Blizzard Announces Joyous Journeys in TBC Classic WoW – Upcoming 50% EXP Buff Before Wrath Classic

TBC Posted 2022/06/21 at 9:41 PM by Squishei

As we continue work on Wrath of the Lich King Classic, we want to celebrate the defeat of Kil’Jaeden and the Burning Legion (again!) with a bit of a special event to help get players ready for their adventures in Northrend.In the coming weeks, we will implement a global buff that we’re calling “Joyous Journeys”. During the time this buff is active, all sources of experience points will award 50% additional XP.We haven’t locked down the specific timeframe for when this buff will activate, but we expect it to last for at least 6-8 weeks; beginning a few weeks before the 3.4.0 Pre-Patch and persisting right up until the day that Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches. This buff should provide a great opportunity for everyone who may have fallen behind the leveling curve, or anyone with alts they want to prep for the next adventure to jump in and get caught up to level 70 ahead of the release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic.This will also be active on Wrath of the Lich King Classic fresh start realms as well, so it should be a great jumpstart for any players who want try to level up quickly during pre-patch and participate in the various Wrath pre-patch events such as the Zombie Plague or special time-limited bosses such as Balzaphon in Stratholme or Tenris Murkblood in Karazhan.While we aren’t quite ready to announce specific dates around Wrath Classic, we felt it might be helpful to let you know ahead of time that this buff event was coming. We’ll have more to share around Wrath of the Lich King Classic launch plans in the coming weeks.Thank you!

Comment by WaltherLeopoldLove this, allows me to get everything up to speed for wotlkcComment by worgenfearThis is quite nice :) Definitely helpful for those who want to prepare for Wrath Classic. Well done Blizzard.Comment by RudeguyOkay not a bad change.Comment by NagisaStreamsGreat!Comment by LorgabrianGreat news! Should have done that only instead of removing RDF. I hope you all come to your senses and see why RDF disabling is bad and will cause a lot of problems, starting with the launch.Comment by ResekIs there a way to turn this off? I know I’m a rarity but I love the leveling process and would be more content for the option to have this on or off.Comment by styx01This announcement is pretty big as it hints at future release dates.

First things first, they said: In the coming weeks, we will implement a global buff that we’re calling “Joyous Journeys”. but we expect it to last for at least 6-8 weeks; beginning a few weeks before the 3.4.0 Pre-Patch and persisting right up until the day that Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches.Comment by SykellisonasI don't want to bring retail here, but they've announce that the latest expansion, Dragonflight will be released this year before 31st of December which is a really rushed date. Most of the people were expecting the new expansion to hit live servers around March/April 2023, giving everyone who wanted to play Wrath and Retail simultaneously some time to get things sorted in Wotlk. I won't be surprised if they postpone the release date of Dragonflgith by 1-2 months as they previously did with Shadowlands and for the love of God I hope they do so. Comment by freedgolemAwful idea for fresh realms. The entire point is to escape botters who can easily level and professional gold sellers who will be able to easily level profession alts for cooldowns. Fresh was sold as making new acquaintances in dungeons, world pvp where you make new friends. Now it's going to be an antisocial race of alts to have a huge advantage over everyone else with things like profession cooldowns and min maxed professions that require gathering alts.

I went from being a 2 year customer of this to going back to private servers. Congrats. If you think I'm ordering Dragonflight because you made WOTLK as bad as retail WoW? Not gonna happen. You made SoM for influencers in a sped up release no one wanted and you don't even understand the games you put out. People don't quit vanilla after BWL due to them wanting a sped up, wannabe mythic vanilla WoW with even more min maxing and fewer specs brought to raids. They quit because damage doesn't scale with health post BWL and PvP becomes awful. BWL should be the baseline you aim for.

Let me know when you fire the people who hijacked WoW and think raiding and failed esports is all that matters. I might care about WoW again other than private servers. See everyone with a fully functioning brain on Everlook.Comment by CastamereAwesome!

