The appeal of World of Warcraft Classic has always been the chance to experience a faithful recreation of a bygone era, but this has also been an opportunity for Blizzard’s developers to make a few improvements with the benefit of hindsight, and the introduction of Heroic Plus is precisely that for Wrath of the Lich King. In the present period of the game, World of Warcraft players have become accustomed to Mythic Plus dungeons as a legitimate and admirable substitute for raiding in the game’s endgame.
The difficulty of Wrath of the Lich King’s Heroic dungeons was one of its biggest flaws, and it’s possible that this was what ultimately led Blizzard to decide to make Cataclysm’s Heroics much harder. The creators discovered a way to introduce a new difficulty in the Northrend dungeons while simultaneously thematically tying the mechanic to the new raid as Wrath of the Lich King Classic neared Ulduar’s release.
Wowhead has datamined a series of Heroic Plus achievements from the latest patch notes for Wrath of the Lich King Classic. They are referred to as Defense Protocol Alpha and include all 12 of the expansion pack’s dungeons. The four dungeons added in Patches 3.2 and 3.3 are the ones that are missing, but there is very little reason to believe that the Pit of Saron or the Halls of Reflection won’t eventually receive Heroic Plus updates.
Players of World of Warcraft can activate Heroic Plus mode for their Heroic dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King Classic by interacting with a Ritual Object located at the entrance of the dungeon, much to inserting a Mythic keystone. It will dramatically increase the damage and hit points of the creatures in the instance and introduce new boss features if all five players channel it simultaneously.
Heroic Plus will not have a depletion timer, unlike a Mythic keystone, and instead act as a standard dungeon challenge for World of Warcraft players to complete. The reward from this new dungeon difficulty will be comparable to Naxxramas gear from its 10-player version, giving players a new opportunity to close the gap in their gear score and get ready for raiding in Ulduar, the titanic city.
