- Blizzard Entertainment says it learned plenty of lessons fromWorld of Warcraft Classic: Season of Discovery
- It acknowledged that “we were going too far” with class changes in Season of Discovery and “Foreverwill be a lot more careful and cautious with slower class changes”
- The studio also learned “what levers we could create to help us manage the in-game economy” inForever
Blizzard Entertainment has learned a lot from World of Warcraft Classic: Season of Discovery, but it’s taking care not to overindulge in class experimentation for World of Warcraft: Forever.
In the same lengthy interview with TechRadar Gaming, where Blizzard confirmed it doesn’t plan to modernize Forever‘s classes, as it wants to preserve the Classic experience, the team shared what it learned from Season of Discovery, a seasonal release for Classic that reimagines progression systems, adds new abilities, unconventional class roles, and redesigned instances, and how it will apply those lessons to Forever.
The team said that it had fun exploring class changes, but admitted it went “too far” and is taking steps to be more considerate with how it applies updates in Forever.
“We pushed every class to the limit and explored every power fantasy on every class,” Blizzard said. “But we knew we were going too far. It’s like eating all your Halloween candy on October 31. It’s fun and amazing, but afterward you are sick to your stomach.
“Forever will be a lot more careful and cautious with slower class changes.”
Another lesson it learned from Season of Discovery was “what levers we could create to help us manage the in-game economy,” something that sometimes suffers from botting and real-money trading (RMT).
It told us that it’s actively working to combat RMT in Forever and has already devised penalties that, depending on the terms of service infraction, could result in permanent bans.
Blizzard continued, saying, “We built several systems both under the hood and player-facing that allowed us to control the inflow and outflow of key resources, which led to a much healthier economy, with much less problematic behavior such as RMT.”
RMT has always been a huge issue in WoW, whether it’s retail or Classic, and Blizzard confirmed it has “a number of new systems in place” to support detection.
“It’s a cat and mouse game, so talking too much about our plans here could tip our hand,” it said. “Suffice to say, we are watching very closely, and engaging in RMT is not worth putting your account at risk.”
Blizzard has also addressed WoW: Forever‘s controversial Skyborne race and explained why the Elf race is available to both Alliance and Horde. It’s also shared why Summoning Stones won’t be in the upcoming game.
