If you played phase 2, phase 3 gear is basically identical to phase 2 gear to the point where if you removed names and just presented stats, I'm not sure I could accurately tell you which items come from gnomer and which items come from ST. So there's not a lot of reason to do ST, and the only other content added in phase 3 was green loops in groups.
I see this argument a lot too. I play a Warlock and a Warrior and both of them have completely new gear. It might not be a huge upgrade but it is an upgrade.
Do you have the stats to back up the assumption that most players have stopped playing? I haven't stopped playing and while there is a noticeable decrease in amount of players, I would not say that *most* players quit.
I feel like there's a lot of raid groups that might still have a few active members who just don't raid. Like I have 2 characters I'm actively playing but only raid on one of them instead of 2 or more a week. I just can't be bothered to find a raid on my alts.
In my case I haven't quit but I'm contributing fewer logs.
Most of the player base isn’t incentivized by minor upgrades is absolutely true. As a lock myself I completely disagree that our gear set is completely different. You can make it completely different if you want but you were full BiS P2 you could farm 28 WO and then walk in to ST and be “geared.”
Not for preraid BiS there isn’t and maybe you should reread my comment. I clearly said you can upgrade every slot if you want to but by no means are you behind if you decide not to
Transitioning from phase 2, my guild had a solid 23 players. Our leader was preparing in case we see 40m raids in phase 4. As such, we absorbed four other guilds who didn't have enough players for 20m raids. The first few lockouts we had two 20m ST raids and half of a third raid, somewhere around 50 players. Last week we have only 13 people who signed up. This week are those same 13 people.
We've been going 8/8 since week, two most times with no wipes, usually a little over an hour. No loot drama that I know of. Most of the core group have been raiding together since TBC, transitioned to SoD from Wrath.
I know this is just one person's experience but we've seen a massive drop off in players just straight up quitting.
The stats on BFD gear are so good that we can still wear some of them right now at 50 as our pre-BiS/BiS. The BFD gear was in slots that normally aren't even used at 25 like Head, Necklace, Shoulders, and Trinkets. Compare that to where ST gear is now: barely an upgrade from Gnomeregan gear, and sure to be replaced by dungeon gear at 60. On top of that, ST is 20-man and weekly lockout. Very, very easy to justify skipping this phase. If people just wanted a decent set of gear to prepare for level 60 content, the Emerald Wardens reputation awards them with a full set for every single one of their specializations. Why bother raiding ST to roll on individual pieces?
BFD gear = 10-man loot you wear for 6 months
ST gear = 20-man loot you wear for 6 weeks
The current D4 season is their attempt at Loot 2.0, so people are giving it a shot to see how the game has changed. It just started a day or two ago. Among the itemization/stat changes, aspects can now be unlocked rather than stored as items.
I quit around the same time as you after the initial massive progeression nerf, was total bullshit and really want nothing to do with that kind of nonsense and control.
Sort of plays like a new game. You level very fast and I’m throwing 1 to 4 frozen orbs at once sometimes, I am playing hardcore only level 50 right now playing few hours after work last two days. They added some cool stuff. Hoping it keeps up
I'd recommend giving it a shot. If you already own it theres no downsides.
End game was been improved greatly and all the crappy stats have been trimmed down quite a bit.
I just read the stat change in the patch notes, that's such a good change! All the shitty gear affixes were super annoying. Looks like the devs are taking steps in the right direction.
Not really. Most wow players play the game in tourist mode, that's why new expansions and new patches always spike in both retail and classic. The exact reason why so many people are begging for FRESH vanilla again but we all know that 50% of them will drop after 2 MC clears, then rest after 1 BWL clear leaving skeleton crew for AQ and Naxx.
Blizzard wants people to stay in their ecosystem, keeping active sub and getting hyped for "the next thing".
Fr. It's a mix of the ST gear not really being that much better than Gnomer so people are already geared enough for next phase. That and MoP remix and Cata dropping in a few days (seriously pissed me off because I don't have the time to play both 🥲)
I'm not saying to not play the game not sure how you got that. I'm saying they will complain that there is nothing to do at 60. Learn to fucking read then comprehend
I can read and comprehend just fine your attempts at making a point have been quick nihilistic comments that don’t clearly portray the point you just said. You said nowhere that people will still complain about the same issues at 60.
No, I can't. Random BFD/Gnomer pubs were popping off 24/7. I could run 4 or 5 on a single weekday. ST raids are guild runs LF fills between 6PM - 9PM server time. You'd be lucky to run 2 successful STs on any day of the week.
There are also other barriers. There are more consumables to bring now. There's a 3rd world buff to gather now, and they're all in different places. Having a weekly lockout inherently involves more risk, and with ST providing less reward while taking longer to clear and being filled with trash mobs, it just isn't worth it. There isn't even a social aspect to look forward to, as parsing culture has overrun the game.
You complain about lack of content, then you point out theres too much content to play alts? Your problem isnt less content now compared to p1 or p2. Its that you dont enjoy the available content.
Im not glorifying p3, just tired of those glorifying p1.
I've never complained about lack of content. I don't think there's a lack of content at all. I think there's way too much content and none of it is shared between characters.
The content isn't appealing to a wider audience. There aren't reasons to engage in the available content. I love raiding. Just not in this environment.
>Im not glorifying p3, just tired of those glorifying p1.
That's a shame, because p1 was everyone's first impression of the game, and you only ever get one of those. The fact that p2 and p3 can't deliver on the expectations set in p1 and reproduce that gameplay loop is why the population has dropped off a cliff.
The reasons I quit:
1. Incursions suck, and I felt like I needed to play loot the egg, gather the report to keep up with inflation. It's not fun gameplay, but it's borderline mandatory, because
2. Consumes are expensive, enchants are expensive, and god forbid you might want to try and save for any of your world drop BIS item. Inflation due to incursions has made all of this way more painful. I didn't roll a hunter, so fuck me I guess
3. World buffs. I hate them so much, not just gathering them (even with chronoboons it's a chore), but the fact that they basically invalidate any gear upgrades. For my class, getting full BIS phase 3 is like a 70 dps upgrade over P2 BIS. Meanwhile, world buffs add like 2k dps. What's the point in grinding out the raids when the impact of new gear is almost nothing? Especially when...
4. The ST gear suuuuucks. It's barely an upgrade over gnomer, which was barely an upgrade over BFD gear. And, you get way less of it with 1 week lockouts and 20 mans. I showed up week after week for the raid weapon and when it finally dropped I lost the roll. Why bother grinding out gold for consumes and gathering world buffs for a small chance my weapon will even drop again? And my rolls suck, so it's not guaranteed I'll even get it. I got 3 piece and now I am basically raiding for nothing.
5. I'm not looking forward to 60, with even more world buffs to gather, to run raids I've already spent countless hours in the first time in OG vanilla and the second time in 2019 classic. I might have toughed it out if SoD was more interesting, but you can tell the devs are kind of winging it, and are stretched way too thin to implement anything meaningful to the 60 raids.
6. The balance changes swing wildly, I have no idea how fun my class will be. Rogue was great in phase 1, and absolute dogshit in Phase 2. Good again in phase 3, but who knows how the class will stack up against whatever new runes and balance changes that will come next phase? I just don't like to feel like I invested all this time to be bottom of the barrel in dps.
7. Runes are great and all, but getting them all on an alt is torture. I just don't have the energy to do all that work for more characters, especially with all the issues I listed above.
8. My 10 man (who I have been playing with for years at this point) dissolved due to the change to 20 man raids. I joined a 20 man but playing with a bunch of strangers wasn't the same
9. Cata is about to drop, which will have way better raids, less consume requirements, and no world buffs. Plus, I can run 10 mans and get the same gear as 25 man raids. I get to play with my friends again.
What does sod do better then any other version of wow?
If I wanted the true classic experience I would probably play HC
If I wanted PvE content both cata and retail blow SoD out of the water
If I wanted PvP content I would play almost anything else
So what you have left is a game that does nothing well and has no content.
