After various rumors and questions, World of Warcraft Classic is now officially released, including its first expansion, The Burning Crusade Burning Crusade Classic, like the vanilla version of Classic, was released in 2007 The Burning Crusade Classic, like the vanilla Classic, will be installed on a set of servers that replicate the way World of Warcraft was played at the time.

Prior to today's announcement of Burning Crusade Classic, I spoke with Patrick Dawson, Director of Production, and Holly Longdale, Lead Producer, about the project and how it will build on the incredible success of WoW Classic. I had the opportunity to talk to them about the project and how they plan to build on the amazing success of WoW Classic. In addition to learning about some of the new features, such as the ability to purchase a one-time level boost so you can jump straight into the new expansion without having to grind to level 60, and the changes Blizzard is making to adapt the "Burning Crusade" experience to a modern audience, Much was discussed.

"The idea we wanted to do with Burning Crusade Classic, which is a little different from WoW Classic, was to make sure that "Burning Crusade stays true to the nostalgic values that it has always been for everyone, while still meeting today's How can we meet the needs of the community?" Dawson said. 'In a more savvy raid environment, people know more and build everything theoretically. Some of these big social media platforms didn't exist then. Now they do. So everyone has access to these resources on how best to play the game. We wanted to think about the changes that could happen to 'Burning Crusade.'"

Before you get too worried, Dawson says that most of these changes will be small ones that most players won't notice right away. But one of them is likely to please Classic's hardcore raiders: when a new raid is added in WoW, it's often the case that the fight is simply too difficult, and after weeks of failure, Blizzard nerfed the boss so more people would beat it to death It's a sensory experience that can be enjoyed. The Burning Crusade raid, in particular, was notorious for being far too difficult.

When WoW Classic came out, Blizzard opted to use a nerfed version of the raid. However, WoW players today are far more capable than they were in 2004, and could easily crush bosses that were a hair-raising nightmare a decade ago. So Blizzard has increased the difficulty. Originally, the raid in Burning Crusade was really difficult, so we're bringing that back in [Burning Crusade Classic], but with some modifications," Longdale explained. They did not elaborate on what they would be, but they did suggest that they might tweak the combat to make it less frustrating." Pat could say that as a mage and as a caster he did not like Meru in raid encounters because of the pushback.

It is expected that the WoW Classic raid will be given a trial run, but if it ends up being too difficult, as it was when Burning Crusade was first released, Dawson said that Blizzard "if they feel it's necessary, like they did with the actual Burning Crusade They would lower the level of difficulty.

While tougher raids are a good thing, there are other changes that will affect various players in different ways. One is that spell batching (the technical term for how the server handles abilities triggered by players) will be changed from WoW Classic, making combat more responsive like modern WoW. Another change concerns only the Paladin, which was an Alliance-only class before Burning Crusade. In the original Burning Crusade, Horde paladins and Alliance paladins could each use their own unique spells, but in hindsight, the Alliance version of that spell was quite weak. Therefore, Burning Crusade Classic allows paladins to use both spells regardless of faction.

According to Longdale, the team is also making significant changes to arena matches to make competitive PVP more accessible and exciting." Matchmaking will be improved and how teams are constructed will be improved to make it a more fun and robust experience for players, but will feel very true to the original experience," Longdale said. Said Longdale, "We want to keep the nostalgia alive, but lower the bar for play and make it more fun."

It will be interesting to see what other changes Blizzard plans to make, but everything Longdale and Dawson talked about feels like natural changes that don't necessarily compromise the authenticity of the WoW classic.

If you're wondering what's next for the WoW: Burning Crusade Classic, Blizzard has confirmed that they will be selling one-time character boosts, so anyone can join right away. However, they did not respond.