World of Warcraft’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, not only represented an extension of zones and raids, but it meant the introduction of new races as well.
While all of the races available in vanilla World of Warcraft remained playable when TBC started, there were two more added by Blizzard Entertainment.
The Blood Elf became a playable race for members of the Horde, and the Draenei were added to the Alliance.
One of the primary reasons for these race additions was to also introduce the expansion of class selection for each faction. While no classes were added to the game in TBC, classes previously only available to one faction became an option for the other.
Blood Elves could be Paladins, a class that was previously exclusive to the Alliance. Draenei could be Shamans, a class previously exclusive to the Horde.
When the WoW Classic TBC pre-patch begins later this year, players will be allowed to start making Blood Elves and Draenei characters in preparation for the TBC launch.
While this option was not available when the game originally came out in the mid-2000s, Blizzard said during BlizzConline it would disincentivize players to make a Blood Elf or Draenei too much if those races weren’t available until after the game officially launched.
By allowing players to play Blood Elves and Draenei in the pre-patch, which still has no official launch time, Blizzard is giving people a chance to get to level 60 prior to TBC’s launch so that they can walk through the Dark Portal at the same time as all their friends who leveled in Classic.
Here’s a list of all the races available in TBC along with the classes they can play.
Alliance
- Dwarf – Hunter, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warrior
- Gnome – Mage, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior
- Human – Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior
- Night Elf – Druid, Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Warrior
- Draenei – Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Warrior
Horde
- Orc – Hunter, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior
- Tauren – Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior
- Troll – Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior
- Undead – Mage, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior
- Blood Elf – Hunter Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warlock