World of Warcraft Classic - Season of Mastery Coming Soon

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Written by ValH on October 4th, 2021

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Those of you wondering what Blizzard Entertainment has in store for World of Warcraft's nostalgia-driven Classic servers, should wonder no more, as we now have this article on the game's website introducing the new Season of Mastery realms scheduled to go into Open Beta on October 5, 2021.

Essentially, this new approach will turn the Classic experience into a seasonal affair where you'll be able to get a fresh start and then progress through the game's content at an increased pace while enjoying some altered rules, like harder Raid bosses and improved mining yields.

Here's what we know at this point:

Greetings, adventurers! WoW Classic Season of Mastery is coming, giving all players a chance to start fresh and a level playing field. This time around, we’re planning #slightlymorechanges.

We will launch new WoW Classic realms for Season of Mastery. These realms will invite new and current Classic players to begin fresh at level 1 for a complete reset of WoW Classic’s content, starting again at the very beginning of the World of Warcraft saga.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT IN WOW CLASSIC SEASON OF MASTERY?

As with the first release of WoW Classic, we’re planning six content release phases. In WoW Classic Season of Mastery, however, phase unlocks will happen faster. We’re planning for a 12-month cadence, with phases unlocking roughly every couple months. Here’s the current outline for the six phases:

Phase 1 (WoW Classic Season of Mastery Launch)

• 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 original release of WoW Classic was made to re-create the difficulty and challenge of patch 1.12 from the original World of Warcraft release. While we strived to bring a faithful re-creation of that release, many raid encounters turned out to be easier than the first time around—players simply were more experienced and prepared, and patch updates greatly increased player power.

With that in mind, we’re planning a few changes to make those early raid bosses pack a bit more of a punch, and attempt to recapture the original challenge they presented. These changes currently include (but are not limited to):

• 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

Our intent with these changes is for this experience to feel somewhat more challenging than WoW Classic did in 2019.

Due to Season of Mastery’s faster content release cadence, we’re also planning several improvements and changes. These include:

FASTER LEVELING

We’re planning on increasing experience gains from what they were in the first iteration of WoW Classic. Our current plan is to set them close to what the 1-60 XP rates are in Burning Crusade Classic™ with a bigger focus on quest XP increases.

QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES

In addition, we’re planning on introducing certain improvements that weren’t in the original WoW Classic release, but that we think can help create a better experience, such as:

• Meeting Stones converted to Summoning Stones
• Increased Mining and Herbalism nodes

Realms tend to be more densely populated in WoW Classic compared to the original 2005 design. Increasing gathering node spawns should provide a more consistent economy this time around.

WoW Classic Season of Mastery will have an Open Beta beginning on October 5. We look forward to hearing your feedback on these changes and many others as we continue to iterate on them. Keep an eye on the forums and https://worldofwarcraft.com/news for the latest developments.

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