- Author: Furious
- Date: November 4, 2023
- Updated: November 10, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Similar to TBC, Blizzard has decided not to keep any realms online for Wrath of the Lich King. We assume the current WotLK realms will progress into Cataclysm with the release of the prepatch at which time players will no longer have access to play the third expansion.
Will there be wrath era servers
BlizzCon 2023 Q&A – Warcraft Wiki
No plans for right now.
With the current hype around the announcement of WoW Classic Season of Discovery we’ve only seen limited disappointment in this decision so far, however it’s worth noting that WotLK continues to be the most populated expansion for players on private servers.
With WoW Classic (Vanilla) when realms progressed into TBC players were also able to keep their characters on Era realms. At first Era realms were sparsely played or populated but they then continued to grow as time went on as it was the only way to play the original version of the game (not counting Season of Mastery).
The popularity of the Era realms eventually led into the player made Hardcore addon and an extensive Classic Hardcore playerbase which eventually Blizzard copied and made official Hardcore realms.
If they had never keep Era realms, we’d have never had Classic Hardcore at all. Having realms open for each expansion frozen in an end game state gives players agency in the version of the game they want to play as well as vital feedback around potential options for seasonal realms or other types of realms like Hardcore.
Update
In their WoWCast Developer Q&A, Blizzard responded to a question about Wrath Era servers. You can view their entire response in the video below – it should start at the correct timestamp.
They said there are too many new offerings for WoW Classic at the moment with Hardcore, Cataclysm Classic, and Season of Discovery, and they don’t want to fragment the population too much. However, when they implemented The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King for WoW Classic, they did so in a way that would make it easy to bring it back again later on. So perhaps we’ll see new Wrath Era realms at some point in the future, or maybe even a new season for the expansion similar to what we’ve seen for vanilla. But that’s probably no comfort to players who would like to carry on with their current characters without moving on to Cataclysm.
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Absolutely massive L from blizzard not keeping wrath servers. They’ve lost the entire reason they started classic servers to begin with. They are literally making the same exact mistake.
There is no point in keeping those. They would be completely dead two weeks into. Nobody wants to “progress” Naxx for 4 months. Then Ulduar for 8 and TOGC for 4, just to get to play ICC again. After, well, doing just that.
What the fk are you talking about? Era realms are frozen on last patch. This means ICC is open and everything stays as it is right now. Do you run your fresh alts through Naxx and Ulduar? Obviously nope lol.
I seriously doubt that . A huge amount of players came from private Wrath Of The Lich King servers to play in official Classic Wrath . My guild included, and if they will not keep it alive we’ll return to private .
There is a petition to preserve the woltik server?
they should keep a wrath classic server open, i dont want to continue to cata 🙁
then twink your toon at 80
People have been playing wotlk private servers for years and there are not tens but hundreds of thousands of players still playing. As for Cata private servers? No one gives a fuck and no one plays it
Let me fix that title for you. WotLK Classic Era Will Not Be Available After Cataclysm Launch if people don’t campaign for it on the forums and social media. Be polite but persistent and don’t give up if you want Wrath classic-era servers. If there is enough demand for it, they will add it.
I’m hoping they will change their mind.
lol not keeping wotlk classic live ill be the final nail in the coffin for wow i think
it makes at least 40 million dollars a month, i think you are gonna need a few more nails
Literaly they are making a mistake! I would play so much wotlk classic era realms forever, because this is my favourite expansion like to many ppl also… I would pay for char copy and etc just le it be. Hope Blizzard open their eyes!
I simply will not continue to play if they don’t keep wotlk servers. Theres a reason the player base dropped off after wotlk and blizzard need to understand this
Gogoggo wrath Era
Well, I guess I get a few months to play Wrath then give up again because Cata absolutely sucks and I never want to play it again.Blizzard fails again.
It would be great if at least one server for each expansion would be kept around.
It has the right nostalgia for me to occasionally run around older versions of the game.
Leave it up to the users what they want to play with.
So, should I still farming my shadowmourne? Or its gonna mean shit when cata comes up?
Lmao. All the losers crying about wrath. “Ouuu I’m not gonna play anymore!!” then fkn don’t. No one gives a rats ass.
The player base is already divided as it is currently. Not to mention it costs $ to maintain servers. Always remember that every business will always have a goal of minimizing cost as much as possible and maximizing profit as much as possible. It’s never about the players, please grow up and get that false sense of hope out of your heads. This decision shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone after having retired the TBC servers already. So if you’re not happy with the decisions Blizzard makes, (and I’ve been saying this for years!) STOP GIVING THEM MONEY. DON’T SUBSCRIBE.
Oh dont worry people will be, people are giving them money right now for JUST wotlk and therll have a MASSIVE dip right after this as its dumb BUSNESS move ffs you really thought you were saying somthing smart didnt you?