Cuinn's Compendium

World of Warcraft (2004 – forever) has been, for most of it's existence, the most popular MMORPG ever. Some people (me) have played it for over a third of their lives and counting. A game with the longevity of WoW undoubtedly has to make changes. Keep up with the times, as it were. However, while keeping up is an ostensibly sensible business idea, the evolution of WoW has been somewhat controversial. Their newest idea is one veterans have been speculating about for a long time. A further development of the Classic experience titled (and I'm not kidding) World of Warcraft: Forever.

Vanilla Flavour

The original Vanilla flavoured experience was slow, deliberate, grindy, unknown, effortful, and many other adjectives. It's social experience was defined by the need to meet other players to complete complex dungeons and objectives, and doing so with very limited tools for connecting within the game One of which were the various chat channels available (these were contextual too). WoW's servers became regular establishments. Guilds would form organically and from within the game. Like going to the same café, or frequenting the same bar, theater, cinema, in Stormwind you'd find the same people with the same regular schedules that just happened to fit with yours. In Orgrimmar... I don't actually know... For The Alliance.

The social aspect aside, there was also a barrier to mastery. Knowing how to play your class, how to navigate the world most efficiently, where to go next when the questline was finished, was not exactly easy. The information may not have been placed anywhere online, no wiki to look up, theorycrafting was for obvious reasons a large part of the game discourse. But this scarcity of information also meant that to do well, to know the world, and know yourself while within it, you had to put in the time and the effort to learn. Often by knuckling down and trying out all of your skills, in different combinations. Discussing with your fellow Hunters how to best utilize your pet's unique abilities, what ammo you should buy. At this point I must acknowledge that I was practically a baby, 7 years of age, by the time I became a cow-person in Azeroth for the first time. With little English, it wasn't me that would do this knuckling down, learning, and theorycrafting. I couldn't even read my spells. They just did stuff, and eventually I was in Westfall. No, I am simply reporting it from a time in the far future. Journeying from level noob to level max would take about 50~ hours, which in any time is a commitment. Game design on MMORPGs was still in its infancy, and many choices made then, if made now, would be ridiculed outside the context of Vanilla WoW. Anywho, take my hand and let us together explore the argument for more or for less effort needed for mastery, by looking at one possible future of WoW.

The one we're in.

Present Day – An Accessible Adventure

In the current WoW 'retail' incarnation (writing in September of 2026) there have been a couple of recent changes that are emblematic of the difference in design philosophy from old to new. How effort has in parts been replaced by convenience, to lower the skill floor so everyone can have a chance, and bringing the ceiling down enough to make it a goal to strive for from all levels of play.

Recuperate

In WoW Midnight every character has a base skill called Recuperate. The idea is to streamline questing, attempts at difficult mobs, and to protect the player from having discouraging moments of “Ahhh fuck, I forgot to buy food...”. Historically food & drink has been an important part of WoW, since without them, you'd have to wait for the natural regeneration of your Health and Mana. This is why you'd often want to be rolling with a fireballin' M.A.G.E (but don't let them know you're just in it for the conjured mana biscuits). The ability itself is by all accounts inspired by Star Wars: The Old Republic, affectionately called SWTOR [swoʊtɔr]. A game that from its earliest edition had a class-specific version of recuperate, that had the player character do a small action while regenerating Health and Force. A personal favourite of mine being the Sith Inquisitor's Seethe. WoW version is identical character to character.

Having recuperate as an ability is a way to respect the player's time. They no longer have to spend cumbersome time traveling to a food vendor, finding one that has level appropriate food, or bother a mage. If you're on a long questing streak, you might go hours between vendor runs, and could easily eat a bag full of cheese and wine. Meaning you'd either have to take a break, go to a town, sell junk, and stock up on cheese, or take the time hit, wait for regeneration, or waltz into fights slightly underprepared. Another thing this does that has been argued as a good thing, is that it mellows out the non-combat differences between classes. Classes that were particularly adept at questing often had self-healing as part of their kit, and would rarely be left to regenerate, even if cheese-less.

Now you might say “Ventus, are you against respecting players' time?” and I'd go “hmm... uhm... well-... actually...”. Let me explain. I like the break. I like journeying back to town in between quests. I like downtime and Recuperate makes the time between game-required breaks farther between. It streamlines the experience, but it does so by pummeling down the bumps. The road road is flat and the max speed increased, but it lacks texture. Cooking is a profession in WoW that has been relegated to crafting food for buff reasons only. Food is still the way of regeneration, as seen from the ability description, but the materiality of it is lost. And I think the world is poorer for it. To argue against the point of respecting time, I'd like to point out the unintuitive mechanics of spending time in WoW. When you're in for a gaming sesh, going on quests running around, losing track of time, the downtime serves a dual purpose. It lets you rest physically from playing. Spending time not thinking of where to go, what spell to cast, you can calm down. More importantly it creates a natural break for stopping your gaming sesh. Being sucked into a long gaming sesh is like hardcore crack cocaine for me, of course. But I do view the disappearance of natural game-required breaks as a dark pattern, offering up that next bump when maybe you should head to bed. (To be honest its not that deep, but I do have feelings on it so here they are)

Catch-Up and Choosing Your Path

Retail WoW features numerous attempts to hook back players. One key one is the “catch-up experience” available to some, but not all (why? Idk) characters you have had created before the current expansion. In short: it is a series of quests that place you in the Arathi Highlands, leads you through a very shallow storyline, and gives you current gear and bags. At the end you'll have battled incredibly easy foes, learned just a little about your class, flying, and be materially prepared to go into the world. My interpretation of this is that it is an attempt to “clean slate” the characters. To bring them back into the world without being disadvantaged compared to any other starter. Did you once play on your alt character and leave them in a far corner of the world, far away from Stormwind? Don't worry. With the catch-up experience you don't have to experience the inconvenience of traveling to your capital. You can just be teleported.

