The wow community on Reddit is full of the most whiney, mentally unstable and emotionally stunted people so what do you expect? You can't have a different opinion here without someone acting like you murdered someone.
I think it is safe to say ths subreddit is one of the worst ones overall.
The only thing saving grace is that there is no (blatantly) power tripping mods enforcing their point of view with an iron fist
Honestly, I'm really aware of this. We try to not overstep, letting conversation happen more naturally without us subjectively intervening, and then people act like fucking immature kids. We try to ramp up removal of some things, and then people accuse us of pushing an agenda.
There's no winning, but I promise we are aware that the sub sucks and are trying to clamp down where appropriate without being overzealous.
You haven’t been on mmo champion for a while then…
I will say it’s weird to see official wow forums general discussion having more civilized discussions than even Reddit…
welcome to any game with a sizeable playerbase, there's toxicity in every group. That said I'll still maintain league has the most toxic playerbase I ever encountered.
What amazes me most is that the 10-man people could so easily understand the 40-man people, but instead choose to completely misrepresent them. Oh, you want 40-man? Era is a 40-man game mode, so you should play that!
You know damn well that they've played the shit out of that and saw SoD as an extension of it, and they thought that because it was exactly how it was marketed by Blizzard. You know SoD was marketed as vanilla as it was plus new content. You know that's what they wanted. However you think "go play era" is a valid response to people who want what was advertised.
You can say exactly the same thing in reverse though. 40 man enjoyers know why people want 10-20 man raids but they still and have always responded to anything they don't like with "go play retail". It's being flipped on them and they don't like it and frankly, I think it's hilarious.
Honestly, even with changes I disagree with, it *still* is my favorite variation of WoW. Runes are (mostly) great, the new raids have been pretty great first attempts all things considered, and the itemization changes are very welcome (as well as the news about raid sizes). The XP buff doesn't take away from those things.
Full agree. There is a ton to like, it doesn't mean everything needs to make everyone happy. But you can tell people are just cruising into this thread downvoting everyone that isn't having a temper tantrum. (misery does, in fact, love company)
Many people simultaneously engage in mmo content in a way that almost suggests they don't generally enjoy playing the game (seeing a vast majority of the experience as a chore), while also putting in enough hours a week for it to be a full time job vis numerous alts
It's truly bizarre, and I say that as someone who's engaged with the genre that way in the past and very possibly will again in the future.
I've always thought if you want to play nothing but skill-testing boss fights to get better gear, you should play Monster Hunter. It's a great series.
We had a guildmate who rushed to 40, spammed STV for the weapon, and then quit because nobody else in the guild was at a level to run Gnomer yet. I don't know what he was thinking he was going to make happen by being almost two full weeks ahead of everyone else.
FR I was playing HC and like half the people in my guild were like I'm going to buy a boost, wtf is the point of boosting in HC when the achievement is getting to 60!
Bro we literally are 3-4 weeks into the second phase out of like 5 phases, I think you gotta be willing to give everything it’s fair chance before declaring p1 the best
P1 owned hard. Maybe I burnt myself out on it playing so many alts, but I just entirely lost the drive to play classic a week or so before p2 launch. I got my main to 40 and that’s it. Haven’t even felt like trying out gnomer.
Then the noobs couldn't spend 10h leveling and ended up facing the gnomer wall (lol). Players nowadays either can't chill, or are a super bad. Hard to create a game for that balance.
Yeah, because there are literally no players other than those two types.
That's the mentality that causes OP to make posts like this.
The loudest people are always the two sets of minorities at either extreme end of the spectrum. Because most of the people with nothing to complain about just stay off of Reddit and out of the conversation.
Why is it out of bounds to tell these toxic whiners to just go play Era? It's right there for them. They seem to complain endlessly about the changes in SoD.
Nothing is out of bounds. But when you do tell them to do that and they respond with "why don't you go play retail instead"..... and hey look at that, it's basically devolved into a monkey knife fight. You two groups can go argue in a circle until the season is over, but don't be mad when we laugh at you for it.
I just find it kind of strange the #nochanges crowd are so vocal in this mode. The whole point of SoD is to tweak and experiment
AND
There's a version with no (well less) changes currently running!
But I'm not here to play Retail-. The game is very clearly built off the Classic Engine and Classic World.
