Blizzard unveiled plans to freshen the WoW Classic experience in the form of a new seasonal model, starting with WoW Classic Season of Mastery, and it’s exactly what players wanted.
WoW Classic players have been up in arms about the game and its content for a while now. The current amount of active users on the game, in general, is on a massive decline. As a result, they’re begging for the company to freshen things up.
Blizzard responded by flirting with the idea of ‘WoW Classic Fresh’ in August this year. In essence, they asked players how they’d feel about seasonal servers and hinted that there was something like that in the works.
They finally went ahead and made it official on October 1st. Blizzard unveiled WoW Classic Season of Mastery – a new seasonal model that is set to last 12 months at a time. Here’s everything we know about it so far.
WoW Classic Season of Mastery: everything we know
WoW Classic Season of Mastery will have six content release phases, similar to the way WoW Classic panned out.
The difference, though, is that these phases will happen faster. They will unlock every couple of months throughout a 12-month period.
WoW Classic Season of Mastery phases
Phase 1
- Molten Core
- Onyxia
- Maraudon
- PvP Honor System and Battlegrounds (up from Phases 3 and 4)
Phase 2
- Dire Maul
- Azuregos
- Kazzak
Phase 3
- Blackwing Lair
- Darkmoon Faire
- Darkmoon deck drops begin
Phase 4
- Zul’Gurub
- Green Dragons
Phase 5
- Ahn’Qiraj War Effort begins
- Ahn’Qiraj raids open as the war effort dictates
Phase 6
- Naxxramas
- Scourge Invasion
Raid Boss Updates
The developers are planning to make early raid bosses pack a little more difficult than they were in WoW Classic in an effort to “recapture the original challenge” that players had to overcome back when the game first released.
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As it stands, the current changes include the following bits and pieces:
- World buffs (like Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer and others) disabled in Raid instances
- Restoring mechanics that were removed early on to some Raid bosses
- No boss debuff limit (up from 16 debuffs in WoW Classic)
- Increased health on bosses, to offset player buffs and the removed debuff limit
Faster Levelling
Another exciting feature about WoW Classic Season of Mastery is that players will be able to enjoy faster leveling. To make that happen, experience rates (particularly those received from quests) will be increased.
Quality of Life Updates
Last but not least, the developers also want to improve on the original WoW Classic experience by introducing some quality of life changes. Not only is this intended to make the game more polished, but they believe it will enhance the user experience.
The two quality of life updates that have been confirmed so far are:
- Meeting Stones converted to Summoning Stones
- Increased Mining and Herbalism nodes
WoW Classic players have been hoping for something like this for a long time now, and it’s finally been confirmed. The consensus among the community is that it’s a good thing, and although it might not be for everyone, it’s the fresh twist the game desperately needed.
- Read More: WoW Classic server populations in 2021
The WoW Classic Season of Mastery beta kicks off on October 5. The devs are urging those interested to provide as much feedback as they can.
