Recent years have seen a huge resurgence of older games either remastered or re-released, some with a fresh coat of paint to spice up the playstyle or to fix older bugs that may have occurred in the past. With older players flocking back to their classic favorites as well as new players exploring what made these games once great, it comes as no surprise that some of these games capture an enormous audience.

(Image from PCGamer)

As gaming has evolved and moved to newer platforms like mobile and changed in the biggest genres that are played like these best casinos not on gamstop amongst many others being a hugely popular mobile experience, going back to these older games both on PC and console offers something an extremely different experience.

After the enormous success of Classic WoW’s re-release and the follow-up with TBC and WOTLK classic, Blizzard announced their newest twist on the classic game being “Season of Discovery” adding more customization to the existing classes in the game, encouraging a bit of exploration, and changing many of the core gameplay mechanics to suit different classes better. Warlock and Shaman tanks? Mage healers? We’re in.

Whilst the initial release being just Phase 1 includes 12 different runes for each class and spec, any with a level cap of 25, it has introduced a number of different interest game mechanics that significantly change the way that many players approach the game. Whilst the 1-25 experience of questing can still largely be the same for many, having new skills to speed up the processor drastically change the approach to a fight makes a lot of difference.

The re-introduction of a spruced up Blackfathom Depths, turning it from a standard dungeon into a 10-man raid at level cap was a great idea too, introduction a new challenge for those hitting max level in phase one and a different spin on a two decade old game. It’s still unmistakably classic WoW, but with a nice little twist on things.

Whilst nothing has been announced just yet for Phase 2 and onwards, it’s expected there will be a couple of months between patch drops, each introducing a few more runes to each spec and slowly increasing the level cap with a new end-game dungeon turned raid to tide players over until eventually hitting the level 60 classic cap, and a whole new endgame experience for players that have been around for a while.

New and returning players have been flocking to the game, huge communities dedicated to adventuring out and finding where each of the 12 runes for each class can be found and dedicated Discord groups to helping new players get started in the Season of Discovery, whilst we’ll never know the true numbers of players turning to the game, early login queues and server issues as always with Blizzard do at least indicate the launch was quite large, and much of the audience has stuck around to enjoy what SOD has to offer.

One of the most interesting changes that has come from the launch however has nothing to do with the Season of Discovery or Classic itself, but instead an attempt for Blizzard to balance faction difference within the game. Throughout the various releases of Classic, Alliance has typically held the lion’s share of players due to questing differences, but a new approach has an announced less than 5% delta between the different factions across SOD. It makes little difference to the modern game, but with Cataclysm Classic just around the corner, introducing this on launch could certainly help with the huge faction imbalance usually seen.