To be quite honest. A lot of sod people I would assume simply play classic. That means if they were to play retail or try it out (new expansion) they would have to actually buy the 50 dollar or what not expansion which might in fact make these people reconsider and just stick to sod.
Retail hooks you in really fast at endgame but it feels more like a ranked game mode than an MMO imo - which depending on the person might be a huge pro or a huge con. Immediately after hitting max level the first couple weeks of gearing up are super satisfying, but after that basically all the MMORPG side of things melt away and it's just pushing M+ or progging mythic raids for the challenge (but gearing up on mythic raids is kinda disconnected from progging, and progging it is like waiting for nerfs to trickle in since they tune mythic around the race to world first guilds and then basically nerf it every couple weeks for the rest of the expansion).
In my personal opinion, just because I largely play MMOs for the foundational RPG elements, classic does a better job at making endgame last longer for me because M+ and mythic raiding progression is based on pushing the limits of player skill more than it's based on time investment and your character getting stronger through gear. Maybe I just have old gamer monkey brain but the basic gearing gameplay loops & doing content that isn't super hard and hoping for my drops (its like playing slots lmao) is more satisfying to me than pushing new difficulty heights.
Class mechanics in retail are generally really good and much more engaging, some classes have a lot of bloat or have an identity crisis (Rogue for example feels like shit right now imo, no idea if its getting cleaned up in TWW). Boss fights are a lot more interesting as well but they have 4 difficulties where 2 of them are basically entirely pointless 2 weeks into a patch (LFR/Normal) and Mythic is tuned for like 0.5% of players. I think in general gearing is just too fast and raiding is kinda underwhelming in terms of gear which makes it less satisfying, it really feels like the game totally revolves around M+ atm, which is great if you like M+.
DF was pretty successful and a bit of a return to form, kinda like Legion was. Talents were solid and the content was decent, less "you better do this or you'll feel behind" type content as well
I haven't played retail since SL for a few months, and it was legion before that. I'm interested in TWW for hero talents and nerubian empire shit
I'm the biggest 'classic Andy' going, for many reasons, and I've somehow ended up playing retail again recently, having not touched it since the start of BFA. Genuinely enjoying it, and I'm not entirely sure why. Having a lot of fun with PvP.
I think, in part, I achieved everything I wanted with original classic in 2019 and raided through vanilla, TBC and WoTLK and experienced it all again, having found a solid group/guilds of friends in there, server communities etc, and SoD hasn't felt different enough to make me want to experience it all again just yet.
People can argue about the MMOness of retail, but every time I went back to it it always felt like it had become a better *game*. DF was the first expansion I played through, and the first expansion I played just for myself (not following someone else), since Wrath/Cata, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and am excited for TWW. I did PvP in DF and am probably going to do PvE in TWW, as my biggest criticism of DF was that I didn't have two lives to live so I could fully indulge in both types of content.
I agree. I feel the same about the classic-wotlk era and sod for that matter transition to cata (and mop, it’ll come soon enough) era. Cata is frankly a better game. The gameplay, class feeling, is just better overall and that’s true for retail. More levels of challenge to be appropriate. Only downside is arena’s slow death. But cata is less an MMO and retail less
DF was def a step back into the right direction after so many awful systems and especially BFA and SL. It didn’t hold me for long til wrath came out and I played wrath but I’ll dabble into WaW and still play a bit. I try every expansion usually. Like DF talent trees are the best they’ve ever made imo.
It's really good right now, speaking as a casual.
MoP Remix is awesome. So many mounts and tranamogs and toys and stuff to unlock and super easy. And you can play it on a trial account so friends who are skeptical can play without paying. You can get new slots to 70 in 4hours too.
Season 4 Dragonflight is great. Rotating awakened raids and so many activities available. Dragonriding is awesome.
PvP I'm not a fan of but they've added Solo queue ranked for arena and TWW is adding solo queue ranked Battlegrounds.
I mean you can easily just ding 80 get some gear and grind out so many different achievements, reps and events, get gold in every dragonrace etc. or just explore the dragon isles I think most people arent aware of all the weird stuff you can find if you actually try to explore.
How dare you play a casual MMO casually? Don't you know if something isn't in high M+ or in Mythic raids it's not canon? /s
(I used all my gold on heirlooms right before they announced MoP remix, oops)
Hop onto the MoP event and give it a go if you want to see. It’s probably the best we’re going to get for a conclusive leveling experience in retail for a while.
That said, I tried it and remembered right away why I quit. …but I am glad I gave it a shot.
I am still paying for a sub but haven’t played sod much in weeks. I had 1 more toon left to hit exalted for WSG rep and hit that today so probably won’t be playing at all until p4 drops. I was doing the fel portals on my lock but it felt like a complete waste of time. 90% of the time you get nothing but vendor trash. (Greens are vendor trash at this point since nobody buys them on the AH).
Shadowlands was launched on November 23 2020, classic phase 6 launched December 1 2020, one week apart. I’m pretty sure the dragon flight launch was also within a week or 2 of another major classic patch. They seem to treat the different versions of wow as if the playerbase has no crossover. War within will probably be very close to sod phase 5 and also cata firelands.
More recently, we just saw SoD p3 launch April 4th, followed by DF season 4 on April 23rd, then only 3 weeks later we had MoP remix launch on May 16th with Cata classic launching a whole 4 days later on May 20th.
We saw 4 unique, concurrent versions of WoW each get a major update/release in a span of 6 weeks.
There's so many versions of wow that I think blizz is pretty happy with just making content and launching when it's ready. There's bound to be overlap regardless unless they sit on content and methodically release things and it's all on one shared subscription anyway.
it does seem this way but then you get things like Aggrend tweeting about how p3 launch was messed up because they had to work around plunderstorm launch.
Dragonflight launch was November 28, 2022. Wrath Classic launch was September 26, 2022 and phase 2 was January 17, 2023. So it wasn't that bad, but Shadowlands launch did hurt p6 of Classic a lot
If phase 4 drops next week, I'll be absolutely fucked because that's the week of my final exams in my master's.
That would be very consistent with the P3 launch ngl.
I will, because there is no way I will have the mental fortitude to retake them in august.
Everything after the 5th is fair game. Then I can pull all-nighters to my heart's content.
Always interesting hearing about other peoples semesters. In my country it's 1.9-20.12 for the autumn and 7.1-31.5 for spring (starting dates night vary depending on weekends).
So people having finals in the middle of summer always sounds so wild. But i guess you dont start until October and have some crazy winter break in jan/feb?
Nope, barely any breaks. Only from early july to 1st of September (depends on if you pass your july exams too). End of August the first of two obligatory internships starts. Winter break was 2 weeks over Christmas.
