World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Collectors Edition Announced

In addition to the WoW Classic launch date being announced there was also a news item about a World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition.

WoW at Fifteen

While the box won’t be available until early October, you can pre-order it today for $100, because of course you can.  And when I say box, I mean box, as this appears to be focused on physical items.

Things you get

The list of items for the CE are:

• Ragnaros Statue
  Behold Ragnaros, he who is ancient when this world was young! Bow, mortals, before this 10+ inch immortalization of the Firelord himself.
• Onyxia Pin
  Add to your pin collection and adorn your home with the head of Onyxia, Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight.
• Map of Azeroth Mouse Pad
  Gaze upon the realms your character has explored these past 15 years while you prepare for the next adventure.
• Fine Art Prints
  Reach into Azeroth’s vivid past with eight frameable fine art prints.
• 30 Days of Game Time
  Extend your stay in Azeroth with 30 days of game time to aid you on your next adventure.
• Alabaster Mounts
  Take to the skies with these majestic alabaster mounts—living stone tributes to a pair of familiar flying creatures.
  • Alabaster Stormtalon for Alliance characters
  • Alabaster Thunderwing for Horde characters

While I am fond of collector’s editions for WoW (I regret not getting the original one) I am not really big on physical items, save for maybe the sound track.  At my age I am already carrying too much baggage when it comes to little nick nacks and dust collectors, so a ten inch tall Ragnaros doesn’t thrill me.

The mounts… maybe.  I’d prefer battle pets, but mounts are still good.

The Anniversary Mounts

But Blizz has me covered.  If I want just the mounts, they will be available on their own in the Blizzard shop in August.  If you buy them there then buy the CE you will get a $25 credit in the Blizzard store to cover the overlap.

And if you don’t want to spend any money on this, Blizz has plans for in-game anniversary gifts for the 15th anniversary for all subscribers.  We’ll get both a mount and a pet.  Blizz had put up a video of them.

So, in addition to WoW Classic, we have some things to look forward to later this year.

 

WoW Classic Coming August 27th

The announcement has finally hit, we now know the date for WoW Classic.

Classic is as Classic does

I thought that given the spotty reception that the Battle for Azeroth expansion was getting would get Blizzard to reel in the launch closer to June.  But Blizzard will move at its own pace, so late August it is.  One more of my predictions proven wrong.  Two, actually.  Par for the course.

There are, of course, lots of details as to what classic really means.  People have been following the announcements and compiling lists to keep track of what is in and out.  I watch the one in the forums and the one on Reddit when I want to see where things stand.

We know it will be based on WoW version 1.12, which has already made some people scream “That’s not classic classic!” or some such.  There is no way to please everybody on this.

There will also be the six phases of raiding unlocked over time, though we do not have and sort of unlock schedule or plan as yet.

Recently it was announced that your character count on WoW Classic will be separate from your main WoW character count.  If you have used up all 50 character slots in WoW you will still get 50 in WoW Classic, limited to 10 characters per server.

There is also a list of things that were not in classic that will be in WoW Classic.  From the forum post list:

• The client will not run on 32-bit systems.
• Accessibility options such as colorblind will be present, though modified to fit Classic.
• Widescreen monitors are now fully supported.
• Right-clicking on a player to report them has been enabled.
• The modern engine no longer permits certain behaviors that could be used to get out of bounds.
• Battle.net chat will be integrated into Classic.
• Loot Trading will be introduced to Classic, allowing players to trade Bind on Pickup items to other players who participated in the same kill for up to 2 hours after the loot dropped, and assuming the item was not equipped.

The lack of support for 32-bit surprises me.  Does normal WoW not support 32-bit still?  I don’t get that, but there it is.  The loot trading thing caused a fuss a while back, but it is one of those things that solved a headache for Blizz as people would petition on accidental looting, so this just keeps that being a problem yet again.

And there are, of course, the things Blizz has said will not be in WoW Classic.

• LFR/LFD
• Cross realms
• Races after Vanilla
• Any content beyond Vanilla (as of right now)
• Transmog
• Achievements
• Progressive itemization

I don’t think any of those are controversial.

I expect that WoW Classic will be a big success at launch and that among the things from classic we will be reliving, server queues will be one of them.

If you cannot wait for August the beta for WoW Classic is launching tomorrow.  You can opt in for it with your account where you opt in for all betas.

Now I am just waiting for the “When do we get The Burning Crusade classic servers?” question to start pouring in.  Oh wait, I think it already has.