TLDR: Calling power curve resets “Seasons” is creatively lazy and negatively contributes to the player experience.
Stop calling them Seasons. It takes away from the RPG spirit of the game and demeans it into a points-and-rewards-based statistical experience. The long term result of this is behavioral hyperfixation on completionism for individual “Seasonal” blocks and a resulting player exhaustion when it comes to subsequent “Seasons.” By making no effort to hide Seasonality, the entirety of the Seasonal power curve reset is laid bare and exposed. The fantasy of the game falls away and it becomes more and more of an “esport mmo.” This is not a call to remove remarketing and power curves–it’s about maintaining integrity of the game experience through creative narrative framing.
Numbering seasons creates a psychological unit of time and potential that contributes to behavioral obsession similar with how slots machines create short-term incentives and completionist goals to get players to continue gaming.
Seasonality creates a seemingly-never-ending cadence that reinforces player disinterest. We saw this with Diablo III, in which returning to play on any given season (“Season 63”, etc) does not create a sense of permanence with your characters, because you are simply on Season 63 of XXX. Additionally, missing out on progression is normal in a game or expansion, but missing out on a Season is a statistical value that is permanent and creates an accumulation of loss that can never be regained. This is both depressing and creates a sense of futility. Why come back to play Diablo III at Season 63 when you missed Season 3-62? If those were meaningful times to play the game, why is the Season count so high, and what changes from Season to Season to begin with if the game is already inherently balanced and ready to play? Additionally, now if you play at Season 63, who knows how many Seasons will continue on after this? The instinct will be to play the game and complete it according to my desire, but the numerical segmentation reinforces not the accomplishments, but rather, the lack thereof.
Creating units of time is also psychologically exploitative. It’s clear that with each season there is a cadence of power growth, but with the beginning of each season there will be an expected catch-up mechanic, which is obvious as the Seasons primarily serve as units of time in which the game can re-market itself to potentially new or returning cohorts of players. This results in the expectation that the power one gains during a season will necessarily be made weakened, and the effort in gaining that power made irrelevant. This further contributes to a compounding cycle of Seasonal hype-and-exhaustion. Normally such a cycle would be limited to an expansion itself.
At the end of the day, it is clear that “Seasons” is some artifact from the e-sports scene, and it is not fair to force that mentality on WoW players. Constantly pushing players to complete goals, finish long grinds, get unique rewards, and experience new dynamic power re-tunings, only to have it all done over again. And again. And again. And who knows how many times? Having “Season X” plastered in the game is an artifact of real-world monetization that comes screaming in. It is uncalled for and does not belong in the game.
The same essence of Seasonality can be achieved simply with creative branding–hiding the Seasonal reset and marketing tactics under a specific name, as is usually done with patches in games:
“The Discovery of Donegal”
“The Nerubian Queen”
And so on.
We already know Blizzard, through Activision, has to casino-ify the game. The least you can do for the playerbase is to get creative and hide it, to allow the players their escapism, while still achieving their own corporate goals.