[Update: The 40-person Naxxramas (Naxx) raid is now live in WoW Classic. Blizzard put out a trailer for the raid below, which is absolutely wild to see in 2020. So many memories are flooding back! Naxx felt like a punishing and proper end to Vanilla WoW, and a great way to usher in the new era of Burning Crusade. Now we see what Blizzard has planned next: a new announcement in February for BlizzCon online sounds likely.]
World of Warcraft Classic will eventually get to the point where it hits the end of Vanilla's lifetime: patch 1.12.2 (which is confusingly different from the nomenclature used for Classic, bear with me here!).
I mean, it's cruising there right now, as Classic just introduced the concept of Naxxramas to its Azerothian denizens, which heralds the end of the expansion and the lead-in to Burning Crusade, the best expansion: no need to at me, you know I'm right. It's also the point where a lot of my friends quit the game, as me and a few others got more into it starting with Burning Crusade on. It was an exciting time for WoW!
Let's break down where we're at right now. Classic just added the "Shadow of the Necropolis" patch this week, which is version "1.13.6" for Classic. In WoW terms, it's patch 1.11.0. After that, there are only five more patches to go until we start to get into 2.0 Burning Crusade territory. Most of them are minor fixes, before the "Drums of War" patch hits with 1.12.
As we know, WoW: Classic uses the Drums of War patch as the framework of WoW: Classic, allowing years of innovations to shine through on day one of the re-release. In other words, Classic is nearly "complete" following the launch of Naxxramas. What's next? Well, I hope we get Burning Crusade. Maybe Blizzard is working on it right now, and will pull the switch when the Classic playerbase starts dwindling. Once that announcement hits (at February's BlizzCon Online? Or November 2021's potential BlizzCon?), people will start flocking back in en masse.
World of Warcraft Classic Patch Notes: Version 1.13.6 [Battle.net]
