Hight suggested that while The Burning Crusade was automatically made available to anyone with a World of Warcraft subscription, “one option would also be to get a boost” and that option “could potentially include other cool things” – effectively suggesting in some way different from the usual paid raise available in the retail version of the game.Birmingham said that, regardless of how it was achieved, it was important that getting that boost did not trivialize the achievements of Classic players so far. He said that Blizzard wants to “honor the sense of accomplishment” that players who have already reached the maximum level in Classic have had. To that end, the increase will be limited: only one on account of World of Warcraft, characters will use dungeon equipment appropriate for the level, but not superpowered, and the two new races introduced in Burning Crusade – Draenei and Blood Elves – cannot be driven.
“We know that for many people this was their entry into WoW, and we don’t want them to feel lost,” said Hight. “I think if we had the notion of an impulse back then, we would definitely have used it. When we introduced it with Warlords of Draenor, we saw a lot of people returning to WoW.”
Character augmentation is not the only classic character service added. Birmingham and Hight also worked out the process of bringing a character to Burning Crusade, or choosing to keep it in the original Classic.
Essentially, Birmingham explained, on launch day there will be two separate game clients on Battle.net: one for Burning Crusade and one for Classic. When you start one and select a character, it will ask you to confirm that it is where you want the character to be, and then you will block it. The choice is by character, so different characters can go to whatever version the players want.But what if players want to play a character in both versions? Blizzard is responsible for this and will offer a paid service (the price has not yet been announced) that will allow players to clone characters in both games.
“We want to make sure that you are making a meaningful choice, that you are really making a decision as to where you want to continue your adventures, but we know that some people prefer not to make that choice, so we are developing this new service for that,” he said. Birmingham.
Hight added, “It must be a conscious choice. If we just did it automatically, we could be creating a lot of characters that are there, but no one is really playing. It’s introducing a little bit of friction to make sure this is really what you want. to do.”
Hight added that, based on player feedback and research, he hopes that most players will want to move on to The Burning Crusade – but the Classic will be kept alive indefinitely for those who wish to stay in the community.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic and details about the 9.1 patch for Shadowlands were leaked yesterday and formally announced today at BlizzCon 2021. IGN also spoke with Hight and Birmingham about other details of the Burning Crusade Classic, including potential plans for a Wrath of the Lich King Classic will be released in the future and changes to Burning Crusade from its original version.
Rebekah Valentine is an IGN reporter. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.