World of Warcraft: Classic was a fun experiment back in 2019 – but since then, the WoW Classic machine has turned into a full blown framework of weird and wonderful Warcraft offerings. With the original release powering through the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic experience and now promising Mists of Pandaria: Classic to follow in 2025, you’d think that was plenty – but here in 2024 you can also jump in to World of Warcraft: Classic Hardcore for the masochists among us, World of Warcraft: Classic Season of Discovery for the endlessly inquisitive and finally World of Warcraft: Classic Anniversary Edition for people who just want to enjoy the simplicity of day one WoW.
Now, if you feel a headache coming on from reading the words ‘World of Warcraft’ that many times, I am right there with you. But there is no denying that there is A LOT of World of Warcraft to play right now.
To shed some light on the future of all these Classic WoW offerings, I had the privilege of picking the collective brains of two incredible members of the WoW Classic team – Clayton Stone, Associate Production Director, and Nora Valletta, Lead Software Engineer, who have their hands deep in the paint with creating and maintaining WoW Classic experiences.
Join us as we dig in to what we can expect with all these incredible options moving forward – and what on Earth happens when we run out of Classic content to explore?
WellPlayed: Throughout the timeline of World of Warcraft: Classic, there has been the introduction of ‘#somechanges’ – Staring down the barrel of Mists of Pandaria: Classic, how is the team feeling about the changes made so far and possibly things that might be considered in the future?
Nora Valletta: I mean, in general, Mists of Pandaria is very well-loved and we see it as a fairly complete expansion. So we weren’t considering much in terms of some changes – we’re still talking about what might make sense for today’s modern audience and those re-experiencing Mists of Pandaria: Classic, but we see it as a very complete game. It’s a very iconic version of World of Warcraft that we’re really excited about experiencing for the first time again.
Clayton Stone: We’ve had, gosh, looking at all the expansions we’ve done so far, the great fortune of this incredibly vocal player base that has helped inform so many of the changes that we have made. We look at Wrath of the Lich King and the introduction of Titan Rune Dungeons and being able to keep those dungeons relevant by providing a fun new difficulty and challenge to acquire improved gear. I think the same will certainly be for Mists of Pandaria: Classic, but as Nora said, you know, it’s a beloved expansion. It got so much right, right out of the gate that I think we do view it as a complete expansion. So we’ll see – nothing definitive to announce on that front today.
WP: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic had an accelerated patch cadence, meaning that content came a little bit sooner than they might have originally. Some players felt a little bit squeezed when it came to engaging with systems like reputation grinds. Is this something that the team might have noticed? Might this be considered within the scope of adjustments in the future that content that is designed to take an amount of time might need to be adjusted to make sure that that can still be engaged with in the way it was intended?
CS: I would say absolutely. For Cataclysm, one of our big changes going into Firelands – because we knew it was going to be a short patch phase – was increasing the acquisition rate of our legendary Dragonwrath staff. So I would say with the accelerated cadence that we’ve been on, certainly making sure that players can accomplish their goals within the time that we have allotted for us is absolutely top of mind for us. Beyond that, looking at ways for players who play many alts to be able to reduce some of the burden that they might face on that front.
NV: Timing the rollout of our content phases is crucial to affecting the tempo of how players journey through that content. Things like, to Clay’s point, how long will it take for them to go through this rep grind? How long will it take for them to acquire some choice items that are especially iconic items that really stand out in your mind like – I have to go for this, but do I have the time? Do I have adequate time? Is it going to be achievable without having to really break the schedule of my daily life in order to achieve it? Those are things we talk about as a team and we evaluate typically well in advance of setting that content phase. We do continue to lean on our player base for feedback on that and understanding what their needs and concerns are.
WP: Is the release schedule of content throughout Mists of Pandaria: Classic going to be accelerated as well?
NV: I think we’re still kind of chewing on that as a team a little bit. To my earlier point about really affecting the tempo of your journey – we want to be very cautious in the changes that we do make, but that is something we want to carefully evaluate for each of the expansions that we release and make sure that we’re striking the right chord. Because this is a chance for players to relive that expansion, but it’s also a chance for us to potentially relieve some pressure, right? Improve things if it makes sense, as long as it feels congruent with how that expansion should feel.
