Blizzard has announced that for World of Warcraft Classic, a new opportunity to start fresh at level one again is coming. This time, however, there is a plan to release the six content phases much faster, over a 12-month period and to pump up the difficulty.
These content unlocks will let WoW Classic players jump back in at a steady pace, with increased experience gains to complement this. The experience rates are intended to match the 1-60 rates in Burning Crusade Classic and see increased quest XP. Some content phases will match the original release of Classic, but others will see some changes. One notable change is the PvP honor System and Battlegrounds will be part of phase one, the Season of Mastery launch.
Other things to pay attention to in the fresh start are raid and quality of life updates. In the release of Classic in 2019, the team had tried to recreate the difficulty and settings of 1.12 from the original release, but after running Classic for a time, the raids wound up being too easy. The difficulty levels might have matched the original intent, but when you've got 20 years of players who've been through your raids and love WoW, their skills are going to be just too polished.
So there are some changes to expect in the raids, especially in the early parts of the player journey. Among the changes to raids are disabling world buffs like Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, adding some cut mechanics to some raid bosses, removing the boss debuff limit, and increasing the bosses' health. Since realms are more densely populated than at the long-ago launch, there will also be more nodes for mining and gathering, and Meeting Stones will be Summoning Stones.
All of this will begin with an open beta on October 5th. For more info and details on the Season of Mastery, check the official announcement.
