World of Warcraft is set to celebrate a number of milestones in 2024. One of the best MMOs of all-time will celebrate its 20th anniversary by kicking off the Worldsoul Saga – a trilogy of expansions charting a new chapter in Azeroth's history, beginning with The War Within. WoW Classic will celebrate its fifth birthday by bringing about the return of Cataclysm, positioning the divisive expansion alongside some forward-thinking seasonal experiences. It's an exciting time for Warcraft, and the game's vice president and executive producer says we haven't seen anything yet.
I sat down with Holly Longdale to get a sense of what the future holds for World of Warcraft. It's incredible, really, that Blizzard Entertainment is still pushing to surprise and delight players after 20 long years. The War Within, which will allow you to descend into the dark depths of Azeroth for the very first time, is described to me as a "huge risk", albeit one which – if Longdale and her colleagues can get it right – will set out a "foundation" for the continuing evolution and expansion of Warcraft.
Below you'll find my conversation with Longdale, where we tackle questions surrounding the Worldsoul Saga, the reason Blizzard isn't interested in pursuing World of Warcraft Classic Plus, and why the team has no intention of wiping the slate clean once Anduin and Thrall's latest adventure draws to an end.
Holly Longdale is the executive producer and vice president for World of Warcraft. She joined Blizzard in 2020, where her first quest was to help bring the final phases of World of Warcraft Classic—including the launch of Zul'Gurub and the realms-spanning opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj—to the live game. An 18-year veteran of the game industry, Holly has worked as a producer for a variety of games and online experiences at Disney studios, and served as a designer and ultimately executive producer of the classic MMOs EverQuest and EverQuest 2 before her journey led her to Azeroth.
12DOVE: 2024 is going to be a huge year for World of Warcraft. Not only is the MMO set to celebrate its 20th anniversary, but Modern will receive The War Within expansion and Classic the return of Cataclysm. What do you think about where Warcraft is now, and what it is becoming?
Holly Longdale: For Modern, I feel like we started taking this journey after Dragonflight. It's really difficult to overstate not only the great work the team has done but what a difference what we are doing is making to our content cadence. We're broadening things – whether it's Turbulent Timewaves, investing in holidays again, or making sure our patches feel really approachable. We're going through this process of understanding, and we're not pretending like we've got that nailed. We're still learning so much, and we're going to push ourselves as we go into next year by doing more experimentation. That's very important for World of Warcraft – we're always player-forward.
With Classic, we've been able to go a bit crazy. The team says that it wants to do a season where we just throw things up in the air and see where they land, and they came up with the Season of Discovery. Hardcore came from a similar place – we saw that players were making their own hardcore challenges, so why not support them with something official? It's all about supporting our development teams to understand the audience better than anyone else.
When you say you're still learning so much, how does that factor into what you're putting forward for players?
We have access to a lot of data and feedback from forums, so we have to find a balance between the two. It's been really interesting to see what players are actually doing, which is more in a variety of playstyles. I'm so proud of the team because everything we're seeing right now is unprecedented – I feel that we've really hit on something special in both Modern and Classic. Looking ahead to these next three expansions, we're going to take what we're learning about players and really invest that back into the game; the team is really energized by that. The beauty of Classic is that we're kind of figuring it out as we go, as we understand more about what our players want. We have the freedom to do that now.
"Season of Discovery feels like a good opportunity to experiment"
Holly Longdale, executive producer
I feel like the Classic team had a choice to make, whether to push in a new direction after Wrath of the Lich King or push forward towards Cataclysm. Why did you decide to continue chasing the Modern timeline of releases?
With Cataclysm – because we understand our communities, and because we lived through Cataclysm, we started to ask ourselves, you know, 'should we do this?' And so we did run surveys and looked at data (it's hard to express just how many things we looked at) but when the survey came back it was strikingly positive – the number of people who are like, 'well, actually, I really liked Cataclysm.' We were delighted by that. But of course, if we were going to do Cataclysm, it has to have that Classic flavor.
[Q] Which is where we start to see ideas like Season of Discovery come into the picture. That's a new approach to play, so I suppose the question is how far could Classic diverge from the original template?
So, the phrase 'Classic Plus' comes up all the time, and nobody can agree on what exactly that means.
[Q] I've been a part of the Warcraft community for a few decades now, and it's rare to find it so divided!
At its core, I think what players are asking for is: 'We love Classic, but do something neat with it.' Right? And so Season of Discovery is sort of like a toe in the water. Like okay, well how about this? You know, the idea for the season came from how we tested classes, which was by level ranges, and how players made their own endgames within those level ranges. We thought that was super fun, and decided to build something around that. But another part of Classic that is its essence – at least for now, anything can change of course – is that it's built foundationally on what came before.
