A Return to Season of Discovery

I haven't talked about Season of Discovery in about eight months. I had an absolute blast with its launch, but almost the moment phase two unlocked, my enjoyment pretty much fell of a cliff. I seemingly wasn't the only one who felt that way either (even if many likely had different reasons for their discontent), as the mode's population continued to decline. Last week's Warcraft Direct dedicated less than a minute to talking about Season of Discovery, and the 2025 road map for Classic just kind of fizzles out for SoD, with the last item being "new endgame content..." at the end of this winter. A blue post has since reassured players that SoD characters won't be deleted, and that they'll have more to share about the future of the mode "Soon™".

Still, at least in the short term things don't look good for SoD as it feels like the announcement of fresh vanilla servers has sucked all the air out of the room, and I expect the SoD servers to see an even sharper decline in activity from tonight onwards. So what's the best thing to do if you're a Classic hipster like me who doesn't care for fresh and doesn't want to be where everyone else is? Get back into SoD of course!

To be clear, I don't necessarily expect to be playing it a lot, but I've actually been thinking about at least temporarily getting back into it for a while. Why? To see the new dungeon! If you're asking "What new dungeon?" I can't blame you, because I myself wouldn't even have known about it if it hadn't been for a complete throwaway comment in a WillE video. If you ever needed any evidence for why "Classic Plus" would never work it's that Blizzard actually creating an entire new dungeon for SoD generated so little interest that it's something most people probably don't even know about.

For me, ever since I heard about it though, I've been thinking about returning to level my characters some more, if for no other reason than to check out this dungeon. I don't know whether it's any good, but I want to find out! Unfortunately "Demon Fall Canyon" apparently requires a character to be level 55+, and considering that I left my SoD toons in their twenties, I knew I would have some work to do, but you've got to start somewhere, right?

Just returning to the SoD tab in the Classic client, I was surprised to see the Lava Lash server still there, if marked as "locked". I would've expected Blizzard to close it down and fully merge it into Wild Growth by now. Wild Growth itself was marked as having "medium" population, but when I logged into my undead priest, Orgrimmar still seemed plenty busy. She was still wearing the red winter hat she acquired last Christmas too.

I logged out again and decided to check on my dwarf priest on Lava Lash, whom I'd actually got to 30 before quitting. A quick scan revealed an active population in the single digits, but I decided to do a bit of questing on my own anyway. At least I'd have no competition for mobs (something that had been a royal pain in the butt last time I played SoD) and I could always still take the free transfer later.

I've got to admit that gameplay-wise, it was fun to have my runes back. I'd forgotten how amusing and useful my little homonculi were, making solo questing as a priest a breeze compared to regular vanilla. The rune on my chest had been marked as "faded" though, which initially confused me, but it didn't take long to figure out that some runes had just been moved to different gear slots since I last played.

I was kind of stunned by how fast the XP was rolling in. Sure, I was rested, but even so - as it turns out, the XP boost I'd bemoaned at the start of phase two has been increased to 150% bonus XP since then, meaning that less than half a dozen quests in Duskwood were enough to net me two full levels.

I later returned to my undead priest to do some questing in Hillsbrad and had a similar experience there in terms of levelling speed. While pausing to cast my line into a fishing pool south of Tarren Mill, I spotted a night elf hunter interacting with a strange crate, which summoned an elite turtle that she ended up fighting. This reminded me that disregarding the way that both community and devs have been obsessing over raiding, seeing strange new things in the world that I knew weren't there in Vanilla was one of the things I really enjoyed about SoD. We'll see whether I'll get some more of that over the coming weeks, now that I no longer feel the need to keep up with anyone else and worry about raiding.