Despite WoW Classic being nearly identical to the original, the game is played substantially different from how it was in 2004. The hardcore community has optimized every aspect of the game, and with it, indirectly forced this optimization on the casual community. Casual players do not feel free to play the classes they want with the equipment and talents they choose, instead following guides and tier lists as they are reluctant to make a character they know will be inferior.

The most dedicated players of any game will systematically examine every aspect of it, reducing it to numerical comparisons and rankings. If their findings are easily shared, the rest of the community becomes obligated to follow them, greatly reducing player autonomy as characters are expected to imitate the optimal builds. This is antithetical to role-playing games where characters are supposed to reflect the choices made by the player, and as such, this type of imitation undermines the genre.

This is the expected outcome of any challenge where the solution can be shared. Only a handful of players are required to "solve" a game for it to become solved for the community. Very few players have the opportunity to experience the game without this influence, as before they have the chance every aspect of the game is analyzed and the results are widely disseminated.

In the examples below, a player reaches the maximum level and develops their character based on the information available to them. In the first, players know only what they learn themselves, and in the second, players can access online resources.

With the game rewarding high-performing characters with game progression, players are always inclined to build their characters optimally based on the information available to them. As communication between players about optimal builds is inevitable, only the underlying issue can be changed: with all players being given the same problem, it only needs to be solved once to become solved for everyone. To address this, a new system is introduced: The Dungeon Master.

The Dungeon Master's role in conventional tabletop role-playing games is to operate the world the player characters interact with. A byproduct of this is that each world takes on characteristics from its Dungeon Master. If two Dungeon Masters were to operate the same campaign for their players, the world of each Dungeon Master would be different. These differences may not directly affect the storyline or end objective, but could change the characters the players interact with, the equipment they acquire, the layout of towns they visit, or unplanned encounters they have along the way.

Even with both groups following the same campaign, it would be difficult to share useful information between them due to each Dungeon Master providing a different experience. For most situations, players would be unable to consult outside information for how they should progress or build their characters as the details in their world are guaranteed to be unique. There may be commonalities, such as the base rules for the game, that players could consult community answers to guide them but ultimately the choices they make would have to take into account their own world.

The Dungeon Master's implementation in World of Warcraft follows a similar set of behaviors. Its end goal is to introduce a certain amount of variety into any system where players are inclined to optimize it. This variety is randomized at each server's creation and remains constant for the life of the server. With enough variables involved, each server would have a world that is entirely unique. Players would still be able to individually optimize their behavior, but the majority of their findings would only be applicable to their own server. This reduces the likelihood that a player will benefit from another player's discovery, as any published information is unlikely to apply to them.

One of the most significant systems affected by the Dungeon Master is character equipment. Each item has an 'item level' that represents its strength. Item levels are used to determine how many attribute points an item has and the strength of the item's effect. Each item has three variables that are randomized at the server's creation: its base item level, attribute allocation, and the effect it has. As with all systems affected by the Dungeon Master, the variation in items is only seen between servers, with each server individually having consistent items.

Through this variation, the highest performing equipment builds on each server are almost guaranteed to be unique. This variation cascades upward, reducing the prevalence of global metagames (ex. optimal arena teams or raid compositions), as players and guilds looking to reach their optimal performance are unlikely to achieve it through imitation. To further reduce the overlap between servers, the Dungeon Master should also be applied to the additional systems outlined below:

For each server to have a reliable online resource for best-in-slot equipment, talent builds, and guides, it would require the sustained effort of likely several dozen highly knowledgeable and skilled players from that server. As there are hundreds of severs, this would require regular contributions of thousands of players. Given that their target audience would likely only be their own server, a player's motivation for doing so would be limited.

The ideal outcome of these changes would be a game that is impossible to be solved by the community. Individuals may discover strong strategies and builds, but their findings are unlikely to be applicable to other servers. Players would be required to experiment with builds if they want to reach their character's maximum strength, and new players would have to undertake the same creative process as learning from other players' discoveries would be difficult.

World of Warcraft's gameplay has always been separated into two distinct phases: leveling and end-game. While this simplifies the creation of new content and systems, it instills the idea in players that anything done before reaching the level cap is ultimately worthless. Most players today consider the leveling experience to be an extended tutorial, with the "real" game beginning upon reaching the maximum level.

Without the need to reset players' progress for each expansion, the very need to limit a player's level is questionable. The division between leveling and end-game content is largely a byproduct of the level cap, and would be improved without it. As such, Reborn is designed around the complete removal of the player level cap. Below are the most important systems and how they would operate with this change.

