Blizzard plans to add a Phase 8 to Season of Discovery and keep servers active in the future

When Season of Discovery was announced during BlizzCon 2023, it was introduced as the next season of content for World of Warcraft Classic following Season of Mastery but with a twist on player abilities, a staggered level-capped phase rollout, and new in-game activities. Even though gameplay in Season of Discovery differed from Season of Mastery, the general expectation was that Season of Discovery realms would be temporary and eventually close just like Season of Mastery. Based on the Classic 2025 roadmap, Season of Discovery Phase 7 was expected to be the last phase of content and after its launch the next natural question became, when will Season of Discovery end?

Recently, WoW Classic Senior Game Producer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield provided a significant update around the future of Season of Discovery in the comment section of a YouTube video created by user hammerdance, and confirmed that Season of Discovery will roll out a Phase 8 of content:

“At the time, it was our intention for Naxx to be the final “full” phase and that whatever else we wanted to tackle would be sort of phase 7.1 or 7.5 but not phase 8. Since then, the team came together and between how much fun we had and are having with building Karazhan Crypts and Scarlet Enclave we are all-in on a really great, really robust phase 8. So yes, the Scarlet Enclave raid is real.”

Greenfield continues to explain that Season of Discovery will end in the sense that active development will cease and at the moment, there is no plan to close Season of Discovery servers once all content has been rolled out, with the caveat of never say never:

“SoD will end in the sense that we will stop actively developing new large amounts of new content, but it won’t be a hard “it ends today” date and we have no intention of closing SoD servers. I can’t say never because I don’t know the future, but I can say that much like era, we have no plans at all to close them, and I do expect that some amount of the population will continue on when active development slows, just as we see in Era today.”

Eventually, Greenfield divulges two reasons behind keeping Season of Discovery active. The first being that an “end date” would discourage players who haven’t tried Season of Discovery from playing or discourage players who stopped from returning. He stresses that shouldn’t be a barrier because more feedback on Season of Discovery will help guide the WoW Classic team on improving their next project.

At the moment, we don’t know what this project is, when Phase 8 will arrive, or if it will truly be the last phase of content for Season of Discovery. Greenfield teases more Phase 8 information will be coming soon and once it does, we’ll keep you updated with everything you need to know.