Black Temple, which is a big-group dungeon from an old World of Warcraft expansion, opened on the Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary Edition servers on 27 August 2026. It arrived alongside the Battle for Mount Hyjal, the Netherwing daily quest hub and epic gems. Blizzard's own notice lists them together under what it calls your journey ahead, and puts Arena Season 3 five days later on 1 September.

The short version for anyone who has never played. Burning Crusade Classic, which is a re-release of the game's first expansion, runs on its own servers so people can play it as it was. Each of Black Temple and Mount Hyjal is a raid, which is the game's word for a dungeon built for a large group. The Caverns of Time, where the second one sits, is the in-game hub that leads to dungeons set in the game's own past. Netherwing is a faction you build standing with to earn a flying mount. And an arena season is a numbered stretch of ranked small-team fighting, with its own gear.

The two raids, side by side

An attunement is a chain of quests you finish before the game lets you in at all. Indormi is the row to note for anyone not raiding: the jewelcrafting designs for the new epic gems sell from inside Mount Hyjal, and the gems themselves come from mining in that raid at 375 skill or as rare drops in Black Temple. Blizzard's notice also says a raid group is not required to enter Mount Hyjal.

Our take: what it means for players

The arena rollover is the part with a deadline on it, and it has already passed for anyone holding points. Season 2 closed the week of 16 August, at 10:00 pm local time the night before each region's reset. Unspent Arena Points, which is the currency earned in ranked small-team matches, turned into Honor Points at ten each. Honor is the older currency, earned from fighting other players out in the world.

That is a conversion rather than a refund, and we think it is the wrong way round. Points saved for a Season 3 purchase became honor, which buys a different and older set of gear. Anyone who did the disciplined thing and banked their points for the next tier was paid out in the currency for the last one. The people who spent theirs immediately lost nothing. A rollover that punishes patience is a small unfairness with a real cost, and it was avoidable.

The upside of the same rollover is genuinely good, and worth being loud about, because it is the opposite of how a lot of this genre now solves the same problem. Two tiers of player-versus-player gear dropped their gates at once. Season 2 gear now sells at a discount from Area 52 with no rating requirement, and Season 1 gear moved to the Honor vendors in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. For a player arriving late to this phase that is a cheap way back in, and it costs time rather than money. No boost, no bundle, no shop page. A vendor and an afternoon.

Netherwing is the long tail and it makes no apology for it. The standing comes from daily quests on Netherwing Ledge. That is a floating outpost in southeastern Shadowmoon Valley, which the notice says needs a flying mount to reach, or a willingness to take a very strategic fall. The six Netherwing Drake colours all need exalted standing, artisan riding, and the Blood Oath of the Netherwing step of the quest chain. Nothing about that chain is fast. That is the point of putting it in beside a raid tier. It is the sort of reward that still means something a year later, precisely because nobody can shortcut it.

Credit where it is due: Blizzard's own notice links a community guide for the Netherwing chain, and Wowhead is where a lot of players will check the steps.

What's next

The anniversary servers have no further dated phase in Blizzard's notice. The next Warcraft date on the record is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, on 12 and 13 September. Its published running order carries three forward-looking Warcraft sessions, one of them for Hardcore, the mode where a character who dies is gone for good. Both days are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.