The Gnarly Blog

As a long-time WoW Classic fan, I could not wait to try WoW Classic Season of Discovery. The prospect of a reimagining of the Vanilla WoW experience, coupled with promises of new armor sets, weapons, and the allure of uncharted raids, set the stage for an exhilarating dive back into the cherished realms of Azeroth. Now, a week into the experience, I can confidently say that Season of Discovery has kept my attention, but I am not sure for how much longer this will be the case. 

Firstly, a great deal of the content introduced are simply mechanics from future expansions repackaged into the framework on Vanilla. While this can be confusing at times, I will commend Blizzard for only introducing abilities that seem to mesh well with the WoW classic playstyle. Some of the completely new abilities in Season of Discovery have yet to be fine tuned, though this is forgivable given the lack of play testing that went into it. If balancing issues are addressed, surely it will become an enjoyable and unique version of the game that has the potential to remain popular for years.

This is where my issue lies with Season of Discovery, despite clearly being something that has the potential to stick around indefinitely, Blizzard has made a timeline of one year. I was initially hoping for Classic Plus at BlizzCon, so Season of Discovery was a bit of a kick in the balls to begin with, but the fact that it has an expiration date is unforgivable in my eyes.

Hopefully Blizzard will come to their senses and simply extend Season of Discovery indefinitely. My guess is the only reason this has not happened already is due to financial concerns surrounding siphoning business from retail WoW. While supporting two versions of the same game and essentially competing with yourself sounds insane on paper, several MMOs have been doing this successfully for years. The reality of the gaming industry, specifically MMOs, is adapt or die, Season of Discovery may be Blizzards attempt at meeting demand for a more simplistic experience, though its potential has yet to be realized in my opinion.