World of Warcraft Classic players begging for fresh “vanilla” servers are finally getting their wish, with new servers set to go live on November 21 in celebration of WoW’s 20th anniversary. Meanwhile, those playing Cataclysm Classic will progress on to Mists of Pandaria in 2025.
Blizzard announced the news as part of its Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, along the way confirming in advance the new vanilla servers (minus the fresh Hardcore servers that are also coming) will automatically progress to The Burning Crusade Classic when the time comes. Blizzard said that just because TBC is already confirmed doesn’t necessarily mean these new servers will keep moving forward all the way to Cataclysm (the expansion players who have kept progressing from WoW Classic’s 2019 launch servers are currently on), but it’s hard not to get some sense of deja vu.
In an interview with GameSpot, WoW Classic lead software engineer Nora Valletta and software engineer Kevin Vigue offered more details on what players starting from scratch on the fresh servers can expect, their thoughts on moving on to Mists of Pandaria, and what the team has learned from more experimental swings like Season of Discovery.