The End of Season of Mastery

I only really talked about Season of Mastery once on this blog, which was when it had just been announced. I was still focused on Classic Burning Crusade back then, but even if I hadn't been, nothing about SoM really sounded appealing to me. I like the pace of levelling in Vanilla, why would I want permanent double XP? I like that the large raids aren't that difficult and allow for a fairly laid-back and relaxed atmosphere, why would I want harder raids? I like to take my time playing casually, why would I want to play on a server that will rush through all the content even faster than Classic did? I enjoy the community aspect of Vanilla/Classic, why would I want to play on a temporary server that's destined to be shut down after only a year and whose community will be dispersed? And so on and so forth.

That said, with my move to Classic era, SoM has somewhat come back into focus for me, not because I suddenly wanted to play it, but because SoM is also based on vanilla Classic (if with modifications) and there's overlap between the two player bases. Specifically, with SoM rapidly approaching its natural end point, some of the people playing there have expressed interest in transferring their characters to era.

Interactions between the two groups haven't been without friction, mind you - as one of the moderators on the Classic era Discord put it very aptly: "They might be that one cousin you never quite liked and your preferences might differ, but they’re part of the family." While not all era players love the exact same things about it that I do, the divide between era loyalists and those coming from SoM has certainly been noticeable, with many SoM players constantly balking against what they perceive as the "staleness" of era and already yearning for the next "fresh" server - whatever it may end up being. As a result, era players can feel torn between wanting to welcome the influx of fresh blood and being annoyed with the newcomers seemingly not appreciating era's value proposition.

At the same time, I've been finding some of the things that SoM players have been talking about quite interesting. Since I didn't really follow what was going on on those servers, I've been learning a lot. Did you know that in SoM, Baron Geddon in Molten Core dropped not one but three bombs at a time, and also left fire puddles behind on the floor that required him to be kited? Or that in AQ40, C'thun tentacles could show up on all the bosses? It certainly sounded interesting in some ways - just not really like something I'd personally want to invest time in.

WillE posted a good video summarising Season of Mastery the other week as well, and in it, he referred to an interview with Classic producer Aggrend, in which he supposedly called SoM a success. I wanted to watch the whole thing for some more context, and SoM actually doesn't come up until very close to the end, starting at around 26:36, when Aggrend goes off on a tangent in response to a question about splitting the player base. He says that SoM has been "near and dear to [their] hearts", that it was great for what it was and that they learned a lot about what does and doesn't work for a seasonal server like that. It didn't sound like they had any immediate plans to launch another project like it, but like they were keen on doing it again, assuming there was enough demand for it.

And that's the question really, isn't it? What does Blizzard consider enough demand? They didn't think there was enough for permanent BC servers. Presumably their goal is to score extra subscriptions that they wouldn't otherwise get from other versions of Classic, but how many is enough to fund a special rule set? There was a decent amount of buzz around SoM when it launched, but even with that in mind I'm a bit doubtful whether many of those players wouldn't have subscribed and played another version of the game if SoM hadn't existed.

According to a guildie who played on SoM, the population there dropped off very quickly, to the point that "soft consolidations" aka free server transfers to a single server were already happening around the time BWL was released. And I guess in a way that's expected with a seasonal server like that, but again, how quickly is too quickly?

I know this whole temporary server thing was Holly Longdale's big trick while running Everquest and apparently worked well for them there, but I can't help but feel like the effect it has on WoW is that it's just cheapening the brand. I know Blizzard has fallen from grace in recent years, but in many ways WoW has still been that MMO that's always there and provides a solid experience with (relatively) few bugs, and where you can always come back and pick things up again where you left off. Littering it with temporary servers that die off after a couple of months and whose characters get deleted if you don't transfer them off in time kind of seems to go against that. Then again, that might just be me.

But yes, if you did play on SoM, consider this your reminder to take a free character transfer off to era or WotLK Classic if you care about your characters at all. Assuming the feature is up and working when you read this, because as it turns out, transferring characters between different "versions" of the game is a process the Blizzard devs have yet to fully master, which was evidenced by the transfers off SoM originally going down again almost as soon as they had launched. From reports that I heard, characters that were transferred during this period retained part of their SoM status even on era and could for example cause items to drop in raids that could only be looted by them.

For now transfers seem to be back up again though, and while no closing date for the SoM servers has been announced as of yet, I recommend getting it over with sooner rather than later to avoid any annoyance later on. I expect that a lot of forgotten SoM characters will end up in the bin and that there'll be some wailing and gnashing of teeth from their players when they return and find out, since Blizzard hasn't really been in the habit of deleting people's unplayed characters in the past.