BlizzCon Virtual Ticket holders will get to play a World of Warcraft: Classic demo

World of Warcraft: Classic is apparently making more progress than Blizzard has let on, because the company announced today that the recreation of the MMO as it first existed in 2004 will be playable at BlizzCon 2018. Don't worry though, those who purchase a Virtual Ticket can also download it and play at home.

As game director Ion Hazzikostas explains in the video above, the demo will let players jump into one "iconic" Horde or Alliance-owned territory, where they can experience World of Warcraft without all the fancy updates that expansions have added over the years. Spoiler alert: Be prepared to kill a lot of boars. It's not clear exactly what limitations the demo will have, but it's safe to say you'll probably be restricted to a certain level range and zone.

Starting on November 2, after the BlizzCon keynote presentation wraps up, Virtual Ticket holders will be able to download the demo through the Battle.net client and can play up until November 8, which is plenty of time to bask in all that nostalgic glory.

BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Tickets are on sale now and cost a mighty $50, which isn't cheap but will let you watch several days worth of presentations and net you some cool cosmetic items for each Blizzard game to boot. Not to mention a trip back in time to 2004's version of Azeroth.

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.