WoW Classic Season Of Discovery Looks To Make A 20-Year-Old Game Surprising Again

gamespot.com:

Blizzard shares new details on how Season of Discovery is shaping the future of WoW Classic.

By Cameron Koch on

In World of Warcraft Classic, there are no surprises left. That makes sense; it is, after all, a nearly 20-year-old game.

Though the original version of WoW that launched in 2004 was in many ways overwritten with subsequent updates, mostly notably 2010's Cataclysm expansion, players never stopped playing the «vanilla» version of Blizzard's MMORPG thanks to unofficial private servers that were available prior to Blizzard's official re-release of the original WoW in 2019. In that time, everything there was to learn about the original era of WoW had been exhaustively detailed. Two decades worth of knowledge, in turn, drastically changed how players approached the release of Classic in 2019.

All the quests had been completed time and time again, all the items found. Battling the game's once-formidable raid bosses became as simple as watching a 30-second encounter guide on YouTube, and solving a confusing quest was as easy as downloading a comprehensive quest-mod or searching for an NPC's name on Wowhead. Players knew which talent specializations were best and what each class excelled at. The game was one giant math problem that millions of players already knew every answer to.

WoW Classic's new seasonal servers are looking to change all that. Called Season of Discovery, the game's new season sounds like it will turn the classic MMO on its head. Classes will be able to learn powerful new abilities by exploring the game's open world and acquiring runes, some of which allow classes to try out new roles, like tanking, that many have never had access to. New items are being added. Players will only be able to reach level 25