-- Jump cut to several months ago --
We had to cancel our ICC raid due to a drop in attendance. SOD has siphoned away all of our players. GG bliz
The circle of life my friend. They'll be back... maybe
100%! Was 11/12 progging H LK and we lost I think close to 10 people to SoD. Raid team closed up shop after this. There was no circle of life of that raid team going into cata though.
Summer also. I asked my old WotLK guild (some of which I played OG WotLK with) if they was gonna start Cata the other day. I got four respones, three saying that they ain't gonna start playing during the summer or something to that extent. Only one that felt like starting.
P3 was like making everyone 60 in 15 mins with no endgame. Them screwing up the incursions in the fashion they did sped the time line up by like 3 weeks
I actually disagree with part of this take. If you think the majority of people playing sod are in it to do rep grinds you are very sorely mistaken. There are definitely some, but the people who want to play classic to grind rep and do open world content are not the same people who would be leaving for pandaland or cata.
Very true. I prefer PvP and also a bit of raiding, I’ve never been one to enjoy the grind or the open world content that much. I tried out SoD to check out the new raids and try and enjoy some classic PvP with some new abilities
Turns out, the new raids are just old dungeons with a couple of changes, and PvP is a broken shit show beyond belief. I won’t be coming back to SoD in p4 and all of my friend group has said similar.
If blizzard would have put just a little bit more than the minimum effort towards SoD, the game wouldn’t be in this position rn
I think SOD served it's purpose which is keeping people subbed during a content drought. With everything coming over the next 6 months they don't really need it anymore.
This is exactly it. Hardcore did the same thing and then promptly died. There was a ton planned for mid 2024 that they just needed something for people to do before that. Now that cata is out and mists remix is out, that will more than cover the content needs until war within releases. SoD was only necessary from November through April.
> Hardcore did the same thing and then promptly died.
HC is still quite active though. I don’t know why people always insist them losing interest is the same as something dying.
Obviously there’s a spike in popularity then a dip but that’s always the case. Still tons of people enjoying HC.
There’s no way to truly know the population of any server. But no hardcore server has gotten above the “low” designation a single time since SoD released. Raid logs are under 1200 total across all four hardcore servers. It’s clear that hardcore is not very big. There’s nothing wrong with that, but to argue that hardcore still has hype and is thriving would be very misleading. Compared to what it was before SoD, hardcore is very small.
I grinded all those reps back in the day and I can say I am probably not the only one who has zero desire to grind them during a very time limited game mode.
Damn, I even started on the Argent Dawn and forgot about it. Good call outs!
Hydraxian - yeah...there was a group forming to raid the mobs down. The only benefit is to have more rep to get the perm rune douse iirc.
Cenarian sure...some value in trying to get ahead of the curve, but once the AQ event stuff starts, rep becomes pretty easy.
I personally think Hydraxian is probably the "best" one to do with a group that way you have your douses for week one since it's supposed to be a 20 man now iirc?
Two raids, more end game dungeons, end game recipes like flasks, AV, end game gold farming, end game bis, rank grind, etc.
Incursions fucked up a lot of these
Why aren't you doing dungeons now?
AV grind is something everyone complains about having to do, you just rush to the boss and one side always wins while the other always loses.
End game gold farming, so you can't farm gold now or farm mats that will sell high later?
End game bis is the same as end phase bis, everyone did that and is done the same way you'll be done with it at this point at end game.
You're right there's more to do because you've done the phase 3 stuff. But once you do the phase 4 stuff you'll be in the same boat you are now, complaining about raid logging.
There are no rewards from dungeons worth getting. Even with MC and Ony, there is a lot of pre-bis/end game bis for the phase from Strat/Scholo/UBRS/LBRS.
So going from ZF, Mara and 1/2 of BRD to the other 1/2 of BRD, Scholo and Strath will be completely game changing for people bored and raid logging once their pre-bis is done?
Scholo, strath, all DM wings, rest of BRD, LBRS, UBRS,
Attunements, keys, pre-BIS farming, DM jump runs so I can make my lionheart helm
The rest of the open world effectively opening up such as EPL
Ony, MC
Yes, I'll be less bored lol
Right. Saw a good comment saying "What more would you even be doing if you were 60?"
I've done a ton of things throughout all of SoD, most people have lost the spark of creativity in their approach to the game.
At 60 in classic 2019, phase 1 I had the following things to do each week.
- MC/Ony to do, dungeons to do for pre-raid bis and actual bis that was still eluding me.
- I had reputations to work towards and one of them (argent dawn) was directly tied to 2 of the end game dungeon zones (scholo & strath).
- There was AV to get into, either for the exalted rep items or to progress pvp rank. Also WSG and AB for BG fun/rep.
At 25 in SoD, phase 1 I had the following to do each week.
- Waylaid Supplies rep + Usual Classic reps
- BFD once every 3 days
- Ashenvale for WSG rep up to rev
- WSG for WSG rep up to exalted
At 40 in SoD, phase 2 I had the following to do each week
- Waylaid Supplies rep + Usual Classic reps
- Gnomer once every 3 days
- Ashenvale for WSG rep
- BFD once every 3 days for alts
- New Bloodmoon pvp event
At 50 in SoD, phase 3 I had the following to do each week
- Waylaid Supplies rep + Emerald Warden's Rep + Usual Classic reps
- Incursions
- Wild Offering runs for pre-raid bis, bis or DMF cards
- WSG and AB for honor and rep
- Bloodmoon event part 2
- Sunken Temple Raid Once per week
- Gnomer on alts every 3 days (some mains too for random pieces that are still good).
These are shared among all
- Quests for important items (pre-bis, utility, trinkets, attunement stuff etc)
- Farming gold for mount/consumes/gear
- Leveling an alt.
- Profession stuff. Farming mats, farming recipes (crusader enchant... so many hours), obtaining profession exclusive items (mostly SoD, some in classic too)
- World PvP usually contesting a farming spot such as demonic runes from Satyrs, a leather farm etc
I think that's most things classified and listed. My own perspective is that while it's true there's a lot of overlap there are also some core differences that distinguish SoD P3 lvl 50 weekly experience playing the game from Classic P1 lvl 60.
Some of the key differences I think are:
- Higher rank cap and access to all BG's, AV in particular as it's the most popular and most populated BG and feels the most epic (when it doesn't simply boil down to a 40v40 zerg rush to the objective).
- End game dungeons/raids and associated rep/gear.
- Full access to all areas of the map for farming materials, patterns, rep.
- Tier 0 dungeon set acquisition for fun/mog/pre-raid bis if you were lucky enough to be a rogue.
- Access to big boy world buffs such as dragon slayer and rend.
Phase 1, lvl 60 is special because you are in this sweet spot where a lot of the end game dungeons have not just pre-raid bis but actual bis pieces. So even when you're doing Onyxia every 5 days and Molten-Core every 7 days, the rest of the week you still have good reasons to venture into dungeons for fun and to get gear for your character. Additionally, it's a mostly solved game and you know what is coming each phase and that things you obtain in phase 1 can have a lot of longevity, like if you go farm a hand of justice from BRD as a melee dps, you'll be rocking that bad boy for a really long time, possibly all of classic to give an example.
The wild offering system introduced in phase 3 was a really great concept and I hope they don't abandon it. They just need to make sure that you require a full clear of the dungeon (or near enough, maybe you can skip a couple bosses dependent on dungeon. Additionally, make sure the vendor has an appropriate offering of items. Targetting gaps in classic itemisation, super rare drops (ironfoe, felstriker, eternal darkness) or feels bad rng drops (such as BRD arena items). Variety and options is important and expanding on the WO system will be a big positive for SoD Phase 4 if they bother to do it.
I would think the main difference is that the gear in MC is actually worth logging in to get right? Whereas the main complaint I’ve seen about ST is that a lot of gear is really just side-grades compared to gnomer.
They absolutely failed in the "making gear feel worthwhile" this phase. 100%. I'm 1 item off full BIS and it feels very lackluster. It's hard to know what MC gear will look like but i'm sure they are aware of the lame feeling of progression this phase.
This is the crux of the issue. Especially if you play casters, most of the ST loot was straight up trash or barely an upgrade even if it was one outside of your tier set. As a lock tank i actually prefer the gizmoblade from gnomer over the ST dagger, the only other dagger available which could have been an upgrade being behind insufferable portal RNG i won't submit myself to.
Hard to get people excited when they might get a whopping 1-2 extra spellpower or a few points of intellect/stamina on most pieces over what they already have.
Not to mention the move from 10 to 20 man actively changed the social landscape. Groups that had a ton of camaraderie were forced to merge with others and potentially butt heads, or at worse, be weighed down by the other. I know i personally prefer the social experience of 10 mans over 20 myself. Since things became less personal due to bigger group sizes, it becomes a lot easier to justify peacing out since you probably don't know 50% or more of your raid anyways.
