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When WoW: Classic launched in 2019, I held off. I’ve already experienced vanilla WoW once; The nostalgia of revisiting the early days of Azeroth didn’t feel like it was worth losing the modernizations WoW has gained since then. But eventually I started to like the idea more and realized that WoW: Classic had gone through three expansions; this meant that Azeroth was once again inaccessible in its current form at launch.

Luckily, Blizzard is about to reset the WoW: Classic clock once again. Announced during today’s Warcraft 30th Anniversary livestream, Blizzard will soon release WoW: Classic 20th Anniversary Edition; a set of “all-new, fresh” Classic realms that give players a fresh start and a level playing field for a new run through WoW’s early years. .

“We’re bringing you the classic Classic experience,” said WoW: Classic co-production director Clayton Stone.

The new Classic realms will open in just one week, on November 21st. In addition to the standard PvE and PvP servers, hardcore realms will also be available from the jump. Online characters have a life in a realm of hardcore; If you get killed, all you can do is chat as a permanent ghost until you get a free character transfer to a standard world.

New realms won’t have to wait for some of the quality-of-life improvements Blizzard has added to WoW: Classic since its launch in 2019. Players will have immediate access to features such as the renewed WoW: Classic. PvP honor ranking system and the Chronoboon Displacer, which lets you keep the world buffs you get when someone earns money on a raid completion mission so you can use them when they’re most useful.

Raids won’t start unlocking in new lands until a few weeks after launch, allowing players to spend time in old Azeroth without feeling pressured to level up power and gear. After Molten Core and Onyxia raids launch sometime this winter, a tentative development roadmap has the new realms progressing through the entirety of vanilla WoW’s raid and event additions by next spring. At this point, new lands (except the Hardcore region) will enter the Burning Crusade expansion. Once again, we are not prepared.

New WoW: Classic 20th Anniversary areas open on November 21.