World of Warcraft Classic players aren’t waiting for Blizzard to define Classic+ — they’re doing it themselves.
A new community-led initiative called The Classic Plus Project is rallying tens of thousands of players to spell out exactly what they want from a potential Classic+ release, and to make sure Blizzard can’t ignore how loud that demand has become.
The community project, helmed by streamer Joardee and creator of the Hardcore WoW All-Stars tournament OnlyBlacksmoke, aims to nail down what World of Warcraft players want from a Classic+ release. The project has received input from more than 22,000 players in under three days.
“Everyone always talks about Classic Plus, how we want to experience what we had in 2004 – the mystery being preserved,” Joardee told TheBestWarGames. “We want that [mystery] back, and we want Classic Plus to infuse that energy into it.”
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What is Classic+?
A return to the original release
Classic+ is a dream held by many Classic World of Warcraft players. It’s the idea of returning to the Azeroth players grew up in, but with additional content that maintains the original spirit of the game’s 2004 release.
Whether that’s new dungeons and raids still steeped in lore, or new specializations like a tank shaman or healer mage. Put simply, Classic+ is a fresh take on the original version of the game.
What is The Classic+ Project?
To support a new release, the community wants to be on the same page
The Classic+ Project aims to answer the question: What do you want from Classic+? It’s a chance for the community to sit down and specifically point to what they’d want to see if Blizzard were to announce an official version of the game.
“Games like this, that are something that have been solved, [developers] need to consult, in my opinion, with the community, because the community is generally as much of an expert in the game as the developers are at this point,” Joardee said.
At the forefront, The Classic+ Project is multiple surveys asking questions across the games’ core pillars, including PvP, PvE, balance, itemization, and more.
Among other things, it asks players:
- What class changes, if any, would you want to see?
- Would you be interested in new zones, or iterations on existing zones?
- New dungeons? Raids?
- Quality of life improvements taken from retail?
- Changes to PvP?
- Should certain specs be reworked, or new specs added?
In order to participate, you’ll need to first link your Discord account. It’s a way for the team to verify the survey results are legitimate. The team is also taking steps to safeguard the data, including using a third-party service with robust safety checks.
But the project is more than just a survey – it’s a community hub where people who love Classic can interact with one another, and maybe even see their vision of Azeroth brought to life.
On the site, players can pitch their own stories within Azeroth for the community to vote on. The story with the highest number of votes will then be animated by Joardee and his team, like they did with their Kazzak short in the video below.
Joardee is also creating an episodic YouTube series chronicling the project, with the second episode likely to come next month.
“Somehow, I managed to gather the Avengers of polling from the classic WoW community,” Joardee joked after having a web designer, a data analyst, a security and data engineer, and others answer the call he put out to the community to assist with the project.
What’s the goal?
Hello hello hello… Blizzard, are you out there?
Joardee doesn’t expect Blizzard to reach out in an official capacity endorsing the project. But he does hope the developers have seen or heard of it, and can use the data they’ve collected in some way.
“I would hope maybe someone [will reach out] like, ‘Hey, we saw this and think it's really cool that you guys did this,’” Joardee said. “I think that would be a really fun nod to the community.”
Joardee said he fully intends to release the data down the road, once he and the team figure out how they want to present it.
“We still have to figure out exactly how we're going to do it, but I promise everybody will have all the data that we have, and it'll be sooner rather than later,” he said.
If nothing else, Joardee wants Blizzard to take away that there’s a community here that wants their voice to be heard.
“I would want [Blizzard] to see that the community is hungry for interaction and for the ability to give input,” he said. “I don't think they need to take any of the design decisions from this thing. If they do, and it's helpful, and it makes a better game, fantastic. But ultimately, the most important thing is for them to recognize there are ways to do this that aren’t negative.”
Blizzard has a habit of only responding to the community feedback when it’s overwhelmingly negative, said Jorardee.
For example, World of Warcraft: The War Within just saw the release of the Midnight expansion pre-patch, which introduced major changes to its transmog system and put its new housing feature in the hands of all players.
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Blizzard made changes to both following player backlash. The developers first increased the cost of transmog, then halved it following backlash.
The housing system originally featured low experience caps for Housing Endeavors – a timed, community event where players in a neighborhood complete tasks to earn shared experience.
After negative feedback, Blizzard increased the experience cap and decreased the diminishing experience returns for certain activities.
“When you're creating a community, or you're a game developer, you teach your community how to treat you. And I believe that [Blizzard has] taught us, however accidentally, that outrage is the only way that we're going to get something changed. Because that's generally the only way that they respond to something,” Joardee said.
And it doesn’t need to be that way.
“I really think that it's important to be proactive and to be out there and talking to your players, and I'm not saying that we need to have creative input,” he added. “I'm not saying we need to take away your agency as a game developer, but I do think that we're your customers and that we need to feel heard at least.”
While Blizzard didn’t announce anything major about Classic+ at its State of Azeroth presentation today, they did say that they plan to send polls out to the community for their games. Until those official surveys come out, the Classic Plus Community Project presents a way to amplify player voices.
"It's a fun community project that hopefully, Blizzard at least, looks at the data, and can maybe get some useful information. But even if they don't, at least we can say we tried," Joardee said.