Now get some work on bannin bots and we're good.Comment by markanton56I don't want to bring retail here, but they've announce that the latest expansion, Dragonflight will be released this year before 31st of December which is a really rushed date. Most of the people were expecting the new expansion to hit live servers around March/April 2023, giving everyone who wanted to play Wrath and Retail simultaneously some time to get things sorted in Wotlk. I won't be surprised if they postpone the release date of Dragonflgith by 1-2 months as they previously did with Shadowlands and for the love of God I hope they do so. Comment by LoaquaI hope they will not be too long in order to launch this buff. I have reached Outlands with my GF yesterday. If this annoucement, i just want to wait now in order to benefit the 50% for the 10 lvls xDComment by Yui714Seems like a majority like this change. I was gonna hop on and relax a bit since TBC is my favorite version but don't think I will with the exp buff. I like the game the way it was and believe a game is more valuable the more difficult it is.. and that time is a sort of currency developers can use to make players feel rewarded.
I'll take the harder path. Enjoy the easy path, ya slackers >:DComment by RazzmanFantastic change!

As someone who is wanting to start on the Fresh realm this hits the nail on the head.

Shows you guys are now thinking outside the box and making changes out of the norm.

Good job dev team.Comment by Jun1usNice, can start preparing for Legion classic.Comment by KagnoThat's nice but it should be turned off for fresh start realms and for new Death KnightsComment by XingbgThis announcement is pretty big as it hints at future release dates.

First things first, they said: In the coming weeks, we will implement a global buff that we’re calling “Joyous Journeys”. but we expect it to last for at least 6-8 weeks; beginning a few weeks before the 3.4.0 Pre-Patch and persisting right up until the day that Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches.Comment by RamGuySo we are getting +50% EXP from all content on the fresh servers as well? To me, that sounds stupid, but I'm not really keen on doing the whole level 1-70 yet again so I'm somewhat happy with it. I did 1-60 on Season of Mastery when it was +40%, and did another one once it got bumped to +100%. As Season of Mastery is Vanilla, and this will be based on 3.4.0 (which is basically a modified 3.3.5a) I suppose it will feel about as fast as +100% EXP on Season of Mastery as we get all the added efficiency that got implemented in Burning Crusade + 50% EXP boost on top of that.

One thing they had to do on Season of Mastery was to lower the cost of riding skills and class abilities. When you only boost EXP gains but don't boost item drops, quest drops or money drops you end up levelling up way too fast compared to your overall income making things like affording mounts, riding skills and all your abilities rather rough. Hopefully, they will keep this in mind this time around? Especially for the fresh servers where players won't have any max level character than can provide your new level 1 character with gold and bags, and where the economy will be fresh so all items on the AH will be in high demand and expensive at the start it would feel strange to not lower the cost for skills etc to balance out the +50% EXP gains.

I suppose this +50% EXP will be a permanent thing? Why remove it after the pre-patch? Would feel even worse for new players, especially on the fresh servers that might not have time to play a lot during pre-patch to be both behind on their levelling, and not have the +50% EXP when pre-patch is over. Makes more sense for it to be permanent like on Season of Mastery. Just make it so it won't work for levels 70-80.

If pre-patch is indeed going to be 6-8 weeks as they stipulate here, shouldn't we have some more information regarding the expected release date? Unless it's going to coexist with Dragonflight, and pre-patch is going to be 6-8 weeks we start to run out of time until WotLK Classic release will be within the same timeframe as Dragonflight which seems stupid. It would be nice to get some details early so we can plan for the release, not have the release announcement drop like 14 days before release like it did with Season of Mastery.Comment by CannonlakeThe best news ever !Comment by FwakyAwful idea for fresh realms. The entire point is to escape botters who can easily level and professional gold sellers who will be able to easily level profession alts for cooldowns. Fresh was sold as making new acquaintances in dungeons, world pvp where you make new friends. Now it's going to be an antisocial race of alts to have a huge advantage over everyone else with things like profession cooldowns and min maxed professions that require gathering alts.

I went from being a 2 year customer of this to going back to private servers. Congrats. If you think I'm ordering Dragonflight because you made WOTLK as bad as retail WoW? Not gonna happen. You made SoM for influencers in a sped up release no one wanted and you don't even understand the games you put out. People don't quit vanilla after BWL due to them wanting a sped up, wannabe mythic vanilla WoW with even more min maxing and fewer specs brought to raids. They quit because damage doesn't scale with health post BWL and PvP becomes awful. BWL should be the baseline you aim for.

Let me know when you fire the people who hijacked WoW and think raiding and failed esports is all that matters. I might care about WoW again other than private servers. See everyone with a fully functioning brain on Everlook.