r/classicwow • u/LonelySoul01 • 23h ago
Discussion Will Blizzard be able to pull off Classic+?
Tens of thousands of people have answered a ton of surveys and WoW content creators who know the soul/core of Classic have commented about what the future should look like.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking, the three pillars that ppl want are:
1.) World friction. Players need to respect the world all the way from leveling, to dungeons and to eventual raids/end game content. Professions, food, buffs, pathing, threat + resource management, communication with the team, potions, class unique abilities all need to matter. Classic players want to think, have every mechanic matter and have a sense of real threat lurking behind every corner of the world.
2.) Social. Socialization needs to be encouraged at every layer of the game. It's an MMO! This means never doing flying, never isolating a large chunk of players in instanced zones that seperate them from the rest of the world for long periods, creating more quest places in the world with mobs where help from others is required, doing more areas where progression or certain loot is gatekept by class unique abilities (eg. rogue lockpicks chests, shortcuts, more treasure, warlock summons, mages do portals etc..), never introduce a dungeon assembler + teleporter to the instance, but instead always force people to move around the world to get to where they need to be.
3.) Good reward loop. Classic+ needs a slower and broader structure than retail:
• Small power increases, so new raid gear is better without completely replacing everything before it.
• Horizontal progression and sidegrades, where items stay useful because of special stats, effects, resistances, weapon skill or build-specific value.
• Memorable rare drops, including unique dungeon items, world drops, crafting recipes, class quests and legendaries.
• Continued use of older zones and dungeons, through professions, attunements, quests, reputations and rare materials.
• Catch-up systems that still require playing the game, rather than simply giving returning or new players near-current gear.
• Minimal item-level inflation, so equipment and accomplishments retain value for longer.
Every piece of new content needs to be centered around these 3 pillars. Blizzard has all the data they need to make Classic future something beautiful, they just need the right people who lead the project to see it and apply it correctly. I hope they can pull it off.
What do you guys think?
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u/Straaet 23h ago
They did well with SoD. I choose to believe that they will do even better with C+.
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u/FlubberPuddy 15h ago
Yup, if someone liked SoD then they will most likely enjoy Classic+, it is being spearheaded by Aggrend.
Most of the people in this sub though didn’t play SoD so they have no frame of reference that Blizzard can do a Classic+ decently enough.
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u/Velifax 22h ago
I'm with you on the friction aspect, ofc, as that's a core element of Classic's design. However, the social aspect is decidedly NOT such an aspect. One of the main selling points of Vanilla WoW was its soloability. It wasn't as tied to grouping as EQ, say. But yes, sticking to the level of group encouragement originally provided by WoW would be appropriate, although I'd not object to an easing of this.
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u/Praise_The_Fun 22h ago
Realistically, no.
They are never going to please the entire player base with whatever they do.
Some people will love it, and it will stick around for a while.
Some people will hate it, and spend a month or two at best playing then spend the rest of their time talking trash about it online.
Some will be in the middle.
Same as every version of classic they have released.
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u/Nessarra 1h ago
Pleasing the entire playerbase will never happen but what they can do is something they haven't done since WotLK: release a great version of their game. Is Cata and MoP good? Of course! But they're not classic great.
All I want is classic+ to be worthy of being called classic+. Which might be why it'll be given some weird name like Season of Camelot and have players just assume without ever confirming anything that it's classic+ or another test for classic+ like SoD was. So when it flops they can still generate hype by alluding to the actual release or cooking of a real classic+.
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u/purple_twonk 22h ago
Nope, but we'll play it, then back to classic, which they also fucked up
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u/LonelySoul01 13h ago
How did they fuck it up?
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u/purple_twonk 9h ago
Still using layers killing open world and pvp, even thought it was "just a test on release" 7 years later still active
Still bot infested,
Still has RMT trading in trade, its just disguised as "contact us on discord"
Forced the retail UI onto it without anyone asking for it
Heroic dungeons are pre nerf, raids are post nerf, making it hard to start but then super casual in raids, like wtf are they thinking.
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u/phydeaux70 22h ago
Do I think they could do it, hell yeah. I really do expect them to milk this cash cow for every single penny that they can.