With all content being interwoven, the distinction between leveling and end-game content should begin to fade. Players should feel they're on a continuous journey, instead of sequentially playing separate parts of the game. Players should not be forced to complete certain content in order to progress, instead following the path they set for themselves, allowing each character's journey to be unique.

When the level cap is raised, players assume their characters will become stronger. This requires more talents and abilities that not only increase the health and damage of each class, but add entirely new capabilities they didn't have before. Due to the limited amount of ways each class can be made stronger, all classes start to become proficient in every domain. This effect compounds with each expansion, causing class identity to erode as capabilities that were previously unique to one class become commonplace.

Without the need to raise the level cap, the capabilities of each class could be strictly defined. Class power levels would never need to be increased, as the difficulty of any new content would not require power levels that weren't already obtainable.

By design, end-game equipment must become obsolete in the next expansion. This limits the type of weapons and armor that can exist as they must eventually become worse than higher level equipment. As a result, most end-game equipment has simply been a collection of attributes, ensuring that it will be made obsolete by the next expansion.

There are thousands of weapons and armor pieces, but the vast majority will never be used again. Players are limited to the equipment from the most recent expansion, ensuring that the amount of choices a player has when selecting their equipment remains consistently low.

Without equipment needing to become obsolete, the variety could be increased to provide unique effects and abilities. New equipment could be added without replacing older equipment, continually increasing the amount of choices available to the player and allowing for unique builds and playstyles.

When the level cap is raised, new zones, quests, and dungeons must be added for leveling content. As a result, the total amount of time it takes to reach the level cap has to increase, or the time spent at each level must decrease.

In each expansion, the added leveling content tends to exclusively focus on leveling to the new level cap. As such, the amount of content relevant to the player as a proportion of all content decreases. This leads to the world feeling one-dimensional as players must progress through a linear sequence of zones, having few choices in where they can level.

• New zones, quests, and dungeons add to the existing leveling experience, providing players with a larger range of options of how and where they want to level.
• Quests are longer but provide greater rewards to compensate. There are fewer quests available at any given time in each town or settlement, increasing the significance of each quest.
• The quest system aims to provide each character with a unique leveling experience. There are several types of quests, each with different criteria for how they become available to the character:
• Static: Available to all players at all times provided they have completed any prerequisite quests. Used for questlines that are important to the lore or are required for progression (ex. raid attunements).
• Dynamic: Based on events and seasons (ex: a flash flood strands workers that need to be rescued, an exploding volcano releases fire elementals that need to be slain, a dust storm damages a settlement which needs to be repaired, etc).
• Random: Randomly selected from a pool of potential quests (ex: a town has 6 potential quests with 2-3 chosen to become available to the character. If the player has a new character enter the same town, the new character will have 2-3 of the unplayed quests become available.)
• Rare: Each quest is only available to a small percentage of randomly chosen players, but has very strong rewards. A character will likely only experience several rare quests while leveling. A player will not get the same rare quest more than once.
• Gated: Based on class, race, professions, faction reputation, game progression, or other variables.

When a new expansion releases, the end-game content from the previous expansion typically remains unchanged. This creates inconsistencies in the lore where the highest level players are stronger than what are supposed to be extremely powerful figures in the Warcraft universe such as Illidan, Kil’jaeden, or The Lich King. All of whom could be easily killed by a single player in later expansions.

Furthermore, as expansions render previous end-game content obsolete, the world develops “dead-zones” where players have no reason to be and become abandoned, making the world feel deserted.

Without the need to reset characters for each expansion, all content could be kept relevant, eliminating any lore inconsistencies and preserving immersion when new content is added.

As almost all end-game content is discarded at the start of each new expansion, new players are denied the opportunity to ever experience it. Any potential new players will increasingly feel as though they are joining too late and have already missed a substantial amount of the game. This is seen most clearly in raids from previous expansions, where players are unable to experience them the way they were intended. Despite there being a substantial amount of content being continually added, the only aspect that changes in any meaningful way is the leveling experience.

This creates a system where potential new players have no greater incentive to join now as they would have 5 or 10 years ago. Regardless of when they were to join, the amount of content available to them would be largely the same.

By contrast, a fixed or unlimited level cap would allow the game to continue to grow in size and depth each year. New zones, dungeons, raids, equipment, world events, and more would build on top of the previous content, continuously increasing the game's appeal to new players. Long-term player retention would be driven primarily by extensive character building and progression, as well as the large amount of content available.