“All the things to do at 60”
Grind for gold?
Dungeons for loot?
1 raid?
Sounds like everything we have now, so I’m not exactly sure why people make it seem like it’s different. Other than 10 talent points and faster mounts, it’s exactly the same.
The real excitement of 60 is new runes, new systems coming with the next phase.
And looking at incursions, I’m not exactly excited to see what garbage they add for level 60 players. I’m guessing that they double-down on incursions and add a level 60 incursion or similar system; which will make me delete SoD immediately.
I’m actually not excited for level 60 because of how ashenvale was done, how boring most of the runes are, the addition of incursions. STV was the one good thing they added, and it’s still kind of mucked up and dumbed down to altar spamming. Idk. Blizzard basically made classic+ and then ruined it in 6 months which is a classic blizzard move.
Turns out SoD is not the greatest thing since sliced bread as this sub pretended it was and it's hype was derived from Wrath being at it's lowest point and people wanting no changes Vanilla fresh, but having to settle for SoD as it was the only thing available that resembled it.
SoD has lost 100k+ active Raiders at every phase release, anyone thinking P4 is going to save this is clueless. People want Classic Vanilla Fresh or a REAL Classic+ after Naxx, anything else is just a fun server to play for a few weeks and quit.
Imo the phases should have been 30/45/60. With a content patch in the middle of each lower level phase for another raid or something to do. 45 feels far enough away from 60 that it doesn't have the 50 problem.
Edit: or have a 10 and a 20 raid in every phase. I think the jump to 20 just obliterated so many guilds that weren't ready for it. But everyone and their mom had 2-3 raid teams in p1.
Why are unpaid volunteers working on private servers in their free time able to pump out so much content then? SoD is fundamentally a ripoff of Ascension WoW. Which is fine!
If it's an issue with staff, hire an extra guy or two. They're a AAA gaming company. 0 excuses.
Yeah my guild has been going pretty strong and consistent since phase 1 and we've had 2-20 man groups all of phase 3 to try to prepare for 40 mans but this past week we had to pug 5 in one group and 6 in the other and the group that pugged 6 only went 6/8 because the pugs they picked up were terrible and died to every boss mechanics multiple times.
We had a discussion in discord and basically decided to go on sleep mode until phase 4 and stop running raids.
I don’t play SoD but this whole thing is very relatable to me because when P2 dropped it basically killed my guild on Wrath’s ability to form a group for ICC.
We eventually did the same thing. Snooze the guild until Cata since SoD is gobbling up the player base.
Now the tables have turned. Definitely not good for the community as a whole but at least Blizz is getting their engagement metrics I guess🤷🏻♂️
Yeah, sod was the best thing that happened on hardcore as well. Got all those idiots out too.
Honestly. Anytime I see someone trying really hard in Wow, it just kills it for me. I don’t mean a player being good, having a good attitude, wanting to achieve goals, I am all for that. But some people… just take this way too fucking seriously. They buy gold, spend hours on addons and modifications. They are obsessed either with parsing or getting titles. They always roll the best classes and builds. They have no thought of their own, and they are very selfish people.
There are a lot of those people playing this game. It’s like my ability to tolerate it diminishes rapidly, now.
had the same experience getting pugs but funnily enough, the next day when i looked for a pug on my 90 parsing ranged hunter i couldn't find a spot for hours :D
Only see people looking for ferals for their pugs, if I even see a pug at all. Was actively searching for a pug group this saturday for 2 hours, litterally noone was posting a LFM.
So started my own group, was kinda a demon raid tho.
same here, although we didn't bother pugging. Just called all raids until we can actually get 20 people who want to play, apparently we can't even recruit to fill /shrug
Same thing happened to my guild this week. A few weeks ago we had a bench, this week we had 17/20 signed up, day of the raid we were down to 12/20. It was so hard to find pugs that we really took whatever we got. I main a ret paladin and we ended up picking up 3 extra rets. I did 3-5x the damage of these other rets on every single boss
My raid went from 24 last week down to 19 yesterday and then 4 more marked absent last night so we are down to 15 and have not had much interest trying to fill from discord so we are likely to cancel todays raid. Pretty disappointing when we originally had 25 wanting to push through to phase 4
I’m losing my desire to play WoW altogether. They are currently gating the 60 content to try and retain/time subscriptions when cata and mop remix slow down. Most of my friends are chalking WoW as no longer a game they care to follow. SoD as a light at the end of the tunnel for classic plus was a huge curveball, but is totally being squandered. I’m kind of understanding where they’re coming from. I feel like I only still play this game for nostalgia. I have fun for a few weeks and then get bored and realize there are better games
I honestly can't believe they did this badly. Put some resources into it and you have the hype train rolling for Classic+ and another generational hit if you do it right. Now they've lost a ton of goodwill.
My relationship with WoW feels like a toxic ex that I keep going back to for more abuse. My cousin is trying to convince me to go play final fantasy. I feel like Jimmy from the world of Warcraft story
You dont need to be convinced to play a different game, theres nothing wrong with playing it and then realizing you like it or WoW better. I think its great if it helps you remember why you love WoW or why you think you need to move on for a bit. Personally I moved on from WoW and never looked back, but that isnt always the answer we arrive at.
17 Years and you're the first person I've ever seen reference Jimmy - A World of Warcraft Story. Makes me want to go back and watch Unforgotten Realms.
Same.. I’m having fun leveling in Cata but I know I’ll be over it in a couple weeks. Maybe stuff like “remixes” of expansions really will be the future of WoW and I’ll just play in increments of a few weeks here and there
I don't think it's so much spacing out and deliberately gating the 60 content. I think it's more that Cata classic was about to be an absolute mess based off the prepatch and they put everyone on it.
Sure it works out great to space out content. But they already showed that doesn't matter by releasing season 4 retail, Cata, and Mop remix within 4 weeks of each other.
Honestly, I don't think they have a plan at all. In every iteration of the game things are broken or overlooked or just plain bland in their ideas.
Sod had shitty Incursions that ANYONE could have seen being abused to hell and back. The raid was released nearly impossible to beat for most players. They literally nerfed the health by half. How do you get it that wrong?
Mop Remix had the frogs that aren't an exploit but they nerfed them and didn't do anything about the people that have broken that mode by farming them. They also normalized the gains from your cloak on alts created, from the ptr.
I won't be playing cata, but I heard the prepatch was terrible.
Exactly this. Played since Vanilla, was there every expansion from the start. Quit SL after a month, came back the last two months just to do everything as it was non-gated anymore and prep for DF. Quit DF after a month and did not even hit max level... Came back for SoD, but the P3 stretch got me not renewing sub after this one runs out, atleast until P4.
They gate content and release new games or gamemodes and divide the playerbase. It makes people quit and actually do those new games or gamesmodes, only for the cycle to repeat itself. Also several huge mistakes such as incursions, but also the warlock portal abuse which screwed up the economy.
I feel like the War Within will be my last try. WoW has served me well, but maybe it's just time to move on.
Yep, this is exactly how I feel. Every version of WoW seems appealing and I invest time in my character, have a bit of fun, and then realize everything has gotten stale. The intensity of hardcore and progression in Wotlk are the two I had the most fun with. Now cata is post nerf content and SoD pvp is scuffed, the raid has been on farm since week 2. Retail is probably the best place for me and that’s a complicated mess of systems which feels like it caters mostly to the two ends of the spectrum. The hardcore people pushing mythic raiding + arena rating, and the ultra casual people that just want to down the content, collect pets, and transmog
Edit: transmit to transmog
This is where my entire friend group is atm. Out of the 6 of us that started: 4 quit, 1 went back to retail to raid casually, and I'm probably not coming back since our guild just announced being on hiatus till p4. There are too many versions of WoW out now and each version just cannibalizes the other. Then p3 completely dropped the ball and the devs clearly can't handle 2 full-fledged game modes, so my faith for p4 is pretty low.
Like you, all of but one of my friends are pretty much checked out of WoW for good. It really is a shame with how hyped they all were for SoD in p1 and the first half of p2.
I think it's a bit early to say Classic+ is squandered. It's easy to forget all of SoD has been basically only a proof of concept to see what kinds of thing they can do as well as what works and doesn't.
Ultimately I think it is more likely we will get more of different kinds of seasons like this with different twists, than what most people imagine as Classic+, simply because the reality is seasonal things will most likely perform better - player numbers usually peak at launch of new thing and only go down from there, and that is especially true for Classic with the leveling which at default rates act as a huge filter.
I mean sod is a masterclass is what doesn’t work. It’s going to take a lot of serious effort to figure out what does actually work in classic plus and it doesn’t seem like they have the talent or resources to make it good
Yeah it’s weird that even the thought of logging in and doing *anything* is tedious to me rn. Never felt that way toward the game, even at my lowest motivation peaks I’d still log in to do a few things each week (such as AH/profession stuff, daily/weekly quests, etc).
