Classic+: What Everyone is Getting Wrong

Imagine if at the next Blizzcon, they announced Classic+, and their presentation went something like this:

"Many players over the years have loved the path we followed with WoW, while others were hoping for a different game. Classic+ is Blizzard's plan to serve both groups. So which version of WoW are you going to like better? 

- If you want a deep story with strong character progression arcs, play retail. If you find that cutscenes and text just get in the way of the game, play Classic+

- If you want a flexible character that can be optimized for whatever you need him to do, play retail. If you want a unique character with individual strengths and weaknesses, play Classic+

- If you want it to be clear which items are upgrades and which fit your character, play retail. If you want to try out janky builds with unusual items, play Classic+

- If you want to join a dungeon group and know exactly what your job is, and how to fit into the group, play retail. If you want the challenge of planning around the unique strengths and weaknesses of your group, play Classic+

- If you're always eager to dive into new content, play retail. If you want to play at a slower pace and get to content when you feel like it, play Classic+

- If, after taking a long break, you want catch-up mechanics to help you join in the latest content, play retail. If instead, you want to pick up where you left off a year ago, play Classic+

- If you want to easily get where you need to go to do what you want to do, play retail. If you want traveling and experiencing the world to be a core part of gameplay, play Classic+

- If you want to safely learn your new character in a highly forgiving area, play retail. If you want to learn your new character because you die when you make too many mistakes, play Classic+

- And if everything I've said sounds fun, play both."

Would you be excited? I would. Because it would show that Blizzard had correctly captured the vision of what Classic+ needs to be.

Too much of the conversation about Classic+ is discussing which features from retail need to be in it. In other words, it's already accepted as a premise that Classic+ should be somewhere between Vanilla and Retail, and the debate is just on exactly where. As long as the conversation is framed this way, the best case scenario for Classic+ is that it matches up with your favorite expansion.

We know that Vanilla is the favorite version for fans of old-school WoW, and we know it because the only two private servers that got big enough that Blizzard went after them were both built on Vanilla (Nostalrius and Turtle WoW). Thus, if we look less at the opinions on forums and examine actual player behavior, there's a pretty strong case that the number of retail features that should make it to Classic+ is zero.

So What Should Blizzard Do Instead?
Build a vision that makes Classic+ less like retail than Vanilla, not more. And choose features based on that vision. The way I came up with the theoretical announcement above was looking at features of Vanilla that got lost over time and imagined a path where they were amplified, or at least maintained. 

Look at it this way. Every new feature or design shift is a trade-off. You gain something, you lose something. So what if you make different trade-offs? In some cases what if you make the exact opposite trade-off? You find a different road that WoW could have traveled that would appeal to an entirely different group of people. 

So let's get into some concrete examples:

Clarity of Gear vs. Interesting Gear: 

In Vanilla WoW, there are a number of unusual items that can be hard to judge the value of. There's leather armor that can put attackers to sleep, books that summon skeletons, food that makes you randomly blow fire, and other fun, quirky items of hard-to-define effectiveness. They are, however, almost always overshadowed by items that simply have bigger stat boosts.

Even outside the quirky items, there were choices to make. Do you get the crit shoulders for the tank to keep aggro or the defense rating ones to stay alive when you get it?

Retail has consistently moved in the direction of improving clarity. By the time Legion landed (perhaps before), you could reliably get the best results by simply taking the item with the highest item level, as long as it was made for your class and role. No decisions to make.

So what is the opposite trade-off? More interesting gear. Less stats, more abilities. Fewer numbers, more unusual passives. It's hard to know what's best, but it gives space for interesting, fun, and unique builds.

Quest Density

Who could complain about more quests? Very few people, but that's probably because they haven't thought it through. Burning Crusade had far more quests in each Outland zone than Vanilla zones offered in Azeroth. At first glance, almost everybody would call that a positive change, but on further analysis, it's more of a trade-off.

What happens when you run out of level-appropriate quests in Vanilla? Emergent gameplay. You start exploring, helping other players, running dungeons, farming materials, or something else. The lack of direction, though likely frustrating in the moment, encourages people to explore more of what the game has to offer, get out of their comfort zone, and in the end, gives many players a better experience.

So do we want the opposite trade-off where we have even fewer quests than Vanilla? That's a harder question than the last one. If you simply reduced the number of quests in Vanilla, I doubt that many people would enjoy the game more. But there might be room to explore a replacement for some of them. And at minimum, I do not believe that Classic+ should have significantly more quest density than Vanilla.

The Constant Direction: Less Functional Individuality

Vanilla WoW showed evidence that they wanted room for near-unique characters. Druids had talents in the resto tree that improved damage in animal forms. The paladin's key tanking talent (consecration) was in the holy tree. You would find cloth items with strength.

Over time, players learned to hyper-specialize. No serious raider would build a healer priest with a few damage talents or a hunter who would pull aggro with distracting shot and had enough defense gear to survive doing so. Because of the way number scaling works--and the way encounters were designed in instances--narrow specialization was the clear superior option.

There were a few small choices like the need for a tank to balance damage (for keeping aggro) with survivability, but for the most part, there was a definite optimal build for your role.

And so, Blizzard had two roads to choose from: They could build the game around the way players were playing, or they could change the game to encourage unique builds. They chose the first. Controlling aggro was made easier so that tanks didn't have to choose. Great effort was made for each damage dealing class and spec to have as near equal of DPS as possible. 

So what is the opposite trade-off that classic could make? This one is more difficult to implement, but the ultimate goal would be that each character needed to use a larger portion of their kit in group content. Shallower changes could be through things like encounter design (example: enemies with big healer-silencing abilities, requiring people to heal off-spec). Deep changes could be through the aggro system (example: Healing causes double threat but only when you heal the person being attacked. This would encourage mixing up who is attacking who). 

This would change much of the game. Pugging would be harder because everybody's job wouldn't be quite so obvious, but then it motivates players to either play with friends or make friends. Turns out, that's another example of classic moving in a different direction than retail, which has consistently moved in the direction of making pugging easier.

Passing Up vs. Passing Down

If you are trading items between characters of different levels, it's almost always the case that your high level character is giving stuff to your low-level. Retail doubled down on this by creating heirlooms--items specially designed for that purpose. This in turn moved WoW more in the direction of "Rush to end-game. Now it's even easier".

So what is the opposite trade-off? Account-bound items where there's a maximum level for acquiring them. Now your alts are serving your max-level character by doing content and challenges that he out-leveled. Leveling experience becomes more varied, as you now have a strong incentive to do different content than your previous characters. Rush to end-game becomes an inferior play style.

Best of all, this mechanism keeps end-game content relevant after new expansions are released. If something that level 70s wanted in Burning Crusade could only be obtained in a Blackwing Lair run where everybody was 60 or below, you have the chance to actually experience old end-game content--not just have easy run-throughs.

Final Thoughts:

Classic+ will succeed best if it targets a very different player than retail. Blizzard has a chance to make something that both feels familiar and comfortable to old WoW players while at the same time making something completely different than the current selection of MMOs. Whether any of the specific suggestions I made are implemented, the path is to be less like retail than Vanilla. Not more.