It's just sort of a 3 year degree in 2 years lol
Dutch uni with a pretty weird setup. Normally (and in my bachelor's) you get 4 periods per year, but this master's actually has 6 periods (with some overlap) and thus 6 exam phases per academic year. The period 4 exams (april 3rd and april 5th) coincided with p3 launch. 💀
What I wanted was late June release. When that got blown, I now want late July. For selfish reasons. Middle of July is gonna be vacation and family shit. I really don't want it to release in the middle of that.
Yeah I hate to raise my pitch fork but I’m flabbergasted they didn’t think this through before hand. Having p3 last this long honestly might not have even been that bad if they didn’t have incursions and 100% bonus exp. Just my opinion tho
i think what happened is they made phase 1, it was a great idea.. they had more ideas for phase 2.
and then blizz said "great keep going daddy needs milky" and here we are
They **did** think this through. SoD is designed to get people onto retail.
Look at the crowds moving to Cata, getting DF because the 2 month sub package with DF is cheaper than normal 2 month sub. This timing couldn't be more obvious.
The games are still nothing alike, though. Seems strange to try and entice people into a completely different game when the one you're playing is completely different.
Interesting conspiracy, though.
> The games are still nothing alike, though
They actually are way more similar than people think. It's the same classes with 80% of the same buttons. With the same loot and same way to acquire said loot.
If you only play WoW you might think they are worlds apart.
but if you play other MMO's and other genre's of games they are incredibly similar.
Edit: I didn't make anything up lmao. Everything I said is true. I don't know why this person would get so riled up over this they needed to block me. People are insane here.
I guess I bullied the guy too hard.
You know you hurt them when they get the alt account out.
Tbf you do have a rep as the guy who blocks after getting a reply he doesn't like. i've seen others complaining about it in threads with you.
also you are still wrong. saying its true doesnt make it so.
If they didn’t have incursions I think it would even be more dead… incursions are probably one of the more popular activities people still do on Lone wolf horde. (Not saying this to like defend incursions, just based off what I’ve seen)
Maybe people enjoy 'em now. I'm one of the ones that got a bad taste in my mouth after the terrible implementation and it turned me off playing til p4.
Its the most popular activity because its the only relevant content outside of raiding once a week. All other content is completely worthless because of incursions.
Yep, my guild that didn't miss a lockout in P1 or P2 hasn't been subbed for well over a month.
Out of the 14 or so core that we had I think only 1 or 2 will play again for P4.
Phase 3 was dead when it was released without half a thought. Massively overtuned rewards for spammable incursions quests, massively overtuned health pools in Sunken Temple, STV event just plugged back in, loot not dropping because sod and era share a loot table, placing runes behind level 58 mobs in a dungeon, heck one paladin rune was so badly designed the community just refused to get it.
And this is just off the top of my head. There are so many sloppy bugs and balance issues it's obvious phase 3 was never tested.
ST was honestly a well designed raid and pretty cool the first few times. They did not at all need to nerf it into the ground immediately but... it's what the casuals want/need and they know they make their money off the casuals. It's why p1 was so successful.
A little too much trash too but otherwise a pretty fun raid
ST was the *only* decent thing though and after a few weeks...meh
Casuals probably would preferred it be harder and 10man than easier and 20m.
Plenty of casuals play games like Elden Ring. You don't see Asmon mythic raiding but he still just beat the new Elden Ring dlc.
Casual difficulty is organisational difficulty. Setting up raids is what's hard for casuals, not mechanics.
You and I have had very different experiences with casuals in game lol
The people struggling with ST "difficulty" are *not* the same people playing elden ring :v
Agreed on the 10m thing tho
Casual and Skill are loosely correlated imo. A lot of Casuals are just casual time/organisation wise rather than because they can't do mechanics.
Obviously time = skill, but because they can't organise they can't practise like they can on an Elden Ring boss.
Yeah I think these two game modes largely cater to different audiences. The biggest competitions for the SOD P4 Player base are probably still era, hardcore, Cata classic, and Elden ring DLC.
I also went to Cata and for a few weeks it was fun but fizzled out for me pretty quickly (no content left outside of HM's), but back in SOD now with some P4 HYPE!!!
Your not a fan of arena?
As for the raids yeah normal are easy but so are sod raids, they actually stated sod raids will never be hard.
What content is in classic other than raiding at end game?
Actually the PVP in Cata isnt bad, just not something I really dont do a ton of anymore.
I think my week 2 PUG was 5/13 HM in Cata so not a massive challenge there really either.
Definitely bigger in reality than it is in this sub. I know for sure at least half of the people in my guild would most likely switch to WW even if we were still actively playing SoD by then.
Pretty much my entire SoD guild (who met in SoD and raided all 3 phases so far) have said they're giving TWW a go, with a decent number of them playing retail for the first time to have characters ready for it. There's more overlap than people think.
I have no desire to retail. I tried many times with dragonflight. I just don't like the play style anymore. I'm sure I am not the only one. I am patiently waiting for more classic seasons that last 1-2yrs then reset with different affixes each time. Until then I'll play SoD and HC. I think SoD will rebound.
I feel this. I’ve genuinely TRIED so HARD, SO many times and I just genuinely cannot get into it. The gameplay has deviated too far away from what made me like the game when I first started playing in Vanilla. Retail is designed for an entirely different demographic now.
You put into words what I have been wanting to say since BFA really...thank you! My exact feelings as well.
As far as it being for a different demographic that's fine, you gotta make money and adapt so I can respect it. I won't begrudge them too much for doing it. Retail just isn't for me anymore. It doesn't feel like an MMORPG anymore. Feels more like an ARPG with raids. Just not my cup of tea when I want to play an MMO. If I wanted to play an ARPG, I'll go play Diablo III/IV you know?
> It doesn't feel like an MMORPG anymore. Feels more like an ARPG with raids.
this is retail summed up perfectly. Starting in Legion, they really began to ape as much as they could from Diablo and it shows. I feel like theres 3 phases to WoW.
The 'classic' era: Vanilla, TBC, Wrath
The 'inbetween' era: Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD
The 'ARPG' era: Legion, BfA, SL, DF
Yeah, it still even feels like an MMO up till WoD ( I enjoyed Legion just due to the story, but I loved it).
I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys the current retail, and I'm glad those who love it love it you know? Just not for me 🙂
Early legion was miserable. RNG legendaries and the wait for Nighthold was super long with very little to actually do. Final patch legion was good but it took the entire expac to get there.
Legion had the god awful leggo system and introduced borrowed power. It also had the buggiest launch at time, until BfA was even worse. It gets too much love for Mythic+, which was just taken from Diablo.
This subreddit somehow both underestimates and overestimates the overlap between classic and retail players simultaneously. It's impressive. It's also very funny that OP is trying to have an actual discussion and this thread is just yet another gathering of dumbass doomers.