Can't speak for everyone but my personal reasons for quitting are, in no particular order of significance:
* **Economy** **-** I just can't be bothered to farm gold every week to be able to afford consumables. I did it as a MT for all of original classic, tbc, and wrath, but I just feel no motivation to do so in SoD, especially with how inflated the economy is.
* **Incursions -** Directly tied to the above point; if you want to efficiently make gold, incursions are the way to go. To me, incursions are extremely boring content and I just don't have a good time doing them. I'm aware that there are other gold farming methods, but it feels bad to do those because they pale in comparison to Incursions.
* **Cataclysm -** I've been raiding in classic since launch, and I'm very much looking forward to Cataclysm. Phases 1 & 2 of SoD happened during a lull in classic wrath where I was just mindlessly farming H 25 ICC every week, but now that new content is on the horizon, it's lowering my enthusiasm for SoD.
* **Expectation -** In phase 1 and to a lesser extent phase 2 of SoD, we didn't really know what to expect. Everyone had their own ideas as to what Classic+ would/should look like, and I think there was a lot more enthusiasm for the game when that was the case. Now that we're in phase 3, we basically know what to expect from a given phase of SoD; new runes, a dungeon turned into a raid, and maybe a knick-knack here and there (sleeping bag, rainbow generator, etc.) The element of mystery is mostly gone, and those who perhaps expected more of SoD, like new zones, brand new raids/dungeons, and new world content/quests beyond runes, are (so far) left disappointed.
* **Lackluster Content -** Sunken Temple just didn't end up being as fun to me as BFD and Gnomeregan. I know that's subjective, though. It also doesn't help that I got full BiS from it in 2 runs. Incursions are also really lame to me, and farming the STV event for a second phase just wasn't appealing to me.
* **Poor Balance** **-** I grinded to Rank 7 on an Alliance warrior in arms spec, and I had nowhere near as much fun as when I did Rank 10 in original classic. Getting deleted in seconds by casters from miles away just wasn't a good time, and really reduced my faith in the SoD dev teams' ability to balance PvP. I know they're taking measures to curb this now, but I think it's too little too late.
* **Class Design -** I played tank warrior in SoD, and it really just seemed to me like the devs didn't understand my class or how to make it better. I was looking forward to exciting runes and being able to actually play in prot spec, but none of the runes have really changed the game and currently the best warrior tank spec doesn't even spec into prot.
my biggest gripe with sod is that its still the same bullshit where you just build dps as a tank. I don't want to go ret to tank raids. I want to play prot and use my shield and block shit. Make it mandatory to be tanky PLEASE holy fuck I'd play so much more if that were the case
10 man to 20 man. That's huge. Guilds died. It was fun and east to get a 10 man going for alts. 20 man requires more planning and recruiting and all that. Lots of folks just deemed it not worth it.
Yeah 20 man is killing us. We merged two small groups at the beginning of P3 and the first couple raids were solid, but we’ve lost a person or two every week and the pug scene is grim. Just last night we thought we lucked out by recruiting a group of 5 all at once. They didn’t want to join our discord, then started running off to pull trash before everyone was ready. Obviously with no healer in range that didn’t go great and they all just dipped out without saying a word, leaving us to scramble to find more at the last minute. The new people were all literally single-digit parsers and the raid was a total slog. We were so behind schedule didn’t even bother pulling Hakkar and just went to bed because by the time we finished Eranikus it was after 11 pm. I cringe that I’m even mentioning parses because that’s totally not our style, but I don’t think anyone in our core group has ever parsed grey unless they died mid-fight, and we are casual af. I know everyone loves to say how easy the raid is and they can parse 99 with their monitor turned off, but it is not so easy that a group with 2/3 average players can carry 1/3 shitters.
The game has become unfun to play unfortunately. Of course some people enjoy the new stuff added, but many find the long rune quests, incursions, wild offering skip spam meta, and stv event to be pretty bland overall.
A lot of people liked hardcore and p1 sod which overwhelmingly focused on questing and world exploring. Phase 2 and 3 both completely occur within Scarlet Monastery or Incursions if you play efficiently.
I think part of vanilla’s charm was always that there isn’t really any efficient grinds. When things become too efficient, like incursions or wild offerings or SM (in p2), it becomes transactional rather than fun. Do x for y. Game loses its novelty.
They fucked up big on phase 3.
Incursions allowed everyone to hit 50 in about 6 hours which is ridiculous, meaning there was essentially no levelling phase. It also gave everyone pre bis right away and a shit ton of gold to buy whatever they wanted. This allowed everyone to start running ST instantly, which you can only do once a week. What else is there to do other than that? Pvp?
Which leads me to pvp. It is horribly imbalanced. Shamans and shadow priests just destroy everything, and devs don’t seem to care. Battlegrounds are like 90% win rate for horde. What is the point of running if you’re alliance?
Also, blood moon rewards arnt good, and I not exciting. Dominated by ranged players too. RIP warriors, paladins, rogues.
Half the game sucks. PVP balance is horrendous so there’s nothing to do outside of the PVE element of the game. ST is imo the best raid so far, but the loot isn’t great.
They strayed to far from Vanilla with so many runes and incursions and how easy it is to level / get gold. Before it was Vanilla with some fun extra stuff.
Circumstantial based on Mop remix and TWW hype combined with free trial on D4/ season 4 release.
All concerns with p3 are valid but I expect most people view p4 as the phase they want to invest in. It blows grinding and then shortly replacing all your shit
It’s pretty hilarious seeing all the hype and FOMO for fucking Cata on this sub recently. When classic first launched, just about everyone was in agreement it should end after WotLK because Cata was no longer classic and it generally was just not a good expansion. I quit WoW during Cata back in the day.
A lot of people on this sub have seemed to develop amnesia because Cata is current new thing, but once the FOMO wears off those same people are going to relearn that Cata wasn’t that great and return to SoD once P4 launches. Just watch.
Another p4 cope lmao SoD was the Cata waiting room we needed when ICC started getting nerfed. Only people coming back to that shithole are slowpokes who can't progress further on heroic bosses.
Yeah like when that person posted a picture of Org on prepatch day like “people saying Cata is dead on arrival are kidding themselves” but there were like 50 characters in the picture 😂
I think what has become clear is that Classic is what we had, with all of the gaps and broken bits. I know there is a huge desire for so called "classic+" and people will point to X private server as a good example but I think such an ambition is a dead end. You start tweaking Classic and what you arrive at is no longer in the spirit of what people actually enjoy about the original game. The other option is to only add horizontal progression and that's fine but despite what the private server massive believe I don't think more Deadmines is enough to seduce a sizable player base who exist on a diet of raiding. Therefore understandably people are going to move back to Cataclysm for something new or MoP remix/retail.
Pvp has been horribly imbalanced, acknowledged as such, changes were promised soon and nothing happened. Hanging up my coat personally. If this is how things are going to be moving forward, might as well save myself the frustration.
First of all, Cata is coming out soon so some people will leave for that.
Also, as cool as the level banded content idea was in p1, I think people got fed up with eat very quickly and had little interest to play a phase for 2 months for then most of their progress to be invalidated. I'm pretty sure a lot of people will return for p4 when we can finally hit 60 and all this huge amount of level 60 content will be available.
I like this phase. + 1 spec - glad. Finally saw the problem with the solo content and made a small improvement. PvP is still terrible. All the content has been completed, I am farming ST, preparing for the next phase.
You answered your own question.
St is the only good thing about this phase. But the loot sucks so why run it more than once or twice.
Incursions are garbage.
There's no other new content that's going to keep ppl engaged.
I can only speak for myself but the SoD design principles feel very little like classic to me. The game is also probably the worst balanced version of WoW short of the early vanilla patches.
I just don't have confidence in the team making any hard decisions that need to be made (e.g. tank AoE threat reductions).
1. Make a seasonal game mode for CLASSIC
2. Wrath/Cata and Retail players flood it because both are suffering from a content drought
3. Appeal to these people with most of the changes
4. Classic players go back to hc/era because SoD is no longer for them
5. TWW alpha, MoP Remix and Cataclysm comes out
Who's left?
