WoW Classic’s Season of Mastery is launching on Nov. 16, giving players a fresh chance to experience Classic from the very beginning. While the WoW Classic Season of Mastery won’t have a traditional “progress wipe,” it will give players who want to re-experience the launch of the game the chance to do so.
To help keep the game fresh, Blizzard Entertainment is adding a slew of changes to WoW Classic that will alter the way the game is played, while focusing on improving the quality of life for players looking to experience Wow Classic at a faster pace. Here are some of the changes Blizzard announced during an update from the developer earlier today.
Leveling changes
The biggest change coming to WoW Classic’s mechanics during the Season of Mastery will be the previously revealed increased experience gains that players receive while progressing to level 60. In a post on the official WoW forums earlier today, Blizzard revealed that changes to the leveling process will also be made in the way that players earn gear, in addition to many other changes. Leveling gear such as dungeon and reputation items gained from some of the game’s later instances will be available earlier than they were in the original release of WoW and WoW Classic.
Changes made to certain bosses’ loot tables and reputation vendors that were implemented at the end of WoW’s original release cycle will be added during the Season of Mastery launch, too.
Related: When does the WoW Classic Season of Mastery begin?
Originally, those changes were placed into the game to assist players in catching up to the game’s final stages. But with the Season of Mastery placing an increased focus on getting players to the endgame faster, it only makes sense to implement these adjustments from the get-go. “This will provide more variety and value in the items available as players gear up for late-game content,” according to Blizzard. “This also provides more goals for players to pursue and gives many classes and specs more interesting gear options early on.”
Beyond the leveling process, high-level content that had been previously “timegated” will now be available at the beginning of the Season of Mastery. Blizzard is making the Dire Maul dungeon, level 50 class quests, as well as all three Classic PvP battlegrounds available at the launch of the new season.
Class balance
Blizzard also said no major changes to class balance will be coming to the Classic Season of Mastery. “A big part of what makes WoW Classic special is being able to relive and re-master the gameplay that bygone versions of WoW provided, and a large part of the WoW Classic project is bringing that back for players to enjoy,” Blizzard said.
While certain classes could benefit from Season of Mastery changes (such as increased health pools for raid bosses), Blizzard is confident in its sample size of tests during the Season of Mastery beta. In recent weeks, the WoW community has hypothesized that Warriors and Rogues would find the most success in long boss fights because of the fact that they physically can’t run out of mana. But Blizzard remains confident that the game’s tier list of classes will not change drastically during the Season of Mastery. “Based on what we saw in Molten Core and Onyxia beta testing last week, groups that stacked warriors and rogues seemed to struggle more than groups that had a greater diversity of classes,” Blizzard said.
The developer is open to changing things up and releasing balance patches should the Season of Mastery alter the Classic meta extensively. “We’ll keep an eye on things though; we’re open to further adjustments if needed if it turns out we’re mistaken,” Blizzard said.
To close out the update, Blizzard confirmed that once the Classic Season of Mastery concludes, players will have the opportunity to transfer their character to an existing Classic era server. Blizzard has not yet given a date as to when the Season of Mastery will end.
The WoW Classic Season of Mastery will begin on Nov. 16. Players will be able to reserve their character’s names on Season of Mastery servers starting on Nov. 11