If we were ever going to say, okay, we're going to – again, I'm just paraphrasing what some people refer to as 'Classic Plus' – build a whole new zone or a weird timeline or some multiverse kind of thing, that's a longer conversation. So Season of Discovery feels like a good opportunity to experiment. To try some different stuff, just like we did with Hardcore – which was another experiment. You know, Classic really is a rare and beautiful thing.
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Announcing three expansions simultaneously is a big statement of intent. How has the Worldsoul Saga impacted your approach to the development and evolution of World of Warcraft?
One of the really cool things about the idea of doing three expansions is how it has coalesced a pretty significantly sized team around jamming story. We know what it is beginning to end, which means there are threads between all of them that are meaningful. Our team, as much as our players, are really driven by passion for ideas and creativity. And they're just jamming all the time, and they're working ahead further than they ever have at any time in the past. That gives them incredible confidence, which also allows them to do some invention.
With the new evergreen features debuting in The War Within – Delves, Warbands, Hero Talens, and so on – are these the result of this wider view of where the franchise is going next?
The foresight to know how The War Within is going to lead to the next expansion and the next expansion puts us in a really unique position, and kind of frees the team up to think a little bigger long term. This is a really unique and rare opportunity, and the constant feedback we are going to get will be incredible. This is the most fun I've had in this job for a really long time, because the journey is going to be so long-lasting, and the players can see it."
The Worldsoul Saga will eschew the biennial release structure, which World of Warcraft has followed since the 2008 release of Wrath of the Lich King. Why quicken the speed in which you deliver expansions now?
This isn't necessarily a new idea, it's just that we're finally in a position to be able to tackle it. Just look at Dragonflight where, every eight weeks, we dropped some meaningful content based on a playstyle. That's been so successful. From the data we have, everything is unprecedented with the way players are enjoying the game right now based on the different ways that they play. Everything is saying players just want more content to play with, and they just want to have more fun. That's what's driving this decision, and there's no reason other than that. Yes, World of Warcraft expansions are a monumental labor of love, but we think we can do it faster. We've invested in the team to make it faster. Because it's very clear to us that players want it, and that's why we exist.
"We exist because of our players, and we always want to get better"
Holly Longdale, executive producer
Is revealing all three expansions at once a risk? You've plotted out a lengthy roadmap and made yourselves accountable to delivering on it, which surely invites more pressure on really nailing big ideas and new feature sets.
It's an absolutely huge risk, but we owe it to our players. We can just keep… Well, I mean, we could have just kept doing it as we've been doing it. But we don't want to! You know, we made it to the 20-year mark – that's awesome, and this team is so incredible for achieving that. And for the next 20 years, let's look at things differently. Let's take some risks, like us committing to three expansions. I believe in this team, and in our ability to hit incredible quality, delight players, and make something awesome. But yeah, of course, it's risky.
Obviously, it's difficult to look beyond the Worldsoul Saga right now, but do you view this as the culmination of a storyline that's been building since 2004, or building a foundation for the future? I suppose what I'm asking is whether this trilogy of expansions will ultimately push towards a blank slate that Blizzard could use to start over.
The idea of a 'blank slate' is not a conversation we've had. You know, when you mention building a foundation, that's exactly what we are doing. We're obviously not talking about features for future expansions at this point, but I don't think we go a month without doing some kind of technical upgrade. I wouldn't even know how to draw a visual about how conversations happen on this team; so many threads that go in fast directions from technology, to advancements, to inventions of how we play the game. We're going to keep going, because we love World of Warcraft.
So no, no blank slate… until players tell us they don't want it, we're going to keep going. We exist because of our players, and we always want to get better – be more mindful, and stretch where we want to take WoW in the future. Particularly with this journey. So yes, the Worldsoul Saga is a foundation for our future. Everything we do is a learning experience; look at what we've accomplished over the last year. We do something and we change, improve, or (hopefully) acknowledge that what we're doing is the right thing for players and become more rooted in that idea. And we'll continue to do that.
You know, we always had a good sense that more content might make people happy [laughter], but that's the nice thing about what we've been able to do with a team as large as the one we have. We can focus our energy on where we are going to invest, especially when we come upon things we didn't expect. So we've got some pretty awesome plans coming for the next year, to breathe new life into World of Warcraft, while still maintaining everything players expect. That's sort of the first step of building a foundation and where we can take it from there.
