• Author: Passion
• Date: March 26, 2023
• Updated: April 2, 2023
• Expansion: WotLK Classic

An inevitability in Classic WoW is that eventually, the expansion we have grown to love and enjoy will run out of content. Each expansion has a predetermined amount of Raids, Dungeons, and Phases. Because of this, we will always have to ask “What comes next?”.

Everyone seems to want something different for the future of Classic. Some players will still loudly clamor for #nochanges, while others are fully on board with changes and insist we need more changes. There are a lot of things to consider before taking steps in any direction for a game, let alone one of the largest games on the market. 

What comes after Wrath of the Lich King could make or break Classic. This is where expansions start to get really divisive, and the original end of Wrath of the Lich King marks the first time the game would end a year with fewer subscribers than the year before. 

When asked, all but one of our writers agreed that the next expansion for Classic should be a somewhat changed Cataclysm Classic.

Our Team

In an effort to provide feedback, thoughts, and ideas for what comes next, the staff here at Warcraft Tavern have thoroughly considered where we would like to see Classic go. The majority of our team is interested in Cataclysm and is likely to play even if it releases without any changes, but everyone has their own vision of what would need to be changed to make the next expansion the best it could be.

Seasonal Content

We already had our first “Season” in Classic. Season of Mastery(SoM) was an attempt at a 12-month Vanilla-Era cycle. During this time the game would work through the 6 original phases of Classic at a faster pace. To match this pace, the servers came with an experience boost to allow players to reach the endgame sooner. 

The largest change for SoM was the removal of the original buff and debuff limits in place, as well as the removal of World Buffs in Raid content. The idea, or hope even, was that without a debuff limit, specs that were previously off-limits for serious raiders may be able to find their place. Shadow Priests and Affliction Warlocks would be free to push the limits of their specs without worrying about knocking off more important debuffs. The removal of World Buffs would also open up the potential for a shifted balance in raids, instead of Warriors coming out on top because of their absurd scaling. As a final addition, the “Soul of Iron” system was added, effectively giving players an in-built Hardcore mode for the first time in WoW’s history. 

Unfortunately, none of this really cemented a “seasonal” style of play. Playing without World Buffs was already possible, and players ended up preferring the third-party Hardcore addons instead of the new system. The bigger change, the removal of debuff limits, did very little to change the metagame and the usual raid composition remained mostly the same. 

“Season of Mastery just doesn’t appeal to me. I understand why others like it but I find it to be a very boring system. Cataclysm would further continue the nostalgia wave that a lot of us are riding.”

Veiled

What if SoM was simply a trial run, to see if they could? There are a few major sources that could be used very effectively as inspiration for future Classic seasons. The first one is Blizzard’s own Diablo 3, currently on its 28th and potentially final season.

Diablo Seasons

A Diablo season lasts for around 100 days. During this time, players are given a handful of challenges to complete, and upon completion, players are awarded unique cosmetics that carry over from season to season. Past season 14, seasons would also come with a unique, interesting buff that potentially shifts the entire meta. For example, during Season 19, players would receive a stacking buff, increasing their speed and damage as long as they have hit a monster within the last few seconds. Alongside this, kill streaks were significantly amped up. The idea was that players would have to choose between going fast and keeping their stacks, or resetting them so they could receive the kill streak bonuses again. 

Something like this significantly changes the game in ways that self-imposed challenges do not and can not. It refreshes the game for those bored of the same gameplay they recently experienced, and the shorter length of a season gives players less time to get bored, and constantly gives them something new and fresh.

Everquest Progression Servers

The classic MMORPG Everquest may be far from its glory days, but despite this, Everquest is still far from a dead game. Since its release in 1999, Everquest has released almost 30 expansions. Just like in WoW, these have received mixed receptions, being criticized for how much they change the game people had grown to love. 

So Everquest did something similar to what World of Warcraft would later do. In 2015 they released the first “Progression Server”. These servers are effectively a modernized version of the oldest versions of Everquest. Including a significant amount of quality-of-life upgrades from future versions, such as an overhauled user interface, and faster leveling. 

These servers are currently released in groups, offering players a few choices in how they want to experience the game. The first progression server, Ragefire, had faster leveling than the original release of Everquest, but slower than the current incarnation of the game. Notably, this server had “Voting Timelocked Progression” expansion releases. This meant that 12 weeks after the server opened, players would vote on if they wanted the next expansion. If the vote passed, the next expansion would come out, and after some time, they would vote on another expansion. This allowed the community themselves to decide the pace of the game. Don’t quite feel done with the content available? Use your vote to communicate that.

