Blizzard announces Mists of Pandaria Classic will release summer 2025

The WoW Classic train continued to roll during the Warcraft Direct stream as Blizzard announced Mists of Pandaria Classic will release summer 2025.  The choice to continue with Cataclysm as a Classic experience — a divergence point for the original World of Warcraft that massively overhauled everything in the game from the zone layouts to quest chains and player progression — was a clear indicator that Mists of Pandaria Classic would eventually arrive. Changing the world just to not continue doesn’t make sense. Much like the previous Classic expansions, we can expect the Cataclysm Classic realms to turn into Mists of Pandaria Classic realms sometime before release next summer.

We did a get a nice Mists of Pandaria teaser video during the Direct stream but perhaps more importantly, we also received a new 2025 roadmap detailing everything coming to all of the Classic servers and realms, including Mists of Pandaria Classic!

Summer 2025 is a vague time frame but we did get a snapshot of the roadmaps for all versions of WoW Classic through the 2025 calendar year. Mists of Pandaria Classic pre-patch which covers Theramore’s Fall and brings playable Pandaren and Monk classes is squarely in the summer block while the Mists of Pandaria Classic launch falls in the autumn/summer window of the roadmap. Pre-patches usually run for about 3-4 weeks so this places the expansion launch around the end of July or beginning of August. The roadmap for Mists of Pandaria Classic goes dark after launch, leaving us to guess what the future cadence for content will be. Cataclysm Classic did experience delays that pushed the release of some phases beyond their originally announced date so this could have had an effect on how Mists of Pandaria Classic content will be pushed out.

The release of Mists of Pandaria Classic also comes about one calendar year after the WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria limited-time event that brought players back to an altered version of Pandaria for about 3 months. A lot of the feedback around this event was positive because players were able to experience the Pandaria stories and zones with crazy abilities, purchasable transmog options, and levelling for new characters. Even though those features won’t be available, it might be safe to say that WoW Remix primed players for the chance to re-experience the Classic incarnation of Mists of Pandaria next summer!