Daily Archives: February 6, 2026

The Dark Portal Opens as The Burning Crusade Lands in Anniversary Classic

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Blizzard is preparing to take us through the dark portal for the third time… or is it more than that.  Does the alternate timeline Warlords of Draenor portal count?  I don’t know, but I feel like we’ll have jumped the Dark Portal shark when retail gets a Burning Crusade Remix to fill out the back half of yet another expansion that cannot sustain interest for two years.  This is the way.

But that is all as maybe.  What is important is that the Anniversary Classic servers are ready for The Burning Crusade expansion… though Blizz waited long enough to tell us when it would happen.  All those who have been calling Anniversary Classic a waiting room for Outland can now rejoice or eat their words.  We’ll see how it plays out.  But Blizz says the servers are up and the expansion is live.

The day has arrived

My WoW account has lapsed since the pre-patch went live three weeks back, so I couldn’t slip in and see the line up at the portal, but I was there for the first time WoW Classic went to Outland a little less than five years ago.

There is a quest giver in there somewhere

Of course, five years ago was another time, so being in that kind of crowd hit differently.

Nobody was wearing a mask either

I’ll have to see if anybody has some screen shots of the way things went this time around.  Until then I can watch the launch trailer and see what vision Blizzard has.

The hype machine is alive and working.  And you have to love the tag line, “Maybe this time you’ll be prepared!”  I mean, if you aren’t after three tries what are you even doing with your life?  Are you into it, or what?

Certainly our group ran into the expansion with great enthusiasm back in June 2021… and then had given up and unsubscribed by the end of August.  Outland was a bust for us… but it was a bust for us the first time around.  Even Carbot was posting videos about being disappointed with Outland classic and Blizzard’s handling of it… which is to say the monetization plan.  Don’t tell me Blizz isn’t trying to make classic players pay the full load with packs and boosts.

We came back more than a year later to get ready for Wrath of the Lich King Classic , using the Joyous Journys xp boost to get to level 58.  We then ended up rolling through Northrend in a big way, after which the shine was off the classic experience for us.  Cataclysm was so-so and only I bothered to poke my nose into Mists of Pandaria.

Blizz did give retail a token incentive to boost the early crowd, offering a retail decor item to those who install the client and take the plunge, so long as you do it before WoW Midnight launches.  Retail is the vision for the future, as it probably should be.  Nostalgia is a dead end eventually.

It all ends up like this eventually

Nostalgia also has a much shorter shelf life than the original experience, something Blizz hasn’t quite grasped.  If you’re diving into Outland you are in for the long haul, as Blizzard’s roadmap says you’ll be doing that for at least a year.

World of Warcraft 2026 Roadmap

Good luck and happy adventures to those now on the path to… whatever it is you get at the end of TBC.  A flying mount?  Flying, another genie that Blizz let out and then couldn’t control.

Anyway, some past thoughts of mine on the last run at Outland in classic: