GREETINGS ADVENTURERS
We are pleased to announce the upcoming launch of World of Warcraft: Classic Plus.
This project represents our ongoing effort to explore what Azeroth could have become if development had continued along a parallel path after the original Classic era, while still preserving the core identity that defines it.
Over the last year, we’ve been closely monitoring player feedback across WoW Classic realms, Season of Discovery, Hardcore, Anniversary, Era, Fresh, Fresh Era, Fresh Hardcore Era, Fresh Anniversary Hardcore PvP realms, PTR realms, PTR test realms, PTR test realms, PTR experimental shards, and at least one internal build that achieved unexpected popularity simply by not crashing.
As always, we’ve reviewed extensive community feedback, including constructive discussions, internal testing, and at least one 14-page forum thread about Warrior scaling that we stopped reading halfway through for health reasons and employee morale protection.
Today, we’re excited to announce the upcoming pre-alpha conceptual reveal preview for World of Warcraft Classic Plus.
Our goal with Classic Plus is simple:
“What if we continued developing Vanilla WoW in 2005 with absolutely no lessons learned, but significantly more data, opinions, and strongly worded feedback?”
Generic Overview
Classic Plus is built around three guiding principles:
- Preserve the world-first feeling of discovery
- Maintain meaningful social dependency
- Ensure at least one design decision per patch is considered a mistake by someone on Reddit
Community Response Forecast
We believe this balance reflects the original spirit of Classic accurately.
We also acknowledge that any change will immediately trigger one of the following responses:
- This is not Classic
- This is literally Classic but worse
- Finally, Classic is saved (rare, usually misclick)
Level Cap
The maximum level will remain 60.
We did briefly consider raising it to 65, primarily because it would add approximately 10 additional hours per level of leveling content, which aligns with our goal of “extended engagement through mild existential reflection.”
However, we ultimately decided that 60 remains a sacred number, and 65 is reserved for future regret and/or expansion box sales.
New Zones, Raids and Dungeons
Classic Plus will include new zones, raids, and dungeons.
These will not be available at launch.
They will be introduced in later phases, at some point next year, or earlier if the community successfully completes enough forum speculation, YouTube theorycrafting, and Discord misinformation loops.
We are aiming to ensure new content feels like it naturally belongs in Azeroth, rather than appearing as if it was created in a timeline where designers were allowed to finish ideas.
New raids currently in plan
The following raids are currently planned for future phases.
- Scarlet Monastery (40-player rework): Featuring 11 identical corridors, 3 fake doors, and one boss that only appears if someone forgets to bring a Mage
- Uldum: Closed at launch, but referenced in every patch note to maintain narrative consistency and community suffering continuity
- Karazhan Crypts: Where every boss applies stacking debuffs named “you should have prepared better” and drops items slightly worse than your expectations
- Azshara (Fully realized zone): Contains one quest, two NPCs, and approximately 400 unanswered lore threads that will be addressed in a future panel titled “we are aware”
Raid Difficulty and Raid Size
We will be introducing a single raid difficulty type: Heroic Plus.
This difficulty is designed for:
- World-first race participants
- Streamers with optimized sleep deprivation schedules
- At least one guild that clears it using unintended mechanics that will later become “emergent gameplay”
Raid Tuning
We anticipate most “dad gamer” groups will not complete it in week one, but we encourage persistence, optimism, and heavier consumable usage. We will nerf raids a few weeks after launch anyway, allowing players to experience the content as intended: slightly too late.
To support social interaction, we will also introduce an 80-player raid size option.
This is intended to:
- Increase community coordination
- Extend raid formation time to approximately 90–120 minutes
- Ensure at least 60 Warriors are always present, regardless of balance or logic
The 80-player raid size will also naturally account for:
- 6 players disconnecting due to perfectly normal latency events
- 3 players dying before pull due to accidental AoE “testing”
- Payo simultaneously alt-tabbing on 4 other accounts
Group Formation
To reinforce Classic social design, we are removing Dungeon Finder and LFG.
Raid assembly will instead be encouraged through direct in-person interaction in major hubs such as Crossroads and Ironforge, where group formation is both a gameplay system and a lifestyle commitment.
It will balance out the lack of end-game content.
Attunements
Attunements will remain part of progression. We are reviewing attunements that require:
- more time than the raid they unlock
- coordination steps involving asking someone in Burning Steppes to “please stop fishing for 3 minutes”
- one full guild discussion that ends in silence and a respec
Classic Plus Rune Systems
We are expanding rune-based customization systems introduced in earlier experiments. These will allow players to:
- Modify core class abilities
- Unlock alternative role expressions
- Accidentally create new balance problems that will be resolved in hotfix 3.2.12
Rune System Philosophy
We believe rune systems represent a meaningful evolution of Classic class identity, or at minimum, a way to ensure no two Warriors ever agree on anything ever again or Hunter pets could one-man any player in PvP.
Flying Mounts
We have considered introducing flying mounts. The intention would be to reduce travel friction and improve accessibility.
However, we also recognize that flying fundamentally changes how players experience a world we have spent years asking them to slow down and appreciate, usually while running back from Stratholme.
As such, flying mounts remain under review. If implemented, it will likely be so players could skip most of the content while crying the game is boring.
