Classic Plus Reality Check — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Blizzard isn't making your Classic Plus. What do we mean by that? This is a video from Azeroth, United, and Denathar from like a week ago. One of you guys linked it in my Discord.

[00:12] Let's take a look. Blizzard is going to announce Classic Plus at BlizzCon. Probably. I think most of the Classic Cloud community expects that.

[00:24] But I'm worried that some of us are going to be disappointed. Because I think Classic Plus is going to be bad. In fact, I think it's going to be incredible. True. But over the past few months, we've spent so much time talking about what we want Classic Plus to be,

[00:38] and I think we've started convincing ourselves that that's what Blizzard is actually going to make. True. So before BlizzCon, before we start arguing about High Elves, Ogres, new classes, new raids, new zones,

[00:51] Scarlet Enclave, Karazhan Crypt, and whatever else, I think we need to talk about what we can realistically expect Classic Plus to be. True. Because Blizzard is making your Classic Plus.

[01:03] Blizzard is making their Classic Plus. It's important to remember that Blizzard is part of one of the largest corporations in the world. And Classic Plus has to make business sense.

[01:16] When Blizzard invests money and development resources into something like Classic Plus, they need to be able to get something back from that investment. They're not doing this for fan service. Blizzard cannot greenlight and support Classic Plus

[01:29] just because the developers and the fans love WoW. So when we're imagining Classic Plus, we can't start from, what do classic players deserve? We have to ask, what kind of game makes sense for Blizzard to keep investing in?

[01:46] Unfortunately, true. And those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Blizzard can make something that classic players love and something that's good for their business. In fact, for Classic Puts to succeed long-term, they're going to have to do both.

[02:01] Right. Yeah, exactly. That's been kind of like my, like, maybe naive, topium take, is that if you do right by your customer long-term, you'll also make a lot of money.

[02:14] And if you do wrong by your customer, then short-term you can squeeze them, but long-term you're actually squeezing yourself in your foot. Right? like uh the way I see it with streaming is this

[02:28] I could make more money if I just said yes to every brand deal and just like did sponsorships every day but then it would be like so annoying

[02:40] and you guys would be so annoyed I think that people would just stop watching and then I would stop getting like actual good sponsorships I would just get a bunch of crappy ones And if I kept saying yes to that, then eventually I would drive my brand into the ground.

[02:55] What does this look like? Short term, I make a ton of cash. Long term, I shoot myself in the foot. Right? I think that way for like most businesses. Maybe this is naive.

[03:07] Maybe this is dumb. Maybe this is copium. But I think that way with Blizzard too. Like, they can squeeze cash out of the player base, or they can do right by the player base,

[03:21] and long-term have more people playing that are invested because it's a good game, and make more money in the long-term, right? So you can do both. Anyway, that's my naive take.

[03:34] There we go. It's going to need Classic Plus to appeal to a much broader audience than any one part of the Classic community. because when we say Classic Plus, we're not all talking about the same game. True. The Nilla purist might want the original game with some new zones and raids,

[03:49] but virtually no mechanical changes. A Season of Discovery player might say, Screw it, go nuts, give me new classes, new abilities, new roles, let's see what happens. A retail player might want to just vacation in Classic Plus for a while,

[04:03] and they'd likely be thrilled to see some familiar modern conveniences or account-wide systems. Hardcore players might want more difficulty modes for dungeons and raids and casual players might want more quests better professions more exploration and things they can accomplish on their own

[04:23] So, like, the way I see it is this. In order to make something great and to be a visionary and to actually do something very, very well, one of the things that you have to do is to be able to say no.

[04:38] no this is not for you this is for someone else this is the product we're making and this is who we're making it for and this is what it's going to be it's not going to please everybody it's going

[04:52] to please this person that we're making it for this subset of people that we're making it for it's not trying to to satisfy everybody's gaining desires because once you try to make everyone

[05:06] happy, you make no one happy, right? So, for example, if you try to make Classic Plus into this game that attracts every type of MMO gamer, then it's going to need something like Mythic Plus,

[05:21] Arena, Rated Battlegrounds, Blitz, Shuffle. Sound familiar? So, you can't really do that. Instead, you have to say, we're making this game, and it's not for the hyper-competitive player,

[05:36] It is for the player that wants an old-school, relaxed, chill, grind MMO. If that's for you, you're going to love it. But it might not be for you, and that's okay. It takes the balls to say that.

[05:49] I'm okay with saying no to a certain percentage of the player base to make a really good game for the other one, instead of trying to just make everyone happy.