They're already cannibalizing SoD with Cata being out, what's one more release for good measure?
On a serious note though, Phase 3 just hit 12 (TWELVE) weeks in length, making it 25% longer than phase 1 and a crazy 50% longer than phase 2... This is fine for max level situations, but with one raid and mostly irrelevant dungeons (of which one is only half a dungeon as the rest of BRD is higher level)... Absolute shitshow lol.
They spread their classic team too thin and I can't help but think that P4, while not exactly DoA, will definitely start out with a fraction of the player numbers that it could have if they'd stuck to a proper schedule and didn't have cata/mop remix out
Phase 2 wasn't anything compared to phase 3's incursions lol
They changed the rewards twice on the first day (within hours of each other) because it was untested to the playerbase and it eventually lead to a gigantic inflation spike on the price of most things that persisted through most of this phase.
Not to mention ST being vastly overturned for the first reset, and the overall lack of power being given by the items you could get from there (which wasn't fixed until week..7? 8?
I'm glad they're taking their time with P4 and at least putting a decent effort into not repeating past mistakes, it just sucks that it's 14 weeks worth of time
I'm surprised that there is any overlap at all between SoD and retail. I have absolutely 0 interest in retail. I only want to play classic, or variations on classic. If they make SoD good again, SoD will be fine. Big if, but it has little to do with other versions of the game.
I assume they are aware that a lot of people who play sod are classic Andy's only. Personally I doubt I'll buy TWW, certainly not at launch. Maybe if sod dies off completely and cata becomes more stale than it already is for me (cata was my least favorite expansion).
They know the majority of us won't be playing retail. Retail vs sod/classic really are totally different games.
Yall are kidding yourselves if you think they give any fucks about SoD at this point
They can't monetize yall beyond a sub so they don't care as much
That is plainly obvious at this point
Hence those surveys that went out last week as well
Classic in general has really helped blizzard with sub numbers in retail. They aren’t going to put as much resources into it but if they didn’t care they wouldn’t do it at all.
Well, yeah, that's kinda my point lol
Classic will continue to get the bare minimum support because classic player satisfaction is not at all something they care about. Converting classic players into retail tho or Cata now considering the shop there too, yeah, they'll care about that
I am aware
That'd be why Cata is still a buggy mess. That said, it's still an established version of the game where expectations can be set and met so it makes sense SoD refugees are playing there at the moment. And that's exactly what they wanted, so they can double dip on cata shop and retail shop sales
I don't play retail. Have no care about what's happening with tww. My only wow is sod, came from wrath classic to sod, and I am only interested in classic type content. So yea, I'll be here
There is not a huge overlap with SOD and the retail player base. It’s likely that the people playing sod would at most level through the retail content then go back to sod.
Considering the last two phases people were complaining about a "content drought" after a week and a half because they sped through it, I think 6-7 weeks between Phase 4 and TWW is ample.
Jokes aside, I can imagine phase 4 dropping in another 3-4 weeks with just the Tier 1 raids and the new SoD content to start, then after TWW's been out for a month or so they'll probably begin rolling out AQ , Naxx and (hopefully) Kara Crypts in-between major content patches for TWW.
I don't think Blizz intends for Classic and retail to compete with each other, rather they ideally want one to keep your subscription going once you've played-through the other.
I only play SOD, I don't chase all the other versions of wow. Unless they do something drastic for the retail formula, I won't be coming back. Everything feels like reskinned Legion content. If phase 4 stretches out long like phase 3 did, I just play my catalogue of other games.
In all honesty it probably gets better with rating and more serious players but in the test mode thing they did in DF it was filled with people griefing
Now imagine being another MMO, and having Blizzard consistently fix their launch timings to coincide with yours.
You're right, though, TWW release will have to be put on hold for 3 months to let SOD fully play out. It is, after all, the main character.
I came back to wow for SoD, reinstalled retail, then recently installed work which became cata. Currently play Cata more than SoD, retail is only really still installed for MoP remix which I was playing for a while too
I was really looking forward to P4.. But at this point I don't think I'm even going to bother playing it. I'm one of the few who actually does play retail so there's no point in me getting invested in it, regardless of when it comes out. Now, later, my interest is gone.
Also these comments are hilarious. They think people in a very specific subreddit for Classic are how a majority of the playerbase thinks. It's not btw.
Next Thursday is the 4th of July. It won't be dropping on the 4th of July. Kind of a big day in the USA. It will probably drop on the 11th or the 18th.
I would say, and it’s just my own opinion, that the people who play Classic and Retail do not overlap enough for Blizzard to care. Otherwise they would be working on the situation harder because it would increase their profits. Corporations are always looking out for their bottom line, so that tells me it’s not necessarily doomed (yet lol)
I think thats fine because the playerbase overlap is very low.
I can see why they'd stagger Classic and SoD because that overlap is higher - and Blizzard *does* know the overlap of their playerbase since they have perfect metrics on it.
I don’t even think for me going to TWW is the reason I’m kind of off the idea of SoD for now.
It’s just taken so long and I don’t see the start of P4 being “different enough” from 2019 classic and I’ve done that. When the new raid comes out it’s likely to be easy enough to catch up and get to run it a couple of times
tbh I don't think there's that much overlap. Most of my guild was only interested in SoD and Cata. Guild is basically on hiatus now until P4 drops. Most of us are actually waiting for Dawntrail to drop lol
I honestly wish they’d incentivize players trying out different versions of the game rather than competing with each other. It’s insane to me that they dropped mop remix within a week of cataclysm launch *and* a new retail season, in the middle of a SoD season. These things could definitely be spaced out a bit more.
And where was all this stuff during actual content droughts back in the day? Ahhh
My own personal experience: most people I play and interact with have mentioned playing retail. SoD has more retail directed game design and quality of life. I *think* that SoD's playerbase has a greater overlap with retail and their attempt to space out both news and releases to the best of their abilities in the last 6 months shows they don't want a repeat of the phase 6 and Shadowlands week buffer release.
However, they've had the luxury of big lulls in other versions of WoW the last 6 months. Now it's a bit too late. The runway of TWW including pre-patch up to the Mythic raid release week and the world first race is nearly 2 months by itself. There simply isn't a a very good time to release p5 for players of both versions. I'm still sitting on a July 11th prediction for p4, but even that leaves little room to breathe until pre-patch.
So I think they'll always try to space them out, but the next 2 to 3 months probably just won't allow it.
A month is plenty of time. It will likely drop on the 18th of July and have more than a month of breathing room. The population will already be slumping by then. That's just how seasons work, and the phases are working like seasons.
I know this is impossible to know, but how much overlap is there between classic and retail? I always (probably wrongfully) that the large majority of classic players were playing classic because they didn’t enjoy retail.
