World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic to Transport Players Back to the Icy Realm of Northrend Later This Year

[btarunr]

From his grim citadel deep in the frozen continent of Northrend, the dreaded Lich King Arthas Menethil sets in motion his conquest of Azeroth, ushering in one of the most unforgettable sagas in Warcraft history. Blizzard Entertainment today announced that World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King Classic is coming later this year, inviting players to experience anew an adventure that indelibly shaped the ongoing story of Warcraft. When it launches in 2022, this finely tuned re-release of the smash-hit 2008 expansion will be available at no additional cost to all players with an active World of Warcraft subscription.

"We're thrilled to revisit one of the most beloved eras in Warcraft history with Wrath of the Lich King Classic," said Mike Ybarra, President of Blizzard Entertainment. "The original release of this expansion brought many improvements to the game, along with a timeless villain and an epic story. We're taking care to preserve the authentic Classic experience for those looking to relive their glory days in Northrend—and deliver a worthy and accessible re-creation for those embarking on this vast adventure for the first time."



Wrath of the Lich King Classic Features

• Just as it shook up WoW during its original release in 2008, Wrath of the Lich King Classic will thrill both veterans and newcomers with a host of paradigm-shifting features, including:
• The Grim Frozen North: Players will begin their journey in one of two zones in Northrend—Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord—and experience some of the most epic vistas and beloved storylines in all of Warcraft before breaching the seat of the Lich King's power in Icecrown.
• The Rise of Death Knights: Available to both factions and starting at level 55, Death Knights—WoW's first hero class—harness the powers of darkness to help combat the evil that threatens Azeroth.
• New profession—Inscription: This new profession allows players to scribe mystical glyphs that alter the appearance and modify the properties of spells and abilities, as well as craft powerful trinkets and off-hand items.
• Achievements Unlocked: Achievements are coming to WoW Classic, giving players a whole new set of rewards for their exploits and accomplishments.
• Dungeons & Raids: Relive seminal 5-player dungeons like Azjol-Nerub and the Culling of Stratholme, and lay siege to Naxxramas in a 10-player raid, an update of its original iteration as a 40-player raid in pre-expansion World of Warcraft.

Players will be able to create Death Knight characters during a content update prior to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. All players will be able to create their first Death Knight characters without any prerequisites or restrictions. (Creating subsequent Death Knight characters on a given server will require an existing character of level 55 or higher.)

Players without existing characters ready to take on the hazards of Northrend can take advantage of an optional level-70 character boost closer to Wrath of the Lich King Classic's launch. Further details, including information around pricing and availability, will be announced at a later date.

For more information on Wrath of the Lich King Classic, visit www.wowclassic.com. Further details, including release timing, will be announced there closer to launch.

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[wolar]

0 changes? Again? So this is just a cash grab without any development behind, still asking for full price subscription..

E: At this point more development time is done on private servers, kinda sad tbh..

 

[Bearshark]

Dungeon finder better work on day one and not the later phases.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Got a toon on classic, not touched normal WOW for sooo long. Not sure if i will bother with classic WOLK though.

 

[agatong55]

Dungeon finder better work on day one and not the later phases.

They already said no Dungeon Finder

 

[Gungar]

Finally WOTLK classic incoming!!!

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

0 changes? Again? So this is just a cash grab without any development behind, still asking for full price subscription..

E: At this point more development time is done on private servers, kinda sad tbh..

You get Retail, wow classic, wow classic season of mastery, TBC, and now Wrath and youre complaining about paying $15? Get over yourself.

And why would they make huge changes to previous expansions? Thats not what most people want.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

When is WOLK classic available just out of interest?

 

[wolar]

You get Retail, wow classic, wow classic season of mastery, TBC, and now Wrath and youre complaining about paying $15? Get over yourself.

And why would they make huge changes to previous expansions? Thats not what most people want.

You realize it costs them almost nothing for doing any of the wow classic stuff right? Why do you think so many private servers existed before, its easy and cheap to maintain.
They don't even have GMs in game to handle stuff, so in that regard it's even worse than a pserver with 0 active funding and 3 people maintaining it.

For the amount of money they ask, with 0 development time done on the game, they should ATLEAST have maximum support stuff helping in game.

 

[ixi]

0 changes? Again? So this is just a cash grab without any development behind, still asking for full price subscription..

E: At this point more development time is done on private servers, kinda sad tbh..

You subscribe to retail and you still can play classic, where is the cash grab? You get two versions of the game for the same old price. :}

 

[BArms]

0 changes? Again? So this is just a cash grab without any development behind, still asking for full price subscription..

E: At this point more development time is done on private servers, kinda sad tbh..

