New Fresh Start Realms with Wrath Classic

Myself and other members of the team have been reading through a lot of the responses about Fresh Start servers since it was announced, and the common feedback we’ve seen is concern over the idea of transfers opening after the servers have been live for 90 days. I felt it was important to chime in and highlight that Kaviax’s post specifically mentions they won’t be available for at least 90 days. As in, at minimum.

The concept of opening fresh start realms in this way for Classic is somewhat new territory for us, so in this situation we believe its very important to carefully monitor the population on these new realms, observe player behavior, and listen to feedback on this topic. There is nothing saying that transfers must flip on exactly on day 91, day 191, or even day 991 and we don’t intend to commit to an arbitrary timeframe for transfers to become enabled super far ahead of time. We plan to be very thoughtful and deliberate when it comes to how and when we lift the restrictions around transfers on these realms.

So to reiterate, 90 days is the absolute minimum amount of time we’d wait to open transfers, and we intend to listen to the feedback we get on this very carefully. If the realms are healthy and we don’t feel the need to open transfers on these realms, we won’t rush to do so. The team really wants to take care with anything we do here because of how excited many players are about the idea of being able to start fresh and have that type of “equal playing field” experience in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. We are excited about it too, and we really want to take our time and ensure that the experience is as awesome as it can be.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this does a little bit to reassure some concerns about this. As always, thank you so much for the comments and feedback!

With the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King Classic pre-patch, we intend to open “Fresh Start” realms for players who wish to experience starting a new character and playing alongside a new community of others.

In addition to fulfilling a request we’ve heard from players for a long time, we expect there to be a lot of new Classic players joining us for the first time in Wrath of the Lich King, and some of them may be concerned that they’ll feel behind. Fresh Start realms should give those players a chance to feel as though they’re on an even playing field with everyone else.

These realms will be Wrath of the Lich King Classic realms from day one, so when they launch, they’ll have all of the talent trees and player abilities coming with Wrath of the Lich King Classic, but all players will start new characters at level 1. Fresh Start realms will also come with a few stipulations:

• For at least 90 days, you will not be allowed to boost a character on Fresh Start realms.
• For at least 90 days, Fresh Start realms will not be available destinations for character transfers.
• Death Knights cannot be created on these realms without a level 55 character on that same realm.

All of the WoW Classic and Burning Crusade dungeons and zones will be unlocked and available on these realms. On all realms, Northrend will be locked until Wrath’s official launch day.

As a reminder, this is one of several steps we’re taking over the next few months to prepare for Wrath Classic:

• PvE to PvP transfer restrictions removed*
• Wrath Classic closed beta test
• Classic Era clone service retired
• Existing realms consolidated**
• New Fresh Start Realms with Wrath Classic pre-patch
• Wrath of the Lich King launch

*This will include the removal of the restriction on having characters of both factions on a PvP realm.

**Before we consolidate realms, we’re going to remove the restriction on the number of characters you can create on each realm, up to the limit of 50 characters per account.

Ultimately, we hope to see players spread out onto all of the available realms as Wrath of the Lich King Classic approaches. For players looking for a chance at faction balance, we’re hopeful that by starting fresh, they’ll have a chance to stay balanced for a long time. For players looking for a chance to level up in dungeons, we hope the presence of other leveling players makes that more likely.

We’re excited about all of this, and we hope you’re excited about it too. We’ll see you in Azeroth!