World of Warcraft: Classic was one of the most asked for and desired releases in gaming for quite some time, with World of Warcraft players asking for a way to play the title in Vanilla as soon as the first expansion was announced.
Once that game became a reality, the fan base was left with one question: What happens next?
The title, being based in Vanilla, has a built-in lifespan due to the fact that Vanilla itself only lasted a couple years before becoming the Burning Crusade expansion. As such, Blizzard can only put so much content in.
Recently, the developers began testing for Naxxramas, the final raid tier for World of Warcraft: Classic. Now, fans are wondering where the developers intend to take the title.
Moreover, recent changes that the developers have made to the title have left many searching for hints on which changes are being made to prepare for the future releases in the title. With the future unconfirmed, fan theories are always popping up.
One of the theories that players have been discussing comes from a survey that Blizzard sent out not long ago. In that survey, Blizzard pitches the idea of new, fresh servers on the same client, effectively wiping everyone’s progress and starting the process over.
While this sounds like it’d just be deleting content, it’s actually a rather popular option. Many love the fresh release of a server where nobody has anything, leaving everyone on the same footing with no one having much of an advantage save for their knowledge of the game.
This idea has been referred to as “Classic Season 2,” more or less treating the servers as a ranked season or a ladder. The idea is that Blizzard would make changes and updates between seasons but otherwise reset the servers back to their base setting, much like how a Diablo III season works.
Others are expecting to see Blizzard work towards releasing a version of the Burning Crusade expansion set to the same principle as Classic, leaving few changes between the original release of the expansion and what players have now.
Players are expecting that the upcoming BlizzConline – the online version of BlizzCon – will be the announcement for the future of Classic. Given that this event was recently announced to be free to spectate, it’ll have thousands of fans waiting to hear the news.
Whatever Blizzard intends to do, it’s obvious that they’ll need to do something before fans begin to lose interest. If Classic stays in its current state for years on end, it’ll only manage to stagnate and grow uninteresting to most players.
