If you’ve ever played vanilla WoW, you’ve probably caught on to the news about WoW Classic coming out. Well, now you want to see what all the buzz is about, and you cant find any option to install Classic WoW. Well, you’re not alone. The reason there is no option to download Classic WoW is because you don’t have an active subscription!
Normally, above the PLAY button, you should see a version selection. This will let you cycle between retail WoW and classic WoW. Each version needs to be installed separately as they are treating as different WoW clients. You immediately notice just how much faster it is to install WoW classic because it’s much smaller file size.
Still Don't See An Option? Re-install Battle Net
Another reason you may not be seeing an option is because you’ll sometimes have to completely un-install the Battle Net launcher. Blizzard makes it almost impossible to find the page to download battle net. Here is the link to it so you don’t have to go looking: https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/apps/battle.net/desktop
Just remove and re-install the battle net launcher and you should see the version selector.
What is Classic WoW's File Size?
If you take a look at the screenshot above, you’ll notice that the download only appears to be just under 3 GB. This is on par for what the file size of WoW actually used to be back in the day. There has been in incredible amount of content updates that just keep making the game file larger larger. Since the whole premise of classic wow is to turn back time before all that content showed up, it only makes sense the the file size is so small.
As you play the game more and more, the total file size may actually show as more. This is very common in most games, but especially a game like Word of Warcraft.