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A new start for World of Warcraft Classic was announced recently in an official blog post. Set to launch November 21 at 2:00 p.m. PST during the Warcraft 30th anniversary celebration, each region will receive one realm of each type - Normal (PvE), PvP, and Hardcore - following January's Season of Discovery format.
The Classic relaunch brings new quality-of-life features: an in-game Looking for Group (LFG) tool for manual party creation, a dedicated Services chat channel for portals and buffs, and options to toggle between Classic and modern guild interfaces.
To support the "journey-focused" nature of Classic, the initial raid content will release several weeks after launch. Players can expect Molten Core and Onyxia to open on December 12 PST, providing time to level and gear characters without rushing to endgame content.
"In Season of Discovery, we implemented enforced faction balance on all PvP realms. The results have been overwhelmingly successful, and feedback on this system has been positive," the announcement stated. This balance system will continue, automatically pausing character creation for whichever faction becomes overpopulated.
Both PvE and PvP realms will progress to Burning Crusade Classic after completing the vanilla content phases. Hardcore realms, which feature permanent character death, will remain in the Classic era and maintain their strict ruleset, including disabled Paladin bubble-hearthing and Warlock soulstones.
"While we understand that there are some benefits for those who find this a convenient way to gain gear, we also recognize that there are concerns surrounding GDKP eroding traditional guild and social structures that are a part of the spirit of the game," the announcement explained. As the result of this, gold dragon kill point (GDKP) runs will be banned on North American and European servers, while other regions will maintain their current policies.
"We expect some queuing, as we will gradually increase realm capacity caps in real time to fit the number of players logging in," the announcement noted regarding the first hours of launch.
