You seem to grasp what retail is so I don’t believe there’s any reason to explain it.
There’s WoW Classic which is presently in the end-stages of Cataclysm which will be progressing into Mists of Pandaria in the very near future.
There’s WoW Classic Era (I supposed you would call it) servers which are “eternal” vanilla content servers. Vanilla content of course being only what was included in the initial game prior to the launch of the first expansion, the Burning Crusade.
There’s Season of Discovery which is something akin to a WoW Classic+. Basically where the development team has taken considerable (from what I understand) liberty in experimentation. Adding other features and functions, class abilities and whatnot that were otherwise not a part of the game when running vanilla content (Molten Core/Onyxia/BWL/ZG/AQ 20 and 40/Naxxramas). It’s basically a heavily modified version of vanilla WoW.
Now there are Anniversary servers which presently only covers the original vanilla content with some very slight alterations (buff/debuff limit being relaxed, dual specialization, etc.) which per Blizzard, will eventually progress into TBC (the Burning Crusade) Anniversary. It is hoped that this will in turn progress into WotLK Anniversary and furthermore, that TBC and WotLK Anniversary will both get era servers such that people can play TBC and WotLK content indefinitely.
If you want to play the original game before any expansion, you have three options:
Classic Era which again is a mostly untouched vanilla WoW experience. Classic Anniversary which is a slightly modified vanilla that is going to progress into TBC. And Season of Discovery which is a heavily modified (by comparison) version of the game that covers vanilla content as far as the raid instances are concerned with some new raids thrown in as I understand it (such as Karazhan Crypts.)
Hopefully that covers it. If not, I am confident someone else will be along shortly to either correct any incorrect information I have given or to more thoroughly explain the differences of each version.
Classic
Era - the re-release vanilla servers, which are old.
Season of Discovery - The “Classic Plus” that classic players thought would be a good idea but it wasn’t a massive success because of the “incursions”. Which was entirely blizzard management’s decision to sabotage their own creation right before the release of some new Dragonflight patch.
Anniversary - Another re-release of vanilla servers in it’s original state.
Cataclysm Classic? - I think that’s the latest version of the “classic re-releases”. And cataclysm is basically what wow is now. It’s retail.
I don’t even know what the latest wow retail expansion is called tbh.
Omg thank you both so much, you laid it out very simply for me.
So I’m guessing I’ll want to be checking out classic era as playing the game in its original state is what I’m looking for.
Season of Discovery sounds too much like a warped version of the original game.
So the difference between classic era servers and anniversary is a few gameplay changes it sounds like and that the anniversary servers will eventually go through the expansion? Like how “classic” is now coming out with classic MoP?
So there are no servers forever stuck in say TBC, or Wrath? Just classic era?
Correct. Era servers are stuck in vanilla as you stated. Anniversary servers will be moving into TBC and possibly WotLK. Lots of us hoping we’ll get servers where we can be stuck in TBC and WotLK forever.
I will add that presently, because of Anniversary servers, the classic era servers have experienced a drop in population because a good amount of the player base is presently playing on Anniversary servers though I am confident that once those servers progress into TBC, a lot of those players will return to era servers and they will thrive once more.
It is also hoped that Blizzard will provide transfers from the anniversary servers to the era servers once anniversary servers progress into TBC though that is just speculation if anything. Blizzard hasn’t made any sort of official announcement in that regard. That said, if you don’t mind the gamble, it may be more worth your while to play on anniversary since they are more heavily populated and you will likely have an easier time getting groups for things and whatnot in the hope that eventually you’ll be able to return to era servers along with others. It isn’t impossible to get groups for things on era servers but it might be a bit more difficult. Mind you, I don’t know this for a fact I am simply stating this based on casual observations of conversations concerning the present state of era servers vs. anniversary servers in terms of population.
Edit: Sorry, I know this is a massive wall of text. I tend to ramble when I get excited.
Classic Era. This is 1.12 vanilla with a few minor tweaks like an update to the honor system.
Classic Era hardcore. Same as Classic Era but with permanent death.
