2. Classic Releases So Far
Clay Stone: But at least a start. Yes, that was where we had to start from, for sure. And we’ve gone on from there. Obviously, as we mentioned, WoW Class of 2019 blew us away. Expectations-wise. I mean, that was- Holly loves to use the word– this particular word, but only in specific situations, and I know when she says it, she means it. And that word is: “Unprecedented.” And it was. It was unprecedented for us.
Holly Longdale: That does happen because I’m a data nerd. Like, I do all kinds of research. And so when I do say it, I can back it up.
Clay Stone: Absolutely. And so, from that success and player interest, we then went forward from there. We released the Burning Crusade Classic, bringing back that amazing expansion again a couple of years later. Then we released Season of Mastery, and Season of Mastery was that vanilla game, but for the first time, us experimenting with a couple of little changes, mostly from player demand. There was something in there, which I’ll touch on a little bit a little bit later, called the Soul of Iron, that led to something much bigger.
But it gave us the ability to say, like, okay, you know what? We can actually make a couple of changes here. And that progressed; of course, we then released Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and then we released World of Warcraft: Classic Hardcore. And that was in 2023, and as I mentioned, that Soul of Iron was our first little attempt at putting something in the game that basically said, for players who want to, could they go all the way from level 1 to level 60 without dying, because death was permanent. And death meant you died, and you had to go again.
And the response to that blew us away. That was the moment when Blizzard and the community really came together outside of the original Classic 2019 launch. And we said, okay, we can build something almost entirely new, or that feels entirely new. You know, visceral, the world is extremely important. You have to pay attention to your surroundings. Because, for those who don’t know, you die a lot in regular World of Warcraft. A lot.
So for those of you who have completed this level 1 to 60 journey, I salute you.
Holly Longdale: The videos are the best. When you peek around a corner and there’s somebody of the opposite faction, people freak out, like absolutely lose their minds and run away, like: “Retreat!” Spectacular, but that is sort of that connection to the world itself, and that’s where there are high stakes; you get those really awesome emotional moments.
Clay Stone: Sometimes after work, I’ll just sit at home at night, put on a little YouTube, watch some Hardcore deaths. I mean, I feel bad, but it’s entertaining.
Holly Longdale: (laughs) It’s a little sick, Clay.
Clay Stone: I’m not alone. Right?
Holly Longdale: No, it’s great. It’s fantastic entertainment.
Clay Stone: So that was WoW Classic Hardcore. And then a mere few months later, we announced and released World of Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery. And you want to talk about moments where the team kept pushing and going bigger and trying new things, progressing from Hardcore to WoW Classic Season of Discovery– that was a big moment. We’ll talk about it again in a little bit but that was a big moment for sure.
And then, of course, came Cataclysm Classic shortly after that, followed by- gosh, I can’t believe this was back in 2004- we re-released that 2019 game again; that was what players called Classic Fresh with WoW Classic 20th Anniversary Edition. And you can see a little baby of the 20th Anniversary Edition Hardcore because we re-released Hardcore again. Only this time, Hardcore players got through the rest of the content at the same time as the other players.
And then not long after that, of course, came Mists of Pandaria Classic, followed by our Titan Reforged realms for our players in China. Something to note on that too: even though that game — we developed it, and we released it only in China, we have learned a lot from that as well.
Similar to all of our other releases that we’ve done so far, we’ve really taken a lot of those learnings and even applied some of those learnings to World of Warcraft: Forever, too.
Holly Longdale: And it’s great seeing this list because it is a lot of what the community asked for. And so we were like, let’s try a season (like Season of Mastery or Season of Discovery) where we can test this idea, this notion of Classic+? And those are the things we kind of fought for because it was such an outlier for Blizzard and for World of Warcraft, but it felt like the right thing to do.
Clay Stone: Totally. We look at each of these, including most recently returning again to Burning Crusade, which again completely exceeded our expectations. But for each of these, you’re 100% correct. We have been guided to where the players have told us that they have wanted to go.
So that leads us to the next topic that I want to talk about, and that is Greenlights. So, for anybody in here who might not be aware, at Blizzard, we go through a greenlight process. Very similar to many other game studios out there. And essentially, what it is, it is a series of checkpoints, usually between the development team and studio leadership, providing studio leadership the ability to be able to ask us questions, discuss any concerns that they might have, really help make sure that we’re all on the same track, and where all systems go for the next stage of the Greenlight process.
Very critical that we make sure everybody’s aligned on this. So I’m going to show something that I’m a little bit nervous about because we’ve never shown it outside of Blizzard before, and that is our actual pitch slides for World of Warcraft: Forever, before it was even called WoW: Forever. You may be asking, Claire, are we really doing this? Yes, we are really.
We are really going to do this. Okay, so, before I jump into this, the only thing to note, these are the actual pitch slides. The only changes that we’ve made to them are like a couple of tiny formatting changes. And then I included one slide that came from a slightly later greenlight — which kinda summarized everything, but otherwise, this is it. This is the same content.
| NAVIGATE - PAX AUSTRALIA 2026 - WORLD OF WARCRAFT: FOREVER KEYNOTE TRANSCRIPT | ||||
| 1. Intro | 2. Classic Releases | 3. WoW Mythos | 4. Dev Pillars | 5. Content |
| 6. Riverglades | 7. Idea | 8. Enemies | ||
