It was released yesterday, but Blizzard has now made it official: World of Warcraft Classic, the retro version of the massive online game, will be extended to include the first expansion The Burning Crusade this year.
This means a level limit increased to 70 (classic players will actually surpass players in the modern game, which has been reduced to 60); an inter-dimensional adventure through the Black Portal to the trippy and broken world of Outland; the addition of the Blood Elf and Draenei breeds; player-versus-player arena, flying montages and more.
As before, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic (abandoned “o” for some reason) will be included for free in a WOW subscription. Players whose dedication is really to the original version of the game will not be forced to upgrade; you can choose whether to progress your character to the Burning Crusade expansion along with the rest of your server, or move to a server that will remain forever in the current version of the game – which I think we now have to call Vanilla Classic. Classic Original. Classic Classic? (Blizzard is calling them Classic Era servers.)
Serving a retro community as it divides into fields that want to experience the game as it was at different times is a potential minefield, but Blizzard seems to have thought of all options. Lead producer Holly Longdale and production director Patrick Dawson told me on Zoom that players who don’t want to choose between the two versions of the game will receive a paid service to clone their characters on the Classic Era and Burning Crusade servers. In addition, die-hard Burning Crusade fans who don’t play Classic and can’t face the long grind to the level required for expansion can pay for a boost to level 58. This option is strictly unique, because “we don’t want to minimize achievements of those who worked so hard on Classic to get their characters ready, “said Dawson.
Blizzard now maintains three versions of its main MMO simultaneously; potentially more, if this model continues until subsequent WOW expansions. This sounds like a headache, although the Classic community is clearly large enough to make the effort worthwhile – Activsion Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick spoke with approval about the effect Classic had on WOW subscription numbers. “Yes, it is more complicated to run several products in this environment,” said Dawson. “But we have a world-class laboratory operations team that is ready for this challenge. Even going from one mega-game to two mega-games when we [launched WOW Classic] it was a big change for that group too. The good news is that we’ve done this before, we know what it’s like to add a new game to World of Warcraft. “
As with the WOW Classic, the content of the original game will be phased out over time, so the community of attackers can expect the opening of Black Temple, Zul’Aman and Sunwell next year. But systematically, Burning Crusade Classic will really start from the end of the expansion. “Our initial model is the final patch,” said Dawson. “It’s the skills of the class, the balance of the class and everything that existed for the final version of Burning Crusade … and then we’ll go ahead and take a look at what makes the most sense to change on top of that.”
Ah yes. New changes. Originally, Blizzard took a purist approach and made only minor changes to the game as in the WOW Classic, but that approach has evolved as the team listened to player feedback. “As a team, we are calling it … I hesitate to say it, but I will anyway … we call it #some changes“laughed Longdale. It turns out that the players wanted the game exactly as it was – but better.
Longdale gave some examples of changes that will be made to the Burning Crusade Classic. Spell batching, a latency in processing player actions to circumvent the limits of server hardware from the mid-2000s, was emulated in the WOW Classic, but will now be discarded for a “more reactive” feel to gameplay. Seal of Blood, an ability granted to Horde Paladins in the Burning Crusade and known to be more powerful than the Alliance’s equivalent ability, is being awarded to Alliance Paladins as well. The Blood Elf and Draenei races will be unlocked before the Dark Portal opens, to give players a chance to level up on new characters.
More controversially, perhaps, the team is opting for a “pre-nerf raid approach”. In Classic, players obtained later versions of raid bosses that had been adjusted downwards (wisely in the case of a fight like C’Thun, the pre-nerf version of which, Dawson said, was proven to be “mathematically impossible”). With Burning Crusade Classic, however, the community will have a chance to test themselves against bosses in their terrifying pre-nerf forms. “We are taking a look at this community of attackers and it is extremely vibrant, they are extremely talented invaders and they know a lot more today than they did 15 years ago,” said Dawson. “So, we want to give them that pre-nerf version of those fights.” (Well, mostly. Some bad game design choices, like the pushback spell in the original M’uru version of Sunwell Plateau, will be left out, but “that life point nerf and damage nerf we had a few weeks ago on – we won’t do it right away, “said Dawson, with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.)
The WOW Classic team learned that returning the game to its exact state at an earlier point in time is not really what the community wants – nor does it take into account how things have evolved. “Like, when Burning Crusade was first released, you were at the beginning of YouTube, right? It was a very different world – community sites, guilds were not as experienced and robust as they are today.” Dawson said. “The game that was designed for that community holds up incredibly well today, which is just incredible to see. But the way people get involved with it is a little bit different. And that’s okay. But that’s partly why we want to make some of these changes to say, hey, let’s meet the needs of today’s community, but keep that same nostalgia, keep that feeling that people had in 2007. “
Nostalgia is a powerful force and memory is subjective. One of the strangest problems facing the team is that the memories of the game’s players – even the development team itself – may differ slightly from the facts. (“Too much,” interrupts Longdale.) Should they redo the game as it was or how do players remember it?
“One thing we’ve always had for both Classic and Burning Crusade is a referral customer, so we can go back and see what it really was like,” said Dawson. “With Classic, people would bring things up and we would dive in and think, ‘Hey, this is exactly how it works.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay, but that’s not what I remember’ … With Burning Crusade, instead of just saying ‘it was like that’, the question is, well, what do you think it should be “E let’s hear it. Because, ultimately, we’re making a game for people who want to play it. “
“Our goal is to bring the best possible experience to the greatest number of players, although, you know, I don’t like it so much when Pat was riding PvP and killing me constantly,” Longdale laughed. “It’s about maintaining the nostalgia, the spirit of Burning Crusade and Classic for that nostalgic experience. But we want to make sure it’s as fun as possible for as many people in the community as possible.”