Anniversary. This is more or less the same as Classic Era but with dual spec, the buff/debuff limit removed and GDKP is banned.
Anniversary hardcore. Same as anniversary but with permanent death.
Season of Discovery. This is what some might consider to be “Classic+”. It’s vanilla with extra abilities, gear and content added.
Classic. This has been following the original expansion release schedule since Classic first released in 2019. I believe it’s still on Cataclysm and It’ll keep going on to Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor etc…
Retail. This is whatever the most recent expansion is.
You did an infinitely better job of explaining it all more concisely than I ever could. I read through my original post again and nearly gave up halfway through. An explanation that tried to become a novel. I’m thinking to myself, “Are you trying to help the guy out or bore him to death?”
No not at all!
Everyone here has been super helpful, I feel like when trying to look this stuff up it gets very confusing.
I’m thinking classic era for sure is up my alley. Though it would be cool to have TBC or Wrath era servers to be eternally frozen those expansions. I’m not interested in progressing past maybe Cata.
Anniversary servers don’t sound much different from classic era but it was mentioned they will be progressing to TBC soon? But will they progress through the other expansions?
Id want to avoid them if that is the eventual plan.
Classic Anniversary is on a shortened timeline and will be going on to The Burning Crusade sometime winter 2025 or early 2026. Dates are not confirmed on that yet. We don’t know if it will progress to Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm and beyond yet that hasn’t been announced but it is reasonable to assume it might.
There are no “Era” (forever) servers for TBC and Wrath at the moment and no announcements have been made that there might be. Only the 2019 launch of Classic has Era servers which will stay the same™ forever. There have been patches and changes though, like the client updates and the revised Honor System for PVP ranks.
Classic Anniversary has dual spec as something you can train at level 40.
The server options for Classic Anniversary are basically one mega server for PVP, PVE and Hardcore. There is also an Oceanic timezone server that appears to be struggling to keep players. This means that everyone on Anniversary who is playing on a PVE server is doing so on Dreamscythe, and most people who play PVP are on Nightslayer. There are pros and cons to this.
We don’t know if server transfers/character copies from Classic Anniversary to Classic Era will happen as TBC approaches, but they might since it will be a money maker.
They will progress into TBC for sure and that is per Blizzard so you can take that one to the bank. No official word as to whether they will progress into WotLK but that appears to be the hope of many (myself included.) Everyone, with very few exceptions that I have seen, seem to be very much in sync in their desire for both TBC era and WotLK era servers and you’ll notice quite a few topics where we’re begging and pleading with Blizzard to comment on whether or not those will either be a thing or if they would at the very least consider them depending on whether there is a sufficient population for each to support them. I’d say the vast majority if not all of us are pretty much in unison that we do not want anniversary servers progressing past WotLK though.
I am still very curious to know what direction Blizzard might take were they to offer anniversary → era transfers in regards to dual specialization if nothing else. Take it away from those who have it? Continue to provide it as an option to those who don’t want it? Either way it’s easy to imagine that one group or the other is going to be miffed.
The game most close to its original form, no gimmicks. It will be nice to play WoW where things are slowed down and the journey matters again.
Maybe I was gone from the game for too long, but even MoP, when it was coming out, seemed too foreign to me and I think that’s why I stopped playing back then. Coming back for DF and now TWW, it’s just not the adventure I remember.
Nostalgia is a b.
Is there just the one actual server for classic era? Does anyone who plays have any info/ advice for a retail player starting on classic era?
Though I will miss the TBC and Wrath content being there, I will join the many hoping to see era servers for those expansions
The servers are in clusters(?) and without looking the Mankrik cluster is for PvE and the Whitemane cluster is for PvP. Not sure just how many servers there are within each cluster nor do I have the population numbers for each server in front of me. I myself am still a little unsure just how precisely clusters work. I think it’s something akin to cross server? Or at least, you can communicate with others across servers within the same cluster. I want to say you can even form cross-server guilds and dungeon/raid groups? That part could very well just be me misunderstanding though.
classic era is where it’s at, the original game without any nonsense changes
