On April 19, Blizzard announced the new WoW expansion Dragonflight, but also Wrath of the Lich King Classic. We at MeinMMO were able to conduct interviews with the developers during the event. The first part is about the content of WOTLK Classic, but also about the handling of Burning Crusade and the lessons learned by the developers.

Arthas is the great villain of WOTLK.

MeinMMO: So that also means that the Death Knights are not as strong as they were back in Release?

Kevin Vigue: Yeah, in terms of their power level. I played a death knight myself back in the day shortly after Wrath of the Lich King came out, and I remember all the different specs and talents.

Even now you can tank and deal damage with each spec. All three of them are really fun. I’ve played them all in different patches of WOTLK and had a great time with them.

The Death Knights in Classic still have those great systems like the original rune system with the different rune types and the powerful abilities. So there’s still so much to love about Death Knight.

But yeah, we all remember the introduction of Death Knights and we decided that the last patch was a better and more balanced starting point.

“Dungeon Finder doesn’t fit what we mean by Classic”.

MyMMO: What have you learned from Classic and also from Burning Crusade Classic that you can now apply and use to your advantage in WOTLK?

Holly Longdale: That’s an interesting question because we’ve been doing this evaluation on an ongoing basis. So we’ve basically been responding to how the community is evolving with Classic. We’ve spent a lot of time looking at what the Classic community is and what they’re looking for.

We’ve come to the conclusion that what makes Classic unique is the world as its own kind of character. Achievements are significant here. We want to make sure that we provide the nostalgic ‘World of Warcraft experiences,’ both in terms of simplicity and difficulty. Players need to be able to rely on each other and know that you’re better in a group and in a team.

This realization from Classic also led us to the discussion about the Dungeon Finder that we had on our team all the time. Does that fit with what we think Classic is now? And it’s an example of where we’re asking the community for feedback. But right now, our instincts and what we’ve learned tell us that it’s probably not a good fit because a big part of the essence of Classic is reaching out to people and making lasting friendships.

We want to maintain that by improving our group search tool. But we felt like the dungeon finder was a little too automatic. You’re in it too quickly and you don’t have to meet people first. That’s just one example, and we’re always looking for new ones so we can involve the community.

MyMMO: You say that joining and leaving a dungeon quickly doesn’t fit Classic. Are those the only reasons against a dungeon finder?

Kevin Vigue: I think the core really comes from the Classic experience that we want to give players. Because Classic started as a fan request where players would come to us and say, please, we really want you to bring Classic back. We want to relive the world the way it used to be. We want to go back to that time, with these simpler systems. We want to bring back the social element.

We listened to them, and it paid off for us, because those fans made Classic such a huge success, and we’re very grateful to them for that. And they’ve continued that in Burning Crusade.

There are certainly advantages to being able to press a button on your lunch break and get in line for your dungeon without having to worry about the social barriers or the sort of hop in, hop out. That’s something that a lot of other games do, including Shadowlands, and a lot of people love Shadowlands for those reasons. However, we want to offer something different. That’s our strength. We want to offer different flavors of World of Warcraft so that players can choose the one that suits them best at the moment. And that was really the main reason we looked at the Dungeon Finder. We just said, yeah, this isn’t quite right for us. We need to protect that Classic feel.

Burning Crusade will be completely absorbed into WOTLK so as not to split players.

MyMMO: When Classic was announced – and especially when Burning Crusade Classic was announced – there was concern in the community that the player base would be split too much. Now there’s a fourth game, WOTLK Classic. Do you share this fear of division?

Holly Longdale: We kept the classic era in Burning Crusade Classic because we wanted to offer what we thought players would like. We thought a healthy number of players would move to Burning Crusade Classic, but some might want to stay in the classic era. And then we found that the vast majority got into Burning Crusade.

So we learned that this time, when we get to Wrath of the Lich King, all of our live servers will be moving from Burning Crusade to WOTLK. And we’re not going to make Burning Crusade a classic era server. Not at this point in time. If there’s a demand for it later, we will.

