When I interviewed Blizzard a couple of months before the launch of WoW Classic, the company’s employees admitted that Vanilla was an experimental project for them. No one then undertook to predict how much attention classic servers will attract, how long they will last and whether they should be developed further. Apparently, the project was a success: at BlizzConline, the company announced the classic servers The Burning Crusade – the first major expansion in the history of World of Warcraft.
But not everything is so simple – in fact, with the release of TBC, three versions of World of Warcraft will be available to us at once. After BlizzConline, we spoke with WoW Executive Producer John Hight and Lead Technical Engineer Brian Birmingen to find out what the future holds for the game. The text below is based on that interview and the panel where Blizzard talked about The Burning Crusade.
The Burning Crusade will be out before the end of this year . Thus, Blizzard maintains about the same pace as it was in the classic – TBC then released two years after the original World of Warcraft.
In the first big addition to WoW, players were sent to Outland – a small continent shard with its own rules and orders. A new race of draenei appeared, and paladins and shamans ceased to be unique classes of the Alliance and Horde, but became available to everyone. The developers went for some simplification of the game – for example, the maximum number of new raids was limited to 25 players instead of 40, which simplified the group gathering. It was in The Burning Crusade that arenas appeared – competitive PvP in which small teams compete for rating. For the first time, personal flying mounts have been added.
You won’t have to buy a new add-on separately – a regular World of Warcraft account will be enough – but some additional services will be paid (more on them later). Like the vanilla version of WoW, The Burning Crusade will launch over several “phases”, gradually opening up new content to players.
The Burning Crusade has a slightly different design approach . Blizzard strived for maximum authenticity in developing WoW Classic – and even repeated many of the bugs of the original game. But it turned out that players do not need 100% accuracy – on the contrary, if the designers of the past years made obvious mistakes, then they can be corrected. That’s what Blizzard did.
The Burning Crusade is mainly based on the final patch of the expansion, but this does not apply to some raids. The fact is that at one time in Blizzard deliberately lowered their complexity so that by the end of The Burning Crusade as many players as possible have visited there. The experience of launching WoW Classic has shown that modern players are much more experienced and skillful, so for most bosses it was decided to return the original difficulty of raids – except for those cases when very serious mistakes were fixed with patches. In addition, in the original, the paladins of different factions had different versions of the seals, with the Horde being lucky to get a more powerful one. In TBC Classic, both factions received both seals.
WoW Classic isn’t going anywhere . When TBC Classic launches, players on WoW Classic servers who have reached the desired option will be presented with two options. First, they will be able to go through the Dark Portal and go to study the new expansion. Secondly, no one will forbid them to stay on the WoW Classic server and continue playing as before. By the way, you can get a character on both servers – but for an additional fee.
It will also be possible to start playing immediately in The Burning Crusade only for a fee, by “buying” a character level rise to 58. In other cases, you will first need to pump on the WoW Classic server, and then go to the add-on.
Blizzard is also pondering the fate of the WoW Classic servers . At the start, of course, the main efforts will be directed to supporting The Burning Crusade, but then, if the audience shows interest, the developers can return to the “vanilla” version. For example, they can start another WoW Classic server from scratch, giving players the opportunity to go through the entire progression from start to finish.
Blizzard doesn’t know when the “classic” era will end . The announcement of The Burning Crusade hints that very soon you will have to think about whether it is necessary to make classic servers for the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, which was also loved by many players. What’s next? Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria? Running too many servers at the same time can lead to the fact that the players “smear” on them. Blizzard understands this, but believes that the problem should be addressed as it arises. The options may be different – the company is even discussing the development of a completely new addition in the “classic” style.
The existence of classic servers does not “harm” the modern version of World of Warcraft. Both developers and journalists at one time feared that WoW Classic would cause an outflow of players from the then-current WoW: Battle For Azeroth. But this practically did not happen. With the exception of a small percentage of players, the classic and modern versions have their own audiences. In many ways, this was the reason for the development of The Burning Crusade Classic.
Blizzard is amazed at the WoW Classic audience . On the one hand, the players are very friendly – just remember the organized queues for quest items at the start, when the first locations were overcrowded. On the other hand, in 15 years, the MMO community has become much better playing, having quickly figured out many things that seemed incredibly difficult in the days of the classics. Blizzard recalls that they had not yet had time to really celebrate the launch of WoW Classic, when someone came running with the news “think, they have already killed Ragnaros” (the last boss of the most difficult dungeon at the time of launch – ed.).
The future of WoW Classic is extended by at least two years. We are interested in looking even further: how far Blizzard will extend the “vanilla” servers and whether it will risk developing a new “classic experience” .