After this catch-up you are given many options of which path you want to take. The entire world has been zone-scaled. Meaning that mobs will match your level and progress, up to a cap. This cap can be circumvented by entering a “Timewalking Campaign”, but that is a hole too detailed to explore today. What this essentially means is that you will:

• Never be challenged beyond your abilities
• Not feel like you are progressing your character
• (If you're like me) be bored out of your mind while leveling

I could rant for a long time on this cowards way of content squishing. It does a disservice to the world that the current expansion is built upon, and takes all of the texture and feeling of creating a character, and journeying within their story away. My dislike is strong.

A primary argument of mine for why I no longer play Retail lies somewhere along this design philosophy. Everything should be available to all the players, all of the time. The player should not be inconvenienced. We (Blizz) do not want to gate people from playing with their friends who are different levels, nor do they want to boot players from zone because they are over/under-leveled. And in doing so they make both a world with far far too much choice. Analysis paralysis is real, and it's coming for your alt. It removes the meaning of everything that happens within the game pre end-game. And (as a stray thought) puts a sort of modern low-attention span sheen on the game. Bored with your quest? Just go somewhere else. Your hearthstone is definitely off-cooldown and you can go anywhere. No gates, no keys. No unlocks, no fun.

Downtime

That was a bit of a doozy wasn't it? Come here rest a minute. Bring your own food, we don't Recuperate in my house.

What is all this 'Forever' stuff?

Since Classic got released in 2019, people have been speculating on the development of Classic+. An alternate scenario where instead of developing in the design direction that Retail has taken, they stuck to the old world, the old patterns, and continued down that path. Slow, deliberate, tactical. With downtime and meaning. What form Classic+ would take, if it every became real, has been the core of so many long-form youtube videos. It has always been a spectre on the horizon. WoW is unique in this way. It is a game with so much history, so much culture. Many people in a wide-range of ages have played WoW through college, or in primary school, or after work. Many players too have stopped playing WoW. Grown out of it, or felt the direction of the game moved past them. I am in the latter category, I definitely haven't outgrown it. I am certainly not alone. I have had friends who've rejoined me in Azeroth when given the opportunity during the Classic period. I've seen the numbers of players that have streamed back to re-experience that old style of design. It was glorious, and now, just as I longed for going back to Vanilla, I now long to go back to Classic again. We just might be able to.

What Classic+ can give us back as players is an interesting discussion. There is no way to go back to those early internet days. When forums were islands in an endless ocean. Something you stumbled upon alongside other explorers on the sea. Now the internet is like the world. Large continents dominate the land, with only small nations to split it up. Gone are the days of wandering serendipitously and finding your people. The lacks of the current social system in WoW simply cannot be fixed by infrastructure. Too many other standardized avenues of communication exist. A point that often pops up in these discussions is about whether the game was more difficult then, or if we were just worse at it. I think it is a healthy mix of both, leaning to the latter. With the slower pace of Vanilla there simply is less for a skilled modern gamer to git gud at. I kind of like that too.

I think what will make or break Classic+ is how well they can capture the sense of an effortful, and therefore rewarding world. How well they can balance accommodating players of all kinds, with the players' personal need to play a specific role. To quote Blizzard sometime ago (no citation, fight me): “Bring a player, not a class”. I dislike this statement. Let me explain in short. Blizzard noticed that players were pressured slightly by meta choices. Your guild needs a healer, and the best healer is a Priest? You might get unpopular if you roll a resto Shaman. But what if you want to play resto Shaman? Blizzard made several design decisions to flatten out the differences between classes, giving more classes similar utility skills, and distinguishing mostly in the “This is best for X, but can do Y and Z well enough”. You would ideally never feel like your class was unwanted within your role. The sentiment is nice enough. Inclusion is, after all, very admirable. Dilution of gameplay in service of inclusion however, is not the correct path. There are many other methods which can serve this goal, without erasing class identity. Blizzard attempted with the expansion Legion to give players class fantasy elsewhere. By giving each class a unique storyline to follow. Gameplay became similar, but storyline became different. A net positive trade? Not to me. One of the things that Classic+ promises us is a stronger class identity experienced through gameplay. I for one, am cautiously optimistic.

There are discussions to be had about the graphical improvements. The so-called “disneyfication” of the world and the characters in it. The inclusion of faction-neutral Skyborne blue-elves. But this post is long, and I should be writing my thesis.

“If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled – for you are in Azeroth!”

I am excited to be home again. Run the plains of Mulgore. Die to ogres in Loch Modan. Craft weapons that will surely be underpowered, but they were made by my hand. I am excited to see where else I can go. What the new “Camping” system has in store for us. If the Legacy System will feel like something not tacked on.

I know the first thing I will do. Sit down, click Tauren, click Hunter.

We can't go back to 2004 to try again. Maybe what we can do is move beyond nostalgia.

It has been a long time coming.

-Ventus