Help! Choosing a path: classic era vs. burning crusade?

WoW Classic
1

Hi all. I’ve got a bunch of characters in various stages of growth in Classic and after reading through the explanation of the “choice” you have to make in the “Playing Ahead: Making Choices in WoW Classic” article, I was left confused. I’m hoping some friendly forum readers can help with a few questions:

  1. Does the new classic era stay classic-only, or does it also progress to TBC eventually?

This wasn’t clear to me in their descriptions. Does Classic Era eventually progress to TBC naturally or is the only way for a character to get to TBC is through the paid clone service? It sounded more like a separate install meant to remain pure Classic with no expasion content.

  1. If I choose the TBC classic option, is the original classic content also part of these new realms?

I also wasn’t clear if the new TBC realms are all-inclusive, and have both the classic content -and- the new TBC content? If I bring a level 32 healer to TBC will I still be able to level them up before storming through the Dark Portal? Or will I only have access to TBC content to level up?

Thanks in advance for any help deciphering these two paths. The explanations from Blizzard just didn’t click with me.

2
  1. classic era is classic forever.
  2. I would say TBCC has the ‘classic’ quests up to level 60. The new quest lines are blood elf, draenei and outlands as you might expect. I don’t think the classic quest lines where changed that much until Wrath. Right now, most folks are in Outlands so low level questing can be more challenging.