When it came to the World of Warcraft: Classic experience, there was a strong suspicion that the launch of The Burning Crusade would see it’s ongoing player base and support diminish. In one way, this is true – those Classic era servers are a ghost town.
Players cried out for some kind of reinvigorated experience, strongly suggesting that Blizzard maybe peek at RuneScape classic’s notes and perhaps steal a few pointers – and now it looks like they are ready to turn in their homework.
Oh yeah dude, for sure I’ll keep playing Classic after TBC launches
In a big ol’ blog post today, Blizzard have announced the WoW Classic Season of Mastery!
Excitingly, there is a plethora of game changes coming with it to ensure that it isn’t just an accelerated WoW Classic launch with a predetermined death date. This ranges from faster experience gain, to unique content phases – and even wholesale addition of features that just were not available in the ye olde days of WoW Vanilla.
Some highlights, at least according to me:
- 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
- Meeting Stones converted to Summoning Stones
- PvP Honor System and Battlegrounds in from the get-go (up from Phases 3 and 4)
- 1-60 XP rate speed mirrors the faster gains made present in Burning Crusade Classic
Summoning stones in particular are massive, because they serve as a player-driven method to get slower friends to your dungeon faster. Easily one of the best things introduced in The Burning Crusade – seeing them in the classic experience (particularly when the seasonal content has a predetermined lifespan) means that one of the greatest time-eaters will no longer have you pulling your hair out awaiting that one person who never picked up the local flight-path and now needs to ride their non-epic mount from two zones away.
I’ll stop gnashing my teeth now, I was just reliving a past trauma.
Even the content release phases have been juggled around to better address player progression – whereas original Classic was quite fastidious about the nature of it’s content release schedule (for better or worse) this means that players will have a far more unique curve when it comes to seeking out their characters gear. Best in slot lists can be burnt down and remade!
From the original post:
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
It’s a unique take, and personally it has a lot more changes that I initially expected – cynicism abounds, but it’s always nice to be surprised.
But, is it enough to get people back on the vanilla Classic wagon?
WoW Classic Season of Mastery will have an Open Beta beginning on October 5
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
