World of Warcraft: Classic’s progressive realm Season of Mastery has been out for over a year now (almost 15 months), with its release going live all the way back in November of 2021.
Initially, the plan was to roll out the game in 6 phases within the following 12 months.
Blizzard didn’t stay true to this, seeing as the last phase was released more than half a year ago, in July of 2022, months sooner than it was projected. Within this time, players have had time to max out a plethora of characters, especially with the hefty EXP buff everyone received.
What Comes Next | WoW: Season of Mastery
It doesn’t come as a shock that players have squeezed every bit of content they possibly could out of this season. After all, it’s been a long time since the most recent content update.
Because of this, Blizzard officially stated back in November that they’re shutting down all Season of Mastery (SoM) realms, which started on the 14th of February.
Officially stated in a blue post, on the 15th of November.
This isn’t anything new for most players, mainly because of the fact that SoM was never supposed to last forever.
It was released as a fresh start for players, with phase releases attempting to mimic the feeling of a natural progression from the days of the original Classic.
However, it’s hard not to feel abandoned as an SoM player because, since November, there’s been complete radio silence about a potential 2nd Season.
The only thing that was mentioned is that players will have up to (approximately) 3 months to transfer off the realm, otherwise, their characters will be permanently deleted. Your options are either one of the Classic Era or the Wrath of the Lich King realms.
What Comes Next for WoW Classic?
With Season of Mastery officially retired, every player and guild will have to migrate off to another realm.
Many players said they will most likely cancel their subscriptions and wait for Blizzard to announce anything about a potential second season, rather than play on other realms.
With this in mind, Blizzard should really consider putting something out there, otherwise, they risk losing players over a simple lack of communication (again). Something as simple as confirming there will be a second season would be a good start, even if they didn’t have a date in mind just yet.
Seeing as we haven’t heard even that though, we’re all left in the dark to wonder and speculate.
It’d be a shame to lose so many passionate players yet again.
Personally, I wouldn’t be against some experimenting: adding entirely new raids and content, without necessarily changing expansions. Perhaps something similar to what Old School RuneScape does; adding content without big revamp and unnecessary new systems.
This is definitely not the way Blizzard has done things so far, but I for one am all for trying things out, especially if said things were already pulled off successfully by another game in the past (e.g. OSRS).
Hopefully, Blizzard will break radio silence as soon as possible as I’m sure many are eager to know more and are quite impatient for it.
I know I sure am!
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