WoW Classic Season of Mastery Announced, Open Beta Coming Oct. 5

WoW Classic Season of Mastery is set to launch soon, inviting players to begin fresh at level 1 for a complete reset of the title's content.
WoW Classic Season of Mastery is set to launch soon, inviting players to begin fresh at level 1 for a complete reset of the title's content. / Photo courtesy of Blizzard

WoW Classic Season of Mastery is coming, giving all players a chance to start fresh and a level playing field, with an Open Beta beginning on Oct. 5, Blizzard announced Thursday.

With the launch of Season of Mystery, new WoW Classic realms will be available to invite new and current Classic players to begin fresh at level 1 for a complete reset of WoW Classic’s content, starting again at the very beginning of the World of Warcraft saga. Here's a breakdown of Blizzard's WoW Classic Season of Mastery announcement.

WoW Classic Season of Mastery Announced

Content Release Phases

Similar to the initial release of WoW Classic, Blizzard is planning six content release phases for the Season of Mastery, with phase unlocks happening faster than before roughly every couple of months.

Here is Blizzard's current 12-month outline for the six phases:

Phase 1 (WoW Classic Season of Mastery Launch)

  • Molten Core
  • Onyxia
  • Maraudon
  • PvP Honor System and Battlegrounds (up from Phases 3 and 4)

Phase 2

  • Dire Maul
  • Azuregos
  • Kazzak

Phase 3

  • Blackwing Lair
  • Darkmoon Faire
  • Darkmoon deck drops begin

Phase 4

  • Zul’Gurub
  • Green Dragons

Phase 5

  • Ahn’Qiraj War Effort begins
  • Ahn’Qiraj raids open as the war effort dictates

Phase 6

  • Naxxramas
  • Scourge Invasion

Raid Boss Updates

Due to players simply being too experienced and prepared for the difficulty and challenge of many of the raid encounters in WoW Classic 2019 re-created from patch 1.12 from the original World of Warcraft release, Blizzard is planning a few changes to make those early raid bosses bit tougher to more closely recapture the original challenge they presented:

  • World buffs (like Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer and others) disabled in Raid instances
  • Restoring mechanics that were removed early on to some Raid bosses
  • No boss debuff limit (up from 16 debuffs in WoW Classic)
  • Increased health on bosses, to offset player buffs and the removed debuff limit

Faster Leveling

Blizzard is said to be planning on increasing experience gains from what they were in the first iteration of WoW Classic, setting them closer to what the 1-60 XP rates are in Burning Crusade Classic with a bigger focus on quest XP increases.

Quality of Life Updates

Additionally, Blizzard is also planning on debuting certain improvements with the launch of WoW Classic Season of Mastery including:

  • Meeting Stones converted to Summoning Stones
  • Increased Mining and Herbalism nodes