World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery servers may have exhausted all of vanilla WoW’s original content, but that doesn’t mean the season is over. Blizzard is instead progressing past vanilla WoW’s normal endpoint and introducing new endgame content in the form of a new raid, as well as giving players the chance to wield one of WoW’s most legendary weapons–the Ashbringer.
Phase 8 of WoW Classic Season of Discovery will begin on April 8, Blizzard has announced. That will be when players will be able to explore new quest content centered around the Scarlet Crusade stronghold of New Avalon. Then, on April 10, players can venture into the new Scarlet Enclave raid, where a splinter faction of the Scarlet Crusade is seeking help to overthrow an “insidious evil” that has taken control of the stronghold.
World of Warcraft: The War Within – Launch Trailer
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The Scarlet Enclave is where Paladin, Warrior, and, yes, even Hunter players can embark on a new legendary questline to reforge one of WoW’s most iconic weapons, the holy two-handed sword Ashbringer. It will be the first time WoW Classic players will be able to get their hands on a non-corrupted version of the weapon, despite players back in the vanilla WoW days tirelessly trying to discover a way to no avail. However, players of the modern “retail” version of WoW were able to use Ashbringer as part of the game’s 2016 Legion expansion.
How, exactly, players will purify the Corrupted Ashbringer and restore it to its former glory is still under wraps, but the datamining sleuths at Wowhead have some theories. If you don’t want spoilers, stop reading now! Based on datamines, in typical WoW Classic fashion, the quest to restore Ashbringer looks like it will be a globe-trotting affair. The quest may even take players to previously unseen areas in WoW Classic like Mount Hyjal and the Well of Eternity.
Wowhead has also datamined possible bosses for the Scarlet Enclave raid, and one of them will be a very familiar face to longtime WoW players. Spoilers if you don’t want the contents of the raid revealed, but it looks like players will face off against none other than Lillian Voss. In modern WoW, Voss is a prominent undead character who first appeared in the game’s Cataclysm expansion, where she infiltrated the Scarlet Crusade in a quest of revenge against those who wronged her.
Before she was turned undead, she was a fanatical member of the Scarlet Crusade, but her exact backstory, or the manner of her death, has never been revealed. Just as was the case when players believed Season of Discovery included appearances from WoW: The War Within’s main villain Xal’atath, it looks like Blizzard is once again tying together its two eras of WoW in an exciting way.
As for the raid’s final boss, that also looks to be a familiar face–the dreadlord Balnazzar. Previously seen in the game’s Stratholme dungeon posing as a member of the Scarlet Crusade, it looks like he has now attempted a full-blown coup, and it will be up to players to dethrone him once and for all.
What will be next for WoW Classic Season of Discovery is still unknown, but Blizzard has said the experimental seasonal servers will continue to exist in some form even after new content is no longer in development. Meanwhile, WoW: The War Within just received its goblin-themed Season 2 update, as Blizzard continues to share more details on the MMORPG’s highly anticipated player housing system.