Most progression servers would provide something different from the ones before, and with them releasing yearly, there was always the opportunity to enjoy your favorite parts of the game again. The servers also did not close just because a new one was released, and as of writing this, there are 6 progression servers currently open. 

Taking inspiration from this, and providing varied versions of Classic servers on a fairly regular schedule would give the largest amount of players the ability to play the way they want to play. Alongside this, incorporating player voices by allowing them to vote for the next Phase release, could open up the game to players being able to play at their pace, or close to it. 

Conclusion

Combining parts of Everquest progression servers, and Diablo seasons, could potentially provide players with a fantastic new way to play the game they love, without having to add a whole mess of new content. This also gives a lot of room for experimentation, and without the looming fear of “this is the last chance I have to play this”, players can enjoy seasons for what they are, instead of seeing them as their chance at playing Classic again being butchered.

Cataclysm

Wrath of the Lich King Classic progressing into Cataclysm Classic is all but confirmed. Even if you are not personally a fan of Cataclysm, a lot of players are. There are a lot of players that started playing in Cataclysm, and look back on it fondly for that. Those that carried on playing during Cataclysm regularly have kind words to say about the Heroic dungeons and raid content. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a bad word about The Firelands from anyone that experienced it as current content; as proven by half of the team here saying that the most exciting upcoming feature in Cataclysm is the 5 raids that come with it. 

Of course, even with that positivity, raiding in Cataclysm came with incredibly long raid tiers, and to this day Dragon Soul remains one of the longest raid tiers in the game, coming in at 336 days, just shy of a full year. 

“Excluding or Including certain systems that deviate from the Original is fine. As long as they are done with careful intent. An example being the absurd length of release for original Dragon Soul, and the stagnation that created.”

Venesh

Despite a lot of fond memories, Cataclysm is one of the most controversial points in WoW. Many players have already decided that Cataclysm Classic isn’t for them, even ones that never touched it originally. Thread after thread saying Raid Finder killed the game, or that they cannot stand the overhauled Azeroth, or that the game became too easy and casual-friendly.

Even people that have never played Cataclysm before already view it through a negative lens.

“I never played the original Cataclysm but I have heard negative things about it, I think this will cause my friends/other people I play with to stop playing”

Bobodingo

While it’s hard to say that Raid Finder, a feature added at the end of the expansion killed Cataclysm, it is still something that players are concerned about. It may not be included at the start of the expansion, but it will be at some point. So how do we address these concerns in a reasonable way?

Raid Finder

One of the most controversial additions to the game, Raid Finder, commonly referred to as LFR (Looking For Raid). This feature allows players to use a tool similar to the dungeon finder to matchmake with a group for a raid with a lower difficulty than otherwise possible. This feature was originally introduced towards the end of Cataclysm and was only ever available for the Dragon Soul raid, the fifth and final raid of the expansion.

Raid Finder typically scaled down everything in the raid. This included making some mechanics so weak that they could be fully ignored with no consequences. Loot in Raid Finder was intended to match this change in difficulty. An item that was ilvl 403 on Normal would instead be 416 on Heroic or 390 from LFR.

The original goal was to allow everyone to experience the content, not just a minority. The feature drew public ire for numerous reasons. Among these were less reasonable reasons, such as players not wanting players who “didn’t earn it” to play through the raids they had to work to finish. A larger, more reasonable complaint is that LFR did not share a lockout with any other difficulty. This meant that for players trying to make sure their character was always the most powerful it could be, they would have to include LFR runs in their weekly routine. Most players that felt they had to do LFR for gear were players that were experiencing these raids on their other difficulties and did not enjoy the experience of playing significantly tuned-down content. 

Our writers had this to say about the addition of Raid Finder

“The game is becoming more and more inaccessible to the average player – LFR would provide sufficient opportunity for every player to experience endgame content.”

Kurathis, listing Raid Finder as one of the most interesting Cataclysm features

“Raid Finder isn’t bad, but I feel it eliminates the necessity of cooperating and relying on a community, a staple of “Classic” WoW.”

