content that could be dropped.
The last of the content dropped not too long ago with the final raid tier, and players have hit a wall of there being no next step. The Vanilla content has run its course, and players were theorizing heavily on what that next step would be.
Much of the theorizing leaned towards the direction of an announcement of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, a Classic remake of the first expansion of the MMORPG of the same title. This expansion brought us flying mounts, a new continent/planet, new races, and bridged cross-faction gaps.
Earlier this week at Blizzconline, Blizzard made the announcement that many have been waiting for. It is officially confirmed that the next step of World of Warcraft: Classic will be the release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.
There’s quite a bit of buzz around the release of the “new” expansion, though there isn’t a release date yet. Blizzard seems confident that they can get the new expansion out before the end of 2021, but they gave no time or date as to when players should expect it otherwise.
Another feature that many have been worried about is what happens to one’s characters when the new expansion drops. Many may decide that they want to keep their characters in the original Classic client without there being an interaction between them and the new expansion.
Blizzard thought of that as a result of a string of community surveys and outreaches to see what players would prefer as the next step. The solution that they’ve come up with is rather ideal – just have both!
Players will have the option of keeping their character in the Classic client rather than moving onto the Burning Crusade expansion when it’s released. Alternatively, they can move on just the same as when it was originally released, unlocking the new level cap and content as they go.
Players also will have the option of doing both, using a paid service to make a clone of their character exactly as they exist in their current form to move onto the new expansion. This will let players have their character both in the original Classic client and in the new expansion.
There hasn’t yet been a word on what the exact price of this would be, or if there’s any sort of consequence of making a clone and then moving the original on regardless. Either way, with the next step of World of Warcraft: Classic decided, fans are excited to see what comes next!