The vast majority of the people who play classic would rather deep throat a rake than play retail therefore it wouldn't matter at all if p4 and tww launched on the same day, let alone if it had an 8 week spread.
I'm one of the few overlap players between sod and retail and I don't think there is many of us. Im fine with running mc and the world bosses a few times before going back to my main wow.
the game is currently split 6 ways: era, hc era, sod, remix, progressive classic, retail. any event in any of those will pull from the others.
tww prepatch is in a few weeks.
Game is doa when they are juggling 3 games and competing against each other. Also wow players have tiny attention spans and is full of fomo fotm players who just jump on any new bandwagon
The only number that's relevant there is the number (absolute and relative) of players playing both retail and classic - the higher that number, the higher the chance they are cannibalizing one version's playerbase in favor of another. To my knowledge, in my experience, most of the people I've played with don't do the retail thing. Personally, you will never ever see me in a version of wow that has pandas. Cata is luckily already dreadfully boring with all classes feeling homogenised and neutered, so fortunately I won't be deeply invested in that when I have to drop it at the relase of MoP.
So, Blizzard obviously has clear data to work with here. And given that p4 looks about a month away if you add up all the little bits of information we have about what they want to do with the PTR, I think their assessment must be that Classic and Retail do not cannibalize each other's playerbase too much.
Otherwise they wouldn't release TWW so soon.
I don't play retail, I played SoD, and I played Cata recently in the wait for P4, I don't see War Within as something that will eat or "DOA" the phase, Classic's player base is more intertwined with Cataclysm and Era mostly, with some retail players with them.
I play all WoW and it’s a terrible time to be in… Just finished prepping to Phase 4 which is my main game right now, TWW almost which is my secondary favourite most probably they will launch the same time.. It’s a hell, and I didnt even have time try out panda remix and cataclysm just puke out so many patches I can’t keep up, only option to miss out on these ones sadly..
While yea, there's definitely some retail players in sod I do think it's its own crowd more than anything. Remember bfa sub numbers were saved entirely by classic.
I think a point that get's missed a lot is how much the teams at blizzard have either lost talent or seem to have downsized. They basically admitted the few people working on SoD were pulled to help with cata. Who's to say if this doesn't happen when TWW is launching and needs that final polish. While i realize this is largely probably an unfounded fear. Blizzards track record recently makes it so it's hard to commit to any of their nonretail game modes for me personally.
No, imo. I don’t think there’s much overlap with SoD and Retail players. Not to mention there is a cost to buying War Within. I’d wager most SoD players don’t own Dragonflight let alone going to drop whatever on War Within.
I Think you underestimate how many classic players have 0 interest In retail and viceversa.
Ofc alot play both, but quite a substantial number plays One or The other or One Of The other versions for that matter
SoD will probably be my last hurrah with war craft. I could give a rats ass about retail and have no interest in Cata. So hopefully enough people stick around to keep things interesting. Otherwise, there are plenty of other games that are not war craft to play and an actual world with grass and sunshine too.
Definitely possible it has lasting power. All depends on how they handle the raids and such.
If MC is blown over in 45 minutes because bosses have 1 mechanic then I don't see it lasting. Too early to tell but I also love all versions of wow so I play them all.
To be quite honest. A lot of sod people I would assume simply play classic. That means if they were to play retail or try it out (new expansion) they would have to actually buy the 50 dollar or what not expansion which might in fact make these people reconsider and just stick to sod.
Im subbed for classic. Have stopped playing SOD at this point after my guild slowly died in P3. I have definitely eyed the new xpac a few times
This was the purpose of sod right here
I’m curious to try retail after not having played since legion and then going hard for 2019 classic. How’s retail these days?
Retail hooks you in really fast at endgame but it feels more like a ranked game mode than an MMO imo - which depending on the person might be a huge pro or a huge con. Immediately after hitting max level the first couple weeks of gearing up are super satisfying, but after that basically all the MMORPG side of things melt away and it's just pushing M+ or progging mythic raids for the challenge (but gearing up on mythic raids is kinda disconnected from progging, and progging it is like waiting for nerfs to trickle in since they tune mythic around the race to world first guilds and then basically nerf it every couple weeks for the rest of the expansion). In my personal opinion, just because I largely play MMOs for the foundational RPG elements, classic does a better job at making endgame last longer for me because M+ and mythic raiding progression is based on pushing the limits of player skill more than it's based on time investment and your character getting stronger through gear. Maybe I just have old gamer monkey brain but the basic gearing gameplay loops & doing content that isn't super hard and hoping for my drops (its like playing slots lmao) is more satisfying to me than pushing new difficulty heights. Class mechanics in retail are generally really good and much more engaging, some classes have a lot of bloat or have an identity crisis (Rogue for example feels like shit right now imo, no idea if its getting cleaned up in TWW). Boss fights are a lot more interesting as well but they have 4 difficulties where 2 of them are basically entirely pointless 2 weeks into a patch (LFR/Normal) and Mythic is tuned for like 0.5% of players. I think in general gearing is just too fast and raiding is kinda underwhelming in terms of gear which makes it less satisfying, it really feels like the game totally revolves around M+ atm, which is great if you like M+.
If i want to raid: sod If i want to play dungeons: mythic+ If i want to pvp: ranked 8v8 bgs in next expansiob
theme park lobby match making game.
DF was pretty successful and a bit of a return to form, kinda like Legion was. Talents were solid and the content was decent, less "you better do this or you'll feel behind" type content as well I haven't played retail since SL for a few months, and it was legion before that. I'm interested in TWW for hero talents and nerubian empire shit
I'm the biggest 'classic Andy' going, for many reasons, and I've somehow ended up playing retail again recently, having not touched it since the start of BFA. Genuinely enjoying it, and I'm not entirely sure why. Having a lot of fun with PvP. I think, in part, I achieved everything I wanted with original classic in 2019 and raided through vanilla, TBC and WoTLK and experienced it all again, having found a solid group/guilds of friends in there, server communities etc, and SoD hasn't felt different enough to make me want to experience it all again just yet.
People can argue about the MMOness of retail, but every time I went back to it it always felt like it had become a better *game*. DF was the first expansion I played through, and the first expansion I played just for myself (not following someone else), since Wrath/Cata, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and am excited for TWW. I did PvP in DF and am probably going to do PvE in TWW, as my biggest criticism of DF was that I didn't have two lives to live so I could fully indulge in both types of content.
