Plus, if we’re being fair, in the zones that saw minimal changes many of those Classic era quests are actually still in the game.
It’s been a long time since I’ve leveled in Elwynn post Cata, but if memory serves me the only big changes I can remember off the top of my head are really Northshire Abbey if you’re starting as a human, Hogger being captured instead of killed, and all the Defias related quests along with the related mobs being generic bandits.
Ultimately however, it doesn’t matter if I’m playing Classic or Retail. In either version of the game, I can start a human in Elwynn and upon leaving the starting area I can do the following quests:
- Bounty on Murlocs
- Elmore’s Task
- Gold Dust Exchange
- Goldtooth
- Pie for Billy
- Princess Must Die
- Riverpaw Gnoll Bounty
Hell, I could even do the quest where you’re looking for the two dead soldiers near the murlocs.
It’s only a small sampling, but as far as the classic starting zones go, many of the old quests are still there with no regard to the fact that Classic was supposed to be “three years” (seriously, screw Blizzard’s timeline tampering/retcon) before Cata. Many of these zones are quite inconsistent as some people and quests reference the passage of time, yet others are still written/exist as if it is launch night on November 23rd, 2004.
Now, I am very much a proponent of expanding Chromie Time. Obviously, deactivate it when a player is about to start the level range for whatever the current expansion is, but a max level version SHOULD be in the game. This is a game with nearly 20 years worth of content, yet Blizzard sure as hell doesn’t act like it.
Also, many folks are thinking Blizzard is hinting at an eventual world revamp (I like to call it Azeroth 3.0). It makes sense as a not so insignificant part of the world still acts like the Cataclysm just happened outside of a few rare cases. Plus, we’ve had the current versions of Kal/EK for far longer than the original versions, and it would serve as a great excuse to FINALLY bring Silvermoon and the Exodar onto the main maps and enable flight.
If they do that however, I do feel like phasing COULD be used to actually give Cata era quests if people want to do that leveling. Only real work would be making sure the aforementioned areas getting added to the main maps are properly phased and pointing to the right locations.
As for Classic itself? Yeah, I just don’t see that happening unless they really want to have additional phasing to support it in a post-DF world, but even then many of those quests are actually going to have no difference between their Classic era versions and their Cata era versions.