When we talk about our championship – Season and what we can do there, there’s a chance that we could have a Burning Crusade-era – Season at some point. There are a lot of possibilities.

But we want to make sure that we maintain our communities and they are healthy. So we’re really looking forward to responding to what the community wants and needs and what attracts them. So we’re always going to keep an open mind, nothing is off the table.

There are some customizations that simply weren’t technically possible before

MyMMO: What changes will there be to WOTLK, aside from the Dungeon Finder and the PvP rating changes?

Holly Longdale: There are a few things we’re looking at more closely. These include things like raids and raid locks and the huge weight of all the options for raids. This is where we’re going to turn to the community to help us with that once we get into beta. Because there are some people who want Wrath the way it was, with all the options that were available to them at the time, especially with the rating.

And then we’ve heard comments that this has led to a tremendous amount of time and burnout on their part. It would be great if we could slow that down a little bit. So we’re trying to bring the community into beta and actively have those discussions with them.

There’s no world where we just resurrect some code that we had saved as Wrath Classic and everything works then and is fine. It’s a huge amount of work to put things back together, including whole systems like arena teams that had to be recreated.

So there are some elements where we can make improvements and changes in quality, but by and large our job is to deliver the nostalgic experience. Also, another factor is what we’ve learned since WOTLK back then and what things weren’t possible back then because of technical limitations.

For instance, we’re talking about the barbershop, which used to be literally a barbershop. You could change your hair. That was a limitation then because of technology that we don’t have today. So now we want to be able to change gender. We want to allow you to change your face, and we’re looking at other ways to make you look like you want to be in the game.

There’s a long list of things. Kevin says every day, “Hey, we should probably do this.”

Kevin Vigue: Another point that comes to mind is that towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King, item levels became a big thing in World of Warcraft. You had to have a certain item level to be able to sign up for certain dungeons in the Dungeon Finder.

That’s definitely something we don’t want to bring back in Classic because we’re trying to capture the old spirit of, “Hey, if you have friends who are willing to guide you through the dungeon, even if you’re low on gear, you’re what they’re looking for. You’re an important part of the team.”

We’re also very fortunate to have some of the original designers on our team. And they’re the ones that drive a lot of these discussions, like, “Oh yeah, I remember that and I remember why we did that and we were motivated by that reason.” But we also recognize that it had an impact or changed the game in a way that we didn’t really intend. Because it’s always a balancing act to recreate something exactly as it was, with exactly the same numbers, with exactly everything, just copy-paste as best you can, and then create something that better captures the original emotions that we had.

Death knight as a class directly for newcomers

MyMMO: Many players report that they had their best time in WoW in WOTLK. Do you think the Classic version is a good starting point for complete newcomers?

Kevin Vigue: Absolutely. I think Wrath was the first expansion for a lot of people. And it introduced a lot of new things that made it easier to immerse yourself in the world.

One new feature in Classic will be that players will be able to directly create one Death Knight per account without having to have leveled a character to level 55 first. If the Death Knight is the class you know from the original WOTLK and want to jump right in with it, you can. The first one can be created directly without any prior knowledge.

Holly Longdale: We’re also going to be offering a level 70 boost. That’s for people who want to get in and jump right in with their friends who may have been playing for a while. What I love about Wrath is playing a death knight and talking to the Lich King.

We’re really looking forward to welcoming back the players that we have now – welcoming them to Wrath. There’s so much love for Wrath of the Lich King. We’re going to do our best to make the best version we can for our Classic fans. And we’re going to do that through community feedback. So we’ll certainly be listening and watching you guys.

MeinMMO: Thank you for your time and the interview!

What do you think about WOTLK Classic? Will you miss the Dungeon Finder? Will you miss Burning Crusade Classic? Can you understand the decisions of the developers? Feel free to write it in the comments.

Read more about the new WoW expansion Dragonflight here:

WoW: Dragonflight Reveal – Addon brings new class, level 70 and new talents

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