Roadmaps were a thing for some of the Daybreak titles last year (EQ and EQII here, LOTRO here) and, lo and behold, we now have World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale, formerly of Daybreak, rolling out roadmaps for World of Warcraft for 2024.
I am not saying these events are related, but I am not saying they are not not related. I just remember that the genesis of WoW was basically “EQ is great, let’s copy that!”
Whether or not one prompted the other, I am always happy to have something like a roadmap for the upcoming year that. And I will say that the WoW roadmapz are a much higher level view of the next year relative to their Daybreak counterparts. No details, just high level goals… which befits a roadmap for a collection of titles as sweeping as WoW has become.
First, there is the WoW retail… or “modern” WoW, roadmap.
World of Warcraft retail 2024 roadmap
From the post for the roadmaps:
In modern World of Warcraft, you’re going to see three more content updates for Dragonflight arriving before World of Warcraft: The War Within releases next year. In these updates, we’ll be wrapping up the story for this expansion and laying the foundation for our next one. Dragonflight Season 4 will revisit Dragonflight’s dungeons and raids, along with outdoor content, featuring updated rewards, and a few new twists. Then, in the Spring/Summer, we’ll ask for your feedback when the War Within expansion alpha and beta tests drop. We will continue to communicate details, dates, and more goodness as we get closer to content updates, just like this year! Well, most of it anyway (we’ll have some surprises in store too!). Coming up next in January, we have the Seeds of Renewal content update on tap and we’re currently keeping an eye on your feedback on the live public test realms (PTR) for this update.
We shall see how that plays out. The skull and cross bones for patch 10.2.6 has some people intrigued. Maybe the pirates idea found fertile ground after all.
And then there is the WoW Classic roadmap, which is more relevant to my interests.
WoW Classic 2024 roadmap
From the post:
In WoW Classic, we have updates coming for Classic Hardcore with “Self Found” support in February as a new way to challenge players and add a little more hardcore into your Hardcore. Lok’tar ogar! We’ll also have more phases to release in Season of Discovery next year as the adventure continues. And, of course, Cataclysm Classic is right around the corner in the first half of next year!
So that gives one some food for thought.
I will say that it is interesting… or maybe a little confusing… that they broke the roadmaps out by season rather than by fiscal quarter. I have to remind myself that my emotional view of seasons… for example, I always feel like summer starts on June 1st, but the calendar makers insist summer doesn’t start in 2024 until the 20th of the month… does not necessarily align with the coming of the solstice and the equinox.
Which is to day everything is about a week off of when the fiscal quarters end. I suppose I can do that math in my head.
It does seem to indicate that Cataclysm Classic won’t be out until July 2024, which means the pre-patch events likely won’t start until the end of May at the earliest. So Wrath Classic is going to have to persist for a while. It will have to run almost as long as it ran when it first launched, with only the Ruby Sanctum, coming in January, to sustain it.
Blizz also seems to be betting a lot on the ongoing Season of Discovery keeping people invested. I do wonder how that will play with Cataclysm Classic. Will that sustain Cata, or make it even less interesting for people?
And then there is the 20th anniversary coming up in November of 2024. That has its own implications. How will Blizzard celebrate that.
All things for the new year I suppose. Meanwhile, I need to go adjust some predictions already laid out in my planned post for January 1st. I expected Cata Classic much earlier and The War Within a bit later.
Related:
The Ancient Gaming Noob 