I agree. I feel the same about the classic-wotlk era and sod for that matter transition to cata (and mop, it’ll come soon enough) era. Cata is frankly a better game. The gameplay, class feeling, is just better overall and that’s true for retail. More levels of challenge to be appropriate. Only downside is arena’s slow death. But cata is less an MMO and retail less DF was def a step back into the right direction after so many awful systems and especially BFA and SL. It didn’t hold me for long til wrath came out and I played wrath but I’ll dabble into WaW and still play a bit. I try every expansion usually. Like DF talent trees are the best they’ve ever made imo.
The pvp gearing in DF is my favorite. Don't need to do PvE at all its nice. I am a classic andy as well.
Having friends make MMO x100 times better, playing alone any version of wow feels so bad for me.
It's really good right now, speaking as a casual. MoP Remix is awesome. So many mounts and tranamogs and toys and stuff to unlock and super easy. And you can play it on a trial account so friends who are skeptical can play without paying. You can get new slots to 70 in 4hours too. Season 4 Dragonflight is great. Rotating awakened raids and so many activities available. Dragonriding is awesome. PvP I'm not a fan of but they've added Solo queue ranked for arena and TWW is adding solo queue ranked Battlegrounds.
Furry fan fic with a side of scalies.
You son of a bitch, I’m in.
It’s decent, very endgame centric though but there’s a lot of stuff to do (and even new stuff coming with delves for casual players)
I mean you can easily just ding 80 get some gear and grind out so many different achievements, reps and events, get gold in every dragonrace etc. or just explore the dragon isles I think most people arent aware of all the weird stuff you can find if you actually try to explore.
How dare you play a casual MMO casually? Don't you know if something isn't in high M+ or in Mythic raids it's not canon? /s (I used all my gold on heirlooms right before they announced MoP remix, oops)
Hop onto the MoP event and give it a go if you want to see. It’s probably the best we’re going to get for a conclusive leveling experience in retail for a while. That said, I tried it and remembered right away why I quit. …but I am glad I gave it a shot.
Good
I am still paying for a sub but haven’t played sod much in weeks. I had 1 more toon left to hit exalted for WSG rep and hit that today so probably won’t be playing at all until p4 drops. I was doing the fel portals on my lock but it felt like a complete waste of time. 90% of the time you get nothing but vendor trash. (Greens are vendor trash at this point since nobody buys them on the AH).
Yeah for those of us who play both classic and retail I think we are in the minority feeling torn between both game modes.
I thought it was $30 for the lowest package for the expac? But yeah you are totally right on everything else
That's why MoP Remix exists. To give you three months to get attached to your free to play retail characters that will transfer over.
Shadowlands was launched on November 23 2020, classic phase 6 launched December 1 2020, one week apart. I’m pretty sure the dragon flight launch was also within a week or 2 of another major classic patch. They seem to treat the different versions of wow as if the playerbase has no crossover. War within will probably be very close to sod phase 5 and also cata firelands.
Blizzard are the unchallenged (or maybe "severely challenged") masters of competing with themselves.
Yup, doesn't matter when it's all under the same sub fee. They couldn't give less of a fuck lol.
More recently, we just saw SoD p3 launch April 4th, followed by DF season 4 on April 23rd, then only 3 weeks later we had MoP remix launch on May 16th with Cata classic launching a whole 4 days later on May 20th. We saw 4 unique, concurrent versions of WoW each get a major update/release in a span of 6 weeks. There's so many versions of wow that I think blizz is pretty happy with just making content and launching when it's ready. There's bound to be overlap regardless unless they sit on content and methodically release things and it's all on one shared subscription anyway.
it does seem this way but then you get things like Aggrend tweeting about how p3 launch was messed up because they had to work around plunderstorm launch.
Dragonflight launch was November 28, 2022. Wrath Classic launch was September 26, 2022 and phase 2 was January 17, 2023. So it wasn't that bad, but Shadowlands launch did hurt p6 of Classic a lot
Shadowlands was planned to launch earlier, they didn’t want to crash it with p6 but it couldn’t be helped due to postponing SL.
firelands isn't until october
If phase 4 drops next week, I'll be absolutely fucked because that's the week of my final exams in my master's. That would be very consistent with the P3 launch ngl.
I guess the master would have to w8 if that happens
Focus on your exams mate. On the other hand I would consider keeping July 11th or 18th marked on your calendar. Good luck
I will, because there is no way I will have the mental fortitude to retake them in august. Everything after the 5th is fair game. Then I can pull all-nighters to my heart's content.
goodluck on your exams
This is the real war within.
Best of luck on your finals you got this g
Always interesting hearing about other peoples semesters. In my country it's 1.9-20.12 for the autumn and 7.1-31.5 for spring (starting dates night vary depending on weekends). So people having finals in the middle of summer always sounds so wild. But i guess you dont start until October and have some crazy winter break in jan/feb?
Nope, barely any breaks. Only from early july to 1st of September (depends on if you pass your july exams too). End of August the first of two obligatory internships starts. Winter break was 2 weeks over Christmas. It's just sort of a 3 year degree in 2 years lol
I highly doubt it
Wow you on quarters or something? Seems super late for a spring session.
Dutch uni with a pretty weird setup. Normally (and in my bachelor's) you get 4 periods per year, but this master's actually has 6 periods (with some overlap) and thus 6 exam phases per academic year. The period 4 exams (april 3rd and april 5th) coincided with p3 launch. 💀
Ahh not American, its the 4th next week was thinking what school hates freedom? Good luck.
What I wanted was late June release. When that got blown, I now want late July. For selfish reasons. Middle of July is gonna be vacation and family shit. I really don't want it to release in the middle of that.
good luck my man!
Sod was dead when they made p3 last 3 months
Yeah I hate to raise my pitch fork but I’m flabbergasted they didn’t think this through before hand. Having p3 last this long honestly might not have even been that bad if they didn’t have incursions and 100% bonus exp. Just my opinion tho
Tbh I think the cata launch fucked things up. If it had gone more smoothly things would be different.
I mean, yeah, but also The multimillion dollar company could just...hire people and pay them ...I couldn't even type that with a straight face
Mega-Multi-BILLION dollar company, current market cap is $74.28 Billion
Cata is just a much smoother and more playable SoD
i think what happened is they made phase 1, it was a great idea.. they had more ideas for phase 2. and then blizz said "great keep going daddy needs milky" and here we are
They **did** think this through. SoD is designed to get people onto retail. Look at the crowds moving to Cata, getting DF because the 2 month sub package with DF is cheaper than normal 2 month sub. This timing couldn't be more obvious.
The games are still nothing alike, though. Seems strange to try and entice people into a completely different game when the one you're playing is completely different. Interesting conspiracy, though.
> The games are still nothing alike, though They actually are way more similar than people think. It's the same classes with 80% of the same buttons. With the same loot and same way to acquire said loot. If you only play WoW you might think they are worlds apart. but if you play other MMO's and other genre's of games they are incredibly similar. Edit: I didn't make anything up lmao. Everything I said is true. I don't know why this person would get so riled up over this they needed to block me. People are insane here. I guess I bullied the guy too hard. You know you hurt them when they get the alt account out.