Milliondollarpuppy

“Raid finder was originally introduced to extend raiding to very casual players. It may have worked back then to make WoW raiding more accessible, but the average WoW Classic player has no difficulty stepping into normal mode raiding. It was also used relentlessly by top guilds to exploit loot, and in the current meta of split raiding, I could foresee some extremely toxic behavior. If LFR is not removed entirely, there would need to be systems in place preventing players from gaming the system”

Lettara

“I feel as if it made raiding too easy, if the difficulty was bumped up to Normal raid mode then I think it would be better.”

Amery

So what can be changed?

Option 1: Share the lockout

The obvious answer here is to make LFR share a lockout with other raids. This unfortunately brings with it other dilemmas, such as players not being able to do LFR as a way to spend time with friends outside of their usual raid group. LFR is the only way a lot of players will be able to raid with their friends, avoiding clashing schedules and herding 25 cats.

Avoiding the lockout share could be done in other ways too. An opt-in for loot when you queue that if checked would cause you to be locked out of 10 and 25-man raids could be used, allowing people the best of both worlds. The downside is that this requires more than simply porting an existing mechanic over — but Blizzard has proved that they are willing to make these changes so far.

Option 2: Don’t include it

Simply don’t include LFR. This would be the optimal fix if you were to listen to public outcry. The need to run an extra, easier raid each week would be gone, as well as players being rewarded for beating the easier content.

Of course, this would mean that those that would never be able to experience raids without LFR will be missing out on Dragon Soul at the very least. In an expansion with highly praised raids, this would be a very significant loss for a lot of players. Along with this, transmogrification was added in the same patch as the Raid Finder. Blanket removal of LFR would then remove access to all the recolored gear available from there with it.

Option 3: Make it harder

Off the bat this sounds like it goes against the basic concept of Raid Finder. Making it too difficult would remove the accessibility factor that was so vital in the first place. Instead of the difficulty that LFR is now infamous for, rebalancing it could help improve the public perception of it, as well as help players enjoy it.

A lot of LFR mechanics can simply be ignored, out-healed, or out-paced. Failure has little consequence, and even if it does result in a death, the raid probably doesn’t need you anyway. Making every player feel like they are relevant to the fight could go a long way. Of course, this is an incredibly delicate balancing act, trying to keep hardcore players engaged without alienating casual players.

Option 4: Transmog

Keep LFR almost exactly as it is, but instead of providing ilvl 390 gear, have the items be transmog only. Similar to the “Cosmetic” gear currently available in Dragonflight. This gives players plenty of reason to do Looking For Raid, but without giving any actual statistical advantage to those that do it. Those that are uncomfortable in their ability to clear Normal or Heroic raids have a venue of practice, while players actively clearing Heroic every week do not feel the need to do LFR weekly to avoid falling behind. 

The allure of transmog as a reward is something that was an unknown when Cataclysm first released, but we know just how important it can be. Even the most hardcore of raiders will stop in their tracks to grab a cool new hat. 

“Raiding has always been my primary interest and focus when playing WoW throughout the years. Obviously major overhauls to systems like talents, reforging, raid finder, and transmogrification all correlate to meeting that goal as well. You might ask why “Transmog” is important in relation to raiding, but everyone knows that looking good is at least 10% of your in game performance.”

Venesh

Old World Changes

The real Cataclysm, the shattering of Azeroth, had players incredibly excited leading up to the original expansion release. Deathwing damages the World Pillar, causing catastrophic “natural” disasters to permanently scar the world players had spent the last 5 years living in. The future of Azeroth was uncertain and exciting. 

Then we got to experience it. The zones we love had been overhauled, changing visually, thematically, and experientially. Barren deserts turned into vivid forests overnight. Darkshore was left with a permanent cyclone tearing the zone apart. Thousand Needles went from immense pillars and natural cliffs to entirely submerged, requiring a boat or a flying mount to traverse easily. 

With this came an entirely new questing philosophy. Zones were story-driven, having you do a handful of quests, progressing your goals in the zone, and then sending you to your next handful of quests. This system has always been a point of contention for players. Some people absolutely adore following a smaller-scale story and seeing their efforts in a zone lead to a thrilling conclusion. Others enjoy the more sandbox style, grabbing a bunch of unrelated quests and knocking them out 10 at a time before turning them all in for one big burst of experience. 

In the end, your personal preference did not matter, because you no longer had a choice. You could not simply opt out and quest your way, it was the Cataclysm way or the highway. 

So how do we fix this?