CS: Exactly what Nora just said. For Cataclysm specifically, we were on the Spine of Deathwing originally for something like 10 months before the next raid tier release. For Cataclysm, that is NOT something we want to repeat again by any stretch of the imagination. And if you look at us announcing that MoP classic would be coming next summer, I think that that aligns with the fact that we won’t be spending that amount of time there again. But it’s really driven by where we think the player base is going to be, as Nora mentioned. We want to release this content at a healthy cadence that feels good as far as the player journey is concerned. We want something to be released at the right time when it’s fun to look forward to that next thing, and you feel like you’ve had a satisfying amount of time in the current phase that you’re in. So I guess if you look at all of our other expansions previously, they have moved slightly faster than the original versions of them. I think it’s probably a good expectation to set for the future as well. But on the flip side of that is, MoP is so great and so much fun, and we do want to give that plenty of room and time to breathe for our players.
NV: I will say on the topic of the 10 months on Spine of Deathwing, I had a blast falling off the Spine of Deathwing for those 10 months.
WP: As far as raid wipes go, that was the most entertaining one.
NV: Yup! Oh, there goes Nora again.
WP: We all enjoyed that.
WP: Is there any talk within the team talking about class disparities, particularly tanks? When you look at statistics such as Blood Death Knights consisting of nearly 56% of tank parses on a boss like Sinestra – whereas warriors, for example, only accounted for 3% of parses. Does this suggest that some classes need a particular kind of attention to shine when it comes to old expansions?
NV: I will say it’s a little bit like walking a tightrope because we don’t want to completely reinvent the meta. Even watching players as they excitedly talk about Mists of Pandaria coming up, you’ll see players start to talk about what class was really strong, what spec was really strong in the content. So we watch for that. We also check our own experiences and think to ourselves, okay, we don’t necessarily have to shake up the meta here, but what are some things that we think we should address? What are some things the team might have addressed before they had moved on to working on the next piece of content, right?
CS: It’s challenging also because we do take the future into account, where we know that patch to patch and phase to phase, that meta class can change. Any changes that we’re making can then impact those further phases down the line. It is definitely a tightrope walk as Nora mentioned.
WP: Has there been an awkward discussion within the team of what happens when we inevitably catch up to what retail is doing?
NV: I don’t think we will catch up. That’s not something that we’re super concerned with. We’re constantly evaluating where we’re at and where we should go. We are currently discussing as a team what our next classic experience will be – so if we did decide to put a pause or stop with progression, we want to make sure that we’re still meeting the needs of our player community. There’s a lot of World of Warcraft out there right now. We feel pretty confident that we have what players are looking for.
And our team has a wonderful relationship with players, which I really appreciate so we can constantly kind of keep a pulse on things and check on where folks want to head.
CS: We went to Cataclysm. We did reach out to the community. We listened to feedback. We knew that there were some very passionate folks who wanted to continue on past Wrath or Cataclysm. When we think about the future, it really is driven by where our players want to go next.
WP: Regarding the newly opened World of Warcraft: Classic Anniversary realms – people flocked to that fresh experience all over again, Does it feel like we’re edging closer to some kind of seasonal release schedule where people can anticipate a regular fresh experience?
NV: I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a thought that didn’t occur to us. It’s something that we’re constantly thinking about, many of us are players ourselves, so we’re constantly thinking, what would I want? I’m trying to project long-term, although we do have the luxury of being able to react and pivot as a team. We don’t set a lot of things too hard in stone early on, which is why we’re hearing overwhelmingly from the player community that they want to see Classic Fresh. A very common refrain in the community was “Fresh When?”. Sometimes they would respond to completely unrelated blue posts with “Fresh When?”. We were delighted to see that response, and so we were delighted to announce our anniversary realms and offer folks that journey from day one, again, in the Classic Classic Experience. We’ll continue to keep our ear to the ground and see where folks want to be.
WP: Maybe people will start asking “Seasonal When?”, and we’ll just go from there.
NV: Maybe.