[06:02] And somehow, Blizzard has to make a game that attracts enough people from all of those groups. Can they actually do it? I have no idea.

[06:14] Because if you or I were making Classic Plus, we'd probably make the version that appeals to us. So, the people we play with, the people in our Discord, the people that we talk to about WoW. Blizzard doesn't have that luxury.

[06:28] Their developers have to visit all of those different circles and try to make a game that works, in some capacity, for all of them. Look at solo players, for example. Vanilla WoW was notoriously short on solo activities once you reached max level.

[06:42] But since Dragonflight, Blizzard has put a lot of effort into improving the solo player endgame experience in Modern WoW. So if they're building a new version of Classic Plus, personally, I'd be really surprised if they just ignored everything they've learned about that audience.

[07:00] I think it's tough, right? I actually love solo play. One of the things that made me realize I love solo play, well, there's been a couple of them. One of the first ones, though, recently, is last year when we played Old School RuneScape,

[07:13] there were so many solo challenges, like Fire Case, if you guys watched me do that, and you could spend hours and hours and hours in this game mode that's really fun and challenging, and you're invested, and you get something cool at the end.

[07:26] Obviously, the World of Warcraft equivalent is the Mage Tower, right? it's something that's dangerously fun, addicting, and when you do it, you're, like, really excited.

[07:39] Like, that kind of content in Classic Plus, like, that would be great. But then at the same time, if you start making, like, a solo MMO, one of the things that defines Classic as Classic

[07:51] is the necessity to lean on your fellow comrade out there, right? It's the necessity to group up to do something difficult. So if they, for example, make the whole game like a single-player game,

[08:07] essentially like a RuneScape is, where you could solo Molten Core in story mode, then no, not so much. So you have to draw the line somewhere. Over time, Classic Plus could introduce some pretty wild and amazing things.

[08:22] New classes or races, new dungeons and raids, new zones talents professions all that sort of thing But don expect it all at once If Classic Plus is meant to be an ongoing version of World of Warcraft then Blizzard needs reasons for us to keep coming back to it

[08:38] Modern WoW has been built around a steady content cadence for years now, but I don't see why Blizzard will build Classic Plus as a one-and-done release. You're not logging in on day one and rolling an ogre bard so you can level through the newly opened gates of Delmeus

[08:52] before raiding Skylar Enclave that night. In fact, I wouldn't expect that until several content phases down the road. The Ogre Isles or something. But seriously, Blizzard doesn't benefit from giving us every good Classic Plus idea on day one.

[09:07] Caravan Crypts could headline its own content update. A new race could be the big feature of another. And unfinished vanilla zones could be an entire content phase. And if Classic Plus is successful, we could be playing this game for years.

[09:22] So when Blizzard finally shows us what's coming, Don't just look at what's there on day one and say, wait, that's it? Because what Classic Plus launches with and what Classic Plus eventually becomes could be two very different things.

[09:35] So I actually agree with this. And just to take it to hyperbole, I wouldn't even be mad if Blizzard, and I know a lot of you guys are going to disagree with this, but I am not kidding when I say this.

[09:48] I would be completely okay with classic... Actually, not even okay. I would prefer, I would love if Blizzard had zero changes,

[10:01] just classic era with a poll in the game, and we could then vote on any content, which means the game, when it launches, is just wow, but the game 10 years from now is something that is crafted

[10:13] and curated by the community for the community, just like Old School RuneScape did with their game. and it just continues to grow and develop in the way that the actual player base, the ones playing the game, not bots, not people, you know, that are just coming in.

[10:27] Like, the people actually playing, right? The RuneScape has it to where you have to have, like, a certain level before you can even vote in the polls. I know a lot of you guys are going to disagree with that, but, like, for me, I'm completely fine with that.

[10:39] I want the game to be, like, really good in five or ten years from now. I also want it to be fun right now, but, like, even more. Like, look, every time WoW has ever done a release, like, pretty much ever, you have, you know, the release of the game, it's crazy hype, right, this is population over time, and it goes like this.

[11:04] It's like every time. Like, look at every graph, bro. I guess to be a little more fair, it goes down, maybe there's like a content patch, content patch, content patch, content patch, content patch, expansion, content patch.

[11:17] Like, that's just how it goes. That's just the graph, right? Always. I would love for the game to launch, and it's just okay.

[11:30] And then you get a patch that's pretty good. And you get another patch that's pretty good. And another patch that's pretty good. And you have the graph that looks quite the opposite, and five or ten years from now, we're like,

[11:42] wow, this is better than it was when it launched. Like, oh, I would love that. Is that even possible in WoW? I don't know. Maybe that's not possible in WoW. But that would be best case scenario ever for me.

