For those not in the know, World of Warcraft Classic is a re-release of the original set of expansions on official Blizzard servers for anyone that is subscribed to WoW to play. Currently, Classic has 4 splits, between 2 versions of the game: Wrath of the Lich King (the second WoW expansion, henceforth called WotLK or WotLK Classic), and Vanilla (the first release of the game before any expansions, henceforth called Classic). Within Classic, we have 3 modes: the normal servers, hardcore (your character only gets one life), and Seasons of Discovery (the main point of this article and explained further down below).
Seasons of Discovery is an expanded version of Classic, some people refer to this, and SoD, as Classic+, however I reserve Classic+ for a much more extensive overhaul of Classic and thus will generally not refer to it as such. It is, unlike Classic, being released in phases with specific level caps for each phase. Phase I had the level cap set to 25, phase II to 40, phase III to 50, phase IV to 60, and there is a final phase V that is listed in Blizzard's WoW roadmap as 'end game content updates'. As of writing this, we are in phase II; thus, I will be reviewing phase I and II and possibly updating this post later on to include future phases.
In phase I of SoD, the level cap was set to 25, there were new enchantment items called runes (12 per class initially), a new level 25 world PvP event in Ashenvale, and the dungeon Blackfathom Deeps turned a level 25 10-man raid. Amongst these changes, some runes allowed certain classes to fill new roles that they could never do in Classic (e.g mage healers and warlock tanks).
Population was quite high in this phase, which is always nice as Classic (and any early expansion) flourishes with higher populations and makes the game feel so alive and fun. The lower level cap of 25 also helped immensely with this, making the zones that people were spread out much less and allowing people that do not always hit the level cap and do endgame content to experience it.
Unfortunately, I can not speak about the endgame of either phase really, as I am mostly a casual player. However, Phase II has been fun as well. I do, however, have some criticisms of it that I think are less the fault of phase II and more the fault of how phases work in general. Unfortunately, many of the positives of Phase I being limited to level 25 (and thus to the zones for these levels) are lessened as the current level cap is 40 (so zones up to level 40 are included). What this means is that you see a more wide spread of people and thus zones do not feel as full and played in as in Phase I. I would suggest playing on a high or full pop server in the region you play on for this reason, as I think it will become more exacerbated in future phases.
For the 25-40 experience, as of writing this I have just reached the late 20s. I am currently playing and levelling a rogue, and having a blast. I have never gotten that far with a rogue in the early expansions of WoW, but I am glad I have now. It makes me wish that other classes had gotten as much love as I believe rogues did in Vanilla: poisons, lockpicking, great class quests, and Ravenholdt Manor; these things really give you that class flavour that really makes WoW feel like an RPG.
With the current buff that is active on the SoD servers, giving players 3 times gold reward for quests and 100% experience increase from all sources, the worry from above has been alleviated and the servers are alive and populated, with many players running around levelling and questing. This buff, combined with the sleeping bag (of which you can find a link to the guide down below), makes levelling quite quick. The sleeping bag should be able to be picked up by any class around level 20; although it has no level requirement, it will be very hard to do without dying a lot before then. When I reach level 40 I will update this with some information on the endgame.
Wowhead Cozy Sleeping Bag Guide
Whilst writing this, Solo Self Found for Hardcore Classic WoW released, so I would like to add that to my review as I am playing both at the same time. Unfortunately, this new mode is a bit of a disappointment for me. I believe that it really came at a bad time, just on the heels of the release of SoD's Phase II. Thus, the server population is not as high as I would have hoped, and that it could have been had it been released at a different date.
I fear Blizzard has thought of this as well, because I find SSF to be rather poorly implemented. For one, the way Blizzard has worded mail, it seems like you might be able to send mail between your other characters, making it so you can still bankroll your SSF character and give it an unfair advantage (although I have not yet tested this). One thing I have tested though, is grouping. For some reason, Blizzard does not know what 'solo' means in the name Solo Self Found. Despite its name, you can still group and play with other players, making this mode really not a solo self found mode, but rather a self found mode. It is unfortunately par for the course at Blizzard to neuter or half-arsed implement new modes of play; I believe they did it with Hardcore, and now with SSF.
This is a very early type-up, but Phase III just started so I figured I'd write something about it. I ended up getting my rogue to level 40 just before the start of Phase III but was not able to do any endgame content unfortunately. The altoholic syndrome is hitting me and I have decided to abandon my rogue at the start of Phase III; not because I dislike playing it, but because I just wanted something different to play. So, for now I am levelling up a druid as I cannot stand playing mana-based classes and whilst a druid *is* a mana-based class, its runes alleviate much of the mana issues, and because after level 20, and with one or two runes, I can go feral and be a discount rogue.
So, it seems the casual life is still going to be the life for myself. I will probably rarely get to actually review any phase endgame content, but I have been having a lot of fun playing through the story and levelling. I know for many people, that is the worst part of WoW, but for me, I love the massive open world and stories of each zone (pre-Cata of course). My only issue at this moment is that I have gone through the Alliance levelling areas so much due to my love for Duskwood and some of the other Alliance zones; I am planning to find a class I really want to play on Horde and level from 1-50 on Horde during this phase hopefully; and if not, during the next phase when the level cap should be 60.
It really does seem, anecdotally, that the population is dropping phase-to-phase. This worries me, as the world feels more and more empty, and that takes away from the fun of playing the game. It also seems a bit odd that Blizz would give the new phase levelling content (41-50) a 50% experience buff, rather than having it baseline initially, and adding the buff after the majority of the players have gotten 50 so that the latecomers can catch up. Everyone seems to have flown to 50, and this exacerbated that problem, meaning that for most people's 41-50 journey, they probably won't get to see much of the zones, and will likely see many more empty zones in their super short time levelling during this phase. This really means that for Phase III, there is not really much levelling content at all, and it is being heavily shifted to level capped content; which Blizzard will likely continue to do for Phase IV when players hit the actual level cap for Vanilla.
For all those that are altoholics like myself, I hope you also have fun levelling new characters and fill out the world's zones to make it more alive; otherwise, I might not even be interested in future phases of SoD as my main fun of this has been the gated levelling caps filling out the world with vastly more players than normal as many people would normally have rushed to 60 and quit the game early. For future seasons of SoD (if they are ever done) or other re-releases of Classic WoW, I hope that Blizzard plays more with level gating rather than endgame content gating.
This is the end for now, as I am busy with other stuff, and unsure if I will continue future phases. For now, I think the only thing that would pull me back in after Phase III would be restarting on the European servers to play with friends if they decided to play SoD.