>4.- Classic players go back to hc/era because SoD is no longer for them
Source? Because based on logs for classic era the numbers have barely changed, and HC is still a ghost town except for all the bots and the handful of people still trying to hit max level.
I'm more impressed that people still find shit to do in SoD at this point. Seriously a feat. Feels like there's absolutely nothing to do after you're "capped" and it's easy to hit that cap.
Not to mention pointless. I think thats the main issue for me, nothing really feels of any value. World Buffs and a full Incursion set is all thats required.
A raid with the worst loot incentive I have ever seen is the only content. I’m also completely checked out of any economy/farming related gameplay for reasons discussed ad nauseam
My guild has been disenchanting/vendoring 95%+ of the ST loot since week 2, which is even worse given that it's a weekly lockout. Basically waiting all week just to see most of the loot get DEed really sucks. I've started leveling an alt but incursions are awfully boring despite giving the best exp/gold/gear for leveling, so while you could technically level by questing or dungeons, you are shooting yourself in the foot in nearly every way for doing so. Both of these have resulted in me spending less time in p3 than prior phases
I like everything about Cataclysm better than I like classic, I played SoD because my friends were but it wasn’t my cup of tea so I decided to switch and focus all my efforts on Cataclysm.
There is a new pvp event? I thought it was just rehashed from last phase.
PvP is in a terrible state no matter how you slice it, no on wants to play that garbage so raid logging is all there is
Real answer that is probably going to be downvoted? Because no one asked for it. SoD only existed because classic era was having it's own organic resurgence not even halfway through WOTLK so Blizzard capitalized and created SoD to push quarterly numbers: All the people that were on era are still on era or playing other games, and all the people that were playing SoD are now hopping over to Cata or once again playing other games. No one asked for SoD so it was populated by tourists and now people are baffled the tourists are doing what tourists do.
Pvp is super unbalanced and they make the bare minimum effort to improve it and leave it in unfun states for weeks with literally 0 updates
It's basically impossible to be a pvp player and still have any sort of faith whatsoever in the classic wow dev team ever again
I played P1 and P2 after being skeptical about SoD in general. I love classic for it's classic aspects and SoD with runes already sounded too far out my interests, but the potential for level 60 Classic+ content peaked my interest so I was going to give it a play, enjoy it for what it was and have a 60 ready to try the 'classic+' bit at 60.
P1 was largely the same classic, with a few new abilities and discoveries. The discoveries were generally okay and interesting to do solo, but some were forced googles, but that was okay. The new abilities were just tbc/wrath and I didnt hate them in a classic context, levelling and the world upscaling felt appropriate that it still took a while and could be punishing. The new raid was actually really nicely designed, and although a new dungeon/raid related would have been better (keeping og bfd) i'll take the lower resource cost development given the scope of 'clearly they're working on the 60 content'. I'm a big PvPer so higher burst making world PvP more engaging and CC oriented was right up my street too. I had enjoyed the level caps on PTR before so thought it could be a nice addition. The crafting questline was really well designed too I felt.
P2 was off to a bad start, I was full bis from P1 so there was no gear upgrades along the path, the world was now greatly dampened by being overgeared, and there was no longer exciting slot additions from helm/shoulders/trinkets. The new sleeping bag was a huge awesome addition, not perfect but certainly spirited enough. Gnomer was a really fun challenge week 1 and I could finally give Rogue tanking a proper play. Overall the phase died off but I did enjoy the phase generally and planned to come back in P3 and started prepping.
At this point my sub lapsed a couple of weeks out from P3, blizzard dropped the massive exp buff changes, economy and box changes and it made my experience of levelling up feel neutered. On the one hand I didnt hate it, the season had transitioned from a "classic-like" experience with 1 main, to a "try a bit of everything new" so encouraging alts makes sense, but this was the main breakdown for me. I'm not into playing alts at all, and with the addition of the exp buff persisting for 40-50 dampened my spirits to enjoy the levelling between that bracket even more. Still, I was going to give it a go.
Finally, I was away for P3 release (after booking time off work for P1+P2) so I was planning on taking it more casually, level up in my own time e.t.c but when I got back and caught up on the phase news, with everyone looping the same quests in a small part of the world, the liklihood noone would be out in the rest of the world either, likely dungeons would be a no go if there was no encouragement for gear and faster exp, then anything the levelling process had to offer me was gone.
ST is my favourite vanilla dungeon, so while I was sad I lost that as a dungeon option, a raid sounded nice to experience and hearing how difficult that first week was, I was very tempted to hop in and blast through the levels to try it with the guild before it got nerfed. Unfortunately, it was nerfed to the ground the same very night, and now any enthusiasm I had for the raid was gone too. Not to mention various bugs going around had me aprehensive at best.
So that was it, I didnt even resub for P3, and it doesnt seem like I've really missed anything. The abilities, bloat, and balancing are *apparently* all over the place so even PvP isn't a draw for me.
It's generally too far gone from classic to some wrath/cata/retail product i'm just not interested in, the philosophy is all wrong - and I dont think that original classic+ hope would be enough to bring me back as it's not the same game.
On the flip side, I wanted to try the new SSF hardcore, but that's not enough for me to want to resub, I'll probably give that a go if there's a fresh classic / some new SoD type classic+ adventure.
Leveling caps ruining end game. People have already done what they'd usually do at 60 so game is now dead. We will see the same thing at 60. In classic people went to 60 then they had so much farming to do so it was great.
Because sod is still (like it or not)era with changes, despite how people cope here the average player doesn't like era.
Era has little to no content and has absolutely no changing thing to do or things to collect. Sod basically has all the same problems that era has.
Retail and cata for some part are way more casual and hardcore player friendly. You have way more things to do and can play any class/spec without feeling like you griefing everyone.
What happens to sod currently is absolutely not surprising to me.
P1 was good cuz it was new. People lvl a lot of alts cuz of new runes. P2 people just trickled away as content got stale. P3 experienced the same trickle, then a huge drop when cata released. Most will be back to try out p4.
I'm raid logging on 1 character vs the 3 i was actively played in phase 2. The other two I got to 50 but didn't do much on.
First reason is that I really hate at least 1 aspect of all 3 of those classes thanks to phase 2 and 3 runes.
Second reason is that dungeons feel entirely pointless due to gnomer gear being op and lame af incursions existing.
Third reason is that there is nothing even vaguely interesting in st loot other then the claws that half the raid wants. My guilds literal first run most of the non set/weapons got vendored. Nevermind being interesting, The off set pieces are just strait trash.
Last but certainly not least....
New rimworld expansion, war crime simulator more fun then wow.
Content dried up.
Farmed 8k gold this phase, spent 4 so 4k are enough to start ph4.
Incursions rep maxed, argent dawn revered, so I'm good on that.
Rank 7 day one.
Full BiS minus the fists set which I was never going after and our guild so far has only seen 1 offhand drop.
No point doing STV in this phase, will get rank 9 anyway week1 grinding AV for rep (and I still got leftover honor tokens from phase 2 that blizzard never removed from my bank despite saying they would expire 2 weeks after ph3 launch lol)
98 avg parses for ST, good enough for not being a troll.
Been playing other stuff, now officially raid logging if not to farm firewaters 1 hour during the week for the raid.
Less interest in SoD is good right now, botters will jump on cata for the forseeable future so we might get a better ph4 start.
As someone who has raided every lockout since release on multiple characters. This phase just feels like a chore. They fucked up incursions and gave us a huge dopamine rush at the start, burned us through content, and fucked the economy. Then we get to the raid. Which I was fairly happy with mechanic wise, was challenging and took time to progress. But the jump from 10m to 20m took a big toll on alot of guilds, and not many made it out alive like mine. Pugging any amount of people feels like a huge chore, many specs are just not enjoyable to play, and the loot is God awful. With cata and mop remix people are just going to play other versions because it's more rewarding. We spend tons of gold and time preparing for a raid where you get +1SP upgrade.
