World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic is on the way, allowing players to experience WoW’s first expansion all over again as they journey beyond the Dark Portal to do battle with the outcast forces of Illidan Stormrage and the demonic Burning Legion. Unlike the original WoW Classic, Blizzard has already announced that there will be a few key changes coming to The Burning Crusade.

While some WoW fans may be worried about Blizzard making edits to the expansion, there’s another big question which is still up in the air regarding one of The Burning Crusade’s most memorable moments. Based on the way Blizzard will be rolling out content as Classic makes the transition to World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic, it’s possible this memorable moment could be left behind. 

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The launch of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic will have significant differences from the game’s original launch. A pre-expansion patch will be released which will update Azeroth to its Burning Crusade state and allow players to begin levelling as Blood Elves and Draenei before The Burning Crusade Classic officially launches, giving them time to catch up for the new content. In contrast, WoW players originally couldn’t access either of these races until purchasing The Burning Crusade.

Current WoW subscribers with characters on Classic servers will be presented with a choice when the pre-expansion patch drops. For each character they have on a Classic server, players will be able to choose whether that character continues on to see The Burning Crusade content by staying on the same server, or if they would like to move to another server which preserves the WoW Classic experience as it is. 

The original release of The Burning Crusade had two main pre-expansion patches. Patch 2.0.1 made the major updates to classes and the more mechanical side of the game in preparation for the first expansion. Patch 2.0.3 was then released on January 7, 2007, around a week before the release of the expansion. Neither of these patches added Blood Elves and Draenei as playable characters, while some of the other patches under the broader patch 2.0 umbrella fixed bugs and added smaller features. 

Patch 2.0.3 added a major temporary world event. "The Dark Portal Opens" caused the demons of the Burning Legion to come pouring through the Dark Portal from Outland into the Blasted Lands, where they were held back by the Argent Dawn and the forces of nearby Nethergarde Keep. Lord Kazzak, a world boss in Vanilla WoW and Classic, was said to have gone through the Dark Portal. In his place Kazzak left Highlord Kruul.

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Highlord Kruul was the pre-expansion patch’s most memorable encounter. Kruul, a ginormous doomguard, attacked major cities across Azeroth. While higher level players were able to take on the “Into the Breach” quest to kill six demons near the Dark Portal itself, Highlord Kruul brought the new expansion directly to newer players and anyone in a racial capital.  

Skeletons were piled high outside the gates of Azeroth’s cities as low level players fell victim to Kruul’s onslaught, and on many WoW servers higher level players struggled to organize a formidable defense. Regardless of whether players had bought the new expansion and regardless of level, Highlord Kruul made it really feel like a major change was coming to World of Warcraft.

For the moment, it’s unknown how Blizzard plans to include Highlord Kruul if at all in its pre-expansion plans for The Burning Crusade Classic. However, if the pre-expansion patch is designed to allow Blood Elves and Draenei to level up in time for the new expansion, it could be significantly longer than the pre-expansion patch for the original release of The Burning Crusade. 

If that’s the case, then an event like Highlord Kruul’s attack on Azeroth’s cities might not fit into Blizzard’s game plan. With Blizzard making more changes to The Burning Crusade Classic than the original WoW Classic, including changes to balance Horde and Alliance Paladins, it’s possible one of the expansion’s first most memorable moments will be left by the wayside.

It’s also possible that there will be multiple pre-expansion patches for The Burning Crusade Classic, just as there were for the expansion's original release. The first could introduce the new playable races while the second could then aim to recreate the opening of the Dark Portal event which was introduced in patch 2.0.3. While Blizzard has broken down the expansion’s content release schedule, it has not given specific dates for patch roll-outs for The Burning Crusade Classic yet aside from stating that it will release in 2021. It’s possible that one pre-expansion patch could include both the new races and the Dark Portal event, only giving players a week’s head start with the Horde and Alliance’s new allies. 

It seems unlikely that Blizzard would want to skip one of The Burning Crusade’s first major moments, however. The Dark Portal event most likely means that the launch of The Burning Crusade Classic will be more gradual than has been revealed so far, with several different pre-expansion patches. Highlord Kruul may have been a menace for lower-level players, but he brought the threat of the Burning Legion to life in a way WoW has rarely recaptured in its lower level areas with the exception of Wrath of the Lich King and Shadowlands' zombie plagues.

If it's the case that there are multiple pre-patches, Blood Elf and Draenei players may be able to experience The Burning Crusade’s launch events for the first time. Whatever happens, those sorts of changes are a reminder that The Burning Crusade Classic is diverging more from the release and content of the original expansion than WoW Classic diverged from Vanilla WoW, marking a change in direction for Classic’s core principles. Whether it will diverge enough to put some Classic fans off, however, remains to be seen.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic releases 2021.

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