WoW Classic Season of Discovery Phase 1 review: A fresh, memorable way to explore Azeroth

WoW Classic Season of Discovery has done much for me, personally and professionally. It’s allowed me to make some incredible new friends, and reconnect with old ones and has brought a lot of useful, interesting content to Sportskeeda as a result. There are so many mysteries and secrets that came with Phase 1, and it was all I played for weeks on end. I couldn’t be bothered to play Retail WoW or Hardcore. There were secrets to uncover, after all!

Now that I’ve had some time with WoW Classic Season of Discovery, I wanted to put my thoughts down. While it’s not a perfect game mode, I really like what it’s doing and how it could build further growth for a limited-time season in future WoW updates.

What exactly is WoW Classic Season of Discovery?

The community really came together in WoW Classic Season of Discovery (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

WoW Classic Season of Discovery is a year-long project within the World of Warcraft universe. Over the next year, there will be several “phases” of content where the game grows and expands across the Classic servers. Phase 1 is where we are right now, with Phase 2 scheduled to drop in early 2024, according to the roadmap.

Currently, players can level through to 25, and the “endgame content” is Blackfathom Deeps. Converted into a challenging but fun raid, there’s much to love about it. In addition, players have Runes to seek out, which wildly change how they play familiar classes. You can have new tanks - Warlock, Rogue, and Shaman. There’s also a new healer build: Mage.

While the level cap is 25, players can tackle content beyond that if they dare, and in fact, they do! Groups raid together into higher areas in search of decent green drops to prepare for Blackfathom Deeps or simply challenge themselves. That gear could be very useful when Phase 2 begins, as well.

Even regular dungeons feel fresh with different tanks and Rune combinations (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Unfortunately, I haven’t spent time in Blackfathom Deeps yet, but it appears to be a pretty controversial raid. Some people feel it’s perfectly tuned, and others feel it’s far too strong and ruins the experience. However, that’s always going to be the case in the Warcraft community. My thoughts on that will come once I’ve completed the content.

How were the Rune secrets/mysteries handled in WoW Classic Season of Discovery?

Living Flame was a complete game-changer (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

What made WoW Classic Season of Discovery really fun was unlocking all the various Runes for each class. While I’ve spent most of my time as a Mage, I honestly don’t have all the Runes unlocked yet. Either I’m not interested in the ones I don’t have, or I’m not geared/ready to go for them. For example, Mass Regeneration requires fighting a level 25 Elite Lich. I’ll need friends to go with me for that.

There’s a great deal of overlap in the unlocks for these Runes. A good example is Warlocks and Mages, which both require the Frozen Makura or the Frozen Murloc to unlock abilities. This brings players together to work together for a goal that benefits both of them.

I do feel like some of the abilities were ridiculously unfair to unlock - being far too frustrating for a level 25 level cap. Some of these were fixed, like Metamorphosis. That originally required Warlock tanks to go into Blackfathom Deeps to farm item drops. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore.

Overall, I think these mysteries were pretty great, to be honest. Many of them made sense and felt solvable while also being cryptic. I hope they don’t reuse the same style of riddles to solve in future updates. However, players got through all the unlocks pretty fast in Phase 1. I imagine that’s probably by design.

How were the actual new builds themselves in WoW Classic Season of Discovery?

At this point, I had my DPS build perfected (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

I’m going to be honest - I did not like Mage Healing. At least, not as it stands in Phase 1. Perhaps you must be incredibly well-equipped to play a Mage Healer this phase, but I always found myself running out of mana after a few spellcasts.

The Regeneration Rune is great and useful, but it requires Arcane Damage in order to heal people. That means the incredibly expensive Arcane Missile/Explosion spells. You can use Living Flame, but that has a significant cooldown. I could not wrap my head around using it efficiently, nor did I come across any healing mages.

That said, Shaman Tank and Warlock Tank? Those are incredible. Shaman Tanks have a real mana issue to get through, but their restoration of that resource is better than an Arcane Mage. I think we’ll really see these builds shine in future updates.

Final thoughts

Expand Tweet

WoW Classic Season of Discovery is exactly what I was hoping it would be. It brought players together in massive amounts to play some vanilla content in a brand-new way. The first few days were frustrating; with so many people packing each server, I still found myself having fun with one friend circle or another. Even people who had never played Warcraft were excited to try - and I love seeing that.

While it’s not a perfect experience - Ashenvale’s PVP remains frustrating on my server - I’m still having a pretty positive time playing through the game. In fact, I’m likely going to start a new character today and start leveling them to 25.

There are so many fun ways to approach the content, and classes that were frustrating to solo before (Priests) don’t feel quite the same way once you’ve got a few runes under your belt. The community has been beneficial, and I’ve made awesome friends along the way. It’s the refresh I needed to remember why I love MMOs so much.