BlizzCon 2023 Interview: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic Aims To Recapture Nostalgia, Despite Some Changes

mmorpg.com:

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is perhaps one of the most divisive, if not the most divisive, expansion that has graced the wildly popular MMORPG. With it came a plethora of new dungeons, two entirely new races (one for the Horde and Alliance, respectively), and a drastic change to the world map. But Blizzard Entertainment is dedicated to preserving the nostalgia that’s integral to the success of World of Warcraft: Classic while also keeping modern sensibilities in mind to cater to players who may have missed these pivotal moments in the MMORPG’s history. This includes some user interface revamps, the inclusion of new systems like the Season of Discovery, and more that the Classic team is working on delivering once Deathwing soars back into Azeroth to wreak havoc for a second time.

“It's a balancing act.” Said Senior Game Producer of World of Warcraft Classic Joshua Greenfield. “A lot of the time, what we’ve done is divided up our team into pipeline groups. And a lot of the logistical problems we get are things like needing help from Tools to make some sort of change to the engine to support this type of data, or we need help from Live Operations to help us plan out the server setup for this.” Greenfield discussed the production schedule at length for working on World of Warcraft: Classic features along with its new seasonal content and just how interconnected the various teams that work to roll out these updates are.

“We have a ton of support from the larger team; we have a core group of developers that work on Classic and all flavors of Classic, but like I mentioned previously, Tools, Live Operations, the Gameplay Engineering teams, the Art teams that help us with new assets when we need it. It’s a little bit of plate