[11:55] That's every game launch, by the way. Not RuneScape. RuneScape went the other way. RuneScape's population today is bigger than it was when old school came out. RuneScape is peaking in players and continuing to grow over time, just like that second graph.

[12:10] It's possible. It's just... You need to do it right, right? You need to do it right. And finally, there's going to be something you don't like.

[12:24] I don't know what it is. Maybe Blizzard changes the system that you think they should have left alone. Maybe they add some modern convenience that you don't think belongs in Classic. Maybe there's a class change you hate. Maybe there's some form of monetization that just pisses everybody off.

[12:38] But yeah there are probably going to be bugs There are probably going to be balance problems There are going to be things that Blizzard tries that don work and eventually have to be changed That going to happen

[12:52] And if our standard for Classic Plus is that Blizzard has to get every single one of these decisions right, we're setting ourselves up to hate the game before we've even played it. True. Hey, Flunder, I'm a Flunderer. That doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize Blizzard.

[13:05] If something sucks, say it sucks. But I don't need to agree with every decision Blizzard makes to enjoy Classic Plus. Will Blizzard eventually find some way to sell us a $25 mount?

[13:17] Come on. It's Blizzard. And I'm still going to play the hell out of it. It's Classic Plus. Goodness gracious. So we can spend the next few weeks arguing about high elves and goblins, Tygell and Gilneas.

[13:29] Hell, I'm going to do some of that myself. But when Blizzard finally shows us what they've been working on, I want to enjoy that moment for what it is. Some of what they show us, we're going to love. Some of it, we're going to hate.

[13:41] Some of it is probably going to be hella broken. Like, dude, to me, the big thing here is the ability to course correct. Like, to me, I hold that very, very high.

[13:57] If Blizzard makes a mistake, I would love them to be able to just say, oh, yeah, let's not do that then, right? Like, Blizzard historically hasn't been very good at that, although I must say they've been better maybe in recent years than, like,

[14:11] when it was, like, the worst. Maybe five years ago it was, like, the worst. Or, like, eight years ago when it was, like, this is what we're doing, period, the end, and they shut out all the noise. And it's like, come on! I feel like they've been getting a little better, potentially.

[14:24] But I guess what I was trying to say is the ability to course-correct is a big one. RuneScape, Dead Guard, incredible at it. incredible, like on a dime.

[14:36] Like they'll put out a post saying like, hey, do you guys want this? And the whole community is raging and saying like, no, this is stupid. And they're like, oh, sorry. Okay, cool. Now we know. And we're not going to do that then. Thanks for letting us know, right? And it's like the next day there's a post.

[14:49] It's not a week later. It's the next day. And there's just this communication. Like I would love that, right? Like they launched Classic Plus. Of course, they're going to mess something up. What I want is the ability to course correct,

[15:02] when, not if, when they mess something up. Like, that's my hope, right? That's my hope. And that's okay. I don't need Classic Plus to check every box on my wish list.

[15:14] I don't need every system to work exactly the way I would have designed it. And I definitely don't need Blizzard to announce everything I've spent the last few years imagining. I just want to go back to Azeroth and have something new and exciting waiting for me.

[15:28] For real. I thought this video was really good. And one of you guys linked it to me. Like I said, I watched the first minute off stream. I was like, oh, I'll watch the rest off stream. It seems pretty good. It's just a very chill take.

[15:41] Not sensational. Not trying to theorycraft into things you don't know. Quite the opposite. It's more just like, this is Blizzard. This is more realistic. You know what I mean?

[15:54] So yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool. There we go. I mean, I'm going to be happy as long as we can play some Classic Plus and like maybe as long as mages just have

[16:06] at least Deep Freeze, Ice Lance, Old School Alter Time, maybe Blazing Speed like, I don't know, maybe Stealth would be nice too. No cooldown.

[16:18] Maybe Bubble for mage would be would make sense in the lore. Like an Instant Cast Chaos Bolt with no cooldown, no mana cost either. Maybe, like, a heal, too. Yeah, I can definitely give him some heals, too.

[16:31] Maybe, like, a Lay on Hands. Except there's no cooldown or global cooldown. And then, like, I'm trying to think. Maybe Polymorph needs to be AoE with, like, a really big AoE.

[16:48] Anyway, yo, yo, Blizzard, if you want any more of my input, just let me know. Because, yeah, I think Mages, as long as Mages can at least do that stuff, I'll be happy. like that's all I really care about cool