We have known for a few days already: the Season 4 World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will be released on Wednesday, August 3, 2022. If it is this last season of the extension is planned to be much shorter than the previous ones, the release of Dragonflight being planned for by the end of the year at the latest, this one is not not exempt from novelties and even… from experimentation!
In a statement published on Sunday, July 3, Scarlizard, one of the developers, spoke about some features of this new season… And in particular what is called the “catch up” mechanic, “catching up” in good French. “Good news my friends…“as that dear Putricide would say!
Experimentation on the program for the season!
Season 4 will be a very special event for both Shadowlands and the modern history of World of Warcraft as a whole. The developers have indeed chosen to opt for a version very different from what players are used to. Very focused on experimentation, this period of a few weeks will mainly aim to discover how players behave in a very unusual given environment.
This environment will mainly be the one dedicated to Mythic Mode + but also to raids. Well, once again the PvP will be forgotten a little bit but we won’t comment much more on this subject (I’m going to crack, hold me).
Kidding aside, the idea is actually quite simple”How would players behave if they were allowed to roam dungeons and raids from previous patches and/or expansions?“.”The question is quickly answered” as the other would say since Timewalking Mode gives us a good overview of this. Yes but here it is: what would happen if this system worked for all the raids of the current expansion, and that we offered the rewards intended for these dungeons and raids originally but at a level adapted to that of the current game?
Let’s do it again simpler: how players would behave if Castle Nathria offered level 304 rewards in Mythic Mode, including the Broken Heart of Al’ar ? Interesting ! But now, to offer such a system it is also necessary to add a little something to change the situation a little and not give a feeling of pure warmed up. This is where the Fateful affix comes in!
Each week, one of the three Shadowlands raids will be active, the Sanctum of Domination for example. One of the four Fate Affix sub-affixes will also be active in this raid, making every encounter with the bosses in this one more complex. In exchange, players will get rewards of a level appropriate to the current season and up to 304 item level (311 for end bosses).
On the side of the Mythical keys, we will almost completely forget all the dungeons of Shadowlands. Instead, eight dungeons from previous expansions will be reintroduced throughout the season:
- The Iron Docks
- Grimrail Depot
- Return to Karazhan (Lower)
- Return to Karazhan (Summit)
- Operation Mechagon: The Heist
- Operation Mechagon: The Workshop
- Tazavesh: The streets of wonders
- Tazavesh: So’leah’s Scheme
The rewards will be updated with an adapted item level again, and a new affix, Disguise, will appear. A fairly banal season outside of the pool of available dungeons which will be the heart of the developers’ experimentation for this feature. It will also be used in the Dragonflight extension, it’s done!
The objects obtainable in the past in the aforementioned dungeons will of course be available again, in particular certain relatively interesting jewels but also the famous duos of rings from Operation Mechagon. Their item level will be readjusted to the current season to make them interesting, of course!
The season of happiness! As long as you like raids…
Nice idea to try things out, but in the end won’t it create problems so painful that players won’t enjoy it? It is still early to think that, nevertheless it is to be expected that certain aberrations could take place in particular during the reintroduction of certain jewels or certain weapons at object levels exceeding the hearing (Rae’shalare and edge of the night we talk about you). It is also the whole point of a so-called “experimental” season to look for nonsense never to be reproduced!
However, Blizzard has already anticipated the situation well and will offer systems aimed at making it easier to catch up. Honestly, it comes once again too late in the expansion about the Cosmic flows (who will be entitled to a catch-up system, it’s official) and it becomes very redundant in the long run to make this review, but hey… At least Season 4 will feature this kind of entry mechanic.
To allow players to access weapons and jewelry, the most coveted items, of each so-called “Fateful” raid, a new currency will be implemented. Concretely, by killing bosses in Fate Raids you will complete three quests each week which will give you Enigmatic Cartel Dinars, a currency you can use to purchase these items from a new quartermaster located near the Great Vault of Oribos. Absolutely any, except Rae’shalare, Whisper of Death.
According to the aforementioned developer Scarlizard, a player who kills 10 Fateful bosses each week from the start of the season should reach their maximum quota of dinars in 4.5 to 5 weeks. Barely a month of play what!
But to allow players to take the season along the way, the developers came up with the idea of applying the Catalyst of Creation system (the thing that allows you to create your set items in Zereth Mortis). After a still undetermined period of time, the requirements will be heavily reduced for quests offering dinarsgiving everyone faster and faster access to the ultimate rewards of Fate Raids.
To entice players into these raids anyway, each Fateful boss you defeat will grant a Shard upon death that will eventually allow you to upgrade a piece of Fateful gear to a higher difficulty mode item level ( in addition to being able to obtain these parts directly from the corpse of Fateful raid bosses when defeated on the appropriate difficulty).
- I buy theold warrior soul at 285 item level with 1 Enigmatic Cartel Dinar
- I get 20 Shards on Fateful bosses in Heroic or Mythic difficulty (one per boss killed)
- I improve my old warrior soul 285 to a level 297 version (Heroic)
And that’s about it. If the system seems complex, it’s probably once again because Blizzard has chosen to introduce new currencies and sub-layers of systems that actually have nothing very complex and are almost similar to the system of Valor Points but suitable for raids.
The problem again is that it’s almost only for raids. The mythical keys remain unchanged apart from this very significant overhaul of the available dungeons, and the few interesting loots that we will find there are still very far from the behemoths available in the Fateful raids. On the PvP side, the situation is even darker: it’s a banal season with new rewards that are just as banal, a habit that we don’t even feel hurt in the long run. “Here, a new recolored skin from the PvE skin, 2-3 recolored mounts and a bigger ilvl. Hit it you’ll be happy“.
Thus, the objects obtainable in Fate Raids will be so powerful (weapons and jewelry especially) that it will probably be more essential than ever to tackle them for those who like to connect to a “properly” equipped character… A shame in a game where you howl with scandal as soon as you have to farm a little gem in PvP to “be viable” in raids (and again…).
Far be it from me to say that all objects should be made accessible to everyone. But isn’t there a fair balance to be found between this system that is offered to us and the fact of allowing everyone to access the objects of the raid without setting foot there? Perhaps it is also a deliberate bias on the part of Blizzard to gauge the reaction of the players and not to reproduce this error in later seasons. But the trend has been so the same for too long that I allow myself to strongly doubt it.
Fortunately, this season will probably only last three or four months at most, and if his stated ambition “to experiment with things” makes it possible to excuse many more aberrations than those seen in the past, it remains quite annoying to note that we always only address a part of the World of Warcraft players at a time, leaving the others on the floor (often the same ones, moreover, strangely).
Hopefully, however, the results of these full-scale tests will be promising and improve the game as a whole in the future! I’ll just note that Shadowlands will end on the same note it started: a very disturbing disinterest in PvP.
Have a good season everyone!