Listen up, everyone. We’ve got…a rumor on our hands. A rumor of a brand new World of Warcraft…thing. We don’t quite know what it is yet. It might be nothing. But as more and more teases crop up of some big, new project related to World of Warcraft Classic, and as Blizzcon 2026 looms, it’s about time we start taking this rumor a little more seriously.
The rumor is of a new World of Warcraft project, referred to by the community as Classic+. Here’s what we know so far.
What actually is Classic+?
The completely honest answer is: We don’t actually know. For now, Classic+ is just a rumored…thing…that Blizzard seems to be working on. Fans have been slowly putting together puzzle pieces from recent Blizzard activities to uncover the existence of Classic+, including some recent takedowns against private servers and the datamining of something called Project Camelot. There were also some hints dropped in Blizzard’s 2025 yearbook, and a tease that a bunch of World of Warcraft Classic streamers visited Blizzard’s campus recently. It’s clear that Blizzard is working on something related to World of Warcraft Classic, we just don’t have confirmation of what that is yet.
What people think it is is a revamped World of Warcraft Classic, a reimagining of the earliest days of the game. There are lots of ideas about what this could mean, but popular theories include new zones, quests, dungeons, and essentially a brand new take on what World of Warcraft could have become had it taken a different path over the years than it did.
Why do we want Classic+?
World of Warcraft Classic began as a way to revisit the original days of WoW, mostly faithful to how the experience was back in the day. Classic has been successful for Blizzard, and has run in tandem with the retail game ever since 2019 with a robust community of players. In the years since, Blizzard has introduced patches and expansions in the order they originally arrived in the game, and Classic is currently on the verge of wrapping up the Mists of Pandaria expansion.
Which presents a problem. World of Warcraft Classic isn’t really…Classic anymore. Mists of Pandaria is old, sure (it launched in 2012), but it’s hardly representative of the original game. Though there are still servers running vanilla World of Warcraft for those who want it, with no updates or content, there’s very little reason for people to pick it up. Blizzard has introduced some fun variations, such as Season of Mastery and Hardcore mode, but all of those have lost their luster over time, and Blizzard isn’t continually updating them.
So if people want the feeling of playing World of Warcraft from back in the day, there’s really no good way to get that feeling right now without going to private servers. Blizzard would prefer you didn’t do that, so it makes sense for them to try to find ways to draw those interested in a Classic experience back in.
Season of Discovery
One thing players are looking to as a model for what Classic+ might look like is Season of Discovery.
Season of Discovery was a popular WoW Classic event that began in 2023, essentially a version of vanilla WoW with some new content dotted throughout. There was a new class ability system, additional dungeon bosses, new and revamped raids and dungeons, and more. Season of Discovery was legitimately great. Level gating and careful hiding from dataminers made it so that players discovered the new content together as a group, adding to a very old-school sense of newness and adventure. Many players asked Blizzard for more content like Season of Discovery, but the final update in 2025 was confirmed to be the last one.
A lot of fans of Season of Discovery have suggested it was effectively a trial run for a Classic+. All the pieces were there: it was essentially an alternate-universe version of the WoW vanilla world, and if Blizzard had committed to it, it could have kept going forever. Players are assuming that a potential Classic+ will have more and bigger changes than Season of Discovery did. Mostly, they’re hoping it’s more than just a limited-time season: we want a full-blown new version of the game here.
What do we want to see in Classic+?
I’ve mentioned all the obvious stuff already: new questlines, zones, dungeons, raids, class abilities and builds, gear, and so forth. Everyone wants that, ideally built onto the original world of Azeroth without the ongoing, continued bloat of expansions. This is a tough line to walk, as new content will inherently pull Classic+ in the direction of retail WoW.
Which is why, critically, what fans seem to want most from Classic+ is a different feel, a different take on WoW, one more aligned with the vibes (and their memories) of the original game. Vanilla WoW had a much slower pace. It was harder to get places, and thus more exciting when you finally arrived. There was a lot more mystery, more work to be done to finish quests and find what you were looking for, and significantly more challenge. Later expansions to WoW made the world much bigger in terms of areas and land mass, but a commonly stated ideal of Classic+ among fans is a desire to see the original world built deeper, with more to do in the existing zones in terms of story, events, and discovery.
That’s not to say people want Classic+ to be totally unrecognizable as anything related to current-day WoW. Some quality-of-life improvements to the UI, mail, and auction systems, such as those made in later expansions, still seem to be welcome.
Classic+ when???
Since no one knows for sure that this is real, no one knows when it’s coming, either. But Blizzard has been teasing something for Classic specifically for a while, and Blizzcon is coming up in September. It’ll be the first Blizzcon since 2023, and after events were canceled in 2020, 2022, 2024, and 2025, and online-only in 2021, Blizzard seems to want to make this one a big deal. Popular speculation is that Classic+ will be one of the big Blizzcon announcements, alongside the reveal of the next retail expansion, The Last Titan.
If Classic+ is real, it’s all too possible that it cannot, will not please everyone. What fans are ultimately chasing is a feeling, a feeling of being a teen or young adult and logging into something back when the internet was jankier, communication was worse, and no one knew how this game worked. Any nostalgia trip, no matter how well-planned, is ultimately going to have to contend with how people remember things to have been, regardless of whether that memory is accurate or not. That said, I really liked Season of Discovery. Having never played vanilla WoW in its original form, I like the slower pace of Classic, of plodding across the plains of Mulgore with my big tauren hooves and trying to find my four elemental quests halfway across the world and only being able to afford the worst kodo to get around. There’s something exciting about getting to play that type of MMO again, but as someone on the forefront of a new and unknown adventure.
Just give me Shaman tanks again, Blizzard. That’s all I ask.
