While we know that Blizzard Entertainment has been working on World of Warcraft Classic for some time, the release date for the product has never been definitively confirmed. Battle for Azeroth has only just recently dropped, so our assumption is that the studio’s efforts were centered on shipping that expansion and not so much on recreating the Vanilla WoW experience that fans were promised. However, it’s been revealed that the Classic WoW release date may be some time in 2021.
It has been reported by the Daily Star that Classic WoW would likely release in 2021. This information was obtained from an AMA that their 3D level designer participated in over a week ago. John Staats was responsible for the majority of Vanilla WoW’s dungeon-based content, so he may well be the most reliable source to date about when Classic WoW will actually be ready. While we note that he isn’t actually working on that product with Blizzard at this stage, his experience with the MMORPG and shipping it is likely valuable to anyone trying to estimate how long it’ll be til Classic WoW is made available to hardcore players.
In terms of what Classic WoW will look like, we’ve already mentioned that from Blizzard has told us so far, it’s going to graphically mirror the good old days of WoW whilst maintaining some quality of life, UI-related changes that the modern iteration of the game has. On top of that, it’s going to have its own realm, but as to how it’ll be integrated into the rest of the WoW experience is really anyone’s guess at this point.
The 2021 release date is still speculation at this point as nothing has been confirmed from Blizzard’s end, or from someone that’s directly working on Classic WoW right now. That being said, it’s still more information than we’ve had previously about when we can expect this latest addition to the MMORPG’s universe.