World of Warcraft Season of Discovery will have several content phases. The exact release date of SoD Phase 2 has now been announced.
Blizzard's Classic+ experiment, better known as Season of Discovery, seems to be a big success so far – it feels like every WoW Classic enthusiast is playing it right now, with unmistakable consequences for the population of other WoW servers, especially on Hardcore realms.
One of the key differences to the Classic Era realms is a phase-based level cap, which is level 25 in Season of Discovery Phase 1. Reaching this level actually doesn't take super long – if you know the game, the quests and are a little lucky with spawn times for certain quest mobs, you can reach it in about 15–18 hours. But even if you're new to the game, you should not need much more than 30 hours of playtime to climb up to level 25.
Once you're at Phase 1's max level, you'll probably visit the 10 people raid Blackfathom Depths for a couple of times and gear up until you'll start asking yourself what else you could do – which will eventually bring you to the question: When will Blizzard release Phase 2 of Season of Discovery? Luckily, Blizzard now finally gave us the answer!
WoW Season of Discovery Phase 2 Release Date Announced By Blizzard
Thanks to a recently published WoW Classic roadmap from Blizzard (which you'll find below these lines), we already knew SoD Phase 2 will launch in Winter 2023/24, after the WotLK Ruby Sanctum, but before the release of WoW HC Self Found. Now, Blizzard made things clear: WoW SoD Phase 2 will be released on February 8, 2024!
The announcement of Phase 2 indicates that the majority of players have overcome the challenges the game currently offers, which is The Blackfathom Depths (BFD) in particular. The raid resets every three days and isn't super hard to clear as well (the first three bosses are actually a joke even with mediocre gear), resulting in many players wearing Best in Slot (BiS) gear and demanding new content by now.
And here it is where it always gets tricky for Blizzard: Since WoW is a subscription based game, they will always try to stretch the content as much as possible, while simultaneously having to ensure that bored endgame players don't cancel their subscription.
WoW Season of Discovery Phase 2: New Features
Besides the official release date of SoD Phase 2, we also already know some details about upcoming features of Phase 2 that have been confirmed by Blizzard.
- The new level cap will be level 40
- Gnomeregan will be the next raid
- New runes and secrets will be added
- Stranglethorn Vale will become a PvP region similar to Ashenvale in Phase 1
- You can expect a faster level experience from level 1-25
And that's all you have to know about Phase 2 of Season of Discovery for now. Until it goes live, we recommend to just take your time and enjoy the fresh SoD experience. Additionally, leveling up an alt can actually be more exciting than it used to be, thanks to the new runes and secrets the world holds for you.