WoW Classic items won’t change over time to maintain the final, polished state of the game

A stat-based feature that many have wanted in WoW Classic won’t be included in the game for design philosophy reasons, Blizzard explained in a recent blog post.

“Progressive itemization,” or patch-based item tweaks and additions, won’t be a part of WoW Classic, despite them existing in the original lifespan of the game. Throughout the original release, Blizzard tweaked items and introduced new items to loot tables so that players could either catch up to current content faster or to generally clean up some questionable itemization — like including Spirit on Warrior-focused items.

Instead, WoW Classic will include the 1.12 versions of the items in the game, with the exception that new items will arrive when the content that originally came with it arrives too. This will tie into the new game’s staged content plan for raids and battlegrounds.

In a blog post, Community Manager Kaivax explained that the challenges for original WoW players were often about knowledge of how the game worked, not mechanics. The process of learning how to fight bosses and what certain stats like Weapon Skill meant “can’t be recreated, because the knowledge can’t be unlearned,” Kaivax said.

“So rather than try to recreate a specific experience from 2005 that can never fully be recaptured, our aim has been to accurately and fully restore the original game’s mechanics and stats to their final and most polished state from before The Burning Crusade. That mission has been a pillar of WoW Classic’s design from its inception.”

The team’s decision to omit this dynamic part of the game makes sense from a design perspective. It’s difficult to do that work and keep players feeling engaged, especially when private servers and memories of how it all worked exist. It’s an clean solution to a complicated problem. Sure, it might not be the original game we all played, but it’ll be less obtrusive and still maintain enough of the intended feel.