It’s no secret that the curve to get into World of Warcraft Classic has never been more mellow, with the Season of Discovery opening up doors to casual and lenient gameplay at a rate the game’s community has never seen.
But WoW enthusiasts are beginning to question just how easy the new season is, and if the line between accessibility and difficulty is as blurred as some of the game’s more avid players believe it is. In a controversial thread posted to the Classic WoW subreddit, SoD players debated just how easy the game is, especially in the context of phase two. The new Gnomeregan raid was pointed to specifically, with many players debating whether or not it was completable by a fresh level 40 character.
Despite the original poster of the thread arguing that Gnomeregan is a difficult raid that’s unclearable in green (uncommon) quality questing gear, most players in the thread fired back, agreeing that Gnomeregan was a “brainless loot simulator” that didn’t promote engagement with the raid or a focus on mechanics.
“Classic raids only work like they do because they are easy and idiots can do them without much effort,” one player named Soulus7887 said in the thread. “You’re incentivised not to be elitist by the sheer fact that if you make enough enemies then filling a 40 man roster becomes impossible. By limiting raid size … and increasing difficulty you are directly causing a breakdown in community interaction.”
Is Classic WoW actually easier than modern WoW? Where does SoD fall into that conversation?
One of the oldest arguments between WoW Classic and retail WoW players is a dissection of which version of the game is actually easier. While Classic WoW certainly requires a more sizable time investment and is definitely more difficult to level in (making the “full game” surrounding the level one to 60 experience that much tougher), the ceiling of modern WoW is far higher. This claim rings especially true when you take into account the sizable investments that organizations are making into professional teams in both the PvE and PvP sectors of retail WoW.
In almost every plausible way, playing retail WoW at the highest level is much more difficult than playing Classic to its fullest extent.
And even as you make your way down the WoW difficulty ladder, it’s easy to see that SoD is relatively easier than other versions of WoW Classic. When one considers the access to runes, epic gear, and new, unrecoverable abilities that turn your character into practical juggernauts well before they reach level 60, it’s hard to argue against the difficulty slider of SoD being set to a simpler module than Classic archetypes like the original release, or even WoW Classic Hardcore.
Still, that’s not to say that Blizzard hasn’t taken the relative overinflation of your characters into account when balancing the Season of Discovery. Leveling feels natural as ever, and each phase of the endgame is still relatively challenging to progress through—so long as you’re in the midst of a gear grind. It shouldn’t be surprising that the flat endgame gets easier once your character’s gear gets better.
“Vanilla WoW was made for casual players from the ground up,” another player on the Reddit thread said. “…A diminishing minority of players back then even had the opportunity to complete raids. Now the general opinion seems that every raid should be accessible to anyone in any comp in a reasonable time frame.”
Leveling in SoD is faster than normal, but how does it translate into each level band’s endgame?
For many players, the treacherous wall of 60 levels to climb before you can even experience the endgame of WoW was a looming presence that deterred countless people away from the game in both 2004 and during its revival in the 2020s. In SoD, though, the introduction of level bands has made navigating the questing process inarguably easier and less-pressure-filled. Now, even the most casual of players don’t have to invest days worth of playing time before they can even sniff their first raid.
Season of Discovery does manage to strike a balance between casual WoW fans and the Hardcore enthusiasts. And recently, the introduction of the Discoverer’s Delight double experience buff has made it even easier for players to get to level 40 and try out the Gnomeregan raid for themselves.
In the coming weeks, the flurry of players who will reach level 40 at an expedited rate should fuel the debate regarding players’ ability to navigate the phase two endgame raid in gear that they earned straight out of questing zones. Even with that in mind, though, we’ll always recommend spending at least a few hours doing some Scarlet Monastery runs and gearing up before trying to tackle Gnomeregan.
