The Burning Crusade Classic Pre-Patch Arrives

At some point in the wee hours yesterday Blizzard finished up the database migration to split WoW Classic from Burning Crusade Classic, with the final downtime estimates running until 1am Pacific, 10 hours past the 3pm Pacific initially projected.  I was a bit bummed I couldn’t play that night, but things happen.  By the time I was able to take a look yesterday though, the servers were up and and ready.  It was go time for the pre-patch.

Through the Dark Portal… soon

The launcher now has a split between WoW Classic and Burning Crusade Classic.

Mu current options

In an odd twist… or an indication of where Blizz thinks people are likely to head… Burning Crusade Classic takes over the directory in your WoW directory while WoW Classic requires an install if you want to play or carry on there.

Again you mean?

That’s okay, since I plan to proceed directly to Outland when available, though I am also a bit nervous about clicking that install button since right now everything is still in the “classic” directory, though I am sure Blizz thought that one through and will do the right thing if I do install.  I’ll just let somebody else try it first.

Once in, all of my characters were on the list with “Choose Expansion” legend under their names.

My main characters

Clicking on one of them brought up an alert… it was time to make the big choice.

Will you choose wisely?

I was destined for Burning Crusade, so chose that.  But if I had wanted to stick with vanilla I would have had to quit, install WoW Classic, log in, and make my selection there.  That makes sense, but I bet somebody will get messed up and do the wrong thing.  It can’t be helped.

And, after that, I was in the game.

I got a warning about my addons, which I ignored, but Auctioneer specifically refused to load as it is keyed to the version number, and 2.5.1 isn’t a version it recognizes.

Auctioneer Balks

I am kind of wondering how CurseForge is going to handle the addon updates.  Since everything is still in the “classic” directory, it might thing everything is fine.  I suppose they’ll catch up at some point, but my few addons will likely all need some sort of update.

Once in the game I was greeted by the need to apply my talent points to the new specs.  I’ll have to go read up on them… I have long since forgotten everything about them… but both my hunter and pally look to have benefited from the new expansion.

Blizzard also put the new services up on the Battle.net store site.

Transfers and clones

And then there are the extras, the Dark Portal Pass and the Deluxe edition.

For those who want extra

The Dark Portal Pass gets you a boost to level 58, some gear, some skills already skilled up, bags, the basic riding skill, a mount, and a bit of gold.

The Deluxe edition adds two special mounts, one for the classic era and one for your retail character, a pet, and a few other goodies, on top of everything the Dark Portal Pass offers.

I cannot see myself being tempted by either.  I have a few characters ready for Outland and, even if I wanted one of the new races, the level boost cannot be used on them.  So it goes.

And the countdown to the opening of the Dark Portal begins.  Since we, as a group, were only around level 40 when The Burning Crusade launched initially, we missed out on the events that build up to the opening.  It might be time to give that a look and add something to our ongoing classic experience.