With the pre-patch date announcement here, we now also have the PTR development notes for the Burning Crusade Classic, and Blizzard are making some new changes to both it and Classic Era!
First of all, Classic Era will be getting the Group Finder and dual spec options! The features are coming “soon” and Blizzard explain that much thought has been put into adding them. TBC itself is also getting some changes. Dungeon and raid attunement will be easier for alts, as you will be able to unlock any instance you’ve attuned on your main. There are also Arena changes and more below.
The PTR itself is coming later this week.
Welcome to the Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary public test realm (PTR).
The PTR will open soon this week.
This first 2.5.5 patch unlocks Outland and allows testers to reach level 70. For this PTR, in addition to all of the content in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, Outland will be available.
The following changes are coming to the Burning Crusade Classic patch 2.5.5, and are planned for testing in the PTR.
General
- Heroism/Bloodlust is now raid-wide with a 10-minute Sated/Exhaustion debuff.
- This specific ability/debuff will only to reset on boss kill and wipe.
- Terocone’s respawn rate is increased and additional Terocone nodes have been added.
- Edit Mode added as a quality-of-life option for players’ user interfaces.
Heroic Dungeons
Every player’s first character will be required to become fully attuned (hitting Revered reputation level), but upon doing so for each dungeon, players can then purchase a Bag which contains a Bind-on-Battle.net-Account key to send to alts.
Alts must reach at least the Friendly reputation level to use the key and grant attunement to that character.
Raids
Every player’s first character will be required to become fully attuned for each Raid, but upon doing so, that raid will be unlocked for all characters on the player’s Battle.net account.
Raids will be released in their post-nerf state.
Arenas
During the original Burning Crusade expansion, it felt good to make a team that started at 1500 and throw together some people to participate in 10 games, to receive points each week without having to climb back up from 0. With BCC Anniversary Edition, we’re interested in bringing that “teams” feeling back by encouraging players to participate in the system more than ever before. However, as we lean into the feeling of teams, we want you to be able to play with whomever you like, without requiring you to make a team, so arena points earned are still based on your individual rating.
- Each character’s rating now starts at 1500 instead of 0.
- Once per week, per character, you can pay gold to reset your rating back to 1500.
- This is only possible if you are below 1500 currently. Ratings above 1500 cannot be reset.
- The gold will vary based on your team’s bracket.
- Each bracket (2v2, 3v3, 5v5) has its own weekly reset.
- There are no requirements in order to be able to purchase PvP gear for any pieces, except Shoulders (2000 required rating) and Weapons (1700 required rating).
- We want to maintain the prestige of earning some nice-looking shoulders or titles for those competing for the top spots, but overall we’d like to make gearing up and participating in PvP more accessible at an entry level, particularly for players who might struggle to reach higher brackets.
- The overall cost of PvP gear has been lowered slightly.
- The Faction Reputation PvP Gear will now be sold starting with the first Arena Season.
- The item set bonuses for each of the Faction Reputation PvP Gear sets have been combined with their Honor gear equivalents (Grand Marshal’s/High Warlord’s). This means that players can get a mix of Honor and Reputation pieces to unlock the two- and four-piece set bonuses.
Realm-Type Transfers and Feature Updates
For those Classic Anniversary players who prefer their characters not continue to Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary, free character transfers from Anniversary Realms to Classic Era realms will be for a limited time starting November 25. This option to move Classic Anniversary characters to Classic Era realms will close on January 12, 2026.
After January 12, 2026, players will no longer be able to move their Classic Anniversary characters to Classic Era realms, and characters remaining on Classic Anniversary realms will continue to Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary.
Anniversary Hardcore Realms
As there are no Burning Crusade Hardcore realms, during the transfer window, players with characters on Anniversary Hardcore realms will have the option to transfer their characters to Normal (non-Hardcore) Anniversary realms, so that those characters will continue to Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary.
Players who do not move their Anniversary Hardcore characters to Normal Anniversary realms before January 12, 2026 will stay on their current realms, and the transfer destinations available to these characters will change to non-Hardcore Classic Era realm destinations. This means that an Anniversary Hardcore character who meets their untimely end will be able to transfer to a Classic Era realm and return to the living.
Classic Era
When making your decision to transfer, please consider that the Group Finder tool and the Dual Spec feature will soon be added to Classic Era realms. This means that new and existing characters on Classic Era realms will have the option to learn Dual Spec. At the same time, the rulesets between Anniversary Hardcore and the original Hardcore realms will be aligned. This means that the original Hardcore realms will receive Dual Spec, Instant Mail, and the Dungeon Finder tool.
No other changes are planned for Classic Era realms or Hardcore realms as part of this update.
We recognize that to some players, any change being brought to the Classic Era or original Hardcore environments arrives with hesitation. We acknowledge this, and we want you to know that we consider any change we make to these realms extremely carefully. In the case of the Group Finder tool, we consider it to be a true quality-of-life update, bringing players an additional and intuitive way to connect with each other.
A similar quality-of-life update is Edit Mode, allowing players to edit their user interfaces, which we are adding as a new change to BCC Anniversary Edition. Quality-of-life user interface options like Edit Mode could eventually make their way to Classic Era as well, and we look forward to the community’s thoughts on optional user interface quality-of-life additions such as this.
The choice to bring Dual Spec to Classic Era similarly received a tremendous amount of consideration and listening to the community’s thoughts on this feature. Since its introduction to Vanilla WoW in Season of Discovery, and again from the very start of Classic Anniversary, the introduction of Dual Spec to Vanilla WoW has been arguably the single most popular new feature and one of the most well-received in the Classic space. Players have praised that it simply makes the game more fun to play, and our hope is that Classic Era players will enjoy it just as much.
Look here for raid testing dates, times, and more details in the weeks to come.
