Current Consensus

World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery hurtled into Phase 3 on April 4th, bringing with it a wave of new content and challenges for players. This latest phase has seen adventurers venture into the Sunken Temple, a 20-player raid, and explore the high-level zones of Feralas and the Hinterlands. But how has the community received this content update? Let’s delve into the good, the bad, and the nerfing of Phase 3.

Nightmare Incursions Invade the Grind

A major addition in Phase 3 is the Nightmare Incursion system. These dynamic events offer a “familiar” take on grinding a la retail or more modern zergfests, but with many controversial opinions from the community.

Besides the FOMO we’ve discussed in a previous article, the events still have noticeably skewed rewards in terms of gearing options (rep vendor), experience, and gold compared to other options the game offers.

Sunken Temple: A Raid Reborn (Mostly)

The Sunken Temple raid has been a focal point of Phase 3. Players have enjoyed revisiting this classic dungeon with its unique boss encounters and challenging mechanics. However, some criticisms have surfaced regarding the overall balance. Optimizations and continuous nerfs have rendered a raid arguably too easy that once was devastatingly difficult.

A Season of Adjustments

Phase 3 hasn’t been without its share of adjustments. Shortly after launch, a nerf hit the Righteous Orbs farming method, a move that caused some frustration among players who felt it stifled alternative gearing paths. Additionally, developers have made tweaks to various classes in an attempt to address balance concerns. These changes have sparked discussions within the community, with some players praising the responsiveness while others debate the effectiveness of the adjustments.

Amongst the biggest offenders were Horde vs. Alliance mana issues, which are looking to be adjusted in the coming weeks.

The Verdict: A Spooky Success (with Room for Improvement)

Overall, the reception towards Season of Discovery Phase 3 has been positive, although various online communities would have you think otherwise.

The Nightmare Incursions add a welcome layer of dynamism albeit with poor implementation (perhaps an article for another time, discussing how maybe it should have been a limited event), and the Sunken Temple raid provides a nostalgic and challenging experience. However, balancing issues and tweaks to established mechanics have led to some debate. Here’s to hoping Blizzard can iron out these wrinkles and ensure a smooth (and terrifying) journey through the remainder of the Season of Discovery as we head into the long awaited 60 cap.

Earlier this month, The benchmark for the latest expansion “Dawntrail” dropped. This particular benchmark had lots of hype surrounding it due to the upcoming updates to the game’s graphical fidelity.

Unfortunately, many in the community were not happy. While some races and character archetypes seem less impacted than others, many have noted quite staggering changes to their character’s appearance.

You can read the full post here.

For better or for worse, there’s been several changes to SoD’s very tumultuous and controversial phase 3 of World of WarCraft’s Season of Discovery.

While the vocal portion of the community is very critical due to the “abuse early, abuse often” nature of the latest updates, there have definitely been some positive changes lately—some live now and some on the horizon.

Here’s a list of near-unanimous positively received changes:

– Grizzby runes are now a 3g flat rate, with no prerequisites, purchasable in Ratchet.

– Seal of Martyrdom will be over 6 times as effective as it currently is, allowing Alliance to have competitive mana management tools to Horde’s Shaman.

– (Pro AND Con): Sunken Temple was nerfed to be just right…

And then they proceeded to nerf it again, causing the endgame content for the next 2 months to be quite trivial, even in comparison to its Phase 2 counterpart, Gnomeregan.

– Countermeasures have been put into place to disincentivize griefing around Incursion portals. (Unfortunately, this largely seems like a band-aid fix, but it’s still something.)

– Mats for Crusader enchant are no longer farmable, and it is now invalidated on WCL (WarCraftLogs)

While these are certainly a step in the right direction, some of the negatives of the patch involve tons of FOMO for casual players, as “early abusers” were capable of getting tons of gold and experience from Incursions, had exclusive farms that further destroyed the market, had Shaman’s killing people just by standing still, and so on.

The reception is hit or miss, but Sunken Temple is considered the best of the leveling raids thus far.

What are your thoughts on WoW Season of Discovery Phase 3?

Check out more content and updates like this in our MMO section!

The new awaited expansion “Dawntrail” for the critically acclaimed MMORPG with a free trial up through Stormblood is just around the corner.  With it, as per tradition, a Benchmark feature has been added.

Benchmarks are important to determine if your PC is capable of running the game at decent and playable framerates, and this one is more important than ever. The latest expansion will be receiving a graphical overhaul, so expect it to be a bit more taxing for those of you running older PC’s out there.

Still, as long as your PC is less than a decade old (the game still runs on a Playstation 4), you’ll be in a solid place.

With that said, there’s been a funny easter egg in regards to the Benchmark tool that was just released.

It turns out that if you change your PC’s date back to April 1st, the default character will turn into none other than Hildebrand, Inspector extraordinaire!

We’re not sure how or why this easter egg was discovered, but props to X user @kiritannplum for this amazing discovery.

過去のベンチマークでもあったと聞いてPCの日付を4/1にしたらデフォひろしがまじでヒルディブランドになって爆笑してる
ヒルディかっけぇ…#FF14 pic.twitter.com/iyct7FSWhB

— きり梅 (@kiritannplum) April 14, 2024

If you’re looking to download the new Benchmark tool, check it out here. You can find the updated system requirements for the latest expansion here.

(You will have to scroll down for the new system requirements.)