Partially for work and partially for personal curiosity, I sat through the entirety of last Friday’s BlizzCon keynote and the two WoW panels that followed. And… I have thoughts. A lot of them.
I guess the main reason I wanted to see this was to gauge whether or not World of Warcraft — in any of its iterations — was in my future based on what they were doing. And I think I can now say “yes” to that without being exactly sure “where.”
The keynote was absurdly long for the amount of reveals and info that they had. I’m serious, they could’ve cut out the first hour and not lost much of anything. You could see how little the crowd cared about Overwatch 2, Hearthstone, and even — to an extent — Diablo IV. By and large, the most enthusiasm and interest was aimed toward World of Warcraft’s two incarnations. The crowd wasn’t exactly on its feet and roaring, but it was engaged and interested. In a way, it was heartening to see both the studio and players still caring this much about the MMO.
So what about the reveals?
World of Warcraft’s Worldsoul Saga
I’ll admit it, I was stunned that they revealed three expansions in one go. It’s the audacious swing-for-the-fences that Blizzard really needed to do at this point, and I’ll give the studio this — I don’t think anyone saw it coming. It also said that it’s going to be pushing out this content at a faster pace and setting the groundwork “for the next 20 years,” both of which is big talk. But you know what? Blizzard set a pretty aggressive roadmap for 2023 and then kept to it with WoW. So I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt here.
Most of the chatter was about next year’s expansion, The War Within. Sounds like a werewolf expansion? It’s not, though. Underground stuff, titans, spider-people, that sort of thing. It sounds like a decent enough expansion — not too thrilling, but solid. More evergreen systems, including hero talents that could be fun. I really liked the push to reward and support alts with warbands and to reward explorers with their own weekly chests.
There’s no one “I must have that” feature, but even so, I found myself getting excited about it. Maybe it was partially Metzen’s call to come back home and take a journey into this next phase of WoW that did it. I just may have to.
WoW Classic
Classic was… whew. Classic was a mixed, confusing, emotional bag. I was really disappointed the way only a father can be when the words “Cataclysm Classic” flashed up on the screen. That was bad enough, but Blizzard putting the onus on the community and saying that it surveyed us all and this is what we wanted? Yeah, that’s a bald-faced lie. I won’t say nobody wanted Cataclysm, but it was a minority voice for sure. Cataclysm isn’t “classic” in any sense. It’s the modern era of the game, and at this point, that branch of WoW is nothing more or less than a progression server.
Worth doing? I don’t see the point, really. If I want to play modern-feeling WoW, then I’ll play retail and have more options available. So what’s the point of Cata? I don’t get it.
That said, I applaud the “self found” option they’re making for Hardcore Classic and really started to warm up to the Season of Discovery once I sat through that panel. It took perhaps too much explaining to really convey what this is, but now that I understand, it’s pretty cool. It’s tossing a whole bunch of toys in the form of collectable spells and talents into the WoW Classic sandbox, level gating the community to keep it together, and trying out some other new ideas within the Classic framework. It’s really different and could be a whole lot of fun if the community gets on board with discovering runes and collaborating on getting them.
And it starts on November 30th, so that’s just around the corner. I think I’m going to have to check that out. My only question is what Blizz is going to do to that server when the season ends — as in, will they strip away runes and toss our characters onto a normal Classic Era server? Keep this Discovery server alive indefinitely? That’s pretty important to know if we’re going to be sinking a lot of time into it.
Overall, the show was good. Not all-out amazing the way it really needed to be, but it wasn’t a wet paper towel either. I continue to see some encouraging groundwork being laid for WoW’s future, and that bodes well to being involved with it.
Bio Break 
As someone who was interested in CataClassic and would also be interested in the almost inevitable Mists of Pandaria Classic, I’d just point out we weren’t all there for the originals. The only WoW eras I played in as they happened were mid-late WotLK and briefly in Legion. The chance to experience a version of them in a form even somewhat similar to the original is very appealing. With the Microsoft takeover opening the doors for a return to WoW, I’m very interested to try Cataclysm, which will certainly not be the same as seeing those zones in retail.
Also, what’s the issue with Classic being a Progression server? I thought that was the point of the ongoing project now the original Classic is a permanent historical presence.