Update from the WoW Classic Team

Greetings,

As you may have read here, we’re excited to offer those of you who have completed the Balnazzar encounter in the Scarlet Enclave raid a free Mists of Pandaria Classic Boost!

We believe that it would be a great capstone for Season of Discovery to offer those of you who are looking to embark on your next classic adventure this opportunity to hop into Mists Classic right away when it launches.

When we look back on the journey we’ve taken in Season of Discovery, we are incredibly proud of the time we got to spend with all of you in this unique take on the original version of World of Warcraft. From the first moments that players sat down at the demo stations at Blizzcon in 2023, we knew we had something special, and it’s wild to think that it has been over 18 months since we announced it.

When we think of the impact that Season of Discovery will ultimately have on World of Warcraft, we think about how it helped prove something that a lot of us already knew: there is an enormous appetite for new experiences set against the backdrop of original World of Warcraft. As soon as the realms went live and we saw the response, we knew we had an unprecedented opportunity to immerse ourselves in new concepts and ideas, and see what works and what doesn’t.

Several months ago, as we wrapped up development on Naxxramas and Karazhan Crypts, we had originally planned for that to be the final content update to Season of Discovery. However, we couldn’t let go of the one major unrealized dream for Season of Discovery: the Scarlet Enclave. We looked at our schedule and decided to take a risk in order to make time to create this new raid tier and really punctuate the Season of Discovery experience with something special. We are very glad we did. It’s been incredibly fun to play and progress through the new content with you.

Season of Discovery was a success beyond our wildest imagination back in 2023. We learned so much, we grew as a team both literally and figuratively, and we’ve been invigorated for the future like never before. That future for Season of Discovery is somewhat bittersweet, as we’ve made the decision to slow down on Season of Discovery and begin work on our next major project in the original WoW design space.

We have big plans and big ambitions for this type of “found photographs” content set in the original world of Azeroth, but in order to realize those ambitions, we need to make sure we’re spending our time where it will make the most impact on the long-term future of WoW Classic. We want to set ourselves up for success by taking take the time we need to get in the proverbial kitchen and “cook”, iterate on, and shape our ideas and lessons learned from Season of Discovery into something truly exciting. Season of Discovery was always meant to be an ephemeral seasonal experience, and while it became so much more for a time, we’re extremely excited about the things we’re working on for the future.

We have no plans to shut down the SoD realms, and we hope to see the game mode continue to operate similar to WoW Classic Era for many months (if not years) to come. We’ve all grown attached to our characters just like you have, and we’re happy to continue to adventure with you for as long as you’d like.

We sincerely thank you for joining us on this incredible journey in Season of Discovery. Thank you all for playing with us, making new friends with us, for giving us feedback, for pushing the boundaries of what content set in original WoW could look like, and more than anything-- thank you for being passionate about World of Warcraft.

-The WoW Classic Development Team

18 Likes

Cheers Aggrend and Co.

Please for the love of God actually learn from this and make classic plus a well balanced, engaging, horizontal improvement to the 2004 classic.

5 Likes

This has undeniably been the most fun I’ve had playing wow for years. Thank you for all your work and for making this version of the game.

But that being said, please continue to make new content for it! If its the end, then so be it, but its really bittersweet. I would much prefer to see new content and resources put into SoD over something else!

4 Likes

Good season overall, and a good end. - I am kind of disappointed that we aren’t able to transfer our characters from SoD over to Cataclysm Classic, just like we did back in Season of Mastery. - Had i known that it wouldn’t have been an option, then i wouldn’t have started to play SoD to begin with, knowing it’ll just rot on some Era server.

Not to mention, i’d rather transfer my character, than get a level 85 boost, it just feels lazy from Blizzard’s end.

3 Likes

I hope this team doesnt do Classic +

Promised way more than you delived, hardly any new content, everything else just recycled. (Bar SE, Kara crypts)
Runes - Again recycled abilities put into a classic setting absolutely destroying any sort of balance, poorly implemented and thought out

Pvp - absolute shambles, abandoned early on (this is what will kill sod make it dead in a week, theres nothing more to do, not even play around and do pvp)

Only good things, Dual Spec ( no brainer ), Abundance of materials, More loot dropping ( apart for SE which is a disaster ).
People dont want to compete like hunter gatherers for resources in a game, ppl want to play games to relax not get mad.

Sod made me mad countless times, specially in pvp cause of how bad it was. Absolute disaster

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stop the nerf without new content :frowning:

In the launch trailer you implied you would make Scarlet content. Do you really think it’s a good look to imply you over delivered by doing the thing many people actually tried SOD for?

The world of Classic is ripe for amazing content. Excuses of having low resources just don’t cut it. SOD was fun but you massively under delivered and the ending being a level boost in something else is par for the minimum effort approach.

I hope you get grown ups for Classic+

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It was really great to play this season despite all its flaws. But I’d still prefer to go into TBC rather than MoP. =)

6 Likes

Getting new content for just the price of the game subscription is the happy out-lier in today’s day and age. Until now we’ve been stuck with re-releases. The fact we got SoD at all, honestly, is Blizzard going above and beyond . There’s really no point biting the hand that feeds.

1 Like

you truly did cook!

Although I left at level 50, I really appreciate the passion of this project so much and I can clearly see just how much you guys loved it. Thank you.

TBC SoD please? I don’t want this to end and i don’t want to play MoP…

3 Likes

alliance shamans in shambles.

broskis i have no idea whats goin on with this game . Retail is a huge disaster so far not even worth logging more then 1 hour MAX. Sod was the only think that actually made players exciting … without an official long term classic weird server like sod aint no way im paying for subscrition

So what happened to “many many many months of content in sod left”?

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F7ug5hedtoyle1.png

6 Likes

That’s your fault for being an angry little man. Grow up.

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Just give us alliance shamans and horde paladins and let us rest in peace

Havent had as much fun with WOW as i did in phase 1 SOD since i started playing vanilla back when it first launched.

I feel like u are leaving us with quite a gap here, since we have nowhere to jump to now that SOD is ending.

If we arent getting fresh MOP servers then im pretty sure a lot of people (definitely including me) is ending subscription in waiting for TBC (if that gets fresh servers) or even until next iteration of classic comes out.

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I have no interest in playing another version of wow other than SoD. Retail is a hot pile of garbage and I have no interest in MoP. Will be ending my subscription instead I think. Would much rather see TBC SoD.

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I’d rather be able to directly transfer to MoP with all my shinies. A boost is worthless if my character is doomed to sit on server’s that basically have a guillotine hanging over them. Really? Supporting them (Letting them rot in maintainance mode with no updates) for months? I think we all know what happens at the end of those months. Sure you have ‘no plans’ to shut down SoD. But that doesn’t mean you won’t make plans a few months down the line when the playerbase has dwindled to a puddle. What happens to our characters then?

2 Likes