• World of Warcraft- Wrath of the Lich King Classic box art
    World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic
    Platform:
    PC
    Developer:
    Blizzard
    Publisher:
    Activision
    Genre:
    MMORPG
    Multiplayer:
    Online Multiplayer
    ESRB:
    Teen
    Released:
    2022-09-26
    Franchise:
    Warcraft

With Wrath of the Lich King Classic set to launch on September 26th, Blizzard is prepping players for what to expect. Blizzard announced several changes earlier today that are coming with Wrath of the Lich King Classic.

After introducing World of Warcraft Classic with a “no changes” mentality, Blizzard has introduced several changes for Wrath of the Lich King. The most infamous is the removal of the random dungeon finder. Feedback from the Wrath of the Lich King beta has led to another change prior to release.

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Aggrend, World of Warcraft Classic Game Producer, details that a buff "audit" system is being put into place. This prevents certain classes from obtaining buffs in one spec, snapshotting it to keep the buff, and then swapping to another spec. This is something that existed in 2009 during the original Wrath of the Lich King. Aggrend, however, mentions it is something the development team would have changed. Aggrend continues to say that this fix will not alter the in-game scenarios when players give each other buffs as they walk by in the open world. The change is solely intended for the raiding experience.

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With Wrath of the Lich King Classic, Blizzard has not been shy about making changes they deem necessary for the health of the game. These are changes that didn't take place in the original Classic WoW release, even if they had benefited the health of WoW.

Updates for cooldowns in Wrath of the Lich King Classic were also discussed. One change for Heroism/Bloodlust is similar to the current practice in retail World of Warcraft. Players would purposely take breaks and not engage in boss fights to ensure these beneficial buffs could be used. Blizzard recognizes that this does not make for the best in-game experience. As a result, when an encounter ends, players can use Heroism/Bloodlust without cooldown restrictions.

Additional long cooldowns will be seeing a similar change for the same reason. It's not fun having the entire raid wait for a handful of players to have their beneficial cooldowns reset. For Wrath of the Lich King Classic, Blizzard is specifically targeting any ability with a base cooldown of longer than two minutes. There are some exceptions for specific abilities.

The community has been mixed on Wrath Classic not having the random dungeon finder in place. Conversely, there is praise and agreement that the upcoming raid buff/debuff changes for Wrath of the Lich King Classic could be good for the game. This echoes the positive reaction from fans with the fresh start realms that will launch within the coming weeks.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic isn't the only World of Warcraft release for 2022. The upcoming retail expansion, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, is also due to release this year.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches on September 26th for PC and Mac.

MORE: Classic WoW: 7 Features from 2008 Wrath of the Lich King You Won't See in the Upcoming Classic Expansion

Source: Blizzard