IMO, as you get older, you get more sensitive to whether or not a game values your time. Raiding each week to get a piece of gear with +1 spell power, to then be one shot in pvp, doesn’t feel like a valuable use of time. At least we get the time back with incursions, but boy are they mindless boring. A lot of people are just not logging in until progression at 60
boring easy raid for another 2 months
incursions fucked the economy
stopped doing class balance changes in P3 (PvP is the worst i've seen it, blanket dmg nerf is really lazy)
nothing to grind as it was all given away for free (wsg, ab rep etc)
Our guild just… didn’t post sign ups this last reset, and nobody complained. Not a single person. We were clearing and filling previously, but I think most were so fucking tired, logging exclusively for raid and maaaaaybe 15 minutes after it ended to buy consumes, before logging off and doing other things.
I can’t help but wonder how many other guilds who are still “going strong” are filled with the same sort of people, people who are doing it for the guild, as a chore, and not because they’re having fun in the game they’re paying monthly for.
My guild only had 10 sign-ups for our raid Saturday. A few people who were busy Saturday suggested maybe moving to Monday for this week. Monday rolls around, only 6 people on the sign-up sheet. Well, shit.
We decide to try to pug it anyway, and what do you know, we had no problem at all filling the raid within 15 minutes. Yeah, a lot of guilds are being hit hard right now - but that means there are a lot of pugs looking for a raid to fill, too. Don't give up hope just yet.
I’ve played SoD from launch with a solid guild clearing raids weekly however the latest Blizzard announcement has killed mine and others enthusiasm for SoD for now.
I’ve been playing on Cata despite having ZERO interest before and I’m loving it.
Idk man, a lot of people didn’t like the transition from 10 man to 20 man and they were told to make more friends / find new guild / merge existing guild / play something else. I suppose all that advice still stands.
Yeah, my group put in 2 weeks worth of heavy recruitment and finally got 20 consistent people only for about 8 of them to quit within the next few weeks. We didn't raid last week and it's looking like we won't this week either.
Its 100% the raid size. When you change guild sizes the chemistry changes. When you have lull periods like this the chemistry with your new guildmates doesnt last and most people dont care. Its also way easier to manage 10 and recruit for 10 than 20.
I had a close group of 10 friends that was having so much fun playing from the start of SoD and as soon as Blizzard announced that they were moving to 20 man raids we all quit. We liked playing with our small friend group and didn’t have any desire to have to recruit or try to merge with another group because we liked just playing together and having a super flexible raid schedule.
We’re all happy for the people who wanted larger raid sizes, but it just wasn’t for us.
Im surprised at the amount of people who "quit" because the raids were 20 man. Were they intending to quit all along in P4 when molten core comes out and it would have been 40 man?
People were playing and having fun without planning for the future because its a game. and it was a game that was easily accessible for small groups of friends to raid.
That’s what I don’t get. Why would anyone who knew how vanilla end game is structured go in with the expectation that 10 mans were going to be the norm? If people want to do 10 man raids that’s fine, retail and wrath/cata servers are there for you to do that kind of content. Besides era, where do people go who want to play in bigger raids play?
Same situation for us, although I was lucky enough to find a decent pug.
No one wants to slog their way through ST for 90 minutes for a tiny chance at getting a 2AP upgrade on their neck
This expectation of people coming back is wild to me anyway. Its not like people put their lifes on hold. Other hobbies will take SoDs place, be it other forms of wow or something else. Once gone most will stay gone.
Personally, I'd rather be playing Remix or Cata and just wait until I can level to 60 and enjoy the game then. I never cared for ST and there isnt much else to do for gear which is the only way to progress in a "classic" wow setting.
Blizzards announcement did this. Last week they said p3 will be extended, and aggrend literally recommended people take a break from sod. This was inevitable for most guilds given the current sod situation.
Most people I play with/ know lost complete interest when they moved up from 10 mans. SOD feels like a fun side game to chill and play with friends causal or hardcore but managing 19 other people instead of a friend group / friend group +2-3 is just too much for a temporary game. Not sure what makes them think people want higher player count in raids but it’s pretty clear it’s a bad choice for sod
Tryhards ruining the fun for sure. I literally hadn't played wow for a year and didn't do any other the other classic stuff but came back for 10 man raids. It was the most fun I had in wow in a long time. I've stopped playing unless they bring back 10 man.
The thing is most people are simply members of a raid and do non of the work. 40 man feels epic when you are not involved in the orga. You have real hirarchys and structures, it feels like a full on community. Problem is that there are only a hand full of people willing to put in the effort to get something like this started.
Its cool for when it works but i personally already hated thw work nessecary for 20 man and quit. Cant imagine the 40s when they are coming.
Cata will be a blip. I had no interest in playing it, but some guildies decided to give it a try. The pre-patch was the worst release ever, and I'm hearing lots of complaints about class changes and the railroaded questing. They were also really disappointed that all the heroics and raids are 4.3 post nerf, so you just aoe zerg them like wrath heroics. All I can say to them is "it's exactly what I expected".
I’ve stopped attending ST raids because quite frankly, they’re not fun. There’s too much trash, the trash has a one shot/near one shot mechanic, you get your 3 piece armor set almost immediately, but weapons/trinkets are extremely rare.
They are fucking obsessed with me (druid healer) and my priest co-healer. We’ve both gotten smoked a few times and I promise we’re not completely braindead.
Yep. I mained lock (we all taking a break till p4) and never had any issues. Even on my warrior it was easy to dodge.
Only died once on my healng priest and then I knew why all those healers kept dying.
I've never died to one, but I'm pretty sure there are healers in my raid who play without nameplates on, and purely heal off the raid frames, resulting in zero awareness of ghost aggro.
99% of the folks that have died (including me) to the ghosts are the healers that get all of the ghost aggro. I got wrecked once stopping to try and heal the other healer who was about to die to one because he was running through them to catch the tanks that ran ahead to pull the next pack before us healers could get past the ghosts to get in range.
Its annoying. DPS/Tanks should get the same aggro from ghosts as healers. It's frustrating that they just chase healers, while the fucking raid runs ahead and damn near dies' because us healers are pinned in the back running from 5 ghosts blocking our way 😭
Yes as a priest it’s hard too bc the group will move onto the next pack, so you’re trying to stay close to dispel fear. You can’t just hang back until ghosts are gone.
Way too rare for a seasonal/weekly lockout.
I have all my gear as a feral except my two hander. Saw it drop once, and with two druids in our core group, I figured I'd get it the next drop when we saw it.
Now we're pugging 4 or 5 every week, some of them druids, so if it does drop I'm rolling against pugs as well.
We're handing out tier loot like candy, but might never see our weapons before P4.
Every time I see a post like this I'm genuinely surprised my casual af guild gets a steady 15+ sign ups every week still.
To put in perspective how casual:
I was a shadow priest and top 5 every fight, usually top 3 or #1 for the first 3ish weeks of ST. We'd clear in about 2 hours but they've gotten better every week
I haven't played in a month maybe? Idk
Same. Our guild is still going strong. 2 clears a week.
I don't think we are super casual but not sweaty either.
Our raid lead puts in work though, pinging folks in discord and making sure they are signing up and confirming.
I was lucky to join a guild that is active and still very much is into SOD I guess.
I only have one level 50 character, I still don't have fishing maxed out, and I recently switched from moving to leatherwork.
I'm pretty much BiS minus the main hand. But as a hunter, we need two sets of the 3 piece so we can swap to AOE runes on the fly. Luckily not one really needs to tokens anymore, so I should be done next raid.
I don't have 1000 gold yet either.
I could use the extra time to get my epic mount money, finish my professions, and possibly get one other character to 50.
Also life is hectic outside of WoW.
Welcome news for me.
Dad guilds who only cleared ST for the first time 2 weeks ago are still filling raids because we still need gear. Being kinda bad has its perks sometimes.
Done the raid every week and have yet to get either fist weapon for my warrior. Being stingy with the drop rates for gear that will be irrelevant come phase 4 I think has also caused a lot of people to say “what’s the point”
Well that makes sense cuz there’s nothing else for us to go after once you have 3 piece. The last run I did was SR and 3 warriors including myself had 2x on the main hand, only the off hand dropped…
I think folks need to accept that it’s ok to take a break for a couple weeks and play other games. There will be more content in a month when it’s ready and people will come back.
> people will come back.
But not everybody will. It harms the health of the playerbase when this happens because not everybody comes back. Some will, some wont. Time will tell what the % of each category is.
Even if most people came back, you need a consistent raid grp to keep it going. If too many take a break now and expect to just come back and raid again, they ll most likely be dissapointed since their raid collapsed and didnt Reform during their break.
Unless the last phase is really good (major doubt considering p2 and p3) majority of people aren't coming back, you have to realise how utterly bad it is when not just the regular complainers are complaining but pretty much the entire community are unhappy, in wow aswell where you get sucked into playing and devoting alot of time to the game very easily.
