Last night in WoW Classic, our guild got into a huge, rambling discussion about the expected path for the 20th Anniversary Servers and our desires for the future of the MMO. Not everyone was in agreement about everything, mind you, but there was a general consensus that the state of the game right now was untenable for long-term success.

WoW Classic may be one of the most interesting projects that Blizzard’s ever attempted, but even the studio has to know that it’s not done with this work yet. In deciding to create a legacy version of the game, it opened the door for a huge mistake — but it’s a mistake that can be corrected if the studio is smart.

Before we get into that, let’s do a quick recap of history. The OG WoW Classic kicked off in 2019 and is heading into Mists of Pandaria this month on its progression journey to… somewhere. Draenor Classic? Or a hopscotch over to retail? The studio isn’t saying yet.

Along the way, we’ve gotten several other iterations. There are Classic Era servers, hardcore servers, two runs of experimental seasonal servers, and the (newest) 20th Anniversary servers. All of these offer a different flavor of WoW Classic, with some progressing through the well-defined expansion paths that World of Warcraft established years ago and others remaining in permanent arrested development.

There’s a whole lot of choice here, which is generally nice to have but a little worrying when it comes to fracturing the community into increasingly smaller sub-communities. Blizzard’s got to be a little tired of rolling out new servers that see initial popularity but gradually dwindle in population while the studio is left with the decision to support a ghost town or shut down a player’s world.

Each of these servers share the same underlying problem: None of them has a real future.

Classic Era isn’t going anywhere, and there’s only so much that players can do in that world before drifting away. Hardcore is wicked fun but also isn’t going anywhere while players eventually grow bored of the reset loop.

Seasonal servers try new things, which is cool, but are more test beds than a commitment to future development (I’m honestly surprised Blizz is keeping Season of Discovery servers online). And the two big progression servers are only tenable as long as they have expansions to progress through, which is a journey that always has an end.

I’m not saying that these servers lack in fun or interesting things to do and keep us occupied! I myself have enjoyed most all of these and am cruising through the 20th Anniversary servers on the way to Outland right now. But if we’re honest, these servers are endlessly reheated leftovers.

The phrase “diminishing returns” comes to mind with WoW Classic, which is why both the studio and community is looking to the one thing that can course-correct this game out of its downward spiral. It needs Classic Plus, and it needs it soon. Like “2026” soon.

Sure, nobody seems to agree what “Classic Plus” would specifically entail, but the general idea is pretty well understood. This version would start with the vanilla version — Classic Era, so to speak — and then see the developers flesh out the world and systems on a different path than what we got in 2007 and beyond with the expansions.

In other words, WoW Classic needs the stability of growth, if that makes sense. It needs to have a future where the game world isn’t stagnating or repeating but developing. An obvious example of this is how Old School RuneScape took the 2007 version of the game and developed its future in a much different way than mainline RuneScape.

That course correction would be huge for WoW Classic, which is why a lot of fans (myself included) are holding on to hopes that we’ll see it soon. We want a version of this game that we can settle into as a proper MMO that receives proper updates without losing its “Classic” feel and setting. Hopefully we’ll hear Blizzard share specifics on this, perhaps by the end of this year, as it does appear that such a project is in the works.

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.