Blizzard has relaunched WoW: Classic, giving players a chance to experience WoW in its earliest era.

When WoW Classic was released in 2019, I waited. I'd already played vanilla WoW, and the nostalgia of reliving Azeroth in its early days wasn't worth it to me. I eventually grew to like the idea, only to discover that WoW Classic had gone through three expansions and Azeroth was no longer accessible.

Blizzard is about to reset WoW: Classic's clock once again. Blizzard announced today during the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Livestream that it will launch WoW: Classic 20th Anniversary Edition. This set of "all new, fresh" Classic worlds offers players a fresh start and a level playing field for a second run at vanilla WoW’s early years.

"We will bring you the classic Classic experience," Clayton Stone, WoW Classic associate production director.

In just one week, on November 21, the new Classic realms will open. Hardcore realms will be available immediately, in addition to the PvE/PvP servers. Hardcore realms only allow characters to have one life. If you die, you can only chat as a ghost until you transfer your character to a standard realm.

Blizzard has already added some quality of life improvements to WoW: Classic, since its release in 2019; the new realms will not have to wait. The players will have access to features such as the revamped PvP Honor Ranking System and the Chronoboon displacer. This feature allows you to store away world buffs that you receive when someone completes a raid quest.

The raids won't be unlocked on the new realms until several weeks after launch. This will allow players to enjoy Azeroth in its old-fashioned glory without feeling pressured to level up and upgrade their gear. A tentative roadmap shows that the fresh realms will progress through all of vanilla WoW’s raids and activities by next spring, after the Molten Core raids and Onyxia raids launch sometime this winter. The Burning Crusade will be available to the new realms at that time (minus the Hardcore realm). Once again, we are not prepared.

The new WoW Classic 20th Anniversary realms will open on November 21, 2018.