World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classichas just been confirmed to be in development at BlizzConline 2021. The announcement has given many fans hope that subsequent expansions could be given their own servers as well, allowing players to enjoy their favorite by-gone eras ofWoW.
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classiccould be the last version of the game that will work well with Blizzard’s currentClassiccontent model, however. The next expansion,Wrath of the Lich King, poses some huge challenges forWoW Classic’s content release model, and could be one of the long-running MMO’s biggest hurdles to date.
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Wrath Of The Lich King Classic
World of Warcraft Classicbrought fans of the franchise back to Azeroth as it was first introduced all the way back in 2004. Since then, Blizzard has released content patches forClassicservers following the same basic outline asVanilla WoW’s release schedule. This meant that whileWoW Classicservers launched in August 2019, content which was released later inVanilla WoW’s cycle like theAhn’Qiraj 40-man raidwouldn’t be released until nearly a year later.
This model can also be applied toThe Burning Crusadewith relative ease.The Burning Crusade’s major patches added new end-game content like The Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau, but didn’t significantly change the way thatWoWraidsand other end-game content worked beyond reducing the number of players needed to 25 players.
The same can not be said forWrath of the Lich King, the second expansion likely to get its own re-release if Blizzard continues down the path of releasing expansion-specific servers. Based on how many players the release ofWoW Classicbrought back to the game, that seems likely.Wrath of the Lich Kingmay have been one ofWoW’s best expansions, but over the course of its run it also transformed the game, setting many precedents which resembleWoW’s current retail release far more than they doVanillaorThe Burning Crusade. Some of these changes were purely good. Questing, for example, saw a huge upgrade inWrath of the Lich Kingfrom the grind-fests of previous patches into compelling story-driven questlines that saw players run up against the Lich King himself long before he was released as a raid boss.
LaterWrath of the Lich Kingpatches, however, fundamentally changed the way the game was played, and the kind of communities it was able to foster. Patch 3.3 introduced Icecrown Citadel as a raid and focused on the fall ofthe Lich King. However, it also introduced Dungeon Finder, a feature which may cause huge problems forWoW Classic.
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Wrath Of The Lich King’s Dungeon Finder Dilemma
WoW’s Dungeon Finderallowed players to teleport directly to dungeons with 5-man groups drawn from players across different servers. This had huge effects onWoW’s end-game. For a start, high level players no longer needed to leave cities to experience lots of end-game content.Wrath’s capital city of Dalaran had portals to all other major faction cities as well, which meant that level 80 players often only had motivation to leave cities for weekly raids.Dungeon Finder would also have devastating effects on server communities. Without the need to know other players on the server to form dungeon groups, fostering server communities became far more difficult in the wake of patch 3.3, as well as simply less relevant.
This is the major problem facingWoW Classicgoing forward. By creatingWoW: Wrath of the Lich KingClassicservers, Blizzard will face a dilemma. IfWrath’s patches are released in their original forms, then eventually patch 3.3 will be released and some of the fundamentals ofWoW Classicwill be changed forever. On the other hand, Blizzard could make the decision to remove Dungeon Finder from patch 3.3, but that could open the door to other expansion changes that might undermineWoW Classic’s ability to truly capture the feel of its different eras.
One of the main challenges is that patch 3.3 brought these fundamental changes toWoWin the middle of the expansion’s life-cycle. The first part ofWrath Classic, including fantastically creative raids like patch 3.2’sUlduar raid, could be far more similar to the rest ofWoW Classicthan the latter part of the expansion.
The Classic Release Model
This raises further questions. ShouldBlizzardrelease different servers for different patches in laterWoW Classicreleases? If so, would that undermine the chance for a genuine feeling of progression throughout an expansion? If nothing else, it seems unlikely that Blizzard will want to further fragment the WoW experience.
Ultimately, the changes made inWrath of the Lich Kingand the problems they pose forWorld of Warcraft ClassicafterThe Burning Crusadeare a reminder thatWoW’s newClassicrelease model cannot immortalize its expansions, only repeat and extend their lifespans. Players who startWoW Classictoday are going to have a very different experience to those who joined whenWoW Classicbegan in 2019. Players who want to experience the Ahn’Qiraj launch event no longer can, and even in the best case scenario, eventually theClassicservers will become saturated with max-level players who have run out of that expansion’s content.
WoW Classicmay be a second wind forWorld of Warcraftthat allows players and Blizzard alike to return to better days, but the problems with creatingWrath of the Lich King Classicshow that the new model has a lifespan all of its own.Burning Crusade Classicwon’t be without its challenges too - it has the potential to reduce the population ofVanillaservers significantly, for example. However, how Blizzard plans to go forward with the model, and how that model will stand up in the face ofWrath of the Lich King’s huge changes to theWarcraftformula, remains to be seen.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classicreleases 2021.
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