Burning Crusade Classic servers will become Wrath Classic when it launches, but BCC might return in a new Season of Mastery

Back when Burning Crusade Classic rolled out, Blizzard allowed characters to either stay on a pure “Classic Era” server that stopped at level 60, or to progress to a Burning Crusade Classic server to play the new content. Currently, the servers are still divided in this way, with some people playing at level 70 on BCC servers and others still playing on Classic servers at level 60. The Season of Mastery servers allowed for people to start over at level 1 on a fresh server with faster leveling and tougher content, with all phases unlocking over the course of a year – a feature that hasn’t made it to BCC content yet.

WoW Classic Production Director Pat Dawson revealed in a recent group interview that Wrath Classic won’t roll out quite like BCC: in Wrath Classic, everyone who is currently on a BCC server will move forward to Wrath, just like it originally worked on live servers back when Wrath of the Lich King came out. He pointed out that the decision was made to help ensure a healthy community for Wrath Classic, and that the return of BCC-only servers might coincide with the introduction of a BCC Season of Mastery at some point in the future, although he didn’t have any specifics to share on that front.

I’m sure some players will be upset by this, just as some players weren’t interested in the Burning Crusade content and wanted to stay in what’s now called Classic Era, but I can also understand why Blizzard would do this. Unlike the original World of Warcraft content preserved on Classic Era servers, Outland is still available in retail World of Warcraft — it wasn’t removed from the game or heavily revamped the way Azeroth was in Cataclysm. So there’s less of a need to preserve it in the same way there is for the original game, where an entire raid — Naxxramas — just vanished. Ironically enough, Naxx moves to Northrend in Wrath and so on BCC servers you’ll soon likely see it removed from their Azeroth — so if you’re farming for an Atiesh for your raid group on BCC servers you may want to get that done before Wrath Classic launches.

Overall I think moving BCC servers to Wrath Classic works as long as that BCC Season of Mastery ends up happening, because it will give players who just plain prefer that content the chance to keep playing it while also making sure that there are enough players in the Wrath zones to keep the upcoming Dungeon Finder-less Northrend moving. And with time, perhaps we’ll even see BCC Season of Mastery servers, which themselves might transition to Wrath Season of Mastery servers in their time. Since this will likely be the last content WoW Classic ever gets — I really don’t foresee a Cataclysm Classic happening — I think an eventual Season of Mastery for it would be a useful means to help players who prefer the WoW Classic experience happy for the longest possible time.