What Blizzard said about TBC Classic in the past
What are the plans after Phase 6? More content for classic or moving to TBC (The Burning Crusade)?
We’ve done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route. We want to be sensitive to the desires of our players. Some may want BC and some may not. We’ll be following the Classic community closely to help determine what our next steps should be.
I think this is a very good sign. The last thing players, me included, want is to have Classic taken away again by releasing TBC Classic on all Servers.
Considering the nature of WoW classic and why people love it, would other tweaks to things that the vanilla community dislike be on the table? Examples: No LFG in Wrath, undoing some blatant, unneeded homogenization in patches, or possibly an ilvl squish in TBC and Wrath so that old content is not marginalized?
We’re looking into what would be required to support BC and WotLK (Wrath of the Lich King expansion) should we decide to go that route. The guiding principle for WoW Classic was staying faithful to the original game.
It’s less clear what our direction should be with BC and WotLK. As you point out, it is likely that some features of these expansions will not be universally embraced by the Classic community. We’ll be following player progression and sentiment to help guide us in our next steps.
What others say about TBC Classic
“Nano” is One of the founders and leaders of the Nostalrius private servers for World of Warcraft, which was huge back when Classic WoW wasn’t a thing. Along with some others, he held talks with Blizzard before they announced Classic WoW.
On his Twitter Account, he announced the following (Sep. 8th) :
Haven’t confirmed it yet but the hottest rumors for Classic WoW: Naxxramas release is planned for early December with a TBC Beta rolling out in March/April of 2021! Sooner than expected but we’ll see!
A couple of weeks after that, he followed this up with another post:
UPDATE: I have had a second source confirm that the plans for phase 6 Classic is a roll out in early Dec ’20. I also had the same source confirm plans for a TBC Beta in March ’21 and there MAY be a chance of a TBC launch after that… MAY be sooner than expected.
This seems like an honest source, as the timing of Naxxramas and Phase 6 seems on track. Of course, if he is correct about the actual TBC Classic Release Date and Beta is to be seen. It does seem quite likely though, that it is coming.
A likely TBC Classic release Date
In my opinion, a release of TBC Classic in Summer of 2021, as Nano suggests, would be a bit too early. Then again, many players have said that the pace of the content phases was too fast as well, so it would be in line with that.
In addition, a few months of a TBC Classic Beta Phase, followed by another month of break before release, would be consistent with a release in late Summer.
Then, there is the Blizzcon thing. As you probably already know, there will be no Blizzcon this year and Blizzards is planning to do a digital event in early 2021. This would be a perfect time to announce a Classic TBC Beta as well.