You must be trolling? The whole point of "classic" is to attempt to play it like it was back in the day.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

You realize it costs them almost nothing for doing any of the wow classic stuff right? Why do you think so many private servers existed before, its easy and cheap to maintain.
They don't even have GMs in game to handle stuff, so in that regard it's even worse than a pserver with 0 active funding and 3 people maintaining it.

For the amount of money they ask, with 0 development time done on the game, they should ATLEAST have maximum support stuff helping in game.

Yeah, the amount of money they ask to have access to not 1, not 2, but 5 games when they have to MAINTAIN SERVER COSTS is asinine.

There doesnt need to be development on a game that is well over 10 years old at this point. Nothing to fund except server costs. Again, get over yourself. You expect too much.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that most private servers IMO are absolute garbage. 20ft tall npcs where you can buy all your gear, mounts, etc from right in the starting area, the private servers own money shop. People complain about blizzards in game shop but somehow it's ok on a private server.

Ill take the blizz way where its not altered by pserver game "devs".

 

[lexluthermiester]

You get Retail, wow classic, wow classic season of mastery, TBC, and now Wrath and youre complaining about paying $15? Get over yourself.

This...

You realize it costs them almost nothing for doing any of the wow classic stuff right?

Not true at all. They have to update the code to run on not only modern hardware but also the modern version of the game engine, which has DRASTICALLY changed in the last 10 years. You are effectively whining about something that took effort, time and money to remaster that is being included at NO extra charge. Let that sink in a moment before you whine and complain any further..

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Wasnt there some story a while about about WOW losing most of its experienced content creators? And this is all they could come up with.

 

[wolar]

Yeah, the amount of money they ask to have access to not 1, not 2, but 5 games when they have to MAINTAIN SERVER COSTS is asinine.

There doesnt need to be development on a game that is well over 10 years old at this point. Nothing to fund except server costs. Again, get over yourself. You expect too much.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that most private servers IMO are absolute garbage. 20ft tall npcs where you can buy all your gear, mounts, etc from right in the starting area, the private servers own money shop. People complain about blizzards in game shop but somehow it's ok on a private server.

Ill take the blizz way where its not altered by pserver game "devs".

I don't think you actually played any good private servers (if any at all). Most i played had LESS bugs than the 'classic' release of blizzard. While also having active GMs, fixing bugs that existed forever and also fixing the dungeons/raids. Some even create timewalk/mythic dungeons or other custom content that didn't exist.
I don't get why you hold blizzard that highly, from all points i look at them they are just trying to milk their fanbase, their games have gotten progressively worse over time as well.
Also, people said no changes for classic release because they feared what blizzard would do, when they realized it wasn't that great of a game they asked for changes for TBC but they didn't do any besides a shop (LOL) and now again, no changes, indicating they just didn't want to fund any development of the classic game.

Why are changes necessary? Well, naxx can be beaten with green gear, ulduar got nerfed hard (which i imagine they release the nerfed version), there is minimal content between ulduar and icc (togc is laughable). Why not try and fix some of these problems? Ulduar system of normal/HM proved to be the best, why not try to implement to all their raids? Anw, alot of things they could do i won't go into greater detail as i have better chances of pservers caring for these (and some already did) than blizzard.

 

[jerrileeh]

What do you guys think about graphics and soundtracks?

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

I don't think you actually played any good private servers (if any at all). Most i played had LESS bugs than the 'classic' release of blizzard. While also having active GMs, fixing bugs that existed forever and also fixing the dungeons/raids. Some even create timewalk/mythic dungeons or other custom content that didn't exist.
I don't get why you hold blizzard that highly, from all points i look at them they are just trying to milk their fanbase, their games have gotten progressively worse over time as well.
Also, people said no changes for classic release because they feared what blizzard would do, when they realized it wasn't that great of a game they asked for changes for TBC but they didn't do any besides a shop (LOL) and now again, no changes, indicating they just didn't want to fund any development of the classic game.

Why are changes necessary? Well, naxx can be beaten with green gear, ulduar got nerfed hard (which i imagine they release the nerfed version), there is minimal content between ulduar and icc (togc is laughable). Why not try and fix some of these problems? Ulduar system of normal/HM proved to be the best, why not try to implement to all their raids? Anw, alot of things they could do i won't go into greater detail as i have better chances of pservers caring for these (and some already did) than blizzard.

Its been many years since Ive played on private servers (probably around the time cata was the current expansion) and that was my experience. I dont want to go back to it.

As for changes, yes, there will be changes, bug fixes etc, with certain aspects of the game just like there was with TBC and WoW Classic. If you think there wont be, youre delusional.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

just popped in classic, my character is lvl mage 51 in tanaris, bit tougher lvling in classic.

