WoW Classic is finally getting new servers as Cataclysm players move to Pandaria

World of Warcraft Classic players begging for new “vanilla” servers are finally getting their wish, with new servers going live on November 21 in honor of WoW’s 20th anniversary. Meanwhile, those who play Cataclysm Classic will move on to Mists of Pandaria in 2025.

Blizzard announced the news as part of its Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, confirming in advance that the new vanilla servers (minus the new hardcore servers that are also coming) will automatically transition to The Burning Crusade Classic when the time comes. Blizzard said that just because TBC has already been confirmed doesn’t necessarily mean these new servers will continue all the way to Cataclysm (the expansion players who progressed from 2019 WoW Classic’s launch servers are currently on), but it’s tough not to do that I get a kind of deja vu.

In an interview with GameSpot, WoW Classic lead software engineer Nora Valletta and software engineer Kevin Vigue provided more details on what players starting from scratch on the new servers can expect, their thoughts on the move to Mists of Pandaria, and what the team has learned from more experimental swings like Season of Discovery.

Blizzard is using advances in server technology to have larger realms that can hold more players, but fewer realms overall for this series of new servers. In a departure from normal, there will be no dedicated role-playing or RPPvP servers as has usually been the case in the past, Valletta confirmed. Quality of life improvements such as the world buff-saving Chronoboon Displacer, faction balancing on PvP realms, and updates to make the original game’s punishing Honor PvP ranking system less onerous will be present at launch for these new servers, as will a ban (at least in North America and Europe) on the controversial practice of GDKP runs – something Blizzard first implemented in Season of Discovery. Unlike 2019, the game’s first raid, Molten Core, won’t be released for another few weeks. The new servers will additionally have a group finder tool (similar to the one that appeared in TBC, Vigue said) to help players find groups without the need for an add-on.

A recent, unpopular change where Blizzard upgraded the guild interface in WoW Classic and Season of Discovery to a more modern version will be rolled back with the rollout of the new new servers, Vigue announced. Players will instead have the option to choose between the more modern UI or the original look: a choice that Blizzard is reluctant to offer, but that it said felt right regarding guilds.

“We realized, especially when we saw the response from the community, ‘Yes, there’s something very nostalgic about the original UI and how it’s presented and what it means to the gaming experience,’” Vigue said.

Adding to the feeling that we’ve been here before is Blizzard’s announcement that the Cataclysm Classic servers will be moving to yet another “new” expansion, 2012’s Mists of Pandaria, in the summer of 2025. Players have Mists of Pandaria may have been revisited earlier this year as part of WoW’s modern Mists of Pandaria Remix event, but Valletta and Vigue said they think the two experiences are different enough to warrant another try.

Mists of Pandaria Remix used the expansion as a backdrop for players to collect exclusive cosmetics and acquire new, overwhelming abilities that could defeat even the game’s toughest bosses almost in one fell swoop, but it still played like modern WoW, all things considered. its current class design, talents, and abilities. Mists of Pandaria Classic will instead play like it did when it first launched over a decade ago. Vigue and Valletta also raised the point that each expansion was some WoW player’s entry point into the MMORPG, and thus Mists of Pandaria is their “classic” for some people. It’s an expansion that may have been underrated in its time, but one that players now have fond memories of.

“I think the fact that MoP Remix was so well received shows how much people love Pandaria as a continent and as an extension,” Vigue said.

As for the currently ongoing WoW Classic Season of Discovery, Blizzard’s more experimental version of the original WoW released in late 2023, there is still some new content on the way. The Naxxramas update for the game will be released later this winter. In addition to Vanilla WoW’s latest raid, it will add new “instanced” content in the form of a new encounter against the Scarlet Crusade and the Karazhan Crypts, which Blizzard originally teased when it first announced Season of Discovery at BlizzCon 2023. Vigue and Valletta declined to say whether the new content will be in the form of raids, dungeons or a combination of both, saying players will have to ‘discover’ what awaits them for themselves.

Vigue and Valletta also wouldn’t comment on what might happen after Season of Discovery — the “team is always cooking,” Valletta said — but did say they’ve learned a lot from the season server in terms of creating new content for a 20 year old game while still trying to maintain the original feel.

“We have found Season of Discovery to be incredibly successful,” said Valletta. “I think part of what made it successful is that the feeling of… (the new content) is very down-to-earth. They weren’t huge, universe-ending world threats. It’s you, as that character in that world …You’re not some great champion hero that everyone knows and everything revolves around you, right?

All the WoW Classic news was just part of the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct. Blizzard also launched new remastered versions of Warcraft 1 and 2, announced a StarCraft mini-set for Hearthstone, and more.