Why I've Become a Classic+ Believer

The first time the concept of something like Classic Plus came up on this blog was in early August 2019, when I was wondering about WoW Classic's future (at a time when it's actual launch was actually still a few weeks away). Wild that this was almost seven years ago! At the time, I (rightly) considered it unlikely that Blizzard would invest time and money into developing new content for the vanilla world when they had all these cheaper and easier options available to keep people engaged and get more money out of Classic.

Nonetheless, people kept talking about it, and it's remained a subject of conversation throughout the years at least in some circles, gaining more and more mainstream traction the further away progressive Classic moved from the expansions that people remembered the most fondly.

To be honest, I used to think that a lot of the Classic+ believers were hopelessly deluded (in my post about BlizzCon 2023 I expressed major bewilderment at how many people had been dead certain that Blizzard was going to announce Classic+ at that event, three years ago now), and I know a few of my fellow bloggers who still feel that way. I've got to admit though, I've kind of come around to the Classic+ fans' point of view.

I'm actually a little embarrassed to say that because of how... weird a lot of them have been over the years, but even a broken clock is right twice a day and I actually think their moment is about to come. I do think that Blizzard will announce a Classic+ of some sort at BlizzCon this year, in the sense of new Classic servers based on Vanilla but with some tweaks and an intent to provide continued development and new additions for that vanilla world.

What has changed?

As far back as before the release of Classic, Blizzard prided themselves in their game being the gold standard for MMOs and their developers always knowing best. That all came crumbling down with the huge success of Classic (I don't remember where I saw it, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Blizzard was very surprised by just how popular Classic was when it came out) and the dark days of Shadowlands. Players made it very clear that they didn't like what the devs were doing with the modern game, and the devs actually took note and made changes: The way retail has transformed over the last few years has been huge. You might still not like it (after all, there's no way to make everyone happy), but they've made huge strides towards giving players more features that had been widely requested:

• Too much of a content draught between patches? Have a new one every eight weeks.
• People sick and tired of pathfinder achievements limiting access to flying? Just fly from the start of every new expansion now.
• Not enough content for people who prefer to play solo? Here are delves!
• People don't get to appreciate the beauty of the world enough because they are just sitting in town while queueing up for stuff? Have all kinds of world events that encourage you to traverse all the zones every week.
• After more than two decades without it, housing is a thing now! 

... to name just a few examples.

Likewise, they've been wanting to hear what players wanted out of Classic from the start. They sent out many surveys over the years to get a feel for how players wanted things to continue. People clowned on the announcement of Cata Classic, but Holly Longdale's speech at BlizzCon made it clear that there had been a demand for it - presumably from regular players who just wanted to keep playing characters they'd become attached to.

And I suspect that over time, the interest expressed in some form of Classic+ content in those surveys has grown. In July 2024, Blizzard in fact gave us a survey entirely devoted to the subject!

The major argument against Classic Plus ever happening (that I used to make as well in the past) is that it would require too much money and effort for not enough guaranteed pay-off, or in other words, that the corporate overlords wouldn't want Blizzard to put too much work into Classic because it doesn't bring in enough money compared to retail and its cash shop.

I just don't think that logic applies anymore. Wanting to keep things lean and focused on a quality product was the old Blizzard. I remember when in the run-up to Classic, they said in an interview that they didn't really want to go too crazy with it, because it would essentially be like running two MMOs at once and they kind of wanted to avoid that. Not only are they effectively running two different MMOs now, there are half a dozen different versions of Classic! Spreading themselves and the players too thin is clearly no longer a concern.

The way I see it, they want to grow their profits by growing their customer base, and they're trying to do that by providing people with more stuff. This is perfectly in line with corporate overlords generally wanting to see the line go up - according to Play Nice, Bobby Kotick was already pushing Blizzard to release more content faster decades ago; the then leadership team just couldn't or wouldn't do it. I would also argue that Classic having more limited microtransactions is even more of an incentive for Blizzard to instead aim for ways to get more subscriptions out of it, such as offering a whole buffet of different options for people to choose from.

And what else can they do at this point to achieve growth on the Classic side of the business? I hadn't even thought about that point when I started writing this post, but when I went back to that old entry about what will come after Classic, I realised that by now, Blizzard has already implemented three out of the four progression options I listed at the time: "Do nothing" is Classic era, "Fresh start servers" is Anniversary, and "Give more expansions the Classic treatment" is why MoP Classic exists. The only major thing they haven't done is go down the Classic Plus route.

As for the argument that developing a second MMO is a lot of work and that the Classic team is too small... eh! I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a considerable undertaking, but a lot of MMOs that aren't modern WoW are run by much smaller teams. Even with limited resources, the Classic dev team managed to add some genuinely new content to Season of Discovery, such as a bunch of new quests, two new dungeons and a new raid.

My experiences on Turtle WoW have also been hugely eye-opening in that regard. Again, not to downplay anyone's efforts, but a regular WoW expansion has so much completely new stuff in it, from new gameplay systems that need to be developed and coded to entirely original new zones that need to be designed and built, to dozens of new creatures with new animations... the Turtle guys had none of that. They built their new zones out of what looked to be 90% existing vanilla assets, filled them with quests and dungeons that simply mimicked what Blizzard had done before, and people loved that stuff. I bet Blizzard absolutely has the capacity to do something similar.

The one thing I feel the need to clarify is that when I say that I've become a Classic+ believer, I only mean to say that I believe it will happen. I still think it's unlikely that it will appeal to me personally in the long run. I mean, I'd love it if it was simply magical and wonderful and everything I ever dreamed of, but I just struggle to imagine a world in which that's the case. I believe that the Classic devs have their hearts in the right place, but after I saw in Season of Discovery how everything ultimately came down to just funnelling people into raiding once again, I struggle to not see any potential Classic+ going down the same road after a while, simply because the people who only care about raiding and parsing are so fucking loud. Even if Blizzard made a bunch of beautiful additions to the old world, the focus at Classic Plus launch would likely still just be on people racing to the level cap again and complaining about boredom two weeks later while demanding new raids. And because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, things then slowly deteriorate for everyone else. (It's ironic to me how retail is actually better at catering to casual and solo players at this point than Classic.)

All that said, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't extremely curious about just what Blizzard is cooking up. MadSeasonShow released a video the other day in which he summarises all the various hints that have been dropped so far (if you can stand his endless griping about Blizzard nowadays). At the same time, rumours are flying around that a bunch of Classic streamers have been invited to Blizzard HQ under an NDA this week. I've actually felt pressure to get this post out while the subject still remains somewhat controversial and before anything gets leaked! Regardless, I think we'll get the big reveal in September at the latest.