World of Warcraft fans have had a lot of things to get excited about recently. In addition to the announcement of Dragonflight, Blizzard confirmed that Wrath of the Lich King would be coming to the Classic servers before the end of the year. Players will soon venture into Northrend and relive the acclaimed expansion as they square off against the Undead Scourge and the Lich King himself.
Game Rant participated in a group interview with World of Warcraft Classic lead software engineer Brian Birmingham and principal system designer Kris Zierhut about the experience of reanimating Wrath of the Lich King for Classic. Birmingham and Zierhut — both of whom worked on the original Wrath of the Lich King — shed light on how Blizzard preserves the atmosphere of classic MMOs for a modern audience. They also offered insight on the nostalgic social experiment of running World of Warcraft Classic using what it has learned from retail WoW.
Keeping the Classic in Wrath of the Lich King Classic
The MMORPG genre has changed a lot since it first began, and World of Warcraft had a huge hand in its direction. The goal of World of Warcraft Classic is to capture the retro feeling of early MMORPGs in modern times. Wrath of the Lich King Classic aims to continue that while learning from the mistakes of the past.
One way Wrath of the Lich King is doing this is by excluding some features: The removal of the Dungeon Finder is one example. This feature will not make a return to Wrath of the Lich King Classic, despite being available in its original run. “We are planning to make improvements to the Group Finding too,” Birmingham explained, “but we don’t want those improvements to mean you will automatically be put into a group of people without talking to them, and we don’t want it to teleport you automatically to the dungeon.”
Other features added in Wrath of the Lich King’s development, like quest waypoint integration in maps, will be cut to preserve the Classic experience. Faction transfers will also be unavailable, largely because of Wintergrasp, the world PvP event from Wrath of the Lich King. “[Wintergrasp] drove a great exodus of people changing servers and factions because they needed to go to the Vault of Archavon,” Zierhut explained. “Wintergrasp is supposed to be the king of all outdoor world PvP events ever… but what it actually ended up doing was killing World PvP.” By restricting faction transfers and restructuring Wintergrasp, Classic hopes to avoid the pitfalls from its original launch.
“We’re thinking about ways to make it not so important [to win]. Maybe there’s a way to go into the Vault of Archavon dungeon without winning Wintergrasp? If your side loses, maybe there’s a way you can still get in there with a little bit of extra work.”
Of course, sometimes creating the best experience for players in World of Warcraft Classic involves adding things to the game that weren’t there before. The removal of outdated, problematic references World of Warcraft has been subtly doing throughout its game is an example of this, which will continue in retail and Classic. “We are very committed to being as inclusive as we can,” Zierhut confirmed, “so the things we find that are a problem? We'll fix it.” Likewise, adding the ability to change gender and appearance at the barbershop is another simple customization that allows more free expression among the playerbase.
World of Warcraft is also adding the Dual Talent Specialization system as soon as possible. The Dual Talent system, which allows players to swap between two different class builds, will be arriving with Wrath of the Lich King Classic, rather than in its subsequent patches. “People have been asking for this to come early in Burning Crusade,” Birmingham admitted, “we would probably be making almost everybody mad if we didn’t do it in Wrath of the Lich King.”
Likewise, players will be able to make Death Knight characters during the Wrath of the Lich King Classic pre-patch event, and will have no existing level requirements to create one. This ensures players will have several weeks to level their Death Knights to 70 and be ready for Northrend when the Wrath of the Lich King update goes live, even if they are just starting Classic.
There are opportunities for World of Warcraft Classic to borrow from retail WoW in the future as well. Shadowlands Patch 9.2.5 is adding cross-faction dungeons and raids, and Dragonflight is introducing massive UI overhauls. While Classic has no plans to introduce cross-faction play at the moment, it could entertain the idea if players wanted it. Birmingham also explained Wrath of the Lich King Classic will not use all the UI updates, since a modernized UI is antithetical to the retro Classic experience, but it may use the framework. “We would want to keep the underlying tools, like the ability to move [the UI] around, so we will probably integrate that at some future point.”
The Social Experiment of World of Warcraft Classic
The social aspect of MMORPGs is what makes them stand out against other types of multiplayer games. Since World of Warcraft first launched, social media has grown substantially more prolific, to the point where most players have a social media presence outside the game. “We didn’t have people thinking about how social systems should work when we originally did Wrath of the Lich King,” Zierhut admitted. In Classic, World of Warcraft has the chance to re-examine what did and did not work the first time.
Modern MMOs are all about convenience, quality of life, and efficiency. On the other hand, World of Warcraft Classic aims to do the opposite. It is like a time capsule, seeking to capture the social experience of the classic MMO without modern conveniences that can disrupt socialization. “As we design for Wrath of the Lich King, we are trying to think about how we can promote social, how we can create those situations where people can find similarity, engage in acts of reciprocity — the things that lead them to friendship — and avoid damaging social proximity.”
“That’s the thing we weren’t careful about when we first worked on Wrath of the Lich King the first time. We put in features that sounded great, but made players experience less social proximity. We want to make changes that strengthen it instead of weaken it.”
World of Warcraft Classic is fueled by nostalgia — it owes its very existence to it. Wrath of the Lich King is one of the most beloved expansion packs in World of Warcraft history and, outside the original Classic servers, may be its most highly-anticipated update. “It helps that it’s beloved by us too,” Zierhut said. “It was great… but how can we make it even better on the second release?” Though Wrath of the Lich King Classic may not need to reinvent the wheel, it still has high expectations to meet with Classic fans.
Wrath of the Lich King Classic will need to strike the perfect balance between modern convenience to keep players interested while maintaining the integrity of the nostalgic Classic experience. Classic has succeeded in doing so with its previous releases, and while only time will tell how successful Wrath of the Lich King Classic is, the passion of its developers and fans is enough to inspire hope and excitement about the upcoming return to Northrend.
World of Warcraft Classic is available now on PC. Wrath of the Lich King Classic is scheduled to release in late 2022.