Blizzard unveil plans to add WoW Classic seasons and it's exactly what players wanted

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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 players will be able to have a fresh start every 12 months.

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
WoW Classic Season of Mastery will release in content phases.

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.

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
Bosses like Ragnaros will be harder with the new seasonal model.

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
Mining nodes have been increased.

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.

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.

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