WP: One of the interesting things that obviously people really engage with is that the World of Warcraft: Classic Anniversary realms enjoyed a very small handful of quality life changes, things like Instant Mail and Dual Spec. What kind of decision-making process goes into selecting what does and doesn’t make the cut for a quality of life change?
CS: Yeah, gosh. It’s challenging because when we set out to do these Classic Anniversary realms, it really was the foundation of how we could recreate that 2019 Classic experience. We’ve learned a lot since then, since 2019. Even much later in Wrath of the Lich King, we implemented the improved PVP Honor Ranking System in our Classic era realms. Just through those learnings, something that appealed not just to our Classic player base, but to a contemporary gaming audience, it just felt like bringing some of that forward right from the start just made sense. Like the Chronoboon Displacer – we weren’t reducing ‘necessary friction’ by doing some of these things, just creating a better play experience for all.
WP: …I’ve actually got a note here from a previous conversation I had where your team mentioned that a big part of Classic was identifying the ‘friendly friction’ that some players remember and actually kind of enjoy.
CS: Yeah! That’s critical in Classic. You don’t want to lose that. That’s part of what makes Classic Classic. So a lot of thought goes into that. Certainly after we announced that the Classic Anniversary realms were coming, we got together as a team to look at all the feedback that we had been hearing. There were very loud calls for things like Dual Spec. But we still take everything into consideration and we take it very seriously. And we really discuss the long term impact of any changes that we make.
So that’s I guess a long way of saying ‘very deliberately and carefully’ is how we make decisions on changes like that.
NV: It can at times depend on the feature and the team’s thoughts and opinions whenever something is fielded. One really important addition to Classic Anniversary was the introduction of the Group Finder tool, which hadn’t previously been in the original Classic. Initially when it was sat down and we started to think about it, we asked if this is something we really want to introduce. I personally was nervous. Any and all changes can be pretty nerve wracking, especially something as fundamentally large as that.
But we sat back and went through the thought process of, okay, let’s really meticulously take the time to analyze what are players saying about the game. What are players saying their pain points are? How might this address this? And what are some ways in which it may change player behavior that could affect the game? Through that process of evaluation, we decided this is something that could relieve a pain point that doesn’t necessarily have to be there for enjoyment. As a player you’d end up spamming in chat and your message scrolls off the screen, or you’d have to install this third party addon in order to post yourself as someone seeking a group. So that process of trying to sync up and connect with other players was something that we were really excited to address.
CS: One other thing to add, we did something with Classic Anniversary that I don’t think we really did before. And that was also announcing that Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary would be coming as well. If you look at the history of our Classic expansions, I don’t think we’ve ever announced this early that we’re going to be progressing on to something else. And that even though that’s not a change to the game itself, it certainly was a change to our mentality about how we basically made a commitment to players that we would be going back to Burning Crusade. Part of that was driven by player feedback. They want to know where they’re going next. Our Classic player base loves to plan things out.
WP: Are there any plans for the existing Hardcore and Classic Era realms which might have been impacted by the release of Classic Anniversary?
NV: We’re constantly monitoring realm health, player populations, player activity, trying to understand if any action needs to be taken. Our tech is such that we are enabling a lot more players than what was originally supported to play on a single realm. That helps mitigate the need for things like merges. I totally understand that it’s kind of a catch 22, sometimes those merges are super healthy for realms, right? For population and for that growth. But also, you know, it can be a little jarring for players to experience. Our team is pretty on top of keeping an eye on things, making sure it’s pretty healthy. And I will say, players who carved out their homes on those existing hardcore and era realms, there’s still a thriving player community there. That is their home, right? Maybe some of them have also created a new home on the newer realms, but they still go back or some of them have actually chosen to stay on the older realms as well. We’re constantly trying to react to player behaviors and what folks are enjoying the most.
WP: Regarding Season of Discovery. Is there a lesson that you’ve taken from Season of Discovery so far that will drive you to try more experimental approaches when it comes to the World of Warcraft: Classic framework moving forward?
