During today’s Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, Blizzard announced its next big plans for World of Warcraft: Classic. Shocking no one, it’s planning to move onto the next expansion in 2025: Mists of Pandaria.As with other Classic expansions, Mists of Pandaria will launch with “some changes” to its original form, but will largely retain the same content and features from when it first released in 2012. Among other new features, Mists of Pandaria introduced the continent of Pandaria, the playable Pandaran race that could join either the Alliance or the Horde, the Monk class, pet battles, Scenarios, and flexible raiding.Notably, though, this will be a different experience than the one offered during the recent Mists of Pandaria: Remix event, which allowed players to speed level through Pandaria with new spells and abilities, new items, and other twists on its original gameplay.The addition of Mists of Pandaria furthers World of Warcraft: Classic’s steady march to catch up with existing World of Warcraft content. However, recently some Classic players have begun to criticize the direction of the game and lament how far away it’s gotten from the original Classic feel as expansions have been added. While Blizzard has done some things to address this, such as add new Classic modes like Hardcore and Season of Discovery, players are increasingly asking for more opportunities to replay the oldest content.For those players, Blizzard announced that it will be adding new “vanilla” Classic realms on November 21. This will include new PvP, PvE, and new “hardcore mode” realms, which will go through the same steady cadence of patch updates as past Classic realms, with the Molten Core raid launching a few weeks after launch. These new realms (minus the Hardcore realms) will eventually progress to The Burning Crusade Classic, giving players the opportunity to start all over once more and progress through early WoW content.World of Warcraft: Classic’s Mists of Pandaria update will launch sometime in 2025. You can catch up with everything announced from today’s Warcraft Direct right here, including remasters of Warcraft I and II, the next patch for The War Within, and teases of the next WoW retail expansion.Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
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