WoW Classic director says the next phase will launch "later this year"

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Ion Hazzikostas outlines what's next for WoW Classic and addresses the layering issue

WoW Classic
(Image credit: Blizzard)

World of Warcraft Classic has seen an impressive amount of players get stuck into the questing and raiding action the vanilla edition has to offer. But more is set to come to the world of, well, Warcraft in future. The good folks over at PCGamer recently interviewed Ion Hazzikostas, who revealed that players can expect a "second phase" introducing new raids and dungeons to Blizzard's MMORPG "later this year." 

"Within that time frame?" Hazzioktas told PCGamer, "It's going to depend on a few factors." While we don't know when exactly the new phase will be rolled out, it might not be too far off with Hazzikostas saying it will happen this year "definitively." 

Since the vanilla edition of WoW launched in August, the realms have seen a wealth of players join. In fact, it was so overcrowded to begin with, folks had to actually queue up to complete quests and faced lengthy wait times to even get onto a server. 

One of the biggest hurdles the Classic server has had to face is the layering problem. Essentially layers create different versions of the same zones to allow more players to join the realm and was used in order to try and meet the demands of the population. After some were exploiting this layering system in order to repeatedly farm loot, Blizzard implemented a player ban, but the studio are still working to stabilize the realms and remove the layers so there's only one in each realm to prevent any exploits happening again. 

It's especially important since the interview reveals the next phase will feature world bosses such as Kazzak, and as Hazzikostas explained, they want there to be only one of them players can face: "When Kazzak is up, we only want one Kazzak. That's kind of a central dynamic of how that needs to play out in the outdoor world." 

In WoW Classic's forums community manager Kaivax addressed the layering problem and revealed that Blizzard have already locked in 13 realms with one layer, and players will now be able to see when a realm there in has more than one layer with a message indicating that it's "layered." Blizzard plans reducing realms to a single layer "over time." 

Read about how World of Warcraft Classic already has one of the nicest communities in gaming or check out the video below to see the top 10 MMO games you can play right now. 

Heather Wald
Heather Wald
Evergreen Editor, Games

Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.