'WoW Classic' Is Throwing It Back Old School — Find Out When It Launches!
Updated April 27 2020, 1:03 p.m. ET
To say that online gaming, and the influence it's had on society over the past 20 years or so, is significant would be an understatement. It's shaped relationships and the way people from all over the globe have interacted with one another; not to mention it's helped change the very nature of the business of gaming itself.
The one online game that's become a worldwide phenomenon, however, is World of Warcraft, so it's understandable that tons of folks are excited over the specific time of the WoW Classic launch.
Although other titles like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and PUBG are dominating the online gaming space, there is still a whopping 5.18 million active WoW subscribers. As you can imagine, ever since the game debuted in November of 2004, there have been a number of changes, expansions, and upgrades that occurred over the title's nearly 15-year lifespan.
In order to celebrate that, Blizzard Entertainment decided to release Wow Classic.
It's a fundamental re-release of the original title that strips it of many of the new additions to the world of Azeroth. It's basically the same game with a few tweaks here and there that improve functionality and playability.
Classic mode will contain beloved raids like Molten Core and Onyxia, and it'll keep a lot of the game's original mechanics. Original skill trees and character models are the same, with some slight texture updates. This means that newer features, like raid finder, aren't present. Blizzard decided to publish a "not a bug" list to delineate that some of the "missing" functionality tools are indeed intentional.
What time does WoW Classic launch?
The official launch date and time of the time-capsule is on August 27 worldwide, but there are some region-specific launch dates and times. In North America, players can take a trip back in the past on August 26 at 6 p.m. ET and 3 p.m. PT.
In Europe, it'll launch at 11 p.m. BST, and 8 a.m. in Australia, along with the rest of the world.
Now, because Blizzard expects a ton of people to hop onto WoW Classic, they recommend that gamers go to a server without as many active players to make it easier to download the classic mode and get in on the action.
In case you're wondering, no additional WoW subscriptions are necessary to play the Classic mode — your regular ole WoW sub will let you play both versions of the game. And if you're just getting into WoW, your account for WoW Classic will work with the current version of the game too.
How do you download WoW Classic?
Finding where to download WoW Classic might prove a little bit confusing for some users because you won't find it on the Battle.net launcher — you're going to have to go to the World of Warcraft tab. After clicking on that, a drop-down menu that'll allow you to download the original version of the game will appear once it goes live just above the install button icon. Click that and you're good to go!
So are you excited to play WoW Classic? Or are you more than happy with the updates the title's gotten over the years and have no interest in going back?
