Staff said in all their posts about this question: No plans for PVE TBC server as of yet. If PVP TBC goes the way vanilla did, they may open a PVE server and admins advised if you want a vanilla character to xfer to TBC, make one on the PVP server.
Now once PVE server is closer to end of timeline like PVP and they see interest, they may open a TBC PVE server like they did with the original PVE server.
They never had plans of opening a PVE server until the overpopulation of the PVP server happened, and that helped mitigate the population and also bring in new players (people like my friend who are pve oriented and played vanilla on a pve realm). They may change their plans depending on income, pricing of hosting, etc to make a pve TBC realm, but at this point, don't count on it.
Edit: This is a below post from Pottu explaining it is unknown. Meaning no conctrete plans for a PVE realm at this time, but may be in the future "to be super duper sure, make a 60 on the pvp realm" from his own words so you have a backup plan in case there isn't a PVE realm. My personal opinion: they will have a PVE realm, but when is the real question.
Pottu wrote:Okay, time to clarify few things again since there seem to be many questions.
1. "Can I change faction, name, class, appearance during the switch from vanilla to tbc?"
No. We have no plans on allowing anything like this and it would be a massive extra workload that would have to be done ostly manually.
2. "Will there be both PVP and PVE tbc realms? Can I move a character from vanilla PVE to tbc PVP?"
Unknown at this time. No details regarding this have been decided. If you want to be super-duper extra sure, level a character you want to play on the tbc PVP realm to 60 on the current PVP realm. But really, this is all up in the air.
3. "Don't release TBC yet! Release TBC asap!"
This announcement just marks the official beginning for the Nostalrius TBC project. The TBC realm will not be available for a significant time. Any speculation on a release date is pointless at this time.
4. "Why are you doing TBC when vanilla has bugs/lag/personal pet peeve"
Separate teams. This announcement was also made to recruit more people to help with the project. The existing team will focus on vanilla content, just as Viper stated, and the new TBC team will on the TBC content.
Hope this helps.
The GM team.