Phase 2 of Season of Discovery is moving forward, bringing players to a level cap of 40 – which also creates more demand for Classic's old XP and gold grinds. In case you totally missed the boat, SoD is a smaller team version of WoW Classic that's all about mixing things up: smaller, gradual level caps, new abilities, low level raids, bringing in rogues, and healing magicians, and so on.
In a current one Developer update, the SoD team presented some immediate and distant plans for the future. First of all: XP Santa Claus is here earlier than planned. Discoverer's Delight is a catch-up mechanism for returning players, allowing them to access the current season's content more quickly. Previously, this was a 50% increase that ended at level 24 – last season's cap. Now there will be a 100 percent boost that stops at level 39, just one level below the current stage cap.
“When we first designed Season of Discovery, we knew we wanted the alternatives to be an important part of the experience, so we decided to include an XP buff, Discoverer's Delight, in the previous level bands at the start of each stage “, says the update. “…but if you've already entered Phase 2 with several characters at 25, it can be a little daunting to level them now.”
Blizzard added: “We always intended to increase Discoverer's Delight to a 100% buff [levels] 1-39 when Phase 3 was started, so this change merely moves from the start of the next phase to a midpoint of this current phase.”
Additionally, level 40 mounts are available at half price. In the classic version, these things would net you an expensive 100 gold – 20 for the riding skill and 80 for the mount itself. These savings come alongside an overall improvement to cash rewards from quests to “make quests a little more lucrative when leveling up.” This makes sense – faster leveling means fewer quests, and fewer quests lead to a worse character. Take a bite if you like Only However, I did spend a pretty penny on a pony.
Finally, Molten Core will be a 20-player raid when SoD finally reaches Classic's original cap. The team says that 40-player raids were originally viewed as an integral part of the experience that they didn't want to change.[40-player raids are] a defining feature of original WoW and are completely unique to this version of the game. Avoiding them entirely wasn't even an option.
However, “we found that we may have caused problems for some communities by asking them to recruit from one or two raid groups of 10 players each to a full 40,” which is fair. Imagine being an established group and then having to triple in size just to play current content – a lot could go wrong.
Instead, the SoD developers currently intend to use raids like “Molten Core” to “bridge” 10-player raid groups to more crowded content. However, reducing other 40-player raids is not off the table, but there are many technical issues to consider:
“While it would theoretically be possible to reduce all 40 player raids to 20, doing so could be prohibitively difficult and could significantly impact the other features and content we wanted to implement in a post-'60s Season of Discovery… Molten Core is here “definitely unique” in that it's so simple mechanically and under the hood that it would be relatively easy to scale down.” The SoD team also has plans to move some raids in the level 60 ecosystem – although it's all whiteboard at the moment -Plans and napkin documents.
A “theoretical example” is traditional “catch-up” raids like Zul'Gurub, where “adjustments could be made that slightly increase their challenge level, but also significantly increase the quality and variety of rewards, making them feel that way.” a viable progression path alongside other current content at this stage.”
Ultimately, it's just nice to see the SoD continue to cook with abandon – the controlled, cautious and optimized realm of retail WoW is like that for a reason, but it's also a little dry. I'm pleased that the SoD team continues to have the freedom to drive change, for better or worse.