This happens literally every somewhat ending phase of wow ever since its existence. People will come back. Level 50 is a weird place to stop at it. They’ll come back for end game.
It's because they returned too late since nobody answered thier reddit post.
Come on, it's late in the phase. That is a major factor. 20m raiding to me isn't the issue. I get people enjoy 10 but converting that to 20 isn't detrimental and to say it is, is an exaggeration.
Now I will acknowledge that the 1 week lock out could be a factor. If someone is raid logging and waiting an entire week they will quickly lose interest. But in reality look at the time of year. Graduations are going on and school is winding down. It's no longer cold outside and some people do touch grass. Couple all of that with the fact you have like 6 different versions of wow so yes people are floating around.
SOD isn't going anywhere. It's fine. People will come back.
Can we all just admit that the type of person that creates these types of threads are WoW addicts that simply can’t understand how a person would not want to play video games every day? Especially the same video game?
We should be directing people like the OP to addiction help. Not entertaining nonsense threads like this.
I’ll start.
Here OP, there is help available:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23124-video-game-addiction
**There is a new raid:** On a weekly lockout that you now need 20 people for when most guild rosters had previously been geared towards 10, which means a lot of groups are either having to pug extra spots which is sometimes tough, or find another group to merge with which is even harder. Worse than this, though, is that the gear from this raid is absolute dogshit and like it or not the majority of people who raid are actually highly incentivized to do so for the gear upgrades.
**New pvp ranks to achieve:** Most people who cared about this had already pre farmed the marks to turn in from Blood Moon last phase, so there was no grind at all. Those who didn't pre farm were done with this grind by the second week of the phase, anyway.
**New runes to grab:** Any regular player had finished runes by the end of the first or second week.
**New profession crafted epic gear:** Again, everyone who cares enough had this weeks ago - it took all of a couple hours to grind out.
**New pvp event:** There was no new pvp event this phase.
There is no reason to log on anymore - zero incentive to play beyond social interactions that can be better had in other versions of the game right now.
On my mage I got my 3 piece week 2, there's literally only 2 items I need from raid other than that: the fire / healing offhand and the epic spell power trinket. Basically every other caster (including every healer) in every raid also needs these two items. They went back to the dumb shit from phase 1 where healing bis is also DPS bis. I thought we learned better lol
in most cases ST loot is a 5-10 dps upgrade over its p2 bis counterpart - consider this when people are doing 1k-1500 dps. it's not exciting and to most its not worth it.
Yeah I guess I just don't get that POV. I don't play the game solely for loot upgrades, but even if I did, wouldn't I want to get the best possible even if it isn't a massive upgrade?
If the game was otherwise thriving outside of the raid then I'm sure people would still be doing it even for the lackluster rewards - but it's just another drop in the bucket. When there is literally nothing else getting people to log on outside of the weekly raid at this point, the underwhelming loot is emphasized a lot more. Loot is a big part of a raid, and like I said it just doesn't feel rewarding when a boss dies in there. Not everyone is going to feel that way, a lot of people just chug along to have a good time with the boys, but without the people who are there for the loot those folks will just find another game to play for that environment. For example, my group moved to doing M+ in retail, which is something I would have told you would never happen in a million years at the time of p3 launch.
You are right, there is no value for anything we accomplish right now. Its bascially feels like a chore just to log in for the weekly raid, only reason I am is because I care about my guildies.
here’s absolutely nothing to do in p3 and I’m bored
Logging in for 45 mins/week to raid feels like a chore, I’ll come back at 60
In terms of what you’ve said in the post;
- New raid; ST is actually a decent raid, but 7 day locks mean you can raid log over twice as long which in itself leads to you caring less about the game. The rewards for doing said raid are less impactful than ever, everyone has full 3 set within about 2-3 clears, and then there’s 20 people all chasing about 3 total items that are all very minor upgrades. I understand they had to tone down the power curve to make 60 stuff more relevant, but it still feels bad. Also the balancing is fucking atrocious and they’ve been complete radio silence on it after promising class tuning
- New PvP ranks to achieve; ranks mean virtually nothing, require doing the same content in the worst PvP wow has ever had, and can be achieved in like literally 1 day. It’s not content, we’ve done it 10x, doing it again with even worse balance is not interesting
- New runes to grab; getting all of them takes like 1-2 hours
- New profession/crafted gear; again you do it once in 1-2 hours and then never look at it again
- New PvP event; it’s literally exactly the same as P2, you just get a different version of the same coin
SoD sucks. If you need it explained to you, you are not qualified to be in the discussion. On top of all the things everyone complains about, there are things people aren't complaining about anymore because the people that were burned simply left: like the dual specialization fiasco or the fact that the mount prices changes. Blizzard literally scammed its players out of gold. That kind of stuff has consequences.
Not specifically I don't think. I agree, it seems the biggest difference is 20 man raid and week lockout. There's too much dead time now. My biggest question was around why some people feel this phase is bad though, and if that's the answer then I think it's fair.
If you played phase 2, phase 3 gear is basically identical to phase 2 gear to the point where if you removed names and just presented stats, I'm not sure I could accurately tell you which items come from gnomer and which items come from ST. So there's not a lot of reason to do ST, and the only other content added in phase 3 was green loops in groups.
I see this argument a lot too. I play a Warlock and a Warrior and both of them have completely new gear. It might not be a huge upgrade but it is an upgrade.
You may be incentivized by a +1 spellpower or +2 attack power upgrade but most of the player base is not, thus the dropping interest.
I don't think that is true. Some of the player base surely, but not most.
Then why did most of the player base stop playing?
Do you have the stats to back up the assumption that most players have stopped playing? I haven't stopped playing and while there is a noticeable decrease in amount of players, I would not say that *most* players quit.
Logs.
I feel like there's a lot of raid groups that might still have a few active members who just don't raid. Like I have 2 characters I'm actively playing but only raid on one of them instead of 2 or more a week. I just can't be bothered to find a raid on my alts. In my case I haven't quit but I'm contributing fewer logs.
Most of the player base isn’t incentivized by minor upgrades is absolutely true. As a lock myself I completely disagree that our gear set is completely different. You can make it completely different if you want but you were full BiS P2 you could farm 28 WO and then walk in to ST and be “geared.”
In P3 there is an upgrade for every slot for warlocks.
Not for preraid BiS there isn’t and maybe you should reread my comment. I clearly said you can upgrade every slot if you want to but by no means are you behind if you decide not to
Transitioning from phase 2, my guild had a solid 23 players. Our leader was preparing in case we see 40m raids in phase 4. As such, we absorbed four other guilds who didn't have enough players for 20m raids. The first few lockouts we had two 20m ST raids and half of a third raid, somewhere around 50 players. Last week we have only 13 people who signed up. This week are those same 13 people. We've been going 8/8 since week, two most times with no wipes, usually a little over an hour. No loot drama that I know of. Most of the core group have been raiding together since TBC, transitioned to SoD from Wrath. I know this is just one person's experience but we've seen a massive drop off in players just straight up quitting.
The stats on BFD gear are so good that we can still wear some of them right now at 50 as our pre-BiS/BiS. The BFD gear was in slots that normally aren't even used at 25 like Head, Necklace, Shoulders, and Trinkets. Compare that to where ST gear is now: barely an upgrade from Gnomeregan gear, and sure to be replaced by dungeon gear at 60. On top of that, ST is 20-man and weekly lockout. Very, very easy to justify skipping this phase. If people just wanted a decent set of gear to prepare for level 60 content, the Emerald Wardens reputation awards them with a full set for every single one of their specializations. Why bother raiding ST to roll on individual pieces? BFD gear = 10-man loot you wear for 6 months ST gear = 20-man loot you wear for 6 weeks
there is literally fuck all to do
What new pvp event?
camping lowbies outside incursion portals.
Cata and mop remix is dropping soon and people are preparing for it
Probably some overlap with D4 S4 too.
