Blizzard’s long-rumoured World of Warcaft Classic+ is actually happening in the form of World of Warcraft: Forever. Set within the first year of the MMO, the game will expand with new zones, quests, dungeons, and more with new content that was not available within the original game.
As Blizzard also manages World of Warcraft: Classic and World of Warcraft’s standard retail version, the team was asked about the possibility of a straight-up sequel in the form of World of Warcraft 2.
WoW 2 has been a long-discussed potentiality by fans with some fans for it and some fans against it. After all, many MMOs do have sequels; Guild Wars 2 was a huge success and Guild Wars 3 is on the way, for example. However, Blizzard has no interest in creating a WoW 2… at least for now.
In a discussion with IGN, World of Warcraft: Forever principal designer Kris Zierhut explained that explained that the evolving nature of WoW means that a sequel simply doesn’t make any sense.
“I think one of the things that’s singularly great about WoW is we have this game and this world and this design that has been continuously developed for the last 25 years,” they said. “And we keep making it better. We made the graphics better, we made the rendering better, we made the lighting better; all that new stuff we showed on stage today.”
Zierhut also stressed the importance of WoW’s evolving engine. “We’ve also made the way the engine draws things move more efficiently. The way the server runs, handling players and moving them around, and all the things that handle spells and combat, all of that’s been made more efficient and better over the years.”
At the end of the day, starting a World of Warcraft 2 would mean starting from scratch with new processes and new ways of doing things, and Zierhut doesn’t see the point of deviating. “We have this incredible engine and server infrastructure driving the game that is second to none,” he said. “Why would you throw that away and start over?”
There’s obviously a point to be made that a World of Warcraft sequel could still happening some time in the future, but Blizzard has done remarkably well in keeping its technology evolving. There are still issues causing by underlying tech (cough, dragonflight, cough) but the studio has done well.
The question, then, is what is the actual point of a WoW 2? What purpose would it serve? Right now, Blizzard is attempting to evolve World of Warcraft to be more than just an MMO with new features like player-housing, and those additions are going well. With WoW still popular, new features still coming, and expansions still rolling? Yeah, what’s the point?