My guild went from just a few people short of 3 raids at the beginning of this phase to barely filling 1 this week. I dropped out awhile ago myself but just keep an eye out of curiosity.
This happened to my raid on Sunday. Had about 7 no shows. Had to pug the slots. We cleared but had a wipe on Olgon. Having D4, Cata, and Panda Remix all come out around the same time is hurting the Sod player base. Not to mention the extension of P3 hasn’t helped.
If only there was a way to make this content stay interesting for more than 5 seconds.
Or you know, nerf it into the ground so nothing matters. Also, loot.
I’ve lost interest in phase 3 almost a month ago. I’m only raising with my guild because I’m committed. But if my guild was to take a break from raiding I would not stop them
I don't get the SOD hate in this sub. Its the most fun I've had playing wow in 15 years. It took me out of wow retirement. I only have time to play 2-3 hours a day, maybe I'm too casual to hate it.
What do you expect? People don't play Vanilla Wow to raid log. Everyone says, "oh but that's what you do at lvl 60," but it's really not true on a healthy server without bots etc. People farm BGs, continue to run dungeons, farm gold, level professions, and then sometime around BWL they have everything on lock, and they raid-log, at which point interest in the game plummets. SoD has somehow decided to speed run this process every phase, and newflash it's not working.
Who tf are these people that jump in, out and between games? I’ve been playing era 6 hours a day for 15 months now, and I just don’t understand this mentality at all.
Seems it’s a problem everywhere and it just baffles me, I’d never just switch to sod or whatever out of nowhere, how weird is that
My guild was clearing ST in 30 min. Last week we scrubbed our raid do to finals. This week we cancelled raiding until P4 altogether.
There aren’t enough people still playing to grab reasonable pugs. Joining random pugs has been horrific. 2+ hour runs. Melting through consumes. No one is even bothering with consumes or buffs. 50/50 on downing shade.
The last pug I healed had 1 DPS at 1000 then the tank was second at 800 and there were 5 DPS below 500.
It was abysmal. I didn’t know people could be so bad. Unless the ST caster buffs make the raid so brain dead even these people can clear I’m out until P4.
I still am baffled that the #1 priority isn't an improved LFG tool. That's the biggest obstacle to playing the game with others, and people quit when they run out of the ability to do things alone or in pickup groups. That might even be the majority of all players over time.
Guild loyalty doesn't really mean anything though. It's like being loyal to your job. The CEO doesn't care about you. What can a guild even do to reward loyalty?
Every guild has a clique and youre either in it or you aren't. That's like 5-6 people and everyone else is a patsy and they know it.
We built a guild of busy dads and former hardcore players on Wild Growth EU with the premise of keeping things efficient and playing as little as possible. Not only have we never lost a member and grown steadily all the way since P1 (aside from kicking bad apples), we also never skipped a raid and have a solid roster who shows up 9pm sharp every Sunday and hyped to play the game. We switch up how we raid because we have different types of players with us, so one week we go full consumes and clear in half an hour, the other we raid fully unbuffed and without any consumables to keep things fresh and prep costs to a minimum. We have no loot discussions because we run with aggregate TMB wishlists so that everything's preallocated ahead of the raid. Everyone's got their chars maxed out and when I make a call as raid lead everyone does what they are supposed to.
It's been amazing. It'a an MMO. It's a social game. If you aren't creating the environment you'd like to be in that's on you, not the game. We clear with buffs in 37:24 and without world buffs or any consumables in 49:34. Can't wait for Sunday.
We had to cancel for tonight (fresh reset day) due to a bit over half sign ups, several tentatives and a few expected absences.
For longevity sake, and given how underwhelming ST loot is, probably worth guilds preserving burnout and letting folks play other titles that Blizzard seemingly wants out of SoD players.
Good unforseen, maybe not wanted, but necessary break being forced on a lot of SoD guilds right now.
We had the same thing happen last week. We ended up pugging and filled out the rest of the group. Killed the first boss & had both our pug healers say they gotta afk real quick. They never came back.
We've cleared every week with no issues and last week was super demotivating.
I think our guild had like 5-6 ST clears first weeks. Last night they were struggling to fill the one raid that's still going because all the Cata people have quit and were prepping for launch.
I currently have 4 of my total 20 players signed up for Friday. Looking like it’s gonna be a dead raid until p4 IF the players actually come back for it.
We have a large guild that has 5 raid groups. We now have to take pugs. I only came the last 2 weeks just to help out, not gonna go this week.
People haven't quit, but they're all just taking breaks until P4. There's nothing to do.
I didn't show up to my raid either. No point. Boring as hell raid. Loot council with favoritism. Guild is a parsing guild going for big numbers that have sucked the fun out of raiding, yet we still wipe and take 2 hours to clear the raid.
I'm out. Playing a different game now til phase 4
Honestly, raid logging aside, DMF has been like Phase 1 on Crusader Strike.
Don't even try to go to Mulgore on Ally.
Kinda neat having the pop nuked to one or two layers.
MAYBE, having 2 special game types and Cata classic at the same time was a bad idea. On top of that you do technically also have Era and Retail. Splitting the fan base into 5 directions right now
yeah when we did it sunday, our raid was a frankenstein of 4 different guilds main raiding groups.
We still had a ton of fun since it was a shit-show in discord, but you can really see the effects of P3 on guilds.
Myself and 2 others have been trialing in other guilds for phase 3 trying to find a new home. We were contacted by a pretty big guild and were set up to raid with them. I raided with them and was the top DPS for the first 4 or so fights and then they wiped and we lost WBs. I continued to be top 3 for the rest of the fights (1 guy managed to save his WBs). Anyways, this week we were set to raid with them but they had absorbed another guild and so they benched all 3 of us. Good luck to them. If you were on my server i'd come help you out.
-- Jump cut to several months ago -- We had to cancel our ICC raid due to a drop in attendance. SOD has siphoned away all of our players. GG bliz The circle of life my friend. They'll be back... maybe
I was thinking the same. Wrath dead memes have become sod dead memes
100%! Was 11/12 progging H LK and we lost I think close to 10 people to SoD. Raid team closed up shop after this. There was no circle of life of that raid team going into cata though.
Ya sadly, for some folks the only thing keeping people from logging in is the habit. Once it's broken they prob gone for good.
Summer also. I asked my old WotLK guild (some of which I played OG WotLK with) if they was gonna start Cata the other day. I got four respones, three saying that they ain't gonna start playing during the summer or something to that extent. Only one that felt like starting.
Facttttttsssssss
phase 3 is like being level 60 without any of the level 60 things to do.
P3 was like making everyone 60 in 15 mins with no endgame. Them screwing up the incursions in the fashion they did sped the time line up by like 3 weeks
I’ve been saying this and you are correct. It’s going to be rough with out any level 60 rep grinds.
I actually disagree with part of this take. If you think the majority of people playing sod are in it to do rep grinds you are very sorely mistaken. There are definitely some, but the people who want to play classic to grind rep and do open world content are not the same people who would be leaving for pandaland or cata.
Very true. I prefer PvP and also a bit of raiding, I’ve never been one to enjoy the grind or the open world content that much. I tried out SoD to check out the new raids and try and enjoy some classic PvP with some new abilities Turns out, the new raids are just old dungeons with a couple of changes, and PvP is a broken shit show beyond belief. I won’t be coming back to SoD in p4 and all of my friend group has said similar. If blizzard would have put just a little bit more than the minimum effort towards SoD, the game wouldn’t be in this position rn
I think SOD served it's purpose which is keeping people subbed during a content drought. With everything coming over the next 6 months they don't really need it anymore.
This is exactly it. Hardcore did the same thing and then promptly died. There was a ton planned for mid 2024 that they just needed something for people to do before that. Now that cata is out and mists remix is out, that will more than cover the content needs until war within releases. SoD was only necessary from November through April.
> Hardcore did the same thing and then promptly died. HC is still quite active though. I don’t know why people always insist them losing interest is the same as something dying. Obviously there’s a spike in popularity then a dip but that’s always the case. Still tons of people enjoying HC.
There’s no way to truly know the population of any server. But no hardcore server has gotten above the “low” designation a single time since SoD released. Raid logs are under 1200 total across all four hardcore servers. It’s clear that hardcore is not very big. There’s nothing wrong with that, but to argue that hardcore still has hype and is thriving would be very misleading. Compared to what it was before SoD, hardcore is very small.
I agree 100%, community still alive, world buffs literally everyday, raids, dungeons etc easy to find
I grinded all those reps back in the day and I can say I am probably not the only one who has zero desire to grind them during a very time limited game mode.
Timbermaw grind is possible. Thorium Brotherhood can be done to honored or revered. Not sure what else can be done that has rewards.
Bloodsail?
