Fresh WoW Classic realms go live November 21 and will lead into The Burning Crusade Classic

During the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct event, Blizzard announced World of Warcraft Classic will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game by launching fresh PVE, PVP, and Hardcore realms on Thursday November 21 at 2pm pacific time! These anniversary realms will mirror the 2019 WoW Classic launch and release all of the Classic phases in order through 2025 for each of the realms, including Hardcore.

When anniversary realms launch on November 21, there will be only one realm of each type — PVE, PVP, and Hardcore. This way, players can choose whichever ruleset they want to play under without having to worry about the size or health of any given realm or server. Players will not be able to utilize character transfers on anniversary realms, except when going from Hardcore to a Normal realm, and the same PVP faction balance system that was employed in Season Discovery will be used to on anniversary realms to ensure similar player populations. If one side becomes too populous, character creation for that faction will be halted until balance is restored. More realms may be added in the future depending on player demand but Blizzard’s goal is to keep the number of realms for each type to as few as possible.

The Classic team stated their goal is to preserve the spirit of what makes WoW Classic special but will implement noticeable, quality-of-life and gameplay changes immediately on anniversary realms that weren’t immediately available during the first run through of WoW Classic in 2019 or were added over time in later Classic expansions. These changes include:

• Solo self-found (Hardcore only)
• Reporting system improvements
• Dethroning system for transferring guild leadership
• Adding the Chronoboon displacer
• Improved PVP Honor rankings
• Graphical improvements
• The choice of a Classic or updated guild user-interface
• New Looking-For-Group (LFG) tool
• Services channel for players to advertise their in-game skills

A 2025 WoW Classic roadmap showing during the Warcraft Direct stream revealed Classic anniversary realm types will follow the same 6 phase content rollout at launch through 2025. The PVE and PVP Classic anniversary realms will then progress into The Burning Crusade Classic around the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026, while the anniversary Hardcore realms will remain as Classic only realms. Right now, it looks like each phase should last about 2 months:

• November 21, 2024 — Launch
• December 12, 2024 — Phase 1: Molten Core and Onyxia
• Winter 2025 — Phase 2: Honor system, PVP rankings, world bosses, Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch battlegrounds
• Spring 2025 — Phase 3: Blackwing Lair and Darkmoon Faire
• Summer 2025 — Phase 4: Zul’Gurub and Arathi Basin battleground
• Fall 2025 — Phase 5: Ahn’Qiraj
• Fall/Winter 2025 — Phase 6: Naxxramas

This is an early look at WoW Classic’s fresh anniversary realms, more will be revealed as the realms go live and we’ll keep you updated on everything we learn!