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There are only three hero classes as of Dragonflight (Death Knight, Demon Hunter, and Evoker) and their only distinctions between a normal class is starting at a higher level, having special customization options, and getting their own starting zones. In designing, Blizzard found that the talent system provided enough customization and that "prestiging" was a more confusing system. Every Hero Unit from Warcraft III was supposed to eventually get a hero class. Paladins were at one point going to be one, but ultimately made a normal class. The initial idea was that players could specialize to become a hero class at level 40 - for example, Warriors could specialize to a Mountain King or a Death Knight. Hero classes were a feature mentioned before the game was released.Most of the cut raids made it into the first expansion, but the Emerald Dream as a raid was scrapped until Legion and the Dragon Isles were cut until being repurposed as the setting of Dragonflight.
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The Emerald Dream and Hyjal raid zones were also somewhere in this progression. The Vanilla game went through several iterations, but the general idea for the original endgame was that the game would have 70 levels, not 60, and included (in a rough order): Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj as the southern half of the Silithus zone, Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, Naxxramas, Karazhan, the Dragon Isles as a raid and a Quel'thalas zone next to it (based around a burnt and ruined Silvermoon), a single Outland zone, and a "Black Citadel" raid with Illidan as the final boss of the game.
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