With Burning Crusade Classic^™, players will be provided a choice of taking their characters beyond Azeroth and through the Dark Portal into Outland or staying in Azeroth—for all time. During the World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic Deep Dive panel at BlizzConline, lead producer Holly Longdale, production director Patrick Dawson, and lead software engineer Brian Birmingham discussed what players could expect when the Burning Crusade Classic releases in 2021.

Where Will Your Adventures Take you?

With the release of the Burning Crusade Classic pre-expansion patch, players will be presented with a choice for each of their existing WoW Classic characters: to progress to the Burning Crusade era along with the rest of the Horde and Alliance heroes on their realm, or to continue adventuring in the original WoW Classic content on all-new “Classic Era” servers.

Once the pre-expansion patch has gone live, players will see a choice of WoW Classic or Burning Crusade Classic within the Battle.net desktop app.  WoW Classic will direct you to the new Classic Era realms which will have the latest phase of WoW Classic content in it and will not progress into any WoW expansion content.  Burning Crusade Classic realms will contain all the new Burning Crusade game systems including the blood elf and draenei races which will become available with the pre-expansion patch release.

You’ll need to make a choice of which game type you’d like to play each of your available characters on. The first time a player tries to log in with a character in either client, they will be asked to confirm that they want to activate the character in that game. Once players choose where they want to play, the clone of that character on the other client will be unavailable for play unless the player chooses to “clone” their character with an optional paid service.

Players who want to experience the best of both worlds will have the option to  unlock both “clones” of each WoW Classic character as an optional paid service, allowing each hero to venture forth into Burning Crusade Classic while their Classic Era character continues their original adventure. Clones are created from a snapshot just prior to the Burning Crusade Classic pre-expansion patch and will not include any additional progress from that point on. This means that if you continue to play your WoW Classic character for some months after and unlock the clone at a later date, it will not include any additional progress past the point of the original capture of your character.

What Happens with Realms?

Here’s how it works….  Existing realms will patch with the new Burning Crusade Classic content. If you choose to experience all of the new content, everything for your character remains the same including your realm, guild, and more — but you’ll have access to the Burning Crusade Classic and all the updates that come with it.

If you choose to have a character remain in WoW Classic, it will be available to play on a new Classic Era realm. These new realms are available as a new game client in the Battle.net desktop app.  Friends from your original realm who also choose to play on the Classic Era realm will join you on the same realm. Your friends list will continue to be available no matter where you end up.

Realm names will remain the same for both Burning Crusade Classic and Classic Era realms and player characters will exist as they are before the pre-expansion patch on both era types.

Breaking it all Down

To simplify the process, here’s a quick rundown of everything you need to know:

1. On patch day, you’ll be able to open the Battle.net desktop app and choose which game you want to play—Burning Crusade Classic or WoW Classic.
2. Your existing characters will show on both game types under your old realm name/s.
3. Once you’ve chosen a game to play, you’ll select a character to play and confirm your choice.
4. If you decide you’d like to play your character in both game types, you’ll be able to use an optional paid service to gain access to the cloned character in both game types.
5. Then all you need to do is log in as you normally would and play.

More to Come…

Further details on each realm type and the available options for characters will be provided at a later date as we move closer to the Burning Crusade Classic launch. Stay tuned here, on the official World of Warcraft site to learn more.