While opinions certainly vary - some people hated Wrath, and some loved Warlords of Draenor, even if I would never understand those positions - the WoW community tends to think of expansions as coming in peaks and valleys. Basically, if it's an odd-numbered X.0 patch, it's usually good, while the even-numbered ones are less impressive. The possible exception to this is Burning Crusade - BC was the first expansion and sort of defined what a WoW expansion would look like. Because I started playing only shortly before BC launched (September of '06, and BC launched in Janurary of '07) I didn't really have a ton to compare it to. And of course, I think it's noteworthy that Mists of Pandaria was derided by many, unfairly for thinking it was too "childish" due to the silly Panda people and fairly because of the massive number of daily quests the game expected you to complete in the early patches.
But typically, starting with Wrath, you tend to see Wrath, Mists, and Legion looked upon favorably while Cataclysm, Warlords, and likely BFA being seen as the "lesser" expansions. Indeed, there's even a conspiracy theory that there are two design teams, the "good one" and the "bad one" that alternate expansions. (One that, for the record, I think is false.)
What makes every other expansion a winner? Well, you could say it's interesting stories and thorough worldbuilding. But oddly, the common denominator I notice is that the "good expansions" have all brought in a new class.
A new class is the most exciting thing for Blizzard to add to the game. Suddenly, the dynamics of groups shift. And we're all incentivized to try out this new gameplay. Players who love the class might start prioritizing it over old alts or even make them their new mains. New classes shake things up and they give us exciting new toys to play with.
But they're also probably the most difficult thing to add to the game.
Blizzard has a reputation for careful balance. And while there are always going to be tiers of play at which some class or spec is going to outshine another, their reputation for balancing is well-earned. But to earn that, they need to work very hard to keep the different classes balanced. And they also need to come up with new creative space for both flavor and mechanics to give the classes their own distinct feel.
And this is the area where things get tricky. WoW started with 9 classes. One could even have argued then that there were some with a bit of a conceptual overlap. Mages and Warlocks are both cloth-robed scholars who throw fire (as well as other elements) at their foes. But by leaning into the darkness (and the use of damage-over-time effects) they made the Warlock feel pretty distinct. Likewise, Shamans and Druids are both nature-based classes, but they gave Shamans a strong focus on the primal elements while giving Druids more of a focus on natural life, as well as a celestial, star-and-moon theme.
Death Knights gave us the first class to really focus on necromancy, though in a lot of ways it was set up to be the dark mirror to the paladin - even having some early talents that were variants on existing Paladin talents (Conviction becoming Dark Conviction, for example.) Monks were able to explore new space with their unarmed attacks, but actually did slide in pretty close to Shamans when it came to their mist-based healing spells. And Demon Hunters infamously took (back) the core mechanic of the 5.0-6.2 Demonology Warlock, forcing that spec to be totally redesigned so that demon hunters could get Metamorphosis.
So there is this question to be asked regarding whether a new class is warranted: is there conceptual space for it?
For example, I'd love to have a Necromancer class, which I'd envision as a ranged caster/healer hybrid (giving us a cool "dark" healer class.) The obvious problem, however, is that we already have two dark summoner specs in the Unholy Death Knight and the Demonology Warlock. Necromancers would seemingly have to have some kind of undead-summoning ability, but between Unholy's periodic summoning of big armies of the dead and Demonology's constant barrage of demonic imps, it's not clear how you would design something that felt distinct from both of them.
Another common suggestion for a new class would be the Tinker, which would be a sort of tool-and-invention based class. This, to be fair, would feel very distinct from any existing class. The real questions then are where it would fit in thematically. We obviously don't know what the next expansion will be yet, but none of the most popular theories suggest a very tech-heavy location of characters. The past three classes added to the game have felt like exactly the right class for the theme of the expansion.
Of course, classes are by their nature evergreen content for the game, and that means any addition now means all future WoW expansions are going to need to have some kind of content or at least balancing work and new abilities designed for the new class.
So should Blizzard just not make a new class?
No, I think they should. And the reason is that an expansion needs something big to make it feel worthwhile. Warlords of Draenor was the only expansion not to give us a race or a class. Admittedly, this was probably due to the fact that Mists had given us one of each. But all the pre-Cataclysm races got updated models in Warlords, it did give us one more reason to think of that expansion as being kind of insubstantial. BFA, on the other hand, will ultimately wind up giving us ten playable races - to the point where I've basically given up on getting all of them their heritage armor at least for the foreseeable future.
I don't know if new classes are an endlessly sustainable thing, but on the other hand, you only have to do a new one every four years.
Just make this one wear mail. And then bring back class tier sets.
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