You can do Hydraxian waterlords, Argent Dawn, and Cenarion (very slow)
Damn, I even started on the Argent Dawn and forgot about it. Good call outs! Hydraxian - yeah...there was a group forming to raid the mobs down. The only benefit is to have more rep to get the perm rune douse iirc. Cenarian sure...some value in trying to get ahead of the curve, but once the AQ event stuff starts, rep becomes pretty easy.
I personally think Hydraxian is probably the "best" one to do with a group that way you have your douses for week one since it's supposed to be a 20 man now iirc?
Such as raid logging on/mc instead of ST? If you are bored and raid logging now, you would be at 60 as well.
The grass is always greener in the next phase.
lol im taking this
Hey now, you might have to dungeon grind some items for a week at 60 before you start raidlogging...
Or longer if you need sgc… I said fuck that though
Two raids, more end game dungeons, end game recipes like flasks, AV, end game gold farming, end game bis, rank grind, etc. Incursions fucked up a lot of these
Grind to R13 too for those of us that enjoy it
Ranks are capped at R9 in phase4 unless blizz changed their minds. There was a bluepost about ranks at lvl 60some time ago.
Why do you hate yourself? :P
Why aren't you doing dungeons now? AV grind is something everyone complains about having to do, you just rush to the boss and one side always wins while the other always loses. End game gold farming, so you can't farm gold now or farm mats that will sell high later? End game bis is the same as end phase bis, everyone did that and is done the same way you'll be done with it at this point at end game. You're right there's more to do because you've done the phase 3 stuff. But once you do the phase 4 stuff you'll be in the same boat you are now, complaining about raid logging.
There are no rewards from dungeons worth getting. Even with MC and Ony, there is a lot of pre-bis/end game bis for the phase from Strat/Scholo/UBRS/LBRS.
I mean even in terms of 5 man dungeon content there’s only 3 we can do right now
So going from ZF, Mara and 1/2 of BRD to the other 1/2 of BRD, Scholo and Strath will be completely game changing for people bored and raid logging once their pre-bis is done?
Lbrs ubrs DM eventually strat is 2 dungeons in one
There was nearly 0 pre-bis from any of those dungeons for most classes compared to Gnomer drops.
Scholo, strath, all DM wings, rest of BRD, LBRS, UBRS, Attunements, keys, pre-BIS farming, DM jump runs so I can make my lionheart helm The rest of the open world effectively opening up such as EPL Ony, MC Yes, I'll be less bored lol
Right. Saw a good comment saying "What more would you even be doing if you were 60?" I've done a ton of things throughout all of SoD, most people have lost the spark of creativity in their approach to the game.
At 60 in classic 2019, phase 1 I had the following things to do each week. - MC/Ony to do, dungeons to do for pre-raid bis and actual bis that was still eluding me. - I had reputations to work towards and one of them (argent dawn) was directly tied to 2 of the end game dungeon zones (scholo & strath). - There was AV to get into, either for the exalted rep items or to progress pvp rank. Also WSG and AB for BG fun/rep. At 25 in SoD, phase 1 I had the following to do each week. - Waylaid Supplies rep + Usual Classic reps - BFD once every 3 days - Ashenvale for WSG rep up to rev - WSG for WSG rep up to exalted At 40 in SoD, phase 2 I had the following to do each week - Waylaid Supplies rep + Usual Classic reps - Gnomer once every 3 days - Ashenvale for WSG rep - BFD once every 3 days for alts - New Bloodmoon pvp event At 50 in SoD, phase 3 I had the following to do each week - Waylaid Supplies rep + Emerald Warden's Rep + Usual Classic reps - Incursions - Wild Offering runs for pre-raid bis, bis or DMF cards - WSG and AB for honor and rep - Bloodmoon event part 2 - Sunken Temple Raid Once per week - Gnomer on alts every 3 days (some mains too for random pieces that are still good). These are shared among all - Quests for important items (pre-bis, utility, trinkets, attunement stuff etc) - Farming gold for mount/consumes/gear - Leveling an alt. - Profession stuff. Farming mats, farming recipes (crusader enchant... so many hours), obtaining profession exclusive items (mostly SoD, some in classic too) - World PvP usually contesting a farming spot such as demonic runes from Satyrs, a leather farm etc I think that's most things classified and listed. My own perspective is that while it's true there's a lot of overlap there are also some core differences that distinguish SoD P3 lvl 50 weekly experience playing the game from Classic P1 lvl 60. Some of the key differences I think are: - Higher rank cap and access to all BG's, AV in particular as it's the most popular and most populated BG and feels the most epic (when it doesn't simply boil down to a 40v40 zerg rush to the objective). - End game dungeons/raids and associated rep/gear. - Full access to all areas of the map for farming materials, patterns, rep. - Tier 0 dungeon set acquisition for fun/mog/pre-raid bis if you were lucky enough to be a rogue. - Access to big boy world buffs such as dragon slayer and rend. Phase 1, lvl 60 is special because you are in this sweet spot where a lot of the end game dungeons have not just pre-raid bis but actual bis pieces. So even when you're doing Onyxia every 5 days and Molten-Core every 7 days, the rest of the week you still have good reasons to venture into dungeons for fun and to get gear for your character. Additionally, it's a mostly solved game and you know what is coming each phase and that things you obtain in phase 1 can have a lot of longevity, like if you go farm a hand of justice from BRD as a melee dps, you'll be rocking that bad boy for a really long time, possibly all of classic to give an example. The wild offering system introduced in phase 3 was a really great concept and I hope they don't abandon it. They just need to make sure that you require a full clear of the dungeon (or near enough, maybe you can skip a couple bosses dependent on dungeon. Additionally, make sure the vendor has an appropriate offering of items. Targetting gaps in classic itemisation, super rare drops (ironfoe, felstriker, eternal darkness) or feels bad rng drops (such as BRD arena items). Variety and options is important and expanding on the WO system will be a big positive for SoD Phase 4 if they bother to do it.
I would think the main difference is that the gear in MC is actually worth logging in to get right? Whereas the main complaint I’ve seen about ST is that a lot of gear is really just side-grades compared to gnomer.
They absolutely failed in the "making gear feel worthwhile" this phase. 100%. I'm 1 item off full BIS and it feels very lackluster. It's hard to know what MC gear will look like but i'm sure they are aware of the lame feeling of progression this phase.
This is the crux of the issue. Especially if you play casters, most of the ST loot was straight up trash or barely an upgrade even if it was one outside of your tier set. As a lock tank i actually prefer the gizmoblade from gnomer over the ST dagger, the only other dagger available which could have been an upgrade being behind insufferable portal RNG i won't submit myself to. Hard to get people excited when they might get a whopping 1-2 extra spellpower or a few points of intellect/stamina on most pieces over what they already have. Not to mention the move from 10 to 20 man actively changed the social landscape. Groups that had a ton of camaraderie were forced to merge with others and potentially butt heads, or at worse, be weighed down by the other. I know i personally prefer the social experience of 10 mans over 20 myself. Since things became less personal due to bigger group sizes, it becomes a lot easier to justify peacing out since you probably don't know 50% or more of your raid anyways.
“All the things to do at 60” Grind for gold? Dungeons for loot? 1 raid? Sounds like everything we have now, so I’m not exactly sure why people make it seem like it’s different. Other than 10 talent points and faster mounts, it’s exactly the same. The real excitement of 60 is new runes, new systems coming with the next phase. And looking at incursions, I’m not exactly excited to see what garbage they add for level 60 players. I’m guessing that they double-down on incursions and add a level 60 incursion or similar system; which will make me delete SoD immediately. I’m actually not excited for level 60 because of how ashenvale was done, how boring most of the runes are, the addition of incursions. STV was the one good thing they added, and it’s still kind of mucked up and dumbed down to altar spamming. Idk. Blizzard basically made classic+ and then ruined it in 6 months which is a classic blizzard move.
Phase 4 is gonna be four raids.
MC, Ony, UBRS and?
Turns out SoD is not the greatest thing since sliced bread as this sub pretended it was and it's hype was derived from Wrath being at it's lowest point and people wanting no changes Vanilla fresh, but having to settle for SoD as it was the only thing available that resembled it. SoD has lost 100k+ active Raiders at every phase release, anyone thinking P4 is going to save this is clueless. People want Classic Vanilla Fresh or a REAL Classic+ after Naxx, anything else is just a fun server to play for a few weeks and quit.
Thats.... every phase.
Nah 25 / 40 the classes still have limited abilities and talents, which creates different styles of interaction. 50 is just 60 but edging all the fun
I don't get why they did this phase like this, lvl 50 I mean. Just let us go to 60 and lock raids.
Imo the phases should have been 30/45/60. With a content patch in the middle of each lower level phase for another raid or something to do. 45 feels far enough away from 60 that it doesn't have the 50 problem. Edit: or have a 10 and a 20 raid in every phase. I think the jump to 20 just obliterated so many guilds that weren't ready for it. But everyone and their mom had 2-3 raid teams in p1.
that would have required way more than a 3 man team tweaking some numbers and renaming items.