 

[Renald]

Just looking at numbers, its pretty abusive to charge 15$/€ as monthly contribution to ... duplicate an old version that a few people will play instead of creating content.
There's a daily peak at 500k players and 5.5M monthly (https://activeplayer.io/world-of-warcraft/). So I'm not counting players paying and not playing

Do you seriously think they need 83M$ to run servers to handle 500k players ?
You're not forced to buy anything, that point is beyond questioning, but you're money is wasted and no new content is created.

Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2, like Guild Wars, even if it doesn't hold as much content (even if the first Guild Wars have it), do it for free. You pay the game, you never pay again, for any update and no monthly fee.
Same for many games like Diablo 3.

Wow is a known cash cow, using every last possibility to make you stay longer like "Hey, you need to wait 4h to find people for a raid, which you need to do like 100 times, it lasts 10 minutes and then you have to wait a full week to do it again". In Guild Wars, Diablo, even Aion when it wasn't F2P you could "basically" re-enter any instance any time. The time was between 4h and a full day for more rewarding ones. And the timer starts when you enter, not when you finish, so you can basically loop on it if you make a 1h pause.

This model is just obsolete.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Do you seriously think they need 83M$ to run servers to handle 500k players ?

More numbers you seem to be pulling out of your backside..

Server Population & Player Count - MMO Populations

World of Warcraft player count, server population, subscribers and game activity stats (aka wow).

mmo-population.com

What was that now? WOW is STILL the most popular MMO currently. Seriously, are you deliberately trolling people and spreading disinformation?

This model is just obsolete.

Kettle, meet pot.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I don't think you actually played any good private servers (if any at all). Most i played had LESS bugs than the 'classic' release of blizzard. While also having active GMs, fixing bugs that existed forever and also fixing the dungeons/raids. Some even create timewalk/mythic dungeons or other custom content that didn't exist.
I don't get why you hold blizzard that highly, from all points i look at them they are just trying to milk their fanbase, their games have gotten progressively worse over time as well.
Also, people said no changes for classic release because they feared what blizzard would do, when they realized it wasn't that great of a game they asked for changes for TBC but they didn't do any besides a shop (LOL) and now again, no changes, indicating they just didn't want to fund any development of the classic game.

Why are changes necessary? Well, naxx can be beaten with green gear, ulduar got nerfed hard (which i imagine they release the nerfed version), there is minimal content between ulduar and icc (togc is laughable). Why not try and fix some of these problems? Ulduar system of normal/HM proved to be the best, why not try to implement to all their raids? Anw, alot of things they could do i won't go into greater detail as i have better chances of pservers caring for these (and some already did) than blizzard.

Many MMO weaken/nerf old content for a few reasons, one being population, another being people are trying to catch up on content, where ever thats needed.

 

[NC37]

Would settle for a LK classic that never rolled out the Argent Tournament loot pinata event. Uldaur was just getting good. People had fought hard and obtained some real good gear in prep for Ice Crown. Then the tournament hit and devalued it all, killed Ulduar, and made it possible for scrubs to take on Ice Crown without learning how to do any raid fights before it. No one wanted to do Ulduar again. I had to lead groups in later who wanted to get Algalon achievements just to see it and it was a mess of scrubs who had no clue how to follow orders in a raid. Threw fits because Algalon killed them and they thought tournament gear made them invincible.

 

[GoldenTiger]

More numbers you seem to be pulling out of your backside..

Server Population & Player Count - MMO Populations

World of Warcraft player count, server population, subscribers and game activity stats (aka wow).

mmo-population.com

What was that now? WOW is STILL the most popular MMO currently. Seriously, are you deliberately trolling people and spreading disinformation?

Kettle, meet pot.

Neither of you know the pop #s. No one does, since blizzard doesn't publish them and hasn't in many years. The only info we have is mau (monthly users, which count how many unique accounts logged into their various games in a month. This includes multiple logins for different games by the same account) totals for all Activision blizzard games combined, not even individually.

 

[Baum]

WoW is still active? oh man what people have wasted on money on this game with subscription fees alone... and time of their live just insane

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

WoW is still active? oh man what people have wasted on money on this game with subscription fees alone... and time of their live just insane

It's not a waste of time if it is what you enjoy. No one can tell anyone how to live their life or how to enjoy it except the person living it. What you think of as wasting time of their lives could be spending it the best way they want.

Hey, you need to wait 4h to find people for a raid, which you need to do like 100 times, it lasts 10 minutes and then you have to wait a full week to do it again"

Are you drunk? Or just stupid? When did a WoW raid EVER last 10 minutes? Some of the raid bosses ALONE are 10 minutes long.