WoW devs confirm fate of Season of Discovery characters after final phase

As with all seasonal experiences, World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery has to end at some point. That said, the bonds and stories that players have forged with their characters make the idea of losing them a difficult one.

As in normal Classic WoW, many players will have reached the Level 60 cap by the end of Season of Discovery. In doing so, they will have spent tens or hundreds of hours taking on the game’s most challenging dungeons and formidable PvP opponents.

As such, it’s important to remember the attachment some people form with their characters. The nature of the seasonal experience may suggest that those characters will be lost forever when it ends.

Now, in an interview with Dexerto, the developers behind the game have shared news that will come as a relief to many.

There will be “someplace cool” for player characters after Season of Discovery

Blizzard Entertainment

When asked about what comes after Season of Discovery, Lead Software Engineer Nora Valletta and Senior Game Producer Josh Greenfield were predictably tight-lipped on specifics. That said, they were happy to allay players’ deepest fears.

When asked about what the future may look like Valletta was keen to stress that the decision would be informed by those who play the game.

“I think the most important thing is what players want to see. There’s a lot of things that we would be excited to build. The season will come to an end eventually. Whereas the characters that you’ve created and invested time into and leveled, their stories don’t have to end with the season,” he revealed.

“We are envisioning an interesting place for them to move to that allows them to keep some of the itemization that we’ve added in Season of Discovery. Something very similar to Classic Era but not existing Classic Era realms. As far as possibilities, our team is fortunate in that there are a great many very exciting directions we could take the future of Classic.”

Greenfield echoed the thoughts of Valletta, adding that simply removing everything when the season is done would undo a lot of good work.

“We are putting a lot of effort into crafting new discoveries, the narrative content that goes with that, and some of these new raids. It would be a shame if that went away and was never available again. We’re building it in such a way that all this content is sort of modular enough that we could flip it on in a different version of WoW at a different point, and maybe adjust it or scale it up,” he said.

“There’s a lot of things we can do with it, and we’re building it in a way that it’s reusable if needed. We really want to keep an eye on what’s well received and what are the things that we probably don’t want to carry forward. It would be a shame if this stuff was completely lost and so we’ve been telling people that no matter what, your characters at the end of the season will be able to go someplace cool.”

Whatever the future for players after Season of Discovery, it’s nice to know that there will be options on the table. With the game only in Phase Two at the time of writing, there’s some time to go before it becomes a major concern.