WoW SoD Phase 4: Nightmare Incursion Changes

Given the massive amount of changes coming to Season of Discovery Phase 4, we will take a brief moment to take a look at the updated Nightmare Incursions in World of Warcraft. Given the negative backlash from their introduction in Phase 3 of SoD, Incursions have become the bane of most of the community. 

Not only did the open-world content die out with these new zones, but also the early launch exploits led to a massive in-game gold economy inflation, fueling the fire of outrage and disappointment for the lack of testing on Blizzard's side. However, the devs recently stated that changes will be introduced to Nightmare Incursions in SoD Phase 4.

Season of Discovery Phase 4 Nightmare Incursions

As previously stated by one of the devs, there will be no new Nightmare Incursions in Phase 4. Along with this, the dev team has decided to make some much-needed changes to the current in-game system.

Missions will now be daily quests, as the difficulty of some of the mobs will be reduced to better accommodate solo players. Players will also stop receiving XP from the quests at level 53, but you will be able to turn in your dailies if you would like to increase your reputation with the Emerald Wardens. 

This is a great way of mitigating the min-max approach of grinding out missions as players did in Phase 3, but it also gives players a new activity to do should they wish to reach Exalted. 

It is great to see that Blizzard has learned from its past mistakes, given how terrible the reception was for Phase 3. In an attempt to re-ignite the passion of the community, the WoW Classic dev team has listened to the feedback from players and is looking to redeem themselves by introducing more open-world content and reduce as much as possible the grind aspects of World of Warcraft. By encouraging exploration and outdoor activities, the player base might see a resurgence of world PvP, questing, and defeating world bosses. 

Hopefully, the PTR has shown some great results both in terms of balancing and fun as well, given the experimental nature of Season of Discovery, the WoW Classic team was able to redefine the Vanilla WoW gameplay by adding exciting twists and new ways to play the game. Despite all of the negativity from the community, mocking Blizzard's attempt at cushioning players into Retail-based systems like the Nightmare Incursions in Phase 3, there is still some hope that Phase 4 will be able to deliver both in terms of content and enjoyment.