World of Warcraft Classic is coming summer 2019, won't require another subscription

World of Warcraft Classic, the recreation of the MMO when it launched in 2004, is coming summer 2019—and better yet, you won't need to pay a separate subscription from your normal WoW one to play it. Announced live at Blizzcon 2018, executive producer John Hight revealed that progress on Classic had made strides since it was first revealed last year and that next year players would finally get to experience World of Warcraft as it was when it first launched 14 years ago.

The good news is that you won't actually have to wait that long to get a taste. Virtual ticket holders will be able to play a time-limited World of Warcraft: Classic demo starting today.

World of Warcraft Classic is something that players have been wanting for years, but Blizzard was hesitant to invest in because resurrecting a very old version of an MMO is no easy task. That was until, last year, we learned of a technical breakthrough that made the whole thing possible. You can read our full feature to hear that story.

World of Warcraft Classic will be arriving summer of 2019, but stay tuned as we have lots more news coming out of Blizzcon and will be jumping in to play the demo ourselves too.

Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.