Blizzard Entertainment has revealed in a post some of the Design Intentions and Details for Season of Mastery just as the Beta went live yesterday.
We’ve been very pleased by the reception to our WoW Classic Season of Mastery announcement last week, and we’ve seen a great many questions from players about this new version of WoW Classic. With the Beta now underway, we wanted to take a moment to talk a bit about the philosophy around Seasonal WoW Classic.
From the official blue post.
The main goal behind Season of Mastery will be to provide a version of Classic WoW with “Faster Progression and More Challenging Content” with the main features being faster XP gain, a 12-month release cycle, and all PvP systems being available from day 1.
Raids will be made more difficult in Seasons of Mastery, and World Buffs will not be available in raids.
Not everything is all planned out yet for the Season and the devs will surely make changes during the beta. The honor system is one of the systems they are still working on for Seasons of Mastery and will be looking for feedback from the community during the Beta on how to implement it into the shorter 12-month cycle.
The Season of Mastery Open Beta started yesterday and the first week will feature:
- Player Levels will be capped at 30.
- Character templates will not be available.
- The Rate of XP gain from Quest turn-ins has been increased by 25% globally.
- Mining and Herbalism Node availability is increased.
- The PvP Honor System is enabled.
- Warsong Gulch is enabled.
The first week will focus on leveling flow and more features will be added as we getting further into the Beta.