World of Warcraft getting the Classic treatment again with 20th Anniversary Realms

It seems as though there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and there must be a World of Warcraft Classic server running. During today’s Warcraft Direct, Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft will once again be returning to its Vanilla roots with the launch of World of Warcraft Classic 20th Anniversary Edition. Those interested in once again reliving the glory days can look forward to doing so when the servers launch globally next week on November 21.

Despite how much I enjoy the retail version of World of Warcraft, there’s just something about WoW Classic. I’m sure a lot of it is the nostalgia; the reverberating memories of a simpler time is admittedly part of the appeal to me. But even from a gameplay standpoint, despite the many similarities between the old and new versions of the MMORPG, there are equally as many differences.

According to Blizzard the new Classic servers have been highly requested by the playerbase and have led to the “third time is the charm” relaunch. There are some pretty interesting additions this time around, though. Several Quality-of-Life features are going to active on the servers right out of the gate including the Chronoboon Displacer to save world buffs and and the improved PvP Honor Ranking System that came out later into Classic. Other helpful additions include a new Looking for Group (LFG) tool, a new Services chat channel, and a revamped Guild UI.

For players interested in the more Hardcore experience, several realms will launch with the Hardcore ruleset. This means you get one life; whether you die to fall damage, aggroing too many enemies, or even drowning, you will have to start over in order to continue playing. Players will also have the option on Hardcore servers of creating a ‘Self-Found’ character meaning they are prohibited from trading, using the auction house, and sending or receiving most mail. This essentially means your character and its progress is entirely dependent on you and your drops alone, and cannot be assisted by others in that regard.

An interesting note about the servers is that Blizzard has already revealed both the normal and hardcore rulesets of servers will eventually progress into through all of the content in Classic and into The Burning Crusade. What happens from there? Will it keep going? Does this mean we’ll eventually hit Cataclysm Classic on these new servers as well, and then see the launch of yet another Classic server ruleset? It’s going to get difficult juggling all the live versions of World of Warcraft that are progressing; do we call this one WoW Classic Classic?

World of Warcraft Classic 20th Anniversary Edition servers are set to go live on November 21 and will be accessible to anyone with an active WoW subscription.