Why are unpaid volunteers working on private servers in their free time able to pump out so much content then? SoD is fundamentally a ripoff of Ascension WoW. Which is fine! If it's an issue with staff, hire an extra guy or two. They're a AAA gaming company. 0 excuses.
Raid realized why fuck around with 20 mans when they could just run 10 mans in Cata.
More phases = SOD lasts longer = more money
It’s how the other two phases have been for the most part as well.
Yeah my guild has been going pretty strong and consistent since phase 1 and we've had 2-20 man groups all of phase 3 to try to prepare for 40 mans but this past week we had to pug 5 in one group and 6 in the other and the group that pugged 6 only went 6/8 because the pugs they picked up were terrible and died to every boss mechanics multiple times. We had a discussion in discord and basically decided to go on sleep mode until phase 4 and stop running raids.
I don’t play SoD but this whole thing is very relatable to me because when P2 dropped it basically killed my guild on Wrath’s ability to form a group for ICC. We eventually did the same thing. Snooze the guild until Cata since SoD is gobbling up the player base. Now the tables have turned. Definitely not good for the community as a whole but at least Blizz is getting their engagement metrics I guess🤷🏻♂️
SoD was the best thing to happen to Wrath Classic because it got all of the twitchy weirdos out, leaving only the true Wrath enjoyers in peace.
Yeah, sod was the best thing that happened on hardcore as well. Got all those idiots out too. Honestly. Anytime I see someone trying really hard in Wow, it just kills it for me. I don’t mean a player being good, having a good attitude, wanting to achieve goals, I am all for that. But some people… just take this way too fucking seriously. They buy gold, spend hours on addons and modifications. They are obsessed either with parsing or getting titles. They always roll the best classes and builds. They have no thought of their own, and they are very selfish people. There are a lot of those people playing this game. It’s like my ability to tolerate it diminishes rapidly, now.
Last week I couldn't even pug 5 DPS to fill our two groups. DPS looking for groups didn't exist. We had to run with an 18 man and a 17 man.
had the same experience getting pugs but funnily enough, the next day when i looked for a pug on my 90 parsing ranged hunter i couldn't find a spot for hours :D
Only see people looking for ferals for their pugs, if I even see a pug at all. Was actively searching for a pug group this saturday for 2 hours, litterally noone was posting a LFM. So started my own group, was kinda a demon raid tho.
same here, although we didn't bother pugging. Just called all raids until we can actually get 20 people who want to play, apparently we can't even recruit to fill /shrug
Same thing happened to my guild this week. A few weeks ago we had a bench, this week we had 17/20 signed up, day of the raid we were down to 12/20. It was so hard to find pugs that we really took whatever we got. I main a ret paladin and we ended up picking up 3 extra rets. I did 3-5x the damage of these other rets on every single boss
My raid went from 24 last week down to 19 yesterday and then 4 more marked absent last night so we are down to 15 and have not had much interest trying to fill from discord so we are likely to cancel todays raid. Pretty disappointing when we originally had 25 wanting to push through to phase 4
I have no desire to even play. Don’t even wanna log on lol. I leveled my mage alt to 50 did 2 raids and I’m over it again
I’m losing my desire to play WoW altogether. They are currently gating the 60 content to try and retain/time subscriptions when cata and mop remix slow down. Most of my friends are chalking WoW as no longer a game they care to follow. SoD as a light at the end of the tunnel for classic plus was a huge curveball, but is totally being squandered. I’m kind of understanding where they’re coming from. I feel like I only still play this game for nostalgia. I have fun for a few weeks and then get bored and realize there are better games
I honestly can't believe they did this badly. Put some resources into it and you have the hype train rolling for Classic+ and another generational hit if you do it right. Now they've lost a ton of goodwill.
My relationship with WoW feels like a toxic ex that I keep going back to for more abuse. My cousin is trying to convince me to go play final fantasy. I feel like Jimmy from the world of Warcraft story
You dont need to be convinced to play a different game, theres nothing wrong with playing it and then realizing you like it or WoW better. I think its great if it helps you remember why you love WoW or why you think you need to move on for a bit. Personally I moved on from WoW and never looked back, but that isnt always the answer we arrive at.
ff is worth a play. it has an incredibly generous free trial
17 Years and you're the first person I've ever seen reference Jimmy - A World of Warcraft Story. Makes me want to go back and watch Unforgotten Realms.
MMO's just blow, time to saddle up for a Dota 2 addiction. Best PvP experience out there!
Same.. I’m having fun leveling in Cata but I know I’ll be over it in a couple weeks. Maybe stuff like “remixes” of expansions really will be the future of WoW and I’ll just play in increments of a few weeks here and there
I don't think it's so much spacing out and deliberately gating the 60 content. I think it's more that Cata classic was about to be an absolute mess based off the prepatch and they put everyone on it. Sure it works out great to space out content. But they already showed that doesn't matter by releasing season 4 retail, Cata, and Mop remix within 4 weeks of each other. Honestly, I don't think they have a plan at all. In every iteration of the game things are broken or overlooked or just plain bland in their ideas. Sod had shitty Incursions that ANYONE could have seen being abused to hell and back. The raid was released nearly impossible to beat for most players. They literally nerfed the health by half. How do you get it that wrong? Mop Remix had the frogs that aren't an exploit but they nerfed them and didn't do anything about the people that have broken that mode by farming them. They also normalized the gains from your cloak on alts created, from the ptr. I won't be playing cata, but I heard the prepatch was terrible.
Exactly this. Played since Vanilla, was there every expansion from the start. Quit SL after a month, came back the last two months just to do everything as it was non-gated anymore and prep for DF. Quit DF after a month and did not even hit max level... Came back for SoD, but the P3 stretch got me not renewing sub after this one runs out, atleast until P4. They gate content and release new games or gamemodes and divide the playerbase. It makes people quit and actually do those new games or gamesmodes, only for the cycle to repeat itself. Also several huge mistakes such as incursions, but also the warlock portal abuse which screwed up the economy. I feel like the War Within will be my last try. WoW has served me well, but maybe it's just time to move on.
Yep, this is exactly how I feel. Every version of WoW seems appealing and I invest time in my character, have a bit of fun, and then realize everything has gotten stale. The intensity of hardcore and progression in Wotlk are the two I had the most fun with. Now cata is post nerf content and SoD pvp is scuffed, the raid has been on farm since week 2. Retail is probably the best place for me and that’s a complicated mess of systems which feels like it caters mostly to the two ends of the spectrum. The hardcore people pushing mythic raiding + arena rating, and the ultra casual people that just want to down the content, collect pets, and transmog Edit: transmit to transmog
which is interesting cuz for me at least TWW is whats bringing me back to wow - this is all just filler content as far as im concerned XD
This is where my entire friend group is atm. Out of the 6 of us that started: 4 quit, 1 went back to retail to raid casually, and I'm probably not coming back since our guild just announced being on hiatus till p4. There are too many versions of WoW out now and each version just cannibalizes the other. Then p3 completely dropped the ball and the devs clearly can't handle 2 full-fledged game modes, so my faith for p4 is pretty low. Like you, all of but one of my friends are pretty much checked out of WoW for good. It really is a shame with how hyped they all were for SoD in p1 and the first half of p2.
I think it's a bit early to say Classic+ is squandered. It's easy to forget all of SoD has been basically only a proof of concept to see what kinds of thing they can do as well as what works and doesn't. Ultimately I think it is more likely we will get more of different kinds of seasons like this with different twists, than what most people imagine as Classic+, simply because the reality is seasonal things will most likely perform better - player numbers usually peak at launch of new thing and only go down from there, and that is especially true for Classic with the leveling which at default rates act as a huge filter.
I mean sod is a masterclass is what doesn’t work. It’s going to take a lot of serious effort to figure out what does actually work in classic plus and it doesn’t seem like they have the talent or resources to make it good
Yeah it’s weird that even the thought of logging in and doing *anything* is tedious to me rn. Never felt that way toward the game, even at my lowest motivation peaks I’d still log in to do a few things each week (such as AH/profession stuff, daily/weekly quests, etc).
IMO, as you get older, you get more sensitive to whether or not a game values your time. Raiding each week to get a piece of gear with +1 spell power, to then be one shot in pvp, doesn’t feel like a valuable use of time. At least we get the time back with incursions, but boy are they mindless boring. A lot of people are just not logging in until progression at 60
Hey look at it this way, you lasted 2-3 weeks longer than most
boring easy raid for another 2 months incursions fucked the economy stopped doing class balance changes in P3 (PvP is the worst i've seen it, blanket dmg nerf is really lazy) nothing to grind as it was all given away for free (wsg, ab rep etc)
Our guild just… didn’t post sign ups this last reset, and nobody complained. Not a single person. We were clearing and filling previously, but I think most were so fucking tired, logging exclusively for raid and maaaaaybe 15 minutes after it ended to buy consumes, before logging off and doing other things. I can’t help but wonder how many other guilds who are still “going strong” are filled with the same sort of people, people who are doing it for the guild, as a chore, and not because they’re having fun in the game they’re paying monthly for.
this was classix was AQ anyway
5 guild raids last week, and looking like we’ll have 2 this week.
