World of Warcraft Classic will be based on game version 1.12
World of Warcraft Classic will be based on version 1.12: Drums of War. That’s the most complete version of the classic experience, according to developer Blizzard. The studio is now working to make the data from 1.12 compatible with the game’s modern back-end.
Version 1.12 is not the last patch that came out before the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out. It is the last major update that has nothing to do with the first expansion. 1.12 was released on August 22, 2006 and introduced cross-realm battlegrounds, Rogue class modifications, and other pvp additions. The Burning Crusade followed on January 15, 2007.
Between patch 1.12 and the release of The Burning Crusade, a period of about five months, two more major updates were released: 2.0.1 and 2.0.3. As the numbers would suggest, the changes these patches introduced were part of The Burning Crusade, even though it hadn’t been released yet. Patch 2.0.1 was also delivered on the disk of the first expansion.
It is currently unclear whether certain quality of life improvements that are not necessarily strongly related to a particular expansion, such as the Looking For Group Interface Tool from version 2.0.1, will not be able to make it into the Classic game.
Blizzard’s devlog further outlines the challenges developers face as they attempt to make version 1.12 data work in the modern back-end. Using the 1.12 backend, probably unsurprisingly, is problematic on modern hardware. Things like databases also need to be translated into new formats to make them compatible. The advantage of this is not only compatibility with modern hardware, but also with Blizzard’s current anti-cheat technology.
World of Warcraft Classic was announced last November at BlizzCon. Unofficial classic servers have been around for a while, but not with Blizzard’s approval. One of those servers was Nostalrius. The popularity of these types of servers may have contributed to Blizzard’s decision to release an ‘old-fashioned’ World of Warcraft of its own. It is not yet known when World of Warcraft Classic will be released. No doubt Blizzard will tell more at BlizzCon 2018, which will be held on November 2 and 3.