As of this writing, the third phase of the World of Warcraft Exploration Season is well underway. Thousands of people rushed into a remixed Sunken Temple raid that wiped out basic boss mechanics, earned no loot rolls, and washed away all their gold on enchantments. It’s all going great. In fact, Discovery Season’s success exceeded even Blizzard’s expectations.
In a press preview for World of Warcraft’s upcoming Civil War expansion, executive producer Holly Longdale spoke to iGamesNews about the reception to the Classic Wow sideline season and the thought process behind the current approach to diversifying World of Warcraft content.
“We thought it was going to be popular, and it’s been more popular than we thought,” Langdale said when asked how the Discovery Season was going. “I can’t give you an exact number, but it was probably what we expected. twice as much. We’re doing a lot of experimental stuff – this idea of not testing […], which adds a lot of risk. But it’s the season of exploration, so it’s part of the spirit! It’s been great and a huge learning experience for how we do things in the future and how the subsequent phases will proceed. ”
World of Warcraft is currently in the shotgun phase of new content, with a variety of different types of updates coming soon. Of course, Season of Discovery is one of them. This is very good in this regard. But you also get new battle royale-style modes in Pillage Storm, where you can remix Pandaria nearby, fly to our Catalysim classics, and the usual march of modern World of Warcraft patches and expansions. No matter which direction you look, there’s always something for players to grab onto.
This diverse approach is intentional, as Langdale elaborates, “WoW has had a pretty solid formula for quite some time, and it works. I think We’re starting to see that it’s not working as well as it used to, and it’s time to start reaching out and we can understand how people are gaming and segment that into player groups, and we can see underserved player groups, like. Casual gamer. ”
The current spread of content appears to have paid off. In Blizzard’s most recent quarterly report, World of Warcraft: Dragon’s Legion had the highest retention rate for an expansion pack at this stage of its lifecycle. Generally speaking, as expansions age, you’ll see a sharp decline in player numbers, and while that’s certainly what happened with Dragonflight, that decline has been curbed recently. One can only wonder if there will be further improvements with the various new content coming soon like Pillage Storm when the Q3 report comes out.
The question now is whether Blizzard can maintain or improve on this trend. The next update to Season of Discovery will see players reach the level cap, at which point raids and the game’s typical endgame content will become available. As the season comes to an end and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm becomes a bit too modern for classic die-hards, people are starting to wonder what the future holds for this 20-year-old version of the game.
I asked Lawndale what the future holds for this enclave of old-school players, and she laughed and said she couldn’t tell me until PR got involved. Oh well, it’s always worth a try!