CS: We’ve learned tremendous amounts of what players like, what players don’t like, what we like, and what we don’t like with Season of Discovery. It’s been a wonderful space for us to be able to try some of these things and see how far we can push the envelope. When it comes to non-seasonal realms, which are positioned as almost forever experiences, then it gets more challenging for us to put something in there without being really certain about it. We’re a little bit less experimental when it comes to our progression realms or our new Classic Anniversary realms. But the spirit of our team absolutely is very agile and we do like to try things. And I think that there is going to continue to be room for more experimentation in the future.
For Season of Discovery specifically, that has really been our primary focus as a space to try some of this more experimental content. It’s been wonderful to see the players embrace that too and go on this ride with us. And of course, it’s not over yet. We announced that there is more content coming, including new instance content next year. Players seem extremely excited about it and so are we. We’re just excited to continue this journey on Season of Discovery.
NV: I’m super excited for what we’ve got coming down the road in Season of Discovery. I will say one of the interesting things we did, especially in terms of how heavily we tend to rely on public test realms for finding issues and addressing things before they reach live, was to kind of maintain that secrecy and give that “Oh my gosh, I just discovered something” experience with Season of Discovery. It has been really interesting from an engineering perspective to try to start thinking of ways in which we can potentially get some amount of testing and put our code through the works in ways that still allow us to potentially keep some things intentionally hidden if we want to surprise and delight players in the future. There’s a surprisingly incredible hunger from players for ‘core’ classic gameplay, but with new content. So that’s been really interesting for me.
WP: In regards to the new Season of Discovery content that is coming – It keeps getting referred to as instance content, are we confirming that those are five person dungeons rather than raid experiences? Or is that something that can’t really be confirmed at this time?
CS: I wish we could confirm it. I can say we are hard at work on it. And we think that players should be as excited as we are. But we’re looking forward to unveiling that a little bit later on.
WP: Is there any thought to what happens to Season of Discovery beyond Naxxramas? Is the thought to go to Outlands? Or something else entirely?
NV: We don’t have any plans of having a Season of Discovery transition onto The Burning Crusade, so to speak. But in terms of just kind of generally discussing what the experience may be like – there’s still plenty coming down the line for Season of Discovery, still got some exciting things. We are discussing as a team what that experience should be like. And we still hold to what we’ve said in prior interviews about making sure that your characters that you’ve been on this journey with us and you’ve poured all this time, love and effort into these characters, giving them some way to live on.
WP: The release phases across Season of Discovery have been a hallmark change – Was there interesting data coming through for how people engage with each phase of content?
CS: A thousand percent, yes. One of the beautiful components of the way that Season of Discovery was built and was released was that we were very much tracking player engagement with each phase and player sentiment towards the features that we were rolling out, including those, as Nora mentioned, that we did very limited to no PTR testing to have players just go in and discover it right away when the phase started. But all of the feedback and community discussion around these different phases and content releases, we have absolutely been listening to and tracking and discussing as a team and really keeping in mind as we look at where we go next and what we do next. The phases and the model of the phases and the way that they were rolled out was particularly helpful for the team and in categorizing everything and cataloging it all.
I would say it’s also made for a really fun ride and player experience too, because you knew that there was always another phase to come, and there’s still more phases to come, of course, that we’re working on. But it did create almost like chapters in a novel that is Season of Discovery that we’ve been following and an easy way too for us to refer to some of the content sets that we’ve been through as well.
NV: While being intentionally vague to the specific types of data that we collect, obviously we’re very much a data informed team. It goes hand in hand with the player feedback we receive, and not so far as it is like, oh, “We’ve learned something from a piece of data”, because if it ends up mismatching what players are saying or what they might expect we don’t want to assume that players are wrong. We’re very, very people oriented, like, what can we learn from this? What are the takeaways here? What are the potential pain points? And what are the things we should actually potentially lean more heavily into or dig in further?
WP: Brilliant – Thank you, Clayton. Thank you, Nora.
NV: Thank you so much.
CS: Thanks!
A heartfelt thank you to both Nora and Clayton for their awesome insights. Much like they said, there is a lot of World of Warcraft to play right now – it seems that no matter your flavour, you will find something to do and very likely something to look forward to across the many incarnations of Azeroth that exist right now. And for those brace souls that continue to march forth into the madness of Season of Discovery, you heard it right from the team behind it – there’s still plenty coming down the line for Season of Discovery.