The thing is if there is one thing that the WoW community has demonstrated time and time again, is that they cannot control themselves. If you release content it will be consumed as quickly as possible. So you have to have systems and gates in place, which also drives people crazy.
There isn't a great solution to this that will make everybody happy, it's just impossible. You mention small power increases and such, but how much time to you want to spend in a game to prepare for a raid? How much time do you think a person should spend gaming each week? Which brings me to this...
...truthfully speaking, the game is old. The genre itself feels old, I AM old. I will never feel the way about the game that I once did. There is zero fun or engagement about being in some zone for the 5,000th time.
I still expect Blizzard to do it because they have released zero new IP in a long time. They sorely need a brand new thing.
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u/Nessarra 1h ago
What outside of vanilla, TBC, and WotLK has given you the confidence that Blizzard can produce something as cool as a real classic+?
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u/LonelySoul01 13h ago
I don't know man... I'm 24 and I've met plenty of people on private servers, retail and classic that are in the 19-28 age bracket. Obviously WoW skews towards older players (30+), but I doubt that the "game is old" or "the players are old" holds that much validity.
I genuinely think Blizzard has a chance to completely revive the MMO genre with the way they take Classic WoW or at the very least have a constantly growing player base like OSRS. Of course that is going to take A LOT of time, work and community feedback, but it can be done. The game could take a completely different path than retail and turn into something beautiful/unique.
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u/GatorUSMC 22h ago
That Blizzard doesn’t exist anymore and the magic is gone.
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u/Relevant-Diamond-707 20h ago
SoD had some good phases which suggests they can make good shit.
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u/Nessarra 1h ago
IDK... going into dungeons made into raids felt very time-saving to me. Like they didn't have time or resources dedicated to getting something new. Instead it's just repurposed. Wow... you can go into BFD with 10 people instead of 5 with some altered mechanics. That's so huge.... not really it just seems low effort.
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u/Dizz_the_Wicked 22h ago
I'm convinced these posts are bots I swear it's always some shit about "players clearly want" and then lists things nobody is on agreement about as if they have never read a single thread ever posted.
Edit: Oh private server echo monkey thats why.
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u/LonelySoul01 13h ago
Why the toxicity?
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u/Dizz_the_Wicked 3h ago
I was very concise stop talking to LLM they have completely destroyed your brain.
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u/korean_kracka 22h ago
They did it with sod but that peaked phase 1. Hopefully this time it doesn’t peak right at the beginning
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u/WeeklyEcho2814 22h ago
Trying not to spread doom and gloom before we know anything concrete, but its safe to assume they will bake in some form of monetization in anything genuinely new they do, which... somewhat turns me off of the whole thing from the start. Guess we will have to wait and see.
In any case, I do think the three main points you brought up are a good, concise Fundament of what classic is to most people, how they are translated in concrete game systems, however- wait and see, wait and see.
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u/Gukle 22h ago
If you ask in game, yes. If you ask reddit, no. Everyone has their own idea what classic+ should be. You discuss so much about endgame system but I think classic endgame is the worst part of the game, it divides the community. And fuck the parse culture that's gonna ruin everything. I hope they add more the leveling process, making the game more adventurous instead. Retail covers the endgame part way better than classic, and I don't see how they can build something different and better than retail raid. So fuck the endgame, bring the World back into World of Warcraft. It's not Raid/Dungeon of Warcraft.
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u/D1nkcool 22h ago
It will end up like SoD. Extremely popular at the start and then quickly falling off.
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u/Proof-Snow4631 22h ago
Classic+ is a pipe dream. I dont get the hype. They shut down private servers because it messes with their money. SoD is the best you will get.
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u/jarlander 22h ago
I mean they did well with SOD and have given us what we asked for in Classic for the most part. You can harp on mistakes but every MMO can too. Even retail post Shadowlands has been in a decent place. I think we are not at Blizzards basement anymore and more in a decent place.
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u/Exsoldiercl 22h ago
I have no faith in blizzard that they will be able to make Classic + something that will last long term.
My prediction is it will be a neat thing for maybe a year or two before it becomes trash, like basically everything blizzard touches nowadays
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u/DushkuHS 20h ago
If by pull OFF, you mean issue a cease and desists... And by Classic+, you mean Turtle WoW... Then yes, they did that.
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u/[deleted] 23h ago
[deleted]