Blizzard has announced the introduction of a “fresh realms” mechanic ahead of the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft Classic. 

WoW Classic has proved a great success, with tens of thousands of active players to this day. The original launch of Classic maintained its momentum and player base in the months following its release. Blizzard then released Burning Crusade Classic on June 1 last year, emulating the release of the original Burning Crusade. In the same vein, Blizzard is now working on releasing Wrath of the Lich King Classic to give classic players more content. 

Blizzard will be releasing the aforementioned fresh realms feature to facilitate new players who want to begin playing WoW Classic upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. In a press release, Blizzard revealed the details of this new feature. Fresh realms will be accessible only to new characters for the first 90 days after launch. Furthermore, players will not be able to use the game’s boosting mechanic on these realms for the same time period, so there’s no skipping ahead. Finally, these realms will not be available destinations for character transfers for the 90-day cycle either.

These realms will launch with Wrath of the Lich King Classic mechanics available, meaning the new talents, abilities, and locations will be in the game immediately. However, a player will have to level an existing character to 55 on the fresh realm before they’ll be able to play as the old-but-new Death Knight class. 

This is one of the several changes to Classic that Blizzard is implementing ahead of the launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. They plan to consolidate lower population realms into realms with higher populations to keep server player pools healthy. Furthermore, they're also looking to remove the restriction whereby players can’t have a PvP character in both factions in the same realm. 

The addition of fresh realms is an attempt by Blizzard to draw in another wave of new players by giving them a sense of shared progression with other fresh players. The aim seems to be capturing the almost indescribable phenomenon that players feel when a new MMO or an expansion for an existing MMO launches. The press release also stated that a goal of these new realms is to aid players looking to level in dungeons by ensuring there are also other players levelling at the same time.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic has no release date as of yet but it is expected to launch later this year.