Option: Chromie Time

Chromie. What else could it have been? More specifically, the Bronze Dragonflight. Blizzard has already introduced new functions for the keepers of time in Classic. Vanilla received Chromies chronoboon, allowing players to alter the fabric of time. WotLK instead received Zidormi, floating ominously in Tirisfal Glades, allowing people to manually select their phase for The Battle for the Undercity event.

Giving players the ability to choose if they want to experience the old world or the new world means everyone can play the way they prefer. No one is required to play one way or the other, and no one loses access to the world they have spent almost 4 years in (again). 

This does come with further issues to handle though. One of the two options will be the fastest option, and a lot of players will always choose that, even if it is less enjoyable for them. A need or want to rebalance the old-world leveling experience could add more work and more potential issues. 
There are also several old-world dungeons that received overhauls in Cataclysm. Wailing Caverns and Sunken Temple were made significantly shorter and simpler to navigate. Shadowfang Keep and the Deadmines were fully overhauled and given Heroic options.

Offering the old-world versions of these alongside the updated ones would impact the general cohesion of the expansion. Receiving the open old world as an option could lead to players taking the small jump into arguing for the old world dungeons too, but offering several versions of leveling dungeons adds a lot of unneeded confusion. “LFM DM” already means at least 3 different things.

Talent Trees

Cataclysm brings the first but far from the last overhaul of Talent Trees and Specialisations. Talent Trees go from 51-point trees with one point awarded for each level after 10, totaling 71 by level 80 into 31-point trees, with points mostly awarded every other level, totaling 41 by level 85. Along with this, you are required to spend 31 points on your specialization of choice before you are able to branch into other trees with your final 10 points.

The goal of this system was to combat cookie-cutter builds and talent bloat. With Wrath of the Lich King there are a lot of talents that are simply “Yup, always grab this” or the opposite, “Why would I ever want that?”. Many talents provided tiny bonuses that did not feel impactful, things like 1% Hit or 1% Damage for X spell. Instead of a point at every level that you might not even notice, a point at every other level that you would really feel was the goal. There were also a handful of hybrid specs that were awkward to balance, especially for PvP. The most iconic example is The Burning Crusades SL/SL Warlock or early Wrath of the Lich King Death Knights. 

“I believe that the talent changes were a big part of Cataclysm’s Identity, ushering in a new era of “Specialization Identity”. This allowed players to delve deeper into a specific “Specialization Fantasy”, being much more committed to it compared to the previous expansions. While this allows players to be much more immersed in their class and desired specialization, the old Wrath of the Lich King system had a better approach in which the “Class Identity” was emphasized more rather than the specialization itself, giving the player a chance to create all sorts of custom builds that did not specifically fit into a “One Meta Fits All” pattern.”

Nevermore

Unfortunately, this ended up having the opposite effect on a lot of players. Talent trees felt more static than ever. Removing the ability to play a hybrid build felt like a kick in the teeth for players that had fallen in love with their play style. This also left leveling feeling a bit less exciting, knowing that your next level has nothing to offer you except some naturally boosted stats. 

So what can be done to alleviate this?

Option 1: Redo talent trees from the ground up

A lot of players will argue that this is the only way to fix these issues. Scrap the Cataclysm system entirely and do something else. The suggestion I see most often is to pull the Wrath of the Lich King trees back in and continue building off of them. This ends up being a difficult solution to agree with. 

Talent trees are already incredibly bloated, and the more you add to them the worse the new player experience with them becomes. Along with this, Cataclysm only brings 5 levels, which would only become 5 additional talent points. 

Cataclysm also did not add new capstone talents for most specs, meaning that adding a new tier with a new spell would require a new spell to be added to the game. The additional 5 points could function to allow you to get deeper into other trees though, without making the trees themselves any longer.

Option 2: Allow hybrid specs

Giving players the ability to play a hybrid spec may not end up making any difference in the long run. The talent trees are so short, and all generally have a powerful capstone talent, meaning that hybrid specs could go wasted anyway. If hybrid specs ended up being optimal, or even viable, this would add a new aspect of balance that was not a consideration upon creating the talent trees. 

Cataclysm talent trees also require you to select one of the three trees for your class before you can spend points. If you select “Demonology” for example, you unlock the ability to summon a Felguard, as well as granting you benefits from Mastery appropriate for your spec. This is what would lock you into the tree itself, requiring you to spend 31 points there before you can move on. Allowing players to simply choose one of these bonuses and then spec into a completely different tree could be game-breaking for balance. Though, this could be addressed by having those bonuses awarded based on the tree you have the most points in. 

