For the better part of the last year we’ve been working on something we call TBC+, driven by our longstanding belief that The Burning Crusade still has untapped potential. With everything we’ve learned from playing and running TBC realms — and thanks to the groundwork we’ve laid during our latest project — we’re finally in a position to bring these ideas to life.
All realities, all dimensions are open to me!
The first raid tier in TBC generally receives the most attention and participation, but it's the most forgettable and disliked in the expansion. We see the core issue here as the fact that Tier 4’s content is mostly just two caves with very boring encounters. This often leads to a faster T4 phase, which leaves some players behind, pressures them to play a lot in a short period of time, causes awkward arena seasons, among other things. But if we stick to a typical timeline for T4, a lot of players lose interest and move on. It's kind of a lose-lose situation. To address this, we’re creating two new T4 raids with 10 fresh boss encounters using new layouts. These will replace Magtheridon’s Lair and Gruul’s Lair, while Karazhan remains mostly unchanged. Our aim with new T4 content is to turn Phase 1 into a real, standalone phase. Tier 5 and Tier 6 content has some of the same issues, and we’ll use a similar approach there by introducing new encounters and layouts. We’re also adding three new 5-man dungeons — one in Blade’s Edge Mountains and two in Shadowmoon Valley — which we plan to make available at launch.
to Rule Them All?
Another area we're focusing on improving is classes and class spells. For PvE, one of our goals is to move away from one-button rotations. We initially considered adding spells and mechanics from later expansions, but quickly realized they’d only work if we also brought in modern systems that support them (like glyphs and modern talent trees). For example, simply throwing in Chaos Bolt doesn’t really change the flow of a Destruction Warlock’s rotation — it’s just one more button to press every 10–12 seconds for a slightly stronger Shadow Bolt. Instead, we’re taking an approach closer to the spirit of TBC. We’ll share details soon, and you can also expect smaller changes like raid-wide Bloodlust with a Sated debuff. For PvP, we’re mostly focusing on spells and mechanics that are currently too oppressive. Warlock’s Curse of Tongues shouldn’t delete Holy Paladins and Restoration Shamans, Rogue’s Blind needs a cooldown that doesn't reward using it mindlessly every 1-minute and 30-seconds, Garrote Silence needs to be subject to diminishing returns discouraging triple Garrotes, and so on. We believe it's important to mention that we don't want PvE class changes to significantly impact PvP, and vice versa.
Raiders in Splits Getting (mostly) Nothing
The final point we'd like to touch on is items and itemization in general. Too much loot, especially in the first two phases, has undesirable stats. This leads to unfortunate (and unlucky) situations where, for example, every melee DPS class is chasing the same Leather piece while other drops gather dust in someone's offspec or go straight to disenchant. We also have situations where an item from Phase 1 stays on par with new drops in later phases, which devalues new content. For instance, a raid drop like Boots of Effortless Striking would never be used by anyone when better items like Edgewalker Longboots or crafted Fel Leather Boots are available from previous phases. On the PvP side, gear often pales in comparison to PvE options, pushing arena players to do PvE whether they like it or not. We’re tackling all of this by adding new items and revamping existing ones to make sure every piece has a purpose and desirable stats for its class.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes…
We know we’ve only scratched the surface here. As our work continues our ideas progress, and we’ll share more details on each major topic in upcoming posts. We also realize there’s a real risk of drifting too far from TBC and falling into the trap of becoming Retail− or, at the very least, Wrath−. We’re working hard to stay true to the spirit of TBC. If you want to join the conversation, challenge our ideas, or just keep an eye on the progress, find us on Discord!