Retail World of Warcraft



Retail World of Warcraft is the modern World of Warcraft game including the most recent expansions. Blizzard also uses the development term Mainline. These terms distinguish from World of Warcraft: Classic (Classic Era) and Burning Crusade Classic (BCC).

Retail differs from Classic in that new expansions have always changed the game client and world for all players, including those who do not purchase the new expansion. For example, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm redesigned the game's original zones and affected all players from that point forward. By contrast, Blizzard announced at BlizzConline the intent to maintain "Classic Era" servers when advancing the Classic branch to the next expansion.