This also fails to address many of the other concerns around these talent trees, such as points (mostly) every second level, and the general shortness of the trees themselves.

Separate Lockouts

Wrath of the Lich King introduced the concept of each raid having a 10-man and a 25-man version. The later raids also have the ability to select normal or hard mode as opposed to manually activating it through an in-game mechanic. Cataclysm continued this, but each raid has a single lockout. This means you can only do 10-man OR 25-man each week. To match this, the different sizes drop the same loot, but in varying quantities. This also means that there are no 10-man/25-man versions of gear, instead being limited to Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic gear.

For most players, this means that they will rarely ever do a 10-man raid, as it is generally more optimal to run 25-man raids. This also means that each character can only run each raid once (excluding Raid Finder) each week. For some players this is fantastic, lowering the amount of “mandatory” content each week, but for others this is a negative, prohibiting them from doing more raids per week even if they wanted to.

When asked about which Cataclysm feature was the most exciting, our writers had this to say

“I was going to say xmog in order to clean my bank out, but honestly it would be the unified raid system so that drops are easier to get without needing 25 people for it.”

Amery

“I literally have the theory that this is what started WoWs decline in subs back in the day—not RDF, and the decline happened already before that. 10 and 25-man vs eachother CANNOT be balanced even by the greatest and most knowledgeable of minds, due to the simple fact that it is easier to find 10 great players than 25 of them.”

Jamielolx

Clearly, this topic has no one-size-fits-all solution, so how do we address it in the best way?

Option 1: Split the lockout

Split the lockouts, allowing players to complete both 10 and 25-man versions of each raid weekly. For this you would need to either add an entirely new set of gear for 10-man or leave the loot as-is, giving players a significant bump in how much loot they can receive per week. The former adds additional dev time, making it a significantly less likely choice. The latter instead causes interest in the tier dwindle significantly sooner. Being fully geared and doing the same raid with nothing more to gain is a motivation killer.

Option 2: Opt-in loot

Allow players to choose if they want to be able to receive loot from the run or not, only providing a loot lockout instead of a raid lockout. This comes with many issues though. The first is that personal loot does not exist for Cataclysm raids. Personal loot was added in Mists of Pandaria, essentially giving each player their own loot, instead of having the enemy drop an item and everyone rolls for it. Without personal loot, a boss will still drop X amount of items, but you will have any number of players that are ineligible to receive this loot, leading to the same amount of drops spread over a smaller pool of players, speeding up gearing for players with a team ready to repeat the raid over and over. 

This also creates potential issues with selling boost runs, which has been a massive issue in Retail, but for Classic has been mostly overshadowed by GDKP runs.

Classic+

Since Classic was announced, a vocal group of players has been asking for, and at times demanding, Classic+. The idea typically comes in the form of “We should skip the next expansion and just do something new instead.” This idea sure sounds great for players, but for Blizzard, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Assigning a dedicated team to produce new content that plays off of Classic in a way that the next expansion in line wouldn’t have is a difficult task.

We have already seen community reaction to a significantly smaller attempt at a similar idea. Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder Seasons have been introducing new items to the game. Most players seem in favor of these items, and in favor of adding new, optional content to their favorite game. But these items follow a clear trend set by later games and an approach that only came about almost 15 years after the original game did. This works in a game with no clearly established direction for new content, but this doesn’t hold true for Classic. We know what could come next, so there is always something to compare to. 

”I like the idea of WOTLK+ over Cataclysm assuming vast changes to various systems such as raid difficulties, talent changes that offer people a choice between output and supportive and such are implemented I would play it for long-term – for the short term I would prefer to just get cataclysm especially if the raid lock outs (10man/25man) change to the WOTLK format”

Jamielolx

The idea of Classic+ also neglects one major factor for Classic—Nostalgia. While nostalgia is unlikely to be the entire reason anyone has stuck around in Classic, it is still a big factor for many players. Even if it is not your favorite expansion, the next expansion is almost certainly someone’s favorite. All of this is to say that even though a lot of players want nothing more than Classic+, it is fairly unrealistic to expect. 

While the Classic+ crowd is significantly quieter these days, there are still a lot of people that see it as a missed opportunity to not have already gone in that direction. Others simply don’t have enough faith in the current direction of Classic to want to see that applied to new content. Matching the current apathy towards the idea, none of the staff here at Warcraft Tavern seemed excited by the idea, especially without massive reworks.