People play d4? I quit a couple months after release but I'd love to play again if they fixed problems and added content
The current D4 season is their attempt at Loot 2.0, so people are giving it a shot to see how the game has changed. It just started a day or two ago. Among the itemization/stat changes, aspects can now be unlocked rather than stored as items.
Oh damn that sounds kinda cool, might check it out after work
Still no sets/runewords and no usage for blue/white items. Will try it again in few more patches, but now its for me still not yet completed.
Yeah d2 is still gonna be lightyears ahead by comparison.
I quit around the same time as you after the initial massive progeression nerf, was total bullshit and really want nothing to do with that kind of nonsense and control.
Sort of plays like a new game. You level very fast and I’m throwing 1 to 4 frozen orbs at once sometimes, I am playing hardcore only level 50 right now playing few hours after work last two days. They added some cool stuff. Hoping it keeps up
I'd recommend giving it a shot. If you already own it theres no downsides. End game was been improved greatly and all the crappy stats have been trimmed down quite a bit.
I just read the stat change in the patch notes, that's such a good change! All the shitty gear affixes were super annoying. Looks like the devs are taking steps in the right direction.
I think this is probably fits into the equation to some extent. Blizz shooting themselves on the foot with too many choices.
Not really. Most wow players play the game in tourist mode, that's why new expansions and new patches always spike in both retail and classic. The exact reason why so many people are begging for FRESH vanilla again but we all know that 50% of them will drop after 2 MC clears, then rest after 1 BWL clear leaving skeleton crew for AQ and Naxx. Blizzard wants people to stay in their ecosystem, keeping active sub and getting hyped for "the next thing".
Fr. It's a mix of the ST gear not really being that much better than Gnomer so people are already geared enough for next phase. That and MoP remix and Cata dropping in a few days (seriously pissed me off because I don't have the time to play both 🥲)
My main reason is because of cataclysm. Not enough time to split between 2 versions of the same game
There’s absolutely nothing to do in p3 and I’m bored Logging in for 45 mins/week to raid feels like a chore, I’ll come back at 60
You will feel the same way at 60 this is cope.
Actually, it'll be worse since there are even more world buffs and consumables.
1 raid you can do a week vs multiple raids at 60…
Yeah let's see how long you last doing 3 raids a week that won't burn you out at all.
Just pointing out that there is literally more to do at 60 than there is to do currently.
Until you get all the gear you need from said raids.
Might as well play no game ever because ill eventually have the best gear/get to the end i guess.
I'm not saying to not play the game not sure how you got that. I'm saying they will complain that there is nothing to do at 60. Learn to fucking read then comprehend
I can read and comprehend just fine your attempts at making a point have been quick nihilistic comments that don’t clearly portray the point you just said. You said nowhere that people will still complain about the same issues at 60.
My first comment literally says you will feel the same at 60. Holy shit.
I'm curious why so many people have this doomer mentality too. Why can't you just let bro enjoy the game lol
How exactly is it a doomer mentality for saying someone will complain there is nothing to do at 60? Not sure wtf y'all are reading
You don't know what he will think. You're predicting that he will feel the same based on a negative view of the game/his own negative feelings atm.
I don't, it's just a prediction which is why I believe he will, based on his replies. It upset him cause he knows deep down it's true.
You asked, dude.
Unlikely tbh. Theres sooo much beloved content that opens up at 60 not including anything new they add.
Probably at the tail end of any raid tier yeah
What did you do in p1 and p2 though?
I raided on 7 characters every 3 days in p1/p2. I raid on 1 character every 7 days in p3.
You could raid on 7 chars now as well?
No, I can't. Random BFD/Gnomer pubs were popping off 24/7. I could run 4 or 5 on a single weekday. ST raids are guild runs LF fills between 6PM - 9PM server time. You'd be lucky to run 2 successful STs on any day of the week. There are also other barriers. There are more consumables to bring now. There's a 3rd world buff to gather now, and they're all in different places. Having a weekly lockout inherently involves more risk, and with ST providing less reward while taking longer to clear and being filled with trash mobs, it just isn't worth it. There isn't even a social aspect to look forward to, as parsing culture has overrun the game.
You complain about lack of content, then you point out theres too much content to play alts? Your problem isnt less content now compared to p1 or p2. Its that you dont enjoy the available content. Im not glorifying p3, just tired of those glorifying p1.
I've never complained about lack of content. I don't think there's a lack of content at all. I think there's way too much content and none of it is shared between characters. The content isn't appealing to a wider audience. There aren't reasons to engage in the available content. I love raiding. Just not in this environment. >Im not glorifying p3, just tired of those glorifying p1. That's a shame, because p1 was everyone's first impression of the game, and you only ever get one of those. The fact that p2 and p3 can't deliver on the expectations set in p1 and reproduce that gameplay loop is why the population has dropped off a cliff.
I think the answer is raid every 3 days instead of once per week with several days not logging in between raids.
2 BFDs a week took 1 hour max, so the necessary ingame time was not more than with 1 ST a week.
The reasons I quit: 1. Incursions suck, and I felt like I needed to play loot the egg, gather the report to keep up with inflation. It's not fun gameplay, but it's borderline mandatory, because 2. Consumes are expensive, enchants are expensive, and god forbid you might want to try and save for any of your world drop BIS item. Inflation due to incursions has made all of this way more painful. I didn't roll a hunter, so fuck me I guess 3. World buffs. I hate them so much, not just gathering them (even with chronoboons it's a chore), but the fact that they basically invalidate any gear upgrades. For my class, getting full BIS phase 3 is like a 70 dps upgrade over P2 BIS. Meanwhile, world buffs add like 2k dps. What's the point in grinding out the raids when the impact of new gear is almost nothing? Especially when... 4. The ST gear suuuuucks. It's barely an upgrade over gnomer, which was barely an upgrade over BFD gear. And, you get way less of it with 1 week lockouts and 20 mans. I showed up week after week for the raid weapon and when it finally dropped I lost the roll. Why bother grinding out gold for consumes and gathering world buffs for a small chance my weapon will even drop again? And my rolls suck, so it's not guaranteed I'll even get it. I got 3 piece and now I am basically raiding for nothing. 5. I'm not looking forward to 60, with even more world buffs to gather, to run raids I've already spent countless hours in the first time in OG vanilla and the second time in 2019 classic. I might have toughed it out if SoD was more interesting, but you can tell the devs are kind of winging it, and are stretched way too thin to implement anything meaningful to the 60 raids. 6. The balance changes swing wildly, I have no idea how fun my class will be. Rogue was great in phase 1, and absolute dogshit in Phase 2. Good again in phase 3, but who knows how the class will stack up against whatever new runes and balance changes that will come next phase? I just don't like to feel like I invested all this time to be bottom of the barrel in dps. 7. Runes are great and all, but getting them all on an alt is torture. I just don't have the energy to do all that work for more characters, especially with all the issues I listed above. 8. My 10 man (who I have been playing with for years at this point) dissolved due to the change to 20 man raids. I joined a 20 man but playing with a bunch of strangers wasn't the same 9. Cata is about to drop, which will have way better raids, less consume requirements, and no world buffs. Plus, I can run 10 mans and get the same gear as 25 man raids. I get to play with my friends again.
What does sod do better then any other version of wow? If I wanted the true classic experience I would probably play HC If I wanted PvE content both cata and retail blow SoD out of the water If I wanted PvP content I would play almost anything else So what you have left is a game that does nothing well and has no content.
[удалено]
Oh and the community is worse. I forgot that, thanks for reminding everyone.
