Thousands of World of Warcraft Classic players are starting over from scratch

More than 1300 World of Warcraft players are preparing to depart on a "fresh" Classic experience in anticipation of the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion.

As reported by Eurogamer, the community project, dubbed The Fresh Crusade, will see players create new characters on a low population server to "reboot" the WoW Classic experience, which has been fraught with botting issues and an inflated economy across multiple realms. 

The two issues go hand in hand, with botting leading to real money transactions (RMT), which directly leads to an inflated in-game economy. While the issue persists across all of WoW Classic, it's more prevalent on higher population servers, hence The Fresh Crusade's plans to migrate to a quieter realm.

Caszhar, the brainchild behind the project, told Eurogamer "with all of us starting together, the economy will be more of an even playing ground compared to the higher/mid-size population servers." 

The event is due to go live on March 5 at 7 pm server time, and will take place on a yet-to-be-determined European realm. Caszhar says on the community Discord that they hope to have enough players to split into both Alliance and Horde. There are already seven guilds getting involved, and Caszhar hopes that they'll hit 2000 players by the time Friday rolls around.

It's a super wholesome idea, one rooted in the desire to make sure new or returning players don't feel left behind by high-level characters or pushed out of the ever-increasing economy. Caszhar said that "the support from people joining has been heart-warming to see," and that "people are really excited to start on Friday." 

You can get involved over on The Fresh Crusade's Discord server. The Burning Crusade Classic doesn't have a firm release date yet, but is coming sometime this year, with Blizzard saying the beta will be starting very soon.