Blizzard has opened the Burning Crusade Classic Phase 3 PTR, with Black Temple and The Battle for Mount Hyjal scheduled for raid testing from August 14 through August 17. If you’ve been waiting to shake down your raid UI in Illidan and Archimonde’s houses, this is your weekend. Details come from Blizzard’s Phase 3 PTR development notes, with additional coverage on Wowhead’s update.
Phase 3 itself is planned to go live on August 27 at 3:00 p.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. EDT, per Blizzard’s notes linked above.
What’s included in Phase 3 (per Blizzard)
According to the PTR development notes, Phase 3 brings:
- New raids: Black Temple (Illidan) and The Battle for Mount Hyjal (Archimonde).
- New daily faction and quest hub: The Netherwing in Shadowmoon Valley.
- Arena Season 3, with new rewards and updated progression.
- Epic gems.
Raid testing schedule
Blizzard plans to enable PTR raid testing at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, August 14, with testing concluding at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, August 17. These windows and the participating raids (Black Temple and Mount Hyjal) are reiterated in Wowhead’s post and the Blizzard raid-testing note.
Note: Blizzard’s raid-testing times above were posted without a timezone. The Phase 3 launch time was specified as 3:00 p.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. EDT in the same forum thread.
For this raid test, Blizzard is also trying out Haste and Destruction potions that can be obtained with Marks of Illidari from Phase 3 raids, alongside the usual flask redemptions. That detail comes directly from the raid-testing update.
Quick UI prep if you’re hopping onto PTR
This is a good window to sanity-check your raid setup in Outland-scale encounters. Keep it simple: make sure your boss mods are enabled, your raid frames show the debuffs you actually care about, your cooldown tracking is readable, and your logging/benchmark tools are toggled on. If you’re planning to play with the potion redemptions, consider surfacing your Marks of Illidari count somewhere visible so you don’t have to dig for it between pulls.
If Blizzard posts further changes to test or adjusts the schedule, we’ll update this note. For now, the authoritative details are in the Phase 3 PTR development notes.
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