WoW Gold News
Blizzconline has just wrapped up and there is a ton of new information for WoW Classic fans! Because this information is spread out across so many different deep dive panels, Blizzard Developer Q&A's,
and other publications, we've done our best to compile all the information in one place!
Five Phases of TBC Classic
The BlizzConline Deep Dive panel just announced that The Burning Crusade Classic will have phases similar to World of Warcraft: Classic! They found that players liked the phase by phase progression,
and so there are currently five phases and four Arena seasons planned for The Burning Crusade, starting with Karazhan and ending with the Sunwell.
The five phases of TBC Classic will be as follows:
Phase 1 will start with the original eight dungeons, along with the Karazhan, Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon's Lair raids.
Phase 2 will move into Serpent Shrine Cavern and Tempest Keep.
Phase 3 will start the Battle for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple raids - this is a departure, as originally Hyjal was available from the start, but nobody could get in there anyway.
Phase 4 will release Zul'Aman.
Phase 5 will release the isle of Quel'Danas, Magister's Terrace, the Sunwell raid.
Update: at the World of Warcraft Q&A we learned that Blizzard is reconsidering the start of arena seasons in TBC. While originally Arena seasons were meant to start in Phase 2, Blizzard is now considering:
Phase 1 for Arena Season 1
Phase 2 for Arena Season 2
Phase 3 for Arena Season 3
Phase 4 - no new Arena Season
Phase 5 for Arena Season 4
Choose your character's future
This is one of the most important decisions Blizzard landed on for how Burning Crusade Classic will roll out. In the Developer Q&A panel at Blizzconline, Developers explained that the moment the Pre-Patch drops on Classic WoW realms, a "snapshot" of every realm and character will take place, freezing everything in place.
When the servers come back up online for the Pre-Patch event, after the snapshot, players will log in and be granted a choice. They can choose one of the following:
Stay on their current realm and change nothing. The realm will progress into the Pre-Patch and eventually Burning Crusade, business as usual.
Transfer off of their current realm to a "Classic Era Realm", which will always be on Phase 6 Naxxramas Patch on Classic. This means they will not be able to play in Burning Crusade.
Players can pay a fee, of which we do not know the amount, to have their character cloned to the Classic Era Realm and stay on the Pre-Patch realm, having a character on both Classic Era and Burning Crusade.
Classic Character Clones: You Can Snapshot Classic Characters to Classic Burning Crusade Realms
In addition to these transfer and cloning options, Blizzard did explain that there will be no limit on the amount of gold players can bring over to The Burning Crusade. While this might seem like a sticky situation for the game's economy, there really isn't any good way to fix this issue. Even if you were to limit the amount of gold players could bring over, it won't stop automated players from farming up insane amounts of gold again.
The only clear way to fix the economy in Classic WoW and eventually Burning Crusade Classic is to crack down hard on botting. Because no matter what Blizzard does, the bots will always win.
Choose Your Era – Prior to Burning Crusade Classic’s release, WoW Classic players can decide whether to advance each of their characters to the Burning Crusade era with the rest of their realm, or to continue playing the original WoW Classic content on new Classic Era servers.
Draenei and Blood Elves during Pre-Patch
In a fantastic choice by Blizzard, they will allow players to create Draenei and Blood Elves during the Pre-Patch event,
giving players plenty of time to level their new Shamans and Paladins before the Dark Portal opens!
This is going to be a great quality of life change from the original Burning Crusade for any Shamans and Paladins on their specific faction. Back then, players couldn't make Draenei or Blood Elves until the Dark Portal was already open, meaning their friends and guild mates were already in the Outlands while they were still running around the Barrens.
Level 58 Boost
In a somewhat controversial decision, Blizzard will allow players to pay a fee, of which we do not know the amount, granted character boosts to level 58. It does come with some restrictions however --
Can only be used on Burning Crusade realms, not on Classic Era.
Can not be used for Draenei or Blood Elves.
Only one per account.
Arena upgrades
Talking about #SomeChanges, this one is kind of a big deal for the PvP community. Back in the original Burning Crusade, arena teams could only hold that teams amount of players, meaning a 2v2 team could only have 2 players on it, a 3v3 team could only have 3, and 5v5 teams held 5. One of the design flaws with this is if a player can't login one night, that team just won't be able to play. Blizzard said they are going to expand the number of players per team to be double that team's amount. 2's team holding 4 players, 3's teams holding 6, and 5's teams holding 10.
On top of this, Blizzard also revealed their won't be Battlegroups, which was actually just a hardware flaw back in the original Burning Crusade. Now, it'll be region wide, everyone versus everyone in the arena. But a new problem will arise, how to handle Rank 1 titles. Blizzard has states they'll probably be going with a percentage based system to reward the highest ranked teams. Hopefully we get ranked leaderboards back as well!
Looking for Group upgrades
If you weren't aware, the Looking for Group tool was in the original Burning Crusade. It wasn't as fleshed out as the "Dungeon Finder" tool in modern WoW, but it was definitely there to allow for groups to form for dungeons and raids. Blizzard touched on this topic, explaining that they would be considering an update to this interface, "modernizing" it and making it a more functional tool, but not allowing for automated group formation.
Kindly Reminder:Possible account termination when using illegal leveling or illegally obtained gold.