World of Warcraft Classic’s new “Season of Discovery” will break rules that have been in place for 19 years. Classes that were once DPS-focused will be able to heal and tank, and old raids will return with bosses and mechanics that never existed in the original version of the MMO.
The Season of Discovery, which will skip public testing and launch on November 30, resembles the “Classic+” concept that WoW Classic players have been begging Blizzard for since its original release. It will run on the original WoW, feature an initial level 25 cap (Classic WoW usually goes to 60) and will have a reworked 10-player Blackfathom Deeps raid with “reimagined bosses, mechanics, and … rewards.”
After “a couple of months,” the level cap will be raised again and Blizzard will introduce another set of reimainged endgame content. More details on the Season of Discovery will be revealed at a developer panel streamed from BlizzCon later today.
According to a press release from Blizzard, the Season of Discovery will introduce a new rune system that allows players to customize and gain new abilities. It almost sounds like equipping Legendary gear in Diablo with unique effects. You’ll find runes in the world and use “rune-engraving” to enable a few of them on your character, activating spells and attacks that have never existed in the game before.
This won’t be the first time WoW Classic has diverged from the original game, but maybe the first time to this degree. Wrath of the Lich King, the most recent Classic’d expansion added its Random Dungeon Finder system earlier this year, which wasn’t the case until a full year after the original expansion was released. Season of Discovery, however, looks to be going much further than that.