Hope Blizz knows what they signed up for

Part of the whole appeal of classic is the faction war. That is, politics - political questions, the political process, consequences of actions long over and actually dealing with them without trying to "resolve" them, etc. Going into classic+ means continuing engaging with politics and political themes including things like chemical warfare, genocide, politically motivated assassination, extortion campaigns, holding innocents hostage and so on.

Tons of people play WoW "just to play" and that's fine - for retail. The recurrent big hero of retail expansions solves any friction these various factions have to solve the issue of the moment. Take that away and now you have to start paying attention again. I'm not sure if they have that kind of bravery or tenacity in this world especially given their new owners and the IRL political pressures that go with that. And to do that with any kind of respectful tone means being able to sit with those elements for a prolonged period and in many cases dealing with their fallout even after the events themselves have concluded.

They could make this day 1 2004 launch vanilla and still completely fail if they're not willing to engage with those themes in the same way the did then - constructing whole campaigns just to deal with particular issues of Forsaken stuff for instance. Not just the Forsaken overall (like a modern retail expansion would try to do) but dealing with them season after season. If their plan is to ignore it then I think this will be like a relationship with one vital issue that goes ignored. Good at first then will get more and more toxic and distorted around that one issue they won't engage with.

The big expansion model solved that for them, but this is meant to be different. The world is the world. We're staying here. Same players, same tensions, same wounds. And their stated goal is to stay that course. I hope they can do that. They've never had to before. Right from TBC they've literally been able to run away from the world and only come back in particular ways as it related to the current expansion. We spent 2 years with vanilla and then every year or every other year they've been doing the expansion thing. They've never had to just sit with a world and tend it like a gardener rather than trying to constantly remodel the greenhouse like they've been able to do with the expansion. Should be an interesting experiment all around.