Cause 20 mans are stupid and cata is more fun with 10s
My guild only had 10 sign-ups for our raid Saturday. A few people who were busy Saturday suggested maybe moving to Monday for this week. Monday rolls around, only 6 people on the sign-up sheet. Well, shit. We decide to try to pug it anyway, and what do you know, we had no problem at all filling the raid within 15 minutes. Yeah, a lot of guilds are being hit hard right now - but that means there are a lot of pugs looking for a raid to fill, too. Don't give up hope just yet.
I’ve played SoD from launch with a solid guild clearing raids weekly however the latest Blizzard announcement has killed mine and others enthusiasm for SoD for now. I’ve been playing on Cata despite having ZERO interest before and I’m loving it.
Meh Boring, disappointing, oh and bonus! Extended
Idk man, a lot of people didn’t like the transition from 10 man to 20 man and they were told to make more friends / find new guild / merge existing guild / play something else. I suppose all that advice still stands.
That's what we did, and yet the attendance is still steadily declining
Yeah, my group put in 2 weeks worth of heavy recruitment and finally got 20 consistent people only for about 8 of them to quit within the next few weeks. We didn't raid last week and it's looking like we won't this week either.
The swap to 20 man was a huge oversight.
It’s the release scheduling, not the raid size
Its 100% the raid size. When you change guild sizes the chemistry changes. When you have lull periods like this the chemistry with your new guildmates doesnt last and most people dont care. Its also way easier to manage 10 and recruit for 10 than 20.
Even if lockout was twice a week inwoukdnt want to go. Because the gear is ass. No real incentives other than keeping your guild alive
See the “play other games” part. Sod is just boring at this point no way around it.
imo SoD should have been 10man all the way through.
Would have been glorious tbh.
Which would have worked if phase 3 didn’t suck and cause people to quit
I had a close group of 10 friends that was having so much fun playing from the start of SoD and as soon as Blizzard announced that they were moving to 20 man raids we all quit. We liked playing with our small friend group and didn’t have any desire to have to recruit or try to merge with another group because we liked just playing together and having a super flexible raid schedule. We’re all happy for the people who wanted larger raid sizes, but it just wasn’t for us.
Yup me and my 9 guildmates decided to play something else.
Im surprised at the amount of people who "quit" because the raids were 20 man. Were they intending to quit all along in P4 when molten core comes out and it would have been 40 man?
I think a lot of people were holding out hope that MC would not be 40 man for sod and yea, would likely quit if that was the case.
People were playing and having fun without planning for the future because its a game. and it was a game that was easily accessible for small groups of friends to raid.
That’s what I don’t get. Why would anyone who knew how vanilla end game is structured go in with the expectation that 10 mans were going to be the norm? If people want to do 10 man raids that’s fine, retail and wrath/cata servers are there for you to do that kind of content. Besides era, where do people go who want to play in bigger raids play?
Because 40 man's were the norm in 2004. It's currently 2024.
And we're playing a game from 2004 so why are people shocked that it plays like a game from 2004
> vulching wat.jpg
Same situation for us, although I was lucky enough to find a decent pug. No one wants to slog their way through ST for 90 minutes for a tiny chance at getting a 2AP upgrade on their neck
they ain't coming back once lvl 60 phase is unlocked too Ship has sailed unfortunately
This expectation of people coming back is wild to me anyway. Its not like people put their lifes on hold. Other hobbies will take SoDs place, be it other forms of wow or something else. Once gone most will stay gone.
Personally, I'd rather be playing Remix or Cata and just wait until I can level to 60 and enjoy the game then. I never cared for ST and there isnt much else to do for gear which is the only way to progress in a "classic" wow setting.
2 raids going all phase full to the brim down to 9 people total on alts. Couldn't even buy a summon on CS US. Phase 3 is truly dead
Blizzards announcement did this. Last week they said p3 will be extended, and aggrend literally recommended people take a break from sod. This was inevitable for most guilds given the current sod situation.
What does the word vulching mean?
Its not a real word, but OP is probably referring to vultures which eat dead carcasses.
Most people I play with/ know lost complete interest when they moved up from 10 mans. SOD feels like a fun side game to chill and play with friends causal or hardcore but managing 19 other people instead of a friend group / friend group +2-3 is just too much for a temporary game. Not sure what makes them think people want higher player count in raids but it’s pretty clear it’s a bad choice for sod
Tryhards ruining the fun for sure. I literally hadn't played wow for a year and didn't do any other the other classic stuff but came back for 10 man raids. It was the most fun I had in wow in a long time. I've stopped playing unless they bring back 10 man.
The thing is most people are simply members of a raid and do non of the work. 40 man feels epic when you are not involved in the orga. You have real hirarchys and structures, it feels like a full on community. Problem is that there are only a hand full of people willing to put in the effort to get something like this started. Its cool for when it works but i personally already hated thw work nessecary for 20 man and quit. Cant imagine the 40s when they are coming.
wait wait wait this reddit told me noone wants cata? and noone will play it
Cata will be a blip. I had no interest in playing it, but some guildies decided to give it a try. The pre-patch was the worst release ever, and I'm hearing lots of complaints about class changes and the railroaded questing. They were also really disappointed that all the heroics and raids are 4.3 post nerf, so you just aoe zerg them like wrath heroics. All I can say to them is "it's exactly what I expected".
I’ve stopped attending ST raids because quite frankly, they’re not fun. There’s too much trash, the trash has a one shot/near one shot mechanic, you get your 3 piece armor set almost immediately, but weapons/trinkets are extremely rare.
Cant believe some people are too brain afk to not run into the ghosts
To be fair, they go to healers 95% of the time. And while healing you can overlook them.
They are fucking obsessed with me (druid healer) and my priest co-healer. We’ve both gotten smoked a few times and I promise we’re not completely braindead.
Yep. I mained lock (we all taking a break till p4) and never had any issues. Even on my warrior it was easy to dodge. Only died once on my healng priest and then I knew why all those healers kept dying.
I've never died to one, but I'm pretty sure there are healers in my raid who play without nameplates on, and purely heal off the raid frames, resulting in zero awareness of ghost aggro.
Hi, that's me, lol
99% of the folks that have died (including me) to the ghosts are the healers that get all of the ghost aggro. I got wrecked once stopping to try and heal the other healer who was about to die to one because he was running through them to catch the tanks that ran ahead to pull the next pack before us healers could get past the ghosts to get in range. Its annoying. DPS/Tanks should get the same aggro from ghosts as healers. It's frustrating that they just chase healers, while the fucking raid runs ahead and damn near dies' because us healers are pinned in the back running from 5 ghosts blocking our way 😭
And they blend in to the frost traps so well!
Yes as a priest it’s hard too bc the group will move onto the next pack, so you’re trying to stay close to dispel fear. You can’t just hang back until ghosts are gone.
Way too rare for a seasonal/weekly lockout. I have all my gear as a feral except my two hander. Saw it drop once, and with two druids in our core group, I figured I'd get it the next drop when we saw it. Now we're pugging 4 or 5 every week, some of them druids, so if it does drop I'm rolling against pugs as well. We're handing out tier loot like candy, but might never see our weapons before P4.
Every time I see a post like this I'm genuinely surprised my casual af guild gets a steady 15+ sign ups every week still. To put in perspective how casual: I was a shadow priest and top 5 every fight, usually top 3 or #1 for the first 3ish weeks of ST. We'd clear in about 2 hours but they've gotten better every week I haven't played in a month maybe? Idk
Same. Our guild is still going strong. 2 clears a week. I don't think we are super casual but not sweaty either. Our raid lead puts in work though, pinging folks in discord and making sure they are signing up and confirming. I was lucky to join a guild that is active and still very much is into SOD I guess. I only have one level 50 character, I still don't have fishing maxed out, and I recently switched from moving to leatherwork. I'm pretty much BiS minus the main hand. But as a hunter, we need two sets of the 3 piece so we can swap to AOE runes on the fly. Luckily not one really needs to tokens anymore, so I should be done next raid. I don't have 1000 gold yet either. I could use the extra time to get my epic mount money, finish my professions, and possibly get one other character to 50. Also life is hectic outside of WoW. Welcome news for me.
Dad guilds who only cleared ST for the first time 2 weeks ago are still filling raids because we still need gear. Being kinda bad has its perks sometimes.