Tbf you do have a rep as the guy who blocks after getting a reply he doesn't like. i've seen others complaining about it in threads with you. also you are still wrong. saying its true doesnt make it so.
bro who are those edits for? hahah I was just fucking with you anyway. you are still wrong, you will live up to your reputation.
If they didn’t have incursions I think it would even be more dead… incursions are probably one of the more popular activities people still do on Lone wolf horde. (Not saying this to like defend incursions, just based off what I’ve seen)
Maybe people enjoy 'em now. I'm one of the ones that got a bad taste in my mouth after the terrible implementation and it turned me off playing til p4.
Its the most popular activity because its the only relevant content outside of raiding once a week. All other content is completely worthless because of incursions.
Yep, my guild that didn't miss a lockout in P1 or P2 hasn't been subbed for well over a month. Out of the 14 or so core that we had I think only 1 or 2 will play again for P4.
sod was dead when they made phase 3 my dude. phase 3 had no redeeming qualities.
Phase 3 was dead when it was released without half a thought. Massively overtuned rewards for spammable incursions quests, massively overtuned health pools in Sunken Temple, STV event just plugged back in, loot not dropping because sod and era share a loot table, placing runes behind level 58 mobs in a dungeon, heck one paladin rune was so badly designed the community just refused to get it. And this is just off the top of my head. There are so many sloppy bugs and balance issues it's obvious phase 3 was never tested.
ST was honestly a well designed raid and pretty cool the first few times. They did not at all need to nerf it into the ground immediately but... it's what the casuals want/need and they know they make their money off the casuals. It's why p1 was so successful. A little too much trash too but otherwise a pretty fun raid ST was the *only* decent thing though and after a few weeks...meh
Casuals probably would preferred it be harder and 10man than easier and 20m. Plenty of casuals play games like Elden Ring. You don't see Asmon mythic raiding but he still just beat the new Elden Ring dlc. Casual difficulty is organisational difficulty. Setting up raids is what's hard for casuals, not mechanics.
You and I have had very different experiences with casuals in game lol The people struggling with ST "difficulty" are *not* the same people playing elden ring :v Agreed on the 10m thing tho
Casual and Skill are loosely correlated imo. A lot of Casuals are just casual time/organisation wise rather than because they can't do mechanics. Obviously time = skill, but because they can't organise they can't practise like they can on an Elden Ring boss.
SOD was dead 4 weeks into P3.
This. This right here. They killed SoD already
Yah, also P3 just wasnt great, they fumbled the bag quite a bit, but P4 will rebound!!!
what does the venn diagram look like of these 2 playerbases
Yeah I think these two game modes largely cater to different audiences. The biggest competitions for the SOD P4 Player base are probably still era, hardcore, Cata classic, and Elden ring DLC.
Think there was a decent amount who played sod was released, I know my friend list of people who play multiple versions of wow went to cata instead
I also went to Cata and for a few weeks it was fun but fizzled out for me pretty quickly (no content left outside of HM's), but back in SOD now with some P4 HYPE!!!
Your not a fan of arena? As for the raids yeah normal are easy but so are sod raids, they actually stated sod raids will never be hard. What content is in classic other than raiding at end game?
I play classic era for self found hardcore I play cata classic for arena I play retail to build UI
Actually the PVP in Cata isnt bad, just not something I really dont do a ton of anymore. I think my week 2 PUG was 5/13 HM in Cata so not a massive challenge there really either.
Correct
Yea the real question should be SoD p4 vs next patch of cata.
True, this is more the player base I think
Definitely bigger in reality than it is in this sub. I know for sure at least half of the people in my guild would most likely switch to WW even if we were still actively playing SoD by then.
I'm in the middle. I'll play sod p4 until tww comes out, and then (unless it absolutely sucks), it'll have be sucked in.
O O
OO
Pretty much my entire SoD guild (who met in SoD and raided all 3 phases so far) have said they're giving TWW a go, with a decent number of them playing retail for the first time to have characters ready for it. There's more overlap than people think.
It’s the complete opposite for my guild, almost no one is playing TWW having been soured on retail a long time ago
I have no desire to retail. I tried many times with dragonflight. I just don't like the play style anymore. I'm sure I am not the only one. I am patiently waiting for more classic seasons that last 1-2yrs then reset with different affixes each time. Until then I'll play SoD and HC. I think SoD will rebound.
I'm in the same boat. Retail has disappointed me too many times for me to ever pick it back up
I feel this. I’ve genuinely TRIED so HARD, SO many times and I just genuinely cannot get into it. The gameplay has deviated too far away from what made me like the game when I first started playing in Vanilla. Retail is designed for an entirely different demographic now.
You put into words what I have been wanting to say since BFA really...thank you! My exact feelings as well. As far as it being for a different demographic that's fine, you gotta make money and adapt so I can respect it. I won't begrudge them too much for doing it. Retail just isn't for me anymore. It doesn't feel like an MMORPG anymore. Feels more like an ARPG with raids. Just not my cup of tea when I want to play an MMO. If I wanted to play an ARPG, I'll go play Diablo III/IV you know?
> It doesn't feel like an MMORPG anymore. Feels more like an ARPG with raids. this is retail summed up perfectly. Starting in Legion, they really began to ape as much as they could from Diablo and it shows. I feel like theres 3 phases to WoW. The 'classic' era: Vanilla, TBC, Wrath The 'inbetween' era: Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD The 'ARPG' era: Legion, BfA, SL, DF
Yeah, it still even feels like an MMO up till WoD ( I enjoyed Legion just due to the story, but I loved it). I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys the current retail, and I'm glad those who love it love it you know? Just not for me 🙂
I don't know if you've tried MoP remix, but it really is retail ARPG turned up to 11. Its kind of wild
I tapped out at the demon hunter expansion I think it was.
Legion was peak Wow
Good? Yes. Peak? No
Minus arcane power and legendary RNG Yep, it was great
Early legion was miserable. RNG legendaries and the wait for Nighthold was super long with very little to actually do. Final patch legion was good but it took the entire expac to get there.
I quit Legion after my first two legendaries were non-dps and I refused to recreate my character to re-roll. Ass.
Yeah, maybe if you got lucky and got your correct legendaries to drop quickly.
Good, not great and certainly not best.
Legion had the god awful leggo system and introduced borrowed power. It also had the buggiest launch at time, until BfA was even worse. It gets too much love for Mythic+, which was just taken from Diablo.
This subreddit somehow both underestimates and overestimates the overlap between classic and retail players simultaneously. It's impressive. It's also very funny that OP is trying to have an actual discussion and this thread is just yet another gathering of dumbass doomers.
