World of Warcraft Classic first launched in August of 2019, and players have had a blast reliving this blast from the past. Now that the game is on the latter half of its original content release schedule, with Phase 5 of 6 launching at the end of this month, it is the perfect time to look ahead to the future of Classic with the inevitable release of re-release of The Burning Crusade.
Blizzard Asks Players How They Want Characters Handled
Although Blizzard has not made a formal announcement for The Burning Crusade Classic, for around three months now they have sent players email surveys asking how such an expansion would be rolled out. As we can see in the image below, Blizzard is vetting four options, including starting new characters on The Burning Crusade servers at level 1, or 58, transitioning the servers from Classic to The Burning Crusade, or staying put.
The main take away from this survey is that Blizzard is interested in seeing how much of the population wants to move onto The Burning Crusade, and who wants to stay on Classic. It may seem like the obvious answer is that The Burning Crusade would be the most obvious choice, but we need to remember that some of the most die-hard fans of the game have been waiting well over a decade to re-experience Classic, and they may not be in any hurry to leave. This is why two of the questions in the survey present the idea of being able to remain on a Classic server at level 60.
This will not be an easy problem for Blizzard to solve, because if too many players leave for The Burning Crusade, those who wish to remain in Classic, even if transferred to only a few servers, might find the populations too low to sustain an economy, at least with an semblance to what we have now.
Can The Servers Keep Up With The Dark Portal?
When Classic first launched, players faced massive queue times and server crashes as everyone packed into several starting zones. What is going to happen when every single player on both Alliance and Horde try to load into Hellfire Peninsula? Given how the launch of Classic went, it would come as no surprise to see the servers crash when The Burning Crusade launches, much like it did back in 2007.
Putting aside for a moment the idea that the servers cannot handle everyone loading in at once, there is also the issue relating to having so many players in the somewhat limited space of Outland, as it is much smaller than the original map in Classic, and players will be fighting over more resources and quest mobs. The obvious solution would be to implement heavy layering, but that is now and has always been a method disliked by most of the community, taking away the genuine feel of the original game, and easy to exploit.
Still, Blizzard would need to figure something out. One of the most interesting things about Classic is that Blizzard says that servers of medium population today have around four times as many players as the busiest servers from back in 2004, so the demand is clearly there.
Rise of the Horde Paladin And Alliance Shaman
Without getting into the massive shift in raid composition meta from Classic to The Burning Crusade, which we will cover in another article, players can expect to see Blood Elf Paladins and Draenei Shamans everywhere and rather soon into the expansion content with guilds boosting the “new” class to get their precious raid buff utility. Now that each faction has access to all available classes, we will no longer see the unique raid compositions used by Alliance or Horde, though this was also the case during the original release of the game as well.
While we can speculate about ideal raid compositions in The Burning Crusade, this will largely depend on what patch of the expansion players receive. The early Heroic dungeons and raids were exceedingly difficult and finely tuned compared to Classic, so while right now guilds can bring basically whichever classes they want to clear raids, The Burning Crusade may require far more min/maxing to achieve the same results.
Jewelcrafting And The Curse Of Knowledge
How Blizzard decides to roll out The Burning Crusade also needs to consider the aggressive way that players treat the economy compared to the original game. With the knowledge of exactly what items are needed in Classic by top guilds during every Phase, players have dominated the economy in ways that have not always been healthy for casual players, such as with the Black Lotus Mafia, which readers can click here to learn about.
The Burning Crusade would be no different. For example, we already know that Jewelcrafting will be the “new” profession added to the game, and in preparation, players are already stock piling ore to max out the skill in little time and sell in the Auction House. Unlike the original game, players will enter the The Burning Crusade with huge amounts, and this may be one reason that Blizzard is considering making players start new characters at level 1 or 58 on new servers, armed with all the information they need about what to do in the endgame, but with the playing field more even for casual or newer players who are only starting with the next expansion.
Pure Speculation, But Lots Of Excitement
For now, everything is pure speculation until Blizzard formally states that The Burning Crusade is happening, and we are left to wonder if the now-cancelled BlizzCon was going to serve as the place the make that announcement, much like Classic was first announced. However, given the success of Classic, we have no doubt that Alliance and Horde players will be charging through the Dark Portal in the near future.
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