One of the best announcements at BlizzCon is going live this Thursday, the Season of Discovery for World of Warcraft Classic. Jumping off from the success of Hardcore Classic, the Season of Discovery offers new ways to play Classic and new things to discover. So let’s jump into the big highlights of what we can look forward to on November 30th at 1 pm PST.
The first massive change in Season of Discovery is we won’t be able to rush to level 60 from the get-go. There will be multiple phases in which the level cap will go from 25, 40, 50, and lastly 60. We don’t know how long each phase will last, but Blizzard has hinted they will last more than a month, so they could follow the same timeframe as Diablo IV seasons. Some players might think that’s a bit long because they’ll rush through everything quickly, but each phase lasting roughly three months feels like it could be a good pace overall. That would give players who tend to move through content more slowly time to get through everything, and those who rush through can level multiple toons or take a bit of a break if they’d like to.
Experience #WoWClassic like never before!Season of Discovery launches this Thursday. pic.twitter.com/6lLlp1CyXG
— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) November 27, 2023
Over the years, players have asked for new roles to be added to various classes; those requests haven’t been fulfilled for the most part. For example, I had quite a few friends back in Burning Crusade who wanted to be able to tank on a Shaman or Warlock. With SoD, some of those requests will be granted. Rogues, Shamans, and Warlocks will be able to tank, and Mages will finally gain the ability to heal. I’m legitimately surprised at going back and adding new roles to classes that have never had those roles before. I can’t wait to see how viable all of these are.
My one caveat is how well these new abilities will be balanced and how players who choose to play the more traditional versions of their classes will fare. Also, will these new roles be just for this phase or carry over to the other phases? If they carry over, that could wreak havoc when we reach level 60. In fact, it’ll be interesting to see how the whole rune engraving system plays out. Going by history, there will be specific runes that will be best for each class, and most players will likely only use those. Hopefully, they also allow for more unique gameplay and interesting use cases.
Those things aside, I am most excited for the Blackfathom Deeps raid. I have been asking for BFD to get some love for years, but I never expected this. It has been one of my favorite dungeons since I first ran it on my original Nelf Warrior. Seeing them expand on it in this way is truly exciting. This reimagined dungeon as a raid will be accessible by groups of 10 level 25 players with seven bosses. I’m a bit torn on what difficulty level I’d like to see out of this. On the one hand, I’d love for everyone to experience it, but on the other, if it is a walk in the park, it’ll quickly become old hat. Especially considering it will have a three-day lockout instead of a week-long one, increasing how often players can go through it.
Lastly, Blizzard has also promised there will be new secrets to discover in Season of Discovery, which has a lot of exciting possibilities. I loved Vanilla so much because everything was so new that there was an extended period of constant exploration and discovery every time I logged in. Of course, this was greatly aided by the lack of comprehensive sources of information back then, and everyone was figuring everything out together.
I’m curious what exactly they mean by new things to discover and how many there really are. I hope there is a good mix of big and little things to discover. Sometimes, stumbling on a small group of NPCs somewhere unexpected is incredibly funny or exciting, even if it doesn’t result in anything new for my character. I know the people who hit all of these things hard will probably ferret out the new stuff, which can affect player power quickly. So having smaller, interesting additions could also be fun and could potentially be shared less, preserving a bit of the discovery period for more players.
I can’t wait to jump into the first phase of Season of Discovery on Thursday. We don’t have a server list or know how many servers there will be, and I don’t expect them to release that information over the next few days. So, I can do limited planning on this one. I’m not even sure if I’ll roll Alliance or Horde. I’m also curious if more people will be interested in this than in Hardcore Classic. I know some Classic purists will think this is a bridge too far on changes, but I hope they give it a chance as a potentially fun alternative. Hopefully, we’ll see more content change-ups of this nature over the next few years, as it will help keep Classic alive for the long term.
