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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All wins.
wow these are terrible changes thanks
What is their problem with TBC HARDCORE servers?
Wow, very, very good changes. Super excited for BCC Anniversary. Smart decision on BCC hardcore, it’s just delusional to even consider it. Hope that blizz will stand by their decisions and not roll them back under pressure from some “public figures” or group of players. They should maintain rockstar style of communication, doing their work and haters and trolls.
Buff prot war
Changing BL to be raid wide with a debuff but not adjusting it so totems are raid wide? So we'll still need the same amount of shamans as before.
wow that's a terrible take
It's a lot of good changes, raid-wide lust and it resets on wipe or boss kill? That's great.Not that stoked about Post nerf raids though. The nerfs in TBC were pretty brutal, I wish we got at least a few weeks with pre nerf raids every phase.
they should give us pre nerf raids from the start, and eventually transition to post nerf close the end of the phases. alot of the enjoyment from raiding came from the challenge. maybe even adjusting some of the nerfs
Raid wide buffs and resetting CD's after each boss would be very welcome changes.
Pretty sad about the HC thing.HC server were the best experience for leveling and make every low level zone lively. Leveling in the BC server is going to be an awful experience in like 3-4 months when everyone is going to be high level....
Dual Spec on Era Servers? You guys are joking? This will not happen.
There a lot of good changes like heroic keys for alts but We want Pre-Nerf Raids please. Without pre-nerf raids the first phase of tbc is lacking difficulty. Please keep the same difficulty as last TBC launch with pre-nerf raids and then eventually you can do post-nerf after a phase has been around for a bit.
"Raids will be released in their post-nerf state."I really hope this is only for the PTR. It would pretty much ruin all the point of thhe game....
"Raids will be released in their post-nerf state." So Bad ! We wants PRE-NERF state !
Nice.This and the Boost, I might actually play TBC:Classic this time around
Dude, please no pre-nerf content! We want the difficulty! Also the nerfs were so brutal. One week you had to focus the next week everything just fell down. Dont nerf everything to the ground, please Blizzard!
W for most changesL for raid post-nerf, like so many people stated the nerfs are too big, make's all the fight face roll.I kinda wished they did some balancing to underperforming specs (poor scaling specs like spriest, boomy, ele shaman. Just changing the spell coefficient on their spells would fix it) and make all buff raid wide (Boomy aura, enh shaman Ap buff, Ele shaman totem of wrath, etc, feral druid aura, etc...) It really feels bad when you don't have all the buffs to perform better.