Monetisation
WoW Token
We will be introducing the WoW Token. This allows us to better align gold acquisition with legitimate in-game systems, rather than third-party services that have been “monitored closely” for approximately 18 years, several expansions, and at least one economic philosophy shift.
GDKP
GDKP systems will not be officially supported. However, we acknowledge their existence and will continue to treat them as an unrelated community phenomenon that appears in logs but not in design documents. Otherwise, why would players buy WoW token.
Level Boosts
Level boosts will be available, of course. This is intended to allow players to experience endgame content immediately, without the burden of understanding their class. We believe this improves accessibility while preserving confusion. It will also give another reason players crying about there is no content in the game when they've just paid 60 bucks to skip half of it.
Professions and Economy
We are making improvements to profession systems and economic usability:
- Profession specializations remain simple enough that they do not require external spreadsheets with 14 tabs and color coding. The bar is so Xaryu does not crash out on it again.
- Auction House UI improvements will reduce the time spent staring at prices and questioning reality
- Economy enforcement systems will be strengthened against bots and third-party gold services, which we continue to monitor closely while they continue to adapt faster than expected
Account-Wide Systems
We are also introducing account-wide systems selectively, though we are aware this may cause philosophical disagreements lasting approximately 3–6 months, or until the next patch notes.
PvP
PvP remains a core pillar of Classic Plus.
We will be introducing one new Battleground.
This decision reflects our commitment to quality over quantity, as well as the reality that adding more than one Battleground requires at least two meetings, a spreadsheet, and a follow-up meeting about the spreadsheet.
Rated battlegrounds may be introduced in future phases.
Arena systems are being discussed, debated, postponed, and accidentally datamined simultaneously.
World PvP Incentives
World PvP will be encouraged through dynamic event systems designed to create conflict in contested zones.
These events may:
- Increase server load significantly
- Cause unpredictable performance degradation
- Result in Rogues appearing at emotionally inconvenient times, usually behind you
Authentic Classic Experience
We consider this an authentic Classic experience.
Content Cadence and Expansion Structure
We are planning a faster content cadence than the original Classic.
New zones, raids, and dungeons will be introduced over time.
Private server influence is acknowledged but not officially referenced in design decisions, despite being referenced in every community discussion.
Streamer-driven balance concerns will be reviewed, but not prioritized over actual gameplay data or internal chaos metrics.
We are aware of ongoing debates about “SoD is Classic Plus.”
To clarify:
- Season of Discovery was an experiment.
- Classic Plus is also an experiment.
- At this point, everything is an experiment, including this sentence.
World Buffs
In response to player feedback, world buffs will now:
- Persist through death
- Persist through logging out
- Persist through server instability
- Persist through raids that disband immediately after someone says “pulling in 5”
- And are only removed by a single NPC in a hidden location who tells you “you should have saved it for later” before disappearing
Quad Specialization
Finally, many players have asked whether Classic Plus will include dual specialization.
We believe dual spec would damage social immersion, class identity, and the ancient sacred process of asking a Restoration Shaman to respec and receiving a 47-minute silence followed by a /logout.
To support this philosophy, respeccing now costs 500 gold and must be approved manually by a GM currently investigating another realm’s economy, a dupe exploit, and a suspiciously organized guild bank.
On the other hand, to slightly satisfy everyone while upsetting everyone else equally, we are introducing Quad Specialization for Druids:
- Tank (Feral)
- DPS (Feral)
- DPS (Balance)
- Healer (Restoration)
- And one additional spec dedicated to Herbalism, Fishing, and existential farming
Class Changes
Several class changes are arriving nobody asked for:
- Hunters now require arrows, bullets, pet food, weapon oils, quivers, ammo pouches, backup ammo pouches, and a raid leader reminding them Auto Shot exists
- Warriors gain a new quest allowing rage generation only after world buffs, summoning, and a short argument in /trade chat
- Rage also generated from reading patch notes
- Whirlwind now scales with keyboard smashing intensity
- Feral Druids can now obtain Manual Crowd Pummeler (Reforged), now required for both DPS and emotional validation
- Hunter Dead zone removed; replaced with “skill issue zone”
- Pet pathing now uses Google Maps beta
- Rogue Sap now also works on raid leaders mid-explanation
- Energy regenerates faster when spamming Sinister Strike
- Paladins gain a taunt after a multi-week quest involving Scholomance, Stratholme, Dire Maul, and a boat trip that disconnects everyone except the Warlock
- Retribution aura now scales with how many times you were benched
- Seal Twisting now requires 3 degrees in mechanical engineering
- Meeting Stones now explain themselves, then refuse to help further “for immersion”
- Warlocks may summon raid members into fire, lava, or slightly incorrect positions depending on raid leader confidence
Closing Notes
We understand that Classic Plus represents different expectations for different players:
- Some want no changes
- Some want meaningful expansion
- Some want retail systems carefully disguised in Vanilla clothing
- Some want their spec buffed specifically and exclusively
- And some simply want to farm Black Lotus until the end of time
Closing Notes Continued
We are attempting to navigate all of these perspectives while maintaining a coherent direction, which historically has been described as:
- impossible
- controversial
- why did you do this again?
Final Word
We will continue iterating based on feedback, telemetry, and the number of forum posts containing the phrase:
“this is not Classic”
To which we respond:
Correct.
That is why it is called Classic Plus.
We’ll see you in Azeroth.
—The WoW Classic Team