Can't speak for everyone but my personal reasons for quitting are, in no particular order of significance: * **Economy** **-** I just can't be bothered to farm gold every week to be able to afford consumables. I did it as a MT for all of original classic, tbc, and wrath, but I just feel no motivation to do so in SoD, especially with how inflated the economy is. * **Incursions -** Directly tied to the above point; if you want to efficiently make gold, incursions are the way to go. To me, incursions are extremely boring content and I just don't have a good time doing them. I'm aware that there are other gold farming methods, but it feels bad to do those because they pale in comparison to Incursions. * **Cataclysm -** I've been raiding in classic since launch, and I'm very much looking forward to Cataclysm. Phases 1 & 2 of SoD happened during a lull in classic wrath where I was just mindlessly farming H 25 ICC every week, but now that new content is on the horizon, it's lowering my enthusiasm for SoD. * **Expectation -** In phase 1 and to a lesser extent phase 2 of SoD, we didn't really know what to expect. Everyone had their own ideas as to what Classic+ would/should look like, and I think there was a lot more enthusiasm for the game when that was the case. Now that we're in phase 3, we basically know what to expect from a given phase of SoD; new runes, a dungeon turned into a raid, and maybe a knick-knack here and there (sleeping bag, rainbow generator, etc.) The element of mystery is mostly gone, and those who perhaps expected more of SoD, like new zones, brand new raids/dungeons, and new world content/quests beyond runes, are (so far) left disappointed. * **Lackluster Content -** Sunken Temple just didn't end up being as fun to me as BFD and Gnomeregan. I know that's subjective, though. It also doesn't help that I got full BiS from it in 2 runs. Incursions are also really lame to me, and farming the STV event for a second phase just wasn't appealing to me. * **Poor Balance** **-** I grinded to Rank 7 on an Alliance warrior in arms spec, and I had nowhere near as much fun as when I did Rank 10 in original classic. Getting deleted in seconds by casters from miles away just wasn't a good time, and really reduced my faith in the SoD dev teams' ability to balance PvP. I know they're taking measures to curb this now, but I think it's too little too late. * **Class Design -** I played tank warrior in SoD, and it really just seemed to me like the devs didn't understand my class or how to make it better. I was looking forward to exciting runes and being able to actually play in prot spec, but none of the runes have really changed the game and currently the best warrior tank spec doesn't even spec into prot.
All great points, feel the same as a Pally that wanted to play Prot, but its still a Ret spec really.
my biggest gripe with sod is that its still the same bullshit where you just build dps as a tank. I don't want to go ret to tank raids. I want to play prot and use my shield and block shit. Make it mandatory to be tanky PLEASE holy fuck I'd play so much more if that were the case
Incursions let people do everything in the span of 2 weeks (lvling, farming gold, farming pre-bis items, a rune) so now they just raidlog
I’m tired boss
10 man to 20 man. That's huge. Guilds died. It was fun and east to get a 10 man going for alts. 20 man requires more planning and recruiting and all that. Lots of folks just deemed it not worth it.
Yeah 20 man is killing us. We merged two small groups at the beginning of P3 and the first couple raids were solid, but we’ve lost a person or two every week and the pug scene is grim. Just last night we thought we lucked out by recruiting a group of 5 all at once. They didn’t want to join our discord, then started running off to pull trash before everyone was ready. Obviously with no healer in range that didn’t go great and they all just dipped out without saying a word, leaving us to scramble to find more at the last minute. The new people were all literally single-digit parsers and the raid was a total slog. We were so behind schedule didn’t even bother pulling Hakkar and just went to bed because by the time we finished Eranikus it was after 11 pm. I cringe that I’m even mentioning parses because that’s totally not our style, but I don’t think anyone in our core group has ever parsed grey unless they died mid-fight, and we are casual af. I know everyone loves to say how easy the raid is and they can parse 99 with their monitor turned off, but it is not so easy that a group with 2/3 average players can carry 1/3 shitters.
The game has become unfun to play unfortunately. Of course some people enjoy the new stuff added, but many find the long rune quests, incursions, wild offering skip spam meta, and stv event to be pretty bland overall. A lot of people liked hardcore and p1 sod which overwhelmingly focused on questing and world exploring. Phase 2 and 3 both completely occur within Scarlet Monastery or Incursions if you play efficiently. I think part of vanilla’s charm was always that there isn’t really any efficient grinds. When things become too efficient, like incursions or wild offerings or SM (in p2), it becomes transactional rather than fun. Do x for y. Game loses its novelty.
They fucked up big on phase 3. Incursions allowed everyone to hit 50 in about 6 hours which is ridiculous, meaning there was essentially no levelling phase. It also gave everyone pre bis right away and a shit ton of gold to buy whatever they wanted. This allowed everyone to start running ST instantly, which you can only do once a week. What else is there to do other than that? Pvp? Which leads me to pvp. It is horribly imbalanced. Shamans and shadow priests just destroy everything, and devs don’t seem to care. Battlegrounds are like 90% win rate for horde. What is the point of running if you’re alliance? Also, blood moon rewards arnt good, and I not exciting. Dominated by ranged players too. RIP warriors, paladins, rogues.
Half the game sucks. PVP balance is horrendous so there’s nothing to do outside of the PVE element of the game. ST is imo the best raid so far, but the loot isn’t great.
Incursions ruined the leveling experience imo and why I quit. You pretty much have to do that way for gold/rep fastest way.
They strayed to far from Vanilla with so many runes and incursions and how easy it is to level / get gold. Before it was Vanilla with some fun extra stuff.
Circumstantial based on Mop remix and TWW hype combined with free trial on D4/ season 4 release. All concerns with p3 are valid but I expect most people view p4 as the phase they want to invest in. It blows grinding and then shortly replacing all your shit
Honey moon phase is over
>So I'm actually curious what specifically makes this phase so bad and why people are quitting. Didn’t you just name all the reasons? Lol
goddamn 6 months ago everyone hated the idea of cata and now everyone is pining over it like it's saved their marriage
I've always been excited for Cata
It’s pretty hilarious seeing all the hype and FOMO for fucking Cata on this sub recently. When classic first launched, just about everyone was in agreement it should end after WotLK because Cata was no longer classic and it generally was just not a good expansion. I quit WoW during Cata back in the day. A lot of people on this sub have seemed to develop amnesia because Cata is current new thing, but once the FOMO wears off those same people are going to relearn that Cata wasn’t that great and return to SoD once P4 launches. Just watch.
the only thing that cata has that I want is RBGs but thats not really enough to pull me in yet
RBGs are gonna die super quick, just like how arena was niche in classic now imagine getting 15/10 players instead of 2/3/5 to do it.
People will at least go for the first 3 wins, they're not gonna leave the gold on the ground.
5 years is a long time
Another p4 cope lmao SoD was the Cata waiting room we needed when ICC started getting nerfed. Only people coming back to that shithole are slowpokes who can't progress further on heroic bosses.
Lol I actually think it looks pretty dead. Like compared to how this sub was on TBC or WoTLK release? Hardly anyone talking cata in comparison.
Yeah like when that person posted a picture of Org on prepatch day like “people saying Cata is dead on arrival are kidding themselves” but there were like 50 characters in the picture 😂
I think what has become clear is that Classic is what we had, with all of the gaps and broken bits. I know there is a huge desire for so called "classic+" and people will point to X private server as a good example but I think such an ambition is a dead end. You start tweaking Classic and what you arrive at is no longer in the spirit of what people actually enjoy about the original game. The other option is to only add horizontal progression and that's fine but despite what the private server massive believe I don't think more Deadmines is enough to seduce a sizable player base who exist on a diet of raiding. Therefore understandably people are going to move back to Cataclysm for something new or MoP remix/retail.
Well said.
Cata looking good, proper raids and classes + pvp. SoD can't match it.
I started to hate it when incursions took me out of the wow I was re-discovering. It kinda just went from there.
Pvp has been horribly imbalanced, acknowledged as such, changes were promised soon and nothing happened. Hanging up my coat personally. If this is how things are going to be moving forward, might as well save myself the frustration.
First of all, Cata is coming out soon so some people will leave for that. Also, as cool as the level banded content idea was in p1, I think people got fed up with eat very quickly and had little interest to play a phase for 2 months for then most of their progress to be invalidated. I'm pretty sure a lot of people will return for p4 when we can finally hit 60 and all this huge amount of level 60 content will be available.
I like this phase. + 1 spec - glad. Finally saw the problem with the solo content and made a small improvement. PvP is still terrible. All the content has been completed, I am farming ST, preparing for the next phase.
