WoW dev asks for “a chance to cook” after Season of Discovery 40-man raid speculation

After speculation over raid formats in the last phase of World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery reached a fever pitch, one senior developer behind the game has urged patience and caution before drawing any conclusions.

Thus far in Season of Discovery, many players have been participating in 10-man raid adaptations of beloved dungeons. In the first phase, this was Blackfathom Deeps, before the focus shifted to Gnomeregan in Phase Two.

This led to inevitable discourse over what raids would look like in the game’s final phase at Level 60. Would 10-man raids slot in alongside the original 40-man Classic experiences or would smaller raids take the lead?

Now, Senior Game Producer Josh Greenfield has urged players to wait for more concrete information before writing off raiding in the final phase of Season of Discovery.

Season of Discovery’s final phase is still up in the air

Blizzard Entertainment

In a recent interview with Dexerto, Greenfield confirmed that the traditional 40-man raids in Classic WoW would feature in some form for Season of Discovery. On raiding generally during the game’s last phase, he noted:

“Those raids that were 40-player will likely stay 40-player. Now, will they look exactly the same? Hard to say and that’s not something we’re ready to talk about right now. There are some things you can expect to stay the same and there are some things that will change a lot. There will be some form of 40-player raiding at some point.”

This began a broader conversation within the community on whether they wanted to see 40-man raids in Season of Discovery at all. In particular, the relative ambiguity of the final phase at this early stage led to fears over grouping up for raids and the health of existing guilds.

In a response to a concerned fan on Twitter/X, Greenfield asked the community for more time to solidify the development team’s plans for Phase Four.

It's a difficult thing for me to comment on right now. As evidenced in that thread, there are a lot of people making assumptions about how things will go when really, we haven't even talked about level 60 content in earnest yet. I hope (though I'm not foolish enough to think this…

— Josh Greenfield (@AggrendWoW) February 25, 2024

With the game only around 1/3 of the way in Phase Two, there is still some time to go before the game enters its final throes. What raiding will look like when we get there, remains to be seen.