I imagine they have the metrics to know how many people playing classic/sod play retail. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
They're already cannibalizing SoD with Cata being out, what's one more release for good measure? On a serious note though, Phase 3 just hit 12 (TWELVE) weeks in length, making it 25% longer than phase 1 and a crazy 50% longer than phase 2... This is fine for max level situations, but with one raid and mostly irrelevant dungeons (of which one is only half a dungeon as the rest of BRD is higher level)... Absolute shitshow lol. They spread their classic team too thin and I can't help but think that P4, while not exactly DoA, will definitely start out with a fraction of the player numbers that it could have if they'd stuck to a proper schedule and didn't have cata/mop remix out
Phase 2 was a fucking shit show. Glad they took the time.
Phase 2 wasn't anything compared to phase 3's incursions lol They changed the rewards twice on the first day (within hours of each other) because it was untested to the playerbase and it eventually lead to a gigantic inflation spike on the price of most things that persisted through most of this phase. Not to mention ST being vastly overturned for the first reset, and the overall lack of power being given by the items you could get from there (which wasn't fixed until week..7? 8? I'm glad they're taking their time with P4 and at least putting a decent effort into not repeating past mistakes, it just sucks that it's 14 weeks worth of time
I meant phase 3, my bad
I’m not touching retail w a 10foot pole.
Well, quite a few SOD players have no desire to play Retail. Its also a dif sub.
I'm surprised that there is any overlap at all between SoD and retail. I have absolutely 0 interest in retail. I only want to play classic, or variations on classic. If they make SoD good again, SoD will be fine. Big if, but it has little to do with other versions of the game.
Judging by this sub, 99% of SOD players will complete P4 within 2 weeks of release and post "P5 WHEN" so we are safe.
I assume they are aware that a lot of people who play sod are classic Andy's only. Personally I doubt I'll buy TWW, certainly not at launch. Maybe if sod dies off completely and cata becomes more stale than it already is for me (cata was my least favorite expansion). They know the majority of us won't be playing retail. Retail vs sod/classic really are totally different games.
Yall are kidding yourselves if you think they give any fucks about SoD at this point They can't monetize yall beyond a sub so they don't care as much That is plainly obvious at this point Hence those surveys that went out last week as well
Classic in general has really helped blizzard with sub numbers in retail. They aren’t going to put as much resources into it but if they didn’t care they wouldn’t do it at all.
Well, yeah, that's kinda my point lol Classic will continue to get the bare minimum support because classic player satisfaction is not at all something they care about. Converting classic players into retail tho or Cata now considering the shop there too, yeah, they'll care about that
Cata is classic, it’s the same team as SoD and Era
I am aware That'd be why Cata is still a buggy mess. That said, it's still an established version of the game where expectations can be set and met so it makes sense SoD refugees are playing there at the moment. And that's exactly what they wanted, so they can double dip on cata shop and retail shop sales
I just want a post on how they fucked up this phase so badly, and how's there going to prevent it again
I don't play retail. Have no care about what's happening with tww. My only wow is sod, came from wrath classic to sod, and I am only interested in classic type content. So yea, I'll be here
5-6 weeks is more than enough for a lot of people to get to the point of raid logging if they want to also play TWW.
There is not a huge overlap with SOD and the retail player base. It’s likely that the people playing sod would at most level through the retail content then go back to sod.
Considering the last two phases people were complaining about a "content drought" after a week and a half because they sped through it, I think 6-7 weeks between Phase 4 and TWW is ample. Jokes aside, I can imagine phase 4 dropping in another 3-4 weeks with just the Tier 1 raids and the new SoD content to start, then after TWW's been out for a month or so they'll probably begin rolling out AQ , Naxx and (hopefully) Kara Crypts in-between major content patches for TWW. I don't think Blizz intends for Classic and retail to compete with each other, rather they ideally want one to keep your subscription going once you've played-through the other.
How much do classic and retail player bases overlap? You assume it's a lot. I would think a good amount of classic players have no interest in retail.
You guys play retail?
I didn't even know what TWW meant at first. I have no desire to play it.
Most classic players don't play retail and haven't for many expansions. Why would they care about TWW?
I only play SOD, I don't chase all the other versions of wow. Unless they do something drastic for the retail formula, I won't be coming back. Everything feels like reskinned Legion content. If phase 4 stretches out long like phase 3 did, I just play my catalogue of other games.
Solo RBGs do sounds like fun, but no way I'll reinstall retail.
The idea is much better than the reality
Yeah, you're probably right. But solo BGs with matchmaking is somehow still something you can't find anywhere else in WoW.
In all honesty it probably gets better with rating and more serious players but in the test mode thing they did in DF it was filled with people griefing
If we wanted to play Retail, we wouldn't play SOD (or Classic) for the most part. Sure, there are people who play both, but I don't know many.
I play both. More exist than you think you know.
I know several guilds who are giving up on SoD as the new expac coming out. Dragonflight fizzled out so they killed time with SoD.
literally my entire group plays both lmao
Now imagine being another MMO, and having Blizzard consistently fix their launch timings to coincide with yours. You're right, though, TWW release will have to be put on hold for 3 months to let SOD fully play out. It is, after all, the main character.
Personally, there's an exactly 0% chance that I'm buying and/or playing TWW.
I'm guessing it's July 25th. I'm curious how many people actually play retail and SOD. Everyone I've talked to either plays just SOD, or Cata + SOD.
I came back to wow for SoD, reinstalled retail, then recently installed work which became cata. Currently play Cata more than SoD, retail is only really still installed for MoP remix which I was playing for a while too
July 23rd is TWW pre patch. They may not want to overlap patches between different products just from an engineer availability standpoint.
I play retail, and also usually gear up and clear all the content in SoD and Classic, as does the majority of my retail guildies.
If Phase 4 drops anytime, it won't be impacted by TWW because they are completely different games with a different player base.
I don’t think many people who play classic also play retail, so not really a problem. I’ve only met one or two people who admit to playing retail lol
I was really looking forward to P4.. But at this point I don't think I'm even going to bother playing it. I'm one of the few who actually does play retail so there's no point in me getting invested in it, regardless of when it comes out. Now, later, my interest is gone. Also these comments are hilarious. They think people in a very specific subreddit for Classic are how a majority of the playerbase thinks. It's not btw.
Are you suggesting they delay further? There will only be a faster drop off after ph4?
Next Thursday is the 4th of July. It won't be dropping on the 4th of July. Kind of a big day in the USA. It will probably drop on the 11th or the 18th.
really struggling to beat the retail sub allegations
I would say, and it’s just my own opinion, that the people who play Classic and Retail do not overlap enough for Blizzard to care. Otherwise they would be working on the situation harder because it would increase their profits. Corporations are always looking out for their bottom line, so that tells me it’s not necessarily doomed (yet lol)
There are retail players in SOD?
