Planning for Wrath of the Lich King Classic

Wrath of the Lich King Classic is coming.  It will land at some point this year.  Probably by the end of summer, if my guess is correct.

The classic comes to classic

The last time I checked there was still some interest in our regular group, a desire to go back to Northrend and face the challenges of what might be the expansion I spent the most time playing.

The question is, how shall we proceed?

Unfortunately Burning Crusade Classic didn’t hold us the way that WoW Classic did.  It turned out my memories on not being really into the Burning Crusade overland content wasn’t just a post-play rationalization.  I felt that was the second time through.

Which leaves us in a bit of a dilemma as to what we ought to do.

I guess the obvious route for us would be to buy whatever level booster that Blizzard will have for us when Wrath Classic finally launches.  We can just skip ahead past Outland like it was never a thing.

I suppose we could save the cost of a character boost with a little effort and just pick up where we left off and power through Outland if we were so inclined.

But Blizzard has come up with a third option.  They have announced that, as part of the Wrath of the Lich King experience, they will be launching some brand new fresh start servers where everybody will start anew again.  The idea is that players coming back for just Wrath might feel like they are behind the curve starting on one of the older servers.  So why not let everybody start at level one again?

Why would I even suggest this route?  If I don’t want to play through Outland, why would I want to play through classic AND Outland?

Well, there is the joy of day one on a fresh server.  And the vanilla content, I could probably do that again.  Maybe we could even swap sides and do it as Horde this time around or some such.  I’ve never done Wrath as Horde.

But when the servers go live, before the actual Wrath Classic launch, they will have the 3.x patch applied, with all the talent tree updates for Wrath along with the change in the xp needed to level up.  So it might be a nice warm up to run through vanilla and a less onerous Outland.

Of course, if we commit, we won’t be able to boost right away on that server if we decide we that we don’t want to take the full ride to Northrend.  The rules have been set:

• For at least 90 days, you will not be allowed to boost a character on Fresh Start realms.
• For at least 90 days, Fresh Start realms will not be available destinations for character transfers.
• Death Knights cannot be created on these realms without a level 55 character on that same realm.

So it will be three months before you can boost your way up.  But we can always boost on the old server if push comes to shove I suppose.

But that is all in the future.  Blizzard has a list of things they want to get done before we get to the Wrath Classic launch.  They are:

• PvE to PvP transfer restrictions removed*
• Wrath Classic closed beta test
• Classic Era clone service retired
• Existing realms consolidated**
• New Fresh Start Realms with Wrath Classic pre-patch
• Wrath of the Lich King launch

*This will include the removal of the restriction on having characters of both factions on a PvP realm.

**Before we consolidate realms, we’re going to remove the restriction on the number of characters you can create on each realm, up to the limit of 50 characters per account.

All of which I suspect will take us out to the end of summer.  Mid-August at the earliest, early September more likely.  We shall see.  Plenty of time to make plans.