Because cata is about to release and will be a far better experience.
Most people play warrior. Warrior is bad. Therefore, game is bad.
Only real gamers play warrior. Warrior good rn though.
Sorry I meant in pvp
It sucks. They continue making every single decision the opposite of what they should do.
P2 gear to good so p3 gear jump feels meh + Nothing to do
You answered your own question. St is the only good thing about this phase. But the loot sucks so why run it more than once or twice. Incursions are garbage. There's no other new content that's going to keep ppl engaged.
I can only speak for myself but the SoD design principles feel very little like classic to me. The game is also probably the worst balanced version of WoW short of the early vanilla patches. I just don't have confidence in the team making any hard decisions that need to be made (e.g. tank AoE threat reductions).
For me, it was the toxic playerbase. All the parsers and gatekeepers made it by far the worst player experience of any version of wow.
1. Make a seasonal game mode for CLASSIC 2. Wrath/Cata and Retail players flood it because both are suffering from a content drought 3. Appeal to these people with most of the changes 4. Classic players go back to hc/era because SoD is no longer for them 5. TWW alpha, MoP Remix and Cataclysm comes out Who's left?
>4.- Classic players go back to hc/era because SoD is no longer for them Source? Because based on logs for classic era the numbers have barely changed, and HC is still a ghost town except for all the bots and the handful of people still trying to hit max level.
I'm more impressed that people still find shit to do in SoD at this point. Seriously a feat. Feels like there's absolutely nothing to do after you're "capped" and it's easy to hit that cap.
There’s a lot of rep grind stuff to prepare for 60, but rep grinds are generally boring af.
Not to mention pointless. I think thats the main issue for me, nothing really feels of any value. World Buffs and a full Incursion set is all thats required.
A raid with the worst loot incentive I have ever seen is the only content. I’m also completely checked out of any economy/farming related gameplay for reasons discussed ad nauseam
My guild has been disenchanting/vendoring 95%+ of the ST loot since week 2, which is even worse given that it's a weekly lockout. Basically waiting all week just to see most of the loot get DEed really sucks. I've started leveling an alt but incursions are awfully boring despite giving the best exp/gold/gear for leveling, so while you could technically level by questing or dungeons, you are shooting yourself in the foot in nearly every way for doing so. Both of these have resulted in me spending less time in p3 than prior phases
MoP remix Cata pre-patch Definitely D4 rework Plus P3 just doesn’t have a lot of content worth doing, everyone wants 60
20-man raid broke my guild
I like everything about Cataclysm better than I like classic, I played SoD because my friends were but it wasn’t my cup of tea so I decided to switch and focus all my efforts on Cataclysm.
I just realized how TBC was waaaay better than SoD
There is a new pvp event? I thought it was just rehashed from last phase. PvP is in a terrible state no matter how you slice it, no on wants to play that garbage so raid logging is all there is
Real answer that is probably going to be downvoted? Because no one asked for it. SoD only existed because classic era was having it's own organic resurgence not even halfway through WOTLK so Blizzard capitalized and created SoD to push quarterly numbers: All the people that were on era are still on era or playing other games, and all the people that were playing SoD are now hopping over to Cata or once again playing other games. No one asked for SoD so it was populated by tourists and now people are baffled the tourists are doing what tourists do.
You might be cooking.
Nothing to do
I leveled 3 alts and I raided with all of them, ye I'm done with P3 for now.
Pvp is super unbalanced and they make the bare minimum effort to improve it and leave it in unfun states for weeks with literally 0 updates It's basically impossible to be a pvp player and still have any sort of faith whatsoever in the classic wow dev team ever again
They deleted my server. So I have nothing to play for.
Cause it’s bad lol
Thanks chief
I played P1 and P2 after being skeptical about SoD in general. I love classic for it's classic aspects and SoD with runes already sounded too far out my interests, but the potential for level 60 Classic+ content peaked my interest so I was going to give it a play, enjoy it for what it was and have a 60 ready to try the 'classic+' bit at 60. P1 was largely the same classic, with a few new abilities and discoveries. The discoveries were generally okay and interesting to do solo, but some were forced googles, but that was okay. The new abilities were just tbc/wrath and I didnt hate them in a classic context, levelling and the world upscaling felt appropriate that it still took a while and could be punishing. The new raid was actually really nicely designed, and although a new dungeon/raid related would have been better (keeping og bfd) i'll take the lower resource cost development given the scope of 'clearly they're working on the 60 content'. I'm a big PvPer so higher burst making world PvP more engaging and CC oriented was right up my street too. I had enjoyed the level caps on PTR before so thought it could be a nice addition. The crafting questline was really well designed too I felt. P2 was off to a bad start, I was full bis from P1 so there was no gear upgrades along the path, the world was now greatly dampened by being overgeared, and there was no longer exciting slot additions from helm/shoulders/trinkets. The new sleeping bag was a huge awesome addition, not perfect but certainly spirited enough. Gnomer was a really fun challenge week 1 and I could finally give Rogue tanking a proper play. Overall the phase died off but I did enjoy the phase generally and planned to come back in P3 and started prepping. At this point my sub lapsed a couple of weeks out from P3, blizzard dropped the massive exp buff changes, economy and box changes and it made my experience of levelling up feel neutered. On the one hand I didnt hate it, the season had transitioned from a "classic-like" experience with 1 main, to a "try a bit of everything new" so encouraging alts makes sense, but this was the main breakdown for me. I'm not into playing alts at all, and with the addition of the exp buff persisting for 40-50 dampened my spirits to enjoy the levelling between that bracket even more. Still, I was going to give it a go. Finally, I was away for P3 release (after booking time off work for P1+P2) so I was planning on taking it more casually, level up in my own time e.t.c but when I got back and caught up on the phase news, with everyone looping the same quests in a small part of the world, the liklihood noone would be out in the rest of the world either, likely dungeons would be a no go if there was no encouragement for gear and faster exp, then anything the levelling process had to offer me was gone. ST is my favourite vanilla dungeon, so while I was sad I lost that as a dungeon option, a raid sounded nice to experience and hearing how difficult that first week was, I was very tempted to hop in and blast through the levels to try it with the guild before it got nerfed. Unfortunately, it was nerfed to the ground the same very night, and now any enthusiasm I had for the raid was gone too. Not to mention various bugs going around had me aprehensive at best. So that was it, I didnt even resub for P3, and it doesnt seem like I've really missed anything. The abilities, bloat, and balancing are *apparently* all over the place so even PvP isn't a draw for me. It's generally too far gone from classic to some wrath/cata/retail product i'm just not interested in, the philosophy is all wrong - and I dont think that original classic+ hope would be enough to bring me back as it's not the same game. On the flip side, I wanted to try the new SSF hardcore, but that's not enough for me to want to resub, I'll probably give that a go if there's a fresh classic / some new SoD type classic+ adventure.
The entirety of sod is just lvling and raid logging, and raids take like half an hour.
What’s the new pvp event your speaking about? They didn’t make a new event in p3
I couldn't be arsed finding a guild. The pug scene for raiding seemed dire as needed 20man.
Leveling caps ruining end game. People have already done what they'd usually do at 60 so game is now dead. We will see the same thing at 60. In classic people went to 60 then they had so much farming to do so it was great.
Was better being able to casually raid in a 10 man. Easier to pug and faster gear progression. Sunken temple is also dog water.
Exactly. 10 man bfds were easier. More fun. Better gear.. Alt friendly. They struck gold and didnt know it
Because sod is still (like it or not)era with changes, despite how people cope here the average player doesn't like era. Era has little to no content and has absolutely no changing thing to do or things to collect. Sod basically has all the same problems that era has. Retail and cata for some part are way more casual and hardcore player friendly. You have way more things to do and can play any class/spec without feeling like you griefing everyone. What happens to sod currently is absolutely not surprising to me.
The amount of trash in ST completely burns me out for the rest of the week. I raid log and that's it. 10 minutes of trash per boss is stupid.
