Despite initially saying automated quest tracking wouldn’t be present for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic, the feature is now slated to be added “at some point,” according to Blizzard.
When Blizzard announced Wrath of the Lich King Classic in April, it confirmed that certain features added towards the end of the popular expansion–like the quest tracker and automated dungeon finder–wouldn’t be part of the experience. The reason behind not including those two features was to preserve the original Wrath of the Lich King leveling experience, as well as the social aspect of the MMORPG that frequently requires players to talk to each other and manually group up for dungeons or quests as they explore Azeroth. Instead of simply being told on the map where to go and what to kill, as in modern WoW, Blizzard indicated it wanted to keep WoW Classic a different experience.
In a recent forum post, Blizzard now says its thinking on the subject has “changed quite a bit” since those initial interviews.
“Just wanted to pop in and say that we do in fact intend to implement the quest tracking features that were added in patch 3.3 of original Wrath of the Lich King into the Quest Log and Map UI at some point,” Blizzard writes.
Quest tracking is not currently present in the Wrath of the Lich King Classic beta, and Blizzard clarifies that the feature, alongside several others like the in-game calendar and equipment manager, are in active development. It’s unclear if the current plan is for quest tracking to be present for Wrath of the Lich King Classic’s launch or if it will instead be added post-release. In an interview from April, WoW Classic lead developer Brian Birmingham said Blizzard wouldn’t implement quest tracking in order to allow players to level up through the expansion just as they did when the expansion first released in 2008. If that is still true, the quest tracker may not be present initially but could be added to the game towards the end of the expansion’s content cycle, just as it was originally.
Blizzard recently outlined its philosophy in regards to how it is approaching changes for Wrath of the Lich King Classic and possible future WoW Classic releases, stating it intends to protect and nurture social experiences, keep the game approachable and familiar for players, and preserve Azeroth as the game’s true “main character.” Adding in the quest tracker does seem to go in the face of some of those stated goals, but the inclusion of the feature is wanted by a considerable amount of the game’s community, many of which would simply use community-made mods to restore much of the quest tracker’s functionality regardless of it’s officially added or not.
Wrath of the Lich King Classic does not currently have a release date, but is coming later this year. Modern WoW’s latest expansion, Dragonflight, is also slated to arrive before the end of 2022.
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