Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed it won't modernize World of Warcraft: Forever's classes, as it wants to align with the "Classic" experience, but some will receive more "engaging depth."

World of Warcraft has undergone many class and balance changes over the years, in both 'retail' and Classic, and with WoW: Forever launching next month, players can expect similar updates.

However, in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, the WoW: Forever team doesn't plan to dramatically alter vanilla classes fans are familiar with; instead, it wants to build on them to make them more engaging as part of its design framework.

Blizzard wants to make a "Classic Plus" experience centered around four design pillars (Nurture and Protect Social Experiences, Approachable and Familiar, World as the Main Character, and Journey before destination), which will help the team build on the vanilla experience while staying true to the game's established "core design, pacing, and tone."

With this in mind, Blizzard plans "to err on the side of simpler classes, but with engaging depth,". The company further explained that "some classes in the Classic era were too simple, so those have gained a few mechanics."

How many? "The level of mechanical complexity found in the beta classes is indicative of our intentions," the team said. "When considering encounter design, we want to align those with our core values. Namely Approachable and Familiar."

It explained that its encounter team played a lot of Classic dungeon and raid content "to truly get an understanding of how the Classic game felt," and it discovered that "encounters that were very approachable and systems that encouraged players to go out into the world, adventure, prepare, and come back ready to take on any sort of challenge ahead of them."

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