WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery is the newest way to play World of Warcraft, providing a massive twist to the original gameplay formula that many players have come to know and love. In this new season, you’ll be able to get your hands on new abilities, talents, and build paths that will totally reshape the way you play your class and interact with the world of Azeroth. And with the new season set to launch later today, the WoW Classic devs shed some extra light in a Blizzard-produced video on what players can expect when the Season of Discovery goes live, as well as what’s coming down the pipeline in this all-new game mode for WoW.
In the video, the developers spent some serious time discussing the most intense gameplay-altering feature in WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery: runes, which are essentially new abilities that will allow you to completely reinvent and customize the way you play your class.
“Due to the seasonal nature of it, it’s a really great opportunity for us to take risks and wild chances on things, and also to ask ‘what if’ questions,” senior WoW game producer Josh Greenfield said in the developer update. “The game doesn’t really tell you what to do, it just kind of says ‘go find more.’”
Throughout the first 25 levels of the season, players will be able to find a total of 12 runes per class, with more runes becoming available in level bands down the line.
When you reach the level cap of 25 in the Season of Discovery, the biggest opportunity for you will be entering the first endgame raid of the season, Blackfathom Deeps, which has had all of its boss encounters revamped and reworked, and its player limit has been upped from five to 10. But the fun won’t stop there. After we’ve exhausted Blackfathom Deeps (and the rest of the one-to-25 level band) for all of its loot, we’ll eventually move on to the next progression checkpoint of the Season of Discovery, which is the level 25-to-40 band.
Between levels 25 and 40, players will get their hands on new talents, new runes, and quests across a whole new slate of open-world zones. Perhaps the most iconic leveling zone at the level 25-to-40 band is Stranglethorn Vale. Players leveling through WoW Classic content often find themselves in that zone for an extended period of time, and we have no doubt that it will become the leveling hotspot in the second phase of Season of Discovery. Blizzard also understands this, and it’s putting plans in motion to make Stranglethorn a place where players will spend a lot of time. The devs teased that STV could be home to the next open-world PvP event, similar to how Ashenvale will house a PvP event in phase one of the Season of Discovery.
Additionally, the developers confirmed the next raid after Blackfathom Deeps will be Gnomeregan, which is presumably going to be scaled up to level 40 and will include even more endgame loot for the back end of that level band.
Regardless of all of the loot and optimized builds that you’re most definitely going to encounter, the developers couldn’t stress enough that the Season of Discovery is more about experimentation and adventure than anything else. It’s not the “Season of Min-Maxing,” after all.
“We have been prioritizing fun over perfect balance,” WoW Classic lead software engineer Nora Valletta said. “There is some aspect to things kind of feeling a little bit wild that I think is very important to have, especially in Season of Discovery where we’re kind of going into this with an experimentation mindset.”
The Season of Discovery will go live in WoW Classic at 3pm CT today, Nov. 30.
