Blizzard announced today that "World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic" will finally be released on June 1, but it's not all good news for the community. Along with the release announcement, Blizzard also revealed the price of the Deluxe Edition and new account services, including a one-time character level increase, but many players are upset about the high price.

Before we get to the meat of the matter, it is important to note that the World of Warcraft Classic is a free addition to a regular WoW subscription. It emulates an MMO from 2006, but because MMOs tend to evolve and grow over time, players get tired of defeating the same raid bosses and want more. That's where Burning Crusade Classic comes in, bringing back the first expansion of World of Warcraft as it was back in the day, giving WoW Classic players a whole new continent to explore, more levels, and a host of exciting changes like the Flying Mount Burning Crusade Classic is also included in the regular WoW subscription.

What has players upset, however, is the price of the optional account service that many will want to take advantage of with Burning Crusade. Most controversial is the $35 fee to clone a character to play on both WoW Classic and Burning Crusade servers; a patch scheduled for May 18 will introduce some of the expansions early (Blood Elves and Dranei, etc.) that will allow you to play as Dranei. After the patch is released, all WoW Classic players will be faced with a permanent choice: advance their character to the Burning Crusade or keep that character within the original WoW Classic version.

Players who advance to Burning Crusade will stay on the same server and enjoy the new features and areas to explore that will be launched in the coming weeks. Those who choose to stay will be moved to a new server that will remain classic with a level cap of 60 and no new features added. While this may seem like an obvious choice, many players prefer the Classic version of Warcraft, which has not been affected by the expansion. That is what WoW Classic was about in the first place.

That's where the $35 clone fee comes in. If you want the best of both worlds, you can pay to clone one character to both servers. This will create a version to play on the Burning Crusade Classic server and a version to play on the regular WoW Classic server, a process similar to playing on WoW's beta servers, from the live server to the beta server. Existing characters can be cloned from the live server to the beta server in a similar process to playing on a WoW beta server.

"$35 to keep a copy of your character on the Classic server, you've got to be kidding!" Some commented.

"This is a shameless cash grab for a service that should have been offered for free with the release of Classic BC.

The reason players are complaining is simple: account services in World of Warcraft are annoyingly expensive compared to other MMOs. Furthermore, by forcing players to pay to play the same character on both Burning Crusade and the regular WoW Classic servers, they arbitrarily divide the community and pressure the majority to follow Burning Crusade. Otherwise, they risk being left behind on the ghost town Classic servers. One Redditor said, "It's practically killing the Classic Vanilla population." Absolutely insane pricing."

"Unfortunately, Classic-only players are really going to be sacrificed," wrote another player. "Most people I know were on the fence about cloning, and at $35 they certainly won't do it."

Players also criticized the price of the deluxe edition. The deluxe edition costs a hefty $70, but only includes some cosmetics, character leveling, and one month of game time. This is more than the price of the special edition of the expanded Shadowlands, which includes access to Shadowlands itself (worth $40). As one Wowhead user writes: " Standalone games aren't sub-based."

None of these purchases are mandatory. Players can jump into Burning Crusade Classic for $15 a month and have fun, but feel manipulated when presented with big choices with permanent consequences that can be avoided by paying big bucks. A few months ago, I wrote about how angry I was that I had to pay $25 to transfer my WoW character to another server; Blizzard employees don't copy and paste character data by hand, they do it for you.

As a long-time WoW player who has probably spent thousands of dollars on subscription fees and expansions over the years, this sucks. But this is a strategy that is clearly working: even though Blizzard has lost about 30% of its 3-year-old player base, its revenue is up 7%. But even though Blizzard has lost about 30% of its 3-year-old players, revenues are up 7%; for those who are angry about the optional fees associated with the Burning Crusade Classic, it is doubtful that this is useful news: "Blizzard has lost about 30% of its 3-year-old players, yet revenues are up 7%.