Welcome to 2025, WoW Classic fans! What began as a somewhat reluctant legacy version of this MMO a little over five years ago has ballooned into an entire sub-franchise of games, community-led initiatives, and rejuvenation (Druids, thank you) for many players’ interest. What used to be but a single MMO when we referred to “WoW Classic” now points toward an umbrella covering an array of expansions and rulesets.
That’s a whole lot to tackle, especially for a column that wants to speculate about the future for these titles. What’s coming for WoW Classic in 2025 and beyond? Where should this game go? Are we going to get tired of “going again?”
Let’s start with the concrete details of what Blizzard has told us about 2025. Right now, the studio — as presented in this past November’s roadmap — sees Classic’s future development divided into three branches (with Classic Era and Hardcore being conspicuously absent).
First, there’s Cataclysm Classic, which is wrapping up as fast as it can before moving into Pandaria Classic by autumn. At this point, we can reasonably assume that these original servers are full-on progression shards that will continue up until retail — and perhaps merge when it gets there. We’ve a while to go and several expansions before that happens, but it looks inevitable.
Then there’s the 20th Anniversary Edition servers, aka “TBC Waiting Room.” All of us playing through vanilla right now are enjoying some minor but welcome quality-of-life improvements and can expect to be in the first expansion by the end of the year. Past that? Blizzard isn’t talking. Either it’ll stop with Burning Crusade or Wrath, or it’ll turn these servers into a newer version of the progression servers that will keep trucking forward. I think I speak for many players here in saying that the studio really should tell us which it is, because leaving us in limbo is unfair and will wreck many expectations.
Finally, there’s the Season of Discovery servers, which are heading into Phase 7 by spring and will kind of go into maintenance mode after that (from what Blizzard has said). Maybe there should be transfers of a sort to other servers, but otherwise, that’s going to become a cul-de-sac with a small population.
Again, it’s really heartening that Blizzard gave the fullest roadmap ever for Classic and is communicating a lot of this in advance. This isn’t a side project for the studio;Â WoW Classic is clearly important to Blizzard and is getting a lot of support.
While it’s nice to have plenty of options for play, the big fault of the Classic scene right now is a sense of uncertainty over where all of this is going. Will Blizzard ever set up Burning Crusade and Wrath dedicated servers, as many have requested? Will any of these progression shards reset at some point? Will Hardcore mode get any more improvements? And what, exactly, is going on with Classic Plus?
We don’t have many answers for most of that, because Blizzard is Blizzard and only talks when it feels like it. I see some strong signs — Season of Discovery as one of the biggest — that there’s some serious behind-the-scenes work on some sort of Classic Plus content, what what that may look like is subject to a myriad of speculative posts.
I think keeping the game in the vanilla world, fleshing out some of the unfinished zones, fixing class imbalance, and building up the endgame to be a whole lot more than raiding and PvP would be smart and obvious moves here. I’d love to see an announcement of an official and permanent Classic Plus evolutionary branch, taking the best of vanilla, cutting out the worst, and building upon that foundation.
Why knowing what’s coming in the future is so important is that this knowledge has a huge impact on the mood, interest, and engagement of the community. As much as we might like vanilla and the first two expansions, there are only so many times we can endlessly recycle through them. Sooner or later, either we feel like we’ve gotten out of it all we ever will and drift away — or we start to get something new, something fresh, and something with a promise of more to come and stick around to see what that might be.
It’s a good sign that going on five-plus years there’s still such a passionate and dedicated Classic community, but Blizzard can’t assume that’ll last forever (or even a few more years). In a way, the studio is competing against itself between Classic and retail, and it’s in the studio’s best interests to keep both sides as attractive and strong as possible.
I hope this will be a thrilling year of additional surprises and developments as we all continue our respective journeys in whatever version we choose. Day after day, I keep coming back to my Dwarf Hunter with the thought of, “This is crazy! Why am I playing such an old version? There’s nothing for me to do at endgame! But it’s so addictive!”
So even with an incomplete idea of the future and unable to make those long-term plans because of it, I’m content to enjoy gaming in the moment, because it’s such a comforting and enjoyable time whenever I log into this MMO.
Stepping back into the MMO time machine of WoW Classic, Justin Olivetti offers up observations and ground-level analysis as a Gnome with a view. Casually Classic is a more laid-back look at this legacy ruleset for those of us who’ve never stepped into a raid or seen more than 200 gold to our names.