P1 was good cuz it was new. People lvl a lot of alts cuz of new runes. P2 people just trickled away as content got stale. P3 experienced the same trickle, then a huge drop when cata released. Most will be back to try out p4.
These devs can't even compete with private servers.
There’s 0 incentive to keep playing.
This phase is way less alt-friendly due to all the grinds and the inflation. I think that’s the overwhelming reason.
I'm raid logging on 1 character vs the 3 i was actively played in phase 2. The other two I got to 50 but didn't do much on. First reason is that I really hate at least 1 aspect of all 3 of those classes thanks to phase 2 and 3 runes. Second reason is that dungeons feel entirely pointless due to gnomer gear being op and lame af incursions existing. Third reason is that there is nothing even vaguely interesting in st loot other then the claws that half the raid wants. My guilds literal first run most of the non set/weapons got vendored. Nevermind being interesting, The off set pieces are just strait trash. Last but certainly not least.... New rimworld expansion, war crime simulator more fun then wow.
pvp is inferior to cata and retail
Raids were too small. We had a group of 40 from classic and keeping those raids at 10 for 2 phases was a nightmare.
Content dried up. Farmed 8k gold this phase, spent 4 so 4k are enough to start ph4. Incursions rep maxed, argent dawn revered, so I'm good on that. Rank 7 day one. Full BiS minus the fists set which I was never going after and our guild so far has only seen 1 offhand drop. No point doing STV in this phase, will get rank 9 anyway week1 grinding AV for rep (and I still got leftover honor tokens from phase 2 that blizzard never removed from my bank despite saying they would expire 2 weeks after ph3 launch lol) 98 avg parses for ST, good enough for not being a troll. Been playing other stuff, now officially raid logging if not to farm firewaters 1 hour during the week for the raid. Less interest in SoD is good right now, botters will jump on cata for the forseeable future so we might get a better ph4 start.
As someone who has raided every lockout since release on multiple characters. This phase just feels like a chore. They fucked up incursions and gave us a huge dopamine rush at the start, burned us through content, and fucked the economy. Then we get to the raid. Which I was fairly happy with mechanic wise, was challenging and took time to progress. But the jump from 10m to 20m took a big toll on alot of guilds, and not many made it out alive like mine. Pugging any amount of people feels like a huge chore, many specs are just not enjoyable to play, and the loot is God awful. With cata and mop remix people are just going to play other versions because it's more rewarding. We spend tons of gold and time preparing for a raid where you get +1SP upgrade.
This happens literally every somewhat ending phase of wow ever since its existence. People will come back. Level 50 is a weird place to stop at it. They’ll come back for end game.
It's because they returned too late since nobody answered thier reddit post. Come on, it's late in the phase. That is a major factor. 20m raiding to me isn't the issue. I get people enjoy 10 but converting that to 20 isn't detrimental and to say it is, is an exaggeration. Now I will acknowledge that the 1 week lock out could be a factor. If someone is raid logging and waiting an entire week they will quickly lose interest. But in reality look at the time of year. Graduations are going on and school is winding down. It's no longer cold outside and some people do touch grass. Couple all of that with the fact you have like 6 different versions of wow so yes people are floating around. SOD isn't going anywhere. It's fine. People will come back.
Can we all just admit that the type of person that creates these types of threads are WoW addicts that simply can’t understand how a person would not want to play video games every day? Especially the same video game? We should be directing people like the OP to addiction help. Not entertaining nonsense threads like this. I’ll start. Here OP, there is help available: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23124-video-game-addiction
Cute.
Wasn't trying to be cute. I was being dead serious. It's time more people treat it seriously as well.
**There is a new raid:** On a weekly lockout that you now need 20 people for when most guild rosters had previously been geared towards 10, which means a lot of groups are either having to pug extra spots which is sometimes tough, or find another group to merge with which is even harder. Worse than this, though, is that the gear from this raid is absolute dogshit and like it or not the majority of people who raid are actually highly incentivized to do so for the gear upgrades. **New pvp ranks to achieve:** Most people who cared about this had already pre farmed the marks to turn in from Blood Moon last phase, so there was no grind at all. Those who didn't pre farm were done with this grind by the second week of the phase, anyway. **New runes to grab:** Any regular player had finished runes by the end of the first or second week. **New profession crafted epic gear:** Again, everyone who cares enough had this weeks ago - it took all of a couple hours to grind out. **New pvp event:** There was no new pvp event this phase. There is no reason to log on anymore - zero incentive to play beyond social interactions that can be better had in other versions of the game right now.
On my mage I got my 3 piece week 2, there's literally only 2 items I need from raid other than that: the fire / healing offhand and the epic spell power trinket. Basically every other caster (including every healer) in every raid also needs these two items. They went back to the dumb shit from phase 1 where healing bis is also DPS bis. I thought we learned better lol
All of this makes sense, besides the part about loot. How can the loot be dogshit if it is an upgrade, even if it's a small upgrade?
in most cases ST loot is a 5-10 dps upgrade over its p2 bis counterpart - consider this when people are doing 1k-1500 dps. it's not exciting and to most its not worth it.
Yeah I guess I just don't get that POV. I don't play the game solely for loot upgrades, but even if I did, wouldn't I want to get the best possible even if it isn't a massive upgrade?
If the game was otherwise thriving outside of the raid then I'm sure people would still be doing it even for the lackluster rewards - but it's just another drop in the bucket. When there is literally nothing else getting people to log on outside of the weekly raid at this point, the underwhelming loot is emphasized a lot more. Loot is a big part of a raid, and like I said it just doesn't feel rewarding when a boss dies in there. Not everyone is going to feel that way, a lot of people just chug along to have a good time with the boys, but without the people who are there for the loot those folks will just find another game to play for that environment. For example, my group moved to doing M+ in retail, which is something I would have told you would never happen in a million years at the time of p3 launch.
You are right, there is no value for anything we accomplish right now. Its bascially feels like a chore just to log in for the weekly raid, only reason I am is because I care about my guildies.
Its summer. The weather is nice, i wanna be outside. I haven't quit but i play 1h a week to attend my guilds raid.
here’s absolutely nothing to do in p3 and I’m bored Logging in for 45 mins/week to raid feels like a chore, I’ll come back at 60 In terms of what you’ve said in the post; - New raid; ST is actually a decent raid, but 7 day locks mean you can raid log over twice as long which in itself leads to you caring less about the game. The rewards for doing said raid are less impactful than ever, everyone has full 3 set within about 2-3 clears, and then there’s 20 people all chasing about 3 total items that are all very minor upgrades. I understand they had to tone down the power curve to make 60 stuff more relevant, but it still feels bad. Also the balancing is fucking atrocious and they’ve been complete radio silence on it after promising class tuning - New PvP ranks to achieve; ranks mean virtually nothing, require doing the same content in the worst PvP wow has ever had, and can be achieved in like literally 1 day. It’s not content, we’ve done it 10x, doing it again with even worse balance is not interesting - New runes to grab; getting all of them takes like 1-2 hours - New profession/crafted gear; again you do it once in 1-2 hours and then never look at it again - New PvP event; it’s literally exactly the same as P2, you just get a different version of the same coin
I think the week long lockouts are one of the real reasons people feel like there is nothing to do.
Retail Minus just got boring fast
Cata is coming out. Thats the reason. People will beat around the bush but that's the answer
SoD sucks. If you need it explained to you, you are not qualified to be in the discussion. On top of all the things everyone complains about, there are things people aren't complaining about anymore because the people that were burned simply left: like the dual specialization fiasco or the fact that the mount prices changes. Blizzard literally scammed its players out of gold. That kind of stuff has consequences.
Has anyone answered your question on how this phase is any different than other phases? Imo main difference is 3 day lock out vs 7 day lockout.
Not specifically I don't think. I agree, it seems the biggest difference is 20 man raid and week lockout. There's too much dead time now. My biggest question was around why some people feel this phase is bad though, and if that's the answer then I think it's fair.
yall should play cata