Blizzard Open to Continuing WoW: Classic into Cataclysm, if the Community Wants It

ign.com:

With the announcement today of Wrath of the Lich King Classic, World of Warcraft has now committed to revisiting arguably its most famous and beloved expansion — a time period that could also be looked at as the end of an era.

Wrath represented the peak of World of Warcraft's popularity, and while it's continued to thrive since then, the expansions that followed were very, very different. Cataclysm, specifically, was a moment of dramatic change throughout the "old world" of Azeroth, and saw a major revamp of numerous regions from the original game. That's not to mention the various mechanical and visual changes from that point forward.

It's for those reasons that I asked WoW Classic head Brian Birmingham and production director Patrick Dawson whether or not Blizzard would be interested in taking Classic further after Lich King has run its course. I've asked Blizzard leads the same question twice in the past — once when Classic was unveiled, and again when Burning Crusade was announced. Both times, the answer was a resounding "if the players want it," but with a general optimism toward the idea.

This time, while the answer itself is still the same, the tone of it is a bit more cautious than before. Birmingham starts by acknowledging that while Cataclysm is often thought of as a breaking point, the break actually began in Wrath, with the introduction of the Dungeon Finder tool at the end of the expansion. An introduction that, notably, won't be present at all in the Classic version.

"We're trying to find that balancing point where we can preserve the Classic feeling and still make sure that we're giving people new things to do," he says. "Because obviously [if] you're going to play through it again, you're going to get to the