World of Warcraft May Add Single Player “Story Mode” Versions of Old Raids

World of Warcraft developers are considering “story mode” legacy raids.

Over the last several months developer Blizzard Entertainment has shown an increased willingness to play around with its long-running MMO World of Warcraft. Of course, the team launched WoW Classic several years ago, but recently we’ve seen the team experiment with things like Season of Discovery and Plunderstorm (WoW‘s answer to the battle royale). With a new expansion on the horizon, the developers have already announced that they will be introducing a “story mode” version of new raids, giving World of Warcraft players of all skill levels the chance to play through all of The War Within‘s content with relative ease. However, WoW has been around for nearly two decades now, which means there’s a ton of old content that many players have never played. It sounds like “story mode” might lead to many old-school raids making a big comeback.

The new information comes from an interview associate game director Morgan Day did with PC Gamer. He was talking about how the team introduced “Chromie Time” in Shadowlands, which lets players run through old expansions to level up. Day also mentioned the new Remix content that Blizzard is using to test even more new ideas. This led to the question about “story mode” versions of old raids.

Day said, “We’ve talked often about, like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I do Wrath of the Lich King Chromie Time, and I end my leveling experience beating Arthas? How cool would that be?” He continued by talking about how World of Warcraft has expanded who participates in raids over the last several expansions with things like Raid Finder and the upcoming “story mode.” Compared to early raiding, modern raids are accessible to nearly everyone. With that in mind, it’s possible the team could expand the feature, allowing everyone to run through old content and take on all that content they may have missed.

However, it’s important to note that this isn’t something Blizzard is targeting with The War Within. As Day said, “This is the first time we’ve done it exactly like this. We’re going to try this out. We want to understand how you guys respond to it because that’s going to shape what we do next. Let’s put it out there and see how it goes.”

Fortunately, Blizzard already has plans for two more expansions after The War Within as part of the Worldsoul Saga, giving them plenty of time to implement the feature if the playerbase asks for it. Remember, World of Warcraft: The War Within launches on August 26th, but you can get in three days early if you pre-order the Epic Edition.