World of Warcraft | Season of Discovery

What is World of Warcraft Season of Discovery?

The time has come to gather your friends, create a new character, and scour the lands of Azeroth to discover class-altering abilities, new endgame activities, and a new Rune Engraving system.

World of Warcraft® Classic Season of Discovery is Now Live!

Today I take a look at the bigger picture of why: World of Warcraft Is BACK… And Vanilla Is Leading The Way

Join RUIN in the Season of Discovery World PVP campaign. Battle for Ashenvale offers the largest player versus player battles yet encountered in World of Warcraft due to the new mega server system. Battles regularly involve several hundred players on a massive scale!

Have you ever wanted to tank as a Shaman? What about as a Warlock? Heck, even Rogue can tank now in World of Warcraft Season of Discovery. Have you wanted to heal as a Mage? Thanks to the power of Runes in Season of Discovery, Mages can now use chrono magic to turn back time and heal themselves and party members. This is the main selling point of World of Warcraft Season of Discovery for the long-time World of Warcraft fan, and don’t get me wrong, it is super awesome to see new gameplay options.

World of Warcraft Is BACK… And Vanilla Is Leading The Way | Season of Discovery

With us being a good way into Season of Discovery now and unofficial sites starting to estimate a few numbers, I wanted to go over Classic as a whole and see how the game is doing players wise.
From every indication we have Season of Discovery is doing incredibly well – but just how much so? Source: WillE

Season of Discovery is a seasonal release for World of Warcraft Classic, so it’s the game as it was 20 years ago give or take, but Blizzard decided to offer new gameplay and content to make the game feel fun and fresh. All classes can discover runes hidden throughout the world that bring some completely new abilities and spells, and some that are being brought forward from future expansions. This makes the leveling and overall experience much more fun.

WHAT’S IN STORE

DISCOVER YOUR PLAYSTYLE

Hidden throughout Azeroth are special runes waiting to be discovered. These runes can augment player characters in new and exciting ways by providing access to abilities not available in WoW Classic. Some runes will be in plain sight, others will be tucked away, and a few will require teamwork to access.

FREEDOM TO EXPERIMENT

Rune engraving will allow players to apply and remove abilities at will as they experiment with different builds to create a truly unique play experience.

A NEW APPROACH TO ENDGAME

Season of Discovery will start with an initial level cap of 25. Over time, the cap will incrementally increase to offer a more progressive endgame experience that will shift with each level band as new abilities become available for players during level-up.

CLASSIC DUNGEONS REIMAGINED

Each phase’s level cap will provide new content for players to experience, starting with the level 25 Blackfathom Deeps 10-player raid: formerly a level-up 5-player dungeon, it has been reworked with redesigned boss encounters to offer exciting challenges that will put players’ builds to the test.

PUT YOUR BUILDS AND SKILLS TO THE TEST

For players more interested in testing their builds and skills against others, there will be an outdoor PvP event in Ashenvale. Additionally, the Honor system and Battlegrounds will be available from day one.


REALMS OF ADVENTURE AWAIT

We’ve expanded the capacity of our realms for Season of Discovery to support more players. As a part of the initial launch, players may still experience some queues. We will be monitoring realm health and populations should additional realms be needed.

PvP realms, in particular, have been designed to maintain faction balance as they grow. To help maintain a regular balance between the factions, creating new characters in a more dominant faction may be temporarily limited on a specific realm until a closer equilibrium is reestablished. Please note that enforced faction balance and temporary character creation limitations will only be limited to PvP realms and will not affect PvE realms.


GETTING INTO SEASON OF DISCOVERY

To begin your new adventure, download and install the Battle.net desktop app. Access to Season of Discovery is available to all players with an active World of Warcraft subscription—no additional purchase is required. Players can subscribe by visiting the Battle.net Shop.

 

  1. Open the Battle.net desktop app and select World of Warcraft from the game selection menu. It may need to update itself if you haven’t run it recently.
  2. Select World of Warcraft Classic. You’ll see a second dropdown for Account if you have more than one World of Warcraft account and select the active account you wish to play on (first-time adventurers or those looking for a fresh start will need to create a new Battle.net account.
  3. Click the Install button. You’ll see an installation progress bar showing you when the installation is available to play.
  4. Once the installation is complete, click the Play button.
  5. Select the Season of Discovery realm you want to play on, which will be identified in the Realm Selection tabs along with Classic and Hardcore.
  6. Select Create New Character to choose your faction, class, and race, then customize your character and name them.

For the best experience, make sure your graphics drivers are up to date—for the current system requirements for PC and Mac, visit our support page.


Learn more about what’s next for the Season of Discovery in our latest WoWCast. We look forward to seeing what new adventures you undertake this Season!

  • DISCOVER YOUR PLAYSTYLE – Hidden throughout Azeroth are special runes waiting to be discovered. These runes can augment player characters in new and exciting ways by providing access to abilities not available in WoW Classic. Some runes will be in plain sight, others will be tucked away, and a few will require teamwork to access.
  • FREEDOM TO EXPERIMENT – Rune engraving will allow players to apply and remove abilities at will as they experiment with different builds to create a truly unique play experience.
  • A NEW APPROACH TO ENDGAME – Season of Discovery will start with an initial level cap of 25. Over time, the cap will incrementally increase to offer a more progressive endgame experience that will shift with each level band as new abilities become available for players during level-up.
  • CLASSIC DUNGEONS REIMAGINED – Each phase’s level cap will provide new content for players to experience, starting with the level 25 Blackfathom Deeps 10-player raid: formerly a level-up 5-player dungeon, it has been reworked with redesigned boss encounters to offer exciting challenges that will put players’ builds to the test.
  • PUT YOUR BUILDS AND SKILLS TO THE TEST – For players more interested in testing their builds and skills against others, there will be an outdoor PvP event in Ashenvale. Additionally, the Honor system and Battlegrounds will be available from day one.

If you’re going to play the game, I recommend playing on Crusader Strike, especially if you play Alliance. Several of the biggest World of Warcraft streamers have made their characters on Crusader Strike and the server faced 10,000+ player queues on launch day. I love going to do a hard quest and finding 10 to 20 other players doing the same quest. I can simply ask to party up, and the quest becomes substantially more easy with some help from other players.

When I first leveled up in Vanilla WoW it wasn’t during the initial launch and so I played most of the game alone since most players were already max level. Jump in now while everybody is still leveling up so you can enjoy the social benefits of playing an MMO.

In the first 25 levels, each class has 12 new runes that add new gameplay mechanics. Blizzard didn’t allow any testing of this new season so the community gets to discover how to earn these runes together, which adds a great feeling of collaboration across the gaming community. There are still several runes that haven’t been discovered yet even though thousands of players have hit the max level of 25. It’s pretty fun to see this level of mystery in a 20-year-old game. The game is doing so well that World of Warcraft Classic was nominated for Best Community at this years Game Awards, and again it is 20 years old.