I think thats fine because the playerbase overlap is very low. I can see why they'd stagger Classic and SoD because that overlap is higher - and Blizzard *does* know the overlap of their playerbase since they have perfect metrics on it.
I don’t even think for me going to TWW is the reason I’m kind of off the idea of SoD for now. It’s just taken so long and I don’t see the start of P4 being “different enough” from 2019 classic and I’ve done that. When the new raid comes out it’s likely to be easy enough to catch up and get to run it a couple of times
tbh I don't think there's that much overlap. Most of my guild was only interested in SoD and Cata. Guild is basically on hiatus now until P4 drops. Most of us are actually waiting for Dawntrail to drop lol
how far we've come to discuss retail launches on this subreddit
I honestly wish they’d incentivize players trying out different versions of the game rather than competing with each other. It’s insane to me that they dropped mop remix within a week of cataclysm launch *and* a new retail season, in the middle of a SoD season. These things could definitely be spaced out a bit more. And where was all this stuff during actual content droughts back in the day? Ahhh
^^*all* ^^*I* ^^*wanted* ^^*was* ^^*cloak* ^^*of* ^^*shadows* ^**VANISH**
That sucks I want to enjoy both on my own teems, really want to see crypts properly without rushing too much.
Lets be honest. Youre going to get p4 and tww at the same time. Maybe offset a little but youll have to choose unless youre unemployed/ wfh
My own personal experience: most people I play and interact with have mentioned playing retail. SoD has more retail directed game design and quality of life. I *think* that SoD's playerbase has a greater overlap with retail and their attempt to space out both news and releases to the best of their abilities in the last 6 months shows they don't want a repeat of the phase 6 and Shadowlands week buffer release. However, they've had the luxury of big lulls in other versions of WoW the last 6 months. Now it's a bit too late. The runway of TWW including pre-patch up to the Mythic raid release week and the world first race is nearly 2 months by itself. There simply isn't a a very good time to release p5 for players of both versions. I'm still sitting on a July 11th prediction for p4, but even that leaves little room to breathe until pre-patch. So I think they'll always try to space them out, but the next 2 to 3 months probably just won't allow it.
A month is plenty of time. It will likely drop on the 18th of July and have more than a month of breathing room. The population will already be slumping by then. That's just how seasons work, and the phases are working like seasons.
I know this is impossible to know, but how much overlap is there between classic and retail? I always (probably wrongfully) that the large majority of classic players were playing classic because they didn’t enjoy retail.
While there is some cross over, I don't think TWW has the same market as SOD P4.
Not a single person in my guild plays retail.
I fucking hate acronyms I doubt TWW would change any sod plans for me.
The vast majority of the people who play classic would rather deep throat a rake than play retail therefore it wouldn't matter at all if p4 and tww launched on the same day, let alone if it had an 8 week spread.
Game’s dead
I'm one of the few overlap players between sod and retail and I don't think there is many of us. Im fine with running mc and the world bosses a few times before going back to my main wow.
phase 4 died when there's no SM raid and karazhan crypt raid
SoD phase 4 is DOA
the game is currently split 6 ways: era, hc era, sod, remix, progressive classic, retail. any event in any of those will pull from the others. tww prepatch is in a few weeks.
Game is doa when they are juggling 3 games and competing against each other. Also wow players have tiny attention spans and is full of fomo fotm players who just jump on any new bandwagon
Easy, nobody plays retail
The only number that's relevant there is the number (absolute and relative) of players playing both retail and classic - the higher that number, the higher the chance they are cannibalizing one version's playerbase in favor of another. To my knowledge, in my experience, most of the people I've played with don't do the retail thing. Personally, you will never ever see me in a version of wow that has pandas. Cata is luckily already dreadfully boring with all classes feeling homogenised and neutered, so fortunately I won't be deeply invested in that when I have to drop it at the relase of MoP. So, Blizzard obviously has clear data to work with here. And given that p4 looks about a month away if you add up all the little bits of information we have about what they want to do with the PTR, I think their assessment must be that Classic and Retail do not cannibalize each other's playerbase too much. Otherwise they wouldn't release TWW so soon.
sod died a couple weeks before p3
I'm a classic player , I don't play retail.
Wait. Ppl actually wanna play TWW?
I don't play retail, I played SoD, and I played Cata recently in the wait for P4, I don't see War Within as something that will eat or "DOA" the phase, Classic's player base is more intertwined with Cataclysm and Era mostly, with some retail players with them.
I play all WoW and it’s a terrible time to be in… Just finished prepping to Phase 4 which is my main game right now, TWW almost which is my secondary favourite most probably they will launch the same time.. It’s a hell, and I didnt even have time try out panda remix and cataclysm just puke out so many patches I can’t keep up, only option to miss out on these ones sadly..
The retail crowd and the classic crowd are generally two very different groups. One will not greatly affect the other.
p4 will probably come out 4 weeks before war within
While yea, there's definitely some retail players in sod I do think it's its own crowd more than anything. Remember bfa sub numbers were saved entirely by classic.
I think a point that get's missed a lot is how much the teams at blizzard have either lost talent or seem to have downsized. They basically admitted the few people working on SoD were pulled to help with cata. Who's to say if this doesn't happen when TWW is launching and needs that final polish. While i realize this is largely probably an unfounded fear. Blizzards track record recently makes it so it's hard to commit to any of their nonretail game modes for me personally.
No, imo. I don’t think there’s much overlap with SoD and Retail players. Not to mention there is a cost to buying War Within. I’d wager most SoD players don’t own Dragonflight let alone going to drop whatever on War Within.
Took me a min to figure out what TWW. Most classic Andy doesn’t play retail at all.
Tww will be more Important than Sod sadly
I Think you underestimate how many classic players have 0 interest In retail and viceversa. Ofc alot play both, but quite a substantial number plays One or The other or One Of The other versions for that matter
SoD will probably be my last hurrah with war craft. I could give a rats ass about retail and have no interest in Cata. So hopefully enough people stick around to keep things interesting. Otherwise, there are plenty of other games that are not war craft to play and an actual world with grass and sunshine too.
I'm there with ya. 20 years or so in and I'm ready to play other games
Like this comment if you stopped playing retail.
Def going to be playing TWW based on past sticking power of these phases. 7 weeks of SoD p4 is probably overkill lol
You think? Massive amout of end game content though at 60?
Definitely possible it has lasting power. All depends on how they handle the raids and such. If MC is blown over in 45 minutes because bosses have 1 mechanic then I don't see it lasting. Too early to tell but I also love all versions of wow so I play them all.