WoW WotLK Classic: Northend with #somechanges – what’s different than back then?
As is well known, the night of September 26th to 27th, 2022 is WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Classic released. The reboot of the Northrend expansion invites you on a nostalgic trip to times long past when we messed with the Lich King and his Scourge, banged our heads in Wintergrasp and with goosebumps the Legendary in-game sequence for the Battle of the Wrathgate admired.
But how much of the old magic is actually in the new edition? After the experiences of #nochanges in WoW (buy now ) Classic and #somechanges in Burning Crusade Classic there should finally be a #somechanges strategy for WotLK Classic again. With the changes, Blizzard developers want to sand down old edges, eliminate bugs, but also protect their vision of Wrath of the Lich King in 2022.
Blizzard’s key design goals
But what exactly does this vision look like? Well, those responsible had already revealed that in the course of the official announcement. The most important design goal for the developers is to support social interaction, which is much more important in Classic than in Retail WoW, as best as possible. Again, the second design goal is to make returning to Northrend feel like “coming home.”
In other words: Despite some changes, WotLK Classic should still feel like WotLK. For example in class design, in battles or when visiting dungeons and raids. We’ve dug through all of Blizzard’s statements once again, including our experiences from the beta and live servers, to summarize below all known #somechanges for Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
The basis of WotLK Classic: Patch 3.3.5
First, let’s look at the foundation upon which Wrath of the Lich King Classic is built. As with WoW Classic and TBC Classic, the Blizzard developers have also chosen the last patch of the expansion as the basis for the new edition for WotLK Classic. In the case of Wrath of the Lich King, the patch is 3.3.5. When it comes to the status quo of the classes, values, racial bonuses, comfort features or the basic systems, all the changes that were actually only played out on the live servers during the expansion await you at launch. For a complete list of all the changes that came into play with the WotLK patches, see here for example on WoWPedia. In In this article we summarized the most important adjustments for you back in April.
However, the patch 3.3.5 level does not mean that all content that has ever been released for Wrath of the Lich King is already on the servers. As in WoW Classic and TBC Classic, WotLK Classic releases highlight features of content patches over the course of multiple phases. This is known so far for the next phases of WotLK Classic (phase 1 started with the launch):
- stage 2: Ulduar raid instance
- stage 3: Raid instance Trial of the Crusader plus its associated dungeon Trial of the Champion
- stage 4: Raid instance Icecrown Citadel plus the three associated dungeons Soulforge, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection
- The level 80 variant of Onyxia should come somewhere between phase 2 and phase 3
The Ruby Sanctum is apparently not considered “the final phase” by Blizzard. The data for the raid will come to the live servers with Icecrown Citadel, only the raid will open at a later date. So the Ruby Sanctum remains the final challenge of WotLK Classic.
Dungeon finder and quest tracking from patch 3.3
As part of the official announcement of WotLK Classic, Blizzard officials announced that they would like to do without the Crossrealm dungeon finder, which was introduced with Patch 3.3 at the time. The reason: A spirit has built up in the Classic community over the years, in which social interaction on the servers and joint organization and coordination are in the foreground. The dungeon finder would torpedo this social interaction. Instead, the developers want to further improve the manual group search implemented for TBC Classic. You have been able to see how this new, old group search with its revisions works in practice since the pre-patch phase.
Also in patch 3.3 were improvements to the quest displays and new quest tracking features that should make it easier for players to find the various quest objectives in the game world. And yes, these adjustments should also be removed first to preserve the classic feel. However, the Blizzard developers have changed their minds here. The quest aids will come, but only sometime after launch. According to their own statements, the devs have not yet had time to finalize the functions for WotLK Classic. Back then, these came into play late, in preparation for Cataclysm.
Reference-www.buffed.de