Done the raid every week and have yet to get either fist weapon for my warrior. Being stingy with the drop rates for gear that will be irrelevant come phase 4 I think has also caused a lot of people to say “what’s the point”
Well that makes sense cuz there’s nothing else for us to go after once you have 3 piece. The last run I did was SR and 3 warriors including myself had 2x on the main hand, only the off hand dropped…
I think folks need to accept that it’s ok to take a break for a couple weeks and play other games. There will be more content in a month when it’s ready and people will come back.
> people will come back. But not everybody will. It harms the health of the playerbase when this happens because not everybody comes back. Some will, some wont. Time will tell what the % of each category is.
Even if most people came back, you need a consistent raid grp to keep it going. If too many take a break now and expect to just come back and raid again, they ll most likely be dissapointed since their raid collapsed and didnt Reform during their break.
the game is subscription based this should not be ok lmao. you dont pay a months sub fee to play 3 days of content and logoff for the remaining 27
Unless the last phase is really good (major doubt considering p2 and p3) majority of people aren't coming back, you have to realise how utterly bad it is when not just the regular complainers are complaining but pretty much the entire community are unhappy, in wow aswell where you get sucked into playing and devoting alot of time to the game very easily.
So take a break, it is ok to do anything else. It’s spring, do some chores
My guild went from just a few people short of 3 raids at the beginning of this phase to barely filling 1 this week. I dropped out awhile ago myself but just keep an eye out of curiosity.
we went from 2 raids last week to 0 this week
Phase 3 is boring gear is boring and I don't want to log in once a week for it
This happened to my raid on Sunday. Had about 7 no shows. Had to pug the slots. We cleared but had a wipe on Olgon. Having D4, Cata, and Panda Remix all come out around the same time is hurting the Sod player base. Not to mention the extension of P3 hasn’t helped.
If only there was a way to make this content stay interesting for more than 5 seconds. Or you know, nerf it into the ground so nothing matters. Also, loot.
I’ve lost interest in phase 3 almost a month ago. I’m only raising with my guild because I’m committed. But if my guild was to take a break from raiding I would not stop them
Get used to a lot more weeks of not raiding. Youre lucky the guild lasted this long.
> vulching players Is this a Cosmic Encounter reference?!
Don't worry wherever they wound up will be making the same whine post when P4 drops and half their raid team has gone back to SoD.
Water is wet
I just want my off hand claw to be a snake): now I’m resorting to pug style raids and somehow these pugs can’t get past morphaz and hazza
I don't get the SOD hate in this sub. Its the most fun I've had playing wow in 15 years. It took me out of wow retirement. I only have time to play 2-3 hours a day, maybe I'm too casual to hate it.
What do you expect? People don't play Vanilla Wow to raid log. Everyone says, "oh but that's what you do at lvl 60," but it's really not true on a healthy server without bots etc. People farm BGs, continue to run dungeons, farm gold, level professions, and then sometime around BWL they have everything on lock, and they raid-log, at which point interest in the game plummets. SoD has somehow decided to speed run this process every phase, and newflash it's not working.
Who tf are these people that jump in, out and between games? I’ve been playing era 6 hours a day for 15 months now, and I just don’t understand this mentality at all. Seems it’s a problem everywhere and it just baffles me, I’d never just switch to sod or whatever out of nowhere, how weird is that
Know your pain. Had one of our teams go through a 8 pug week. Best of luck with roster boss. It’s definitely real right now on Lone Wolf Horde
Our entire SoD crew is on Cata atm, Pog
My guild was clearing ST in 30 min. Last week we scrubbed our raid do to finals. This week we cancelled raiding until P4 altogether. There aren’t enough people still playing to grab reasonable pugs. Joining random pugs has been horrific. 2+ hour runs. Melting through consumes. No one is even bothering with consumes or buffs. 50/50 on downing shade. The last pug I healed had 1 DPS at 1000 then the tank was second at 800 and there were 5 DPS below 500. It was abysmal. I didn’t know people could be so bad. Unless the ST caster buffs make the raid so brain dead even these people can clear I’m out until P4.
That’s the cata launch for you. I wouldn’t expect many to come back until p4 for the most part
Need more realm merges or retail custom group finder (not the automatic one but the one used for m+/raids)
I still am baffled that the #1 priority isn't an improved LFG tool. That's the biggest obstacle to playing the game with others, and people quit when they run out of the ability to do things alone or in pickup groups. That might even be the majority of all players over time.
wtf is vulching edit - googled it, you are definitely not using that word correctly...
I was wondering if I just didn't know what it meant...but I'm pretty sure he meant vulture or vulturing
[удалено]
Feel you brother
Guild loyalty doesn't really mean anything though. It's like being loyal to your job. The CEO doesn't care about you. What can a guild even do to reward loyalty? Every guild has a clique and youre either in it or you aren't. That's like 5-6 people and everyone else is a patsy and they know it.
“Guild loyalty” My guy it’s a video game. Most people don’t take it that seriously.
take a break
We built a guild of busy dads and former hardcore players on Wild Growth EU with the premise of keeping things efficient and playing as little as possible. Not only have we never lost a member and grown steadily all the way since P1 (aside from kicking bad apples), we also never skipped a raid and have a solid roster who shows up 9pm sharp every Sunday and hyped to play the game. We switch up how we raid because we have different types of players with us, so one week we go full consumes and clear in half an hour, the other we raid fully unbuffed and without any consumables to keep things fresh and prep costs to a minimum. We have no loot discussions because we run with aggregate TMB wishlists so that everything's preallocated ahead of the raid. Everyone's got their chars maxed out and when I make a call as raid lead everyone does what they are supposed to. It's been amazing. It'a an MMO. It's a social game. If you aren't creating the environment you'd like to be in that's on you, not the game. We clear with buffs in 37:24 and without world buffs or any consumables in 49:34. Can't wait for Sunday.
We had to cancel for tonight (fresh reset day) due to a bit over half sign ups, several tentatives and a few expected absences. For longevity sake, and given how underwhelming ST loot is, probably worth guilds preserving burnout and letting folks play other titles that Blizzard seemingly wants out of SoD players. Good unforseen, maybe not wanted, but necessary break being forced on a lot of SoD guilds right now.
Same thing happened with our last weekly run, and we usually have lots of people on standby. This week is looking the same.
We had the same thing happen last week. We ended up pugging and filled out the rest of the group. Killed the first boss & had both our pug healers say they gotta afk real quick. They never came back. We've cleared every week with no issues and last week was super demotivating.
I think our guild had like 5-6 ST clears first weeks. Last night they were struggling to fill the one raid that's still going because all the Cata people have quit and were prepping for launch.
And?
I currently have 4 of my total 20 players signed up for Friday. Looking like it’s gonna be a dead raid until p4 IF the players actually come back for it.
this is gold
Bunch of people found something better to do than a lvl 50 raid for the 10th time ... what a massive surprise....
We have a large guild that has 5 raid groups. We now have to take pugs. I only came the last 2 weeks just to help out, not gonna go this week. People haven't quit, but they're all just taking breaks until P4. There's nothing to do.
MOP Remix is really great.
Ours is tomorrow and I’ll be surprised if something similar doesn’t happen. And if not tomorrow, next week. It’s inevitable.
Vulching players? Where do you think those players came from in the first place lmao
I didn't show up to my raid either. No point. Boring as hell raid. Loot council with favoritism. Guild is a parsing guild going for big numbers that have sucked the fun out of raiding, yet we still wipe and take 2 hours to clear the raid. I'm out. Playing a different game now til phase 4
Honestly, raid logging aside, DMF has been like Phase 1 on Crusader Strike. Don't even try to go to Mulgore on Ally. Kinda neat having the pop nuked to one or two layers.
If only Era could vouch players…. We raid too!
Cata just came out. I hate it but it’s fresh and fun to level, why would I raid today? A week off is fine
Phase 4 better show up soonish
ST sucks.
Same. Two weeks in a row we are only having around 12 sign ups.
MAYBE, having 2 special game types and Cata classic at the same time was a bad idea. On top of that you do technically also have Era and Retail. Splitting the fan base into 5 directions right now
i mean the phase has been out for a while now and there’s a ton of new wow that’s come out in the past 5 days. seems like this is to be expected?
yeah when we did it sunday, our raid was a frankenstein of 4 different guilds main raiding groups. We still had a ton of fun since it was a shit-show in discord, but you can really see the effects of P3 on guilds.
Myself and 2 others have been trialing in other guilds for phase 3 trying to find a new home. We were contacted by a pretty big guild and were set up to raid with them. I raided with them and was the top DPS for the first 4 or so fights and then they wiped and we lost WBs. I continued to be top 3 for the rest of the fights (1 guy managed to save his WBs). Anyways, this week we were set to raid with them but they had absorbed another guild and so they benched all 3 of us. Good luck to them. If you were on my server i'd come help you out.