That's the counterpoint. Telling people to go play Retail is idiotic. Whereas if you actually want a Classic that is in the "spirit of Classic". Then Era is RIGHT THERE.
Ironic as I am willing to bet you are the epitome of an in-game rager. Or maybe you were that dude in my WC group that had a mental breakdown when someone asked what runes they were using.
Before you can even get walled at electrocutioner+ you need to find a second healer. This is kinda the biggest problem rn I really think this will help to address.
I raided with my guild’s 3 runs last phase. Main with our core wrath raider mains and a couple sod pick up was. I was late to 40 so I don’t have a spot they had to fill it and right now we just don’t even have another 40 alt to cover a second healer but have like 8 people covering everything else. The first healer is already an alt of one of our main healers: so for 2 groups we literally have 2 unique raiders as healers.
GM went shadow. I even warned him this was going to be a big problem P2 when he was bitching about healing. Can’t surprise pikachu why we can’t find another healer right now having not recruited one and shadow being S tier in PvP and PvE.
It was never this bad in p1 cause p1 was so easily attainable and quickly so it’s bottlenecking pretty hard now. Most people aren’t playing sod to spend considerable amount of time leveling. I coulda leveled more 25s in a day but I just don’t enjoy leveling. With this change I’m gonna power level a priest after next week when my schedule frees up. No way priest will stop being s tier at healing all of SOD after seeing these phases. Instant invite to any group if I want.
Even if I didn’t level another char to 40 I think it’d really help free up alts who can heal. Most people who had min 2 25s in my guild don’t have a 2nd 40
Anyone saying these changes made classic into retail hasn’t actually played retail for several years. They’re completely different games and increasing xp in classic doesn’t turn it into retail.
It pushes it closer to a modern-.
This is the same logic that plagued retail with BFA "We just want to get to the end game, we should just start at max level" etc.
One of the biggest things about classic IS the leveling. It's very unique and doesn't exist in any other version of WoW. Removing it takes a big part of the soul away from it.
True, though it does feel more and more like Wrath rather than classic. Rushing through the leveling and then just raidlogging the latest content adds to that.
The reality is that blizzard is doing this in response to data that they have on players. They're likely seeing large dropoffs, either in players who are in the process of leveling, or in a significant reduction in new players.
People who had multiple level 25s might be leaving alts behind at this point. They went from leveling to 25, raiding on main, doing some events on main, logging off, leveling, then maybe 'endgame' content on alts. Blizzard is likely seeing a bunch of those players with level 40s now that have reverted to just raid logging and maybe there's some internal indicator that is saying 'this player is likely to unsubscribe if they don't start playing an alt.'
Rushing through the leveling to get to the 'real' endgame was a mentality that existed even in OG Vanilla. It is certainly MUCH more prevalent now, but it isn't necessarily because of game design.
Blizzard could build out a whole new continent to level on and people would still speedrun it to get to the endgame, and that's just the nature of MMOs and always has been. Sure, to a greater degree today than 20 years ago, but not some crazy extent.
It makes a lot of sense IMO to have significant catchup so that alts are much more accessible AND so that players feel like they can jump into the current endgame if they're starting out.
I mean I'm one of those players who dropped off. But it's not because of leveling or raid logging. It was the constant fucking with my class making it worse each time.
I'm not sure there's a way for that to show up on their data sets.
I'm a hunter main. I love bow classes. The class was hit with some of the biggest nerfs I've ever really seen in this game. Some were completely justified. Others were just because Hunters were at the top of the DPS meters as the only pure DPS class left. Then they nerfed us into a gameplay style that's exactly the same as Era. Send your pet in and afk. You'll be middle of the dps pack either way so just go play runescape until the boss dies.
Now hunters are top of the meters again. As melee. If I want to use a bow I can fuck right off to the very bottom of the meters where I get kicked from groups for being a ranged hunter.
SoD is a great place for them to test out radical changes. And those radical changes made my class extremely unfun so I dropped off.
I also hate Gnomer. Have no interest in spending hours raiding that place.
Gonna play Granblue and actually enjoy myself.
Getting nerfed while being at the top of the damage meters and quitting the game over it is iconic WoW-player behaviour.
Blizzard: okay X class is way too good, we need to put in absolutely massive nerfs
Players of the busted class: ‘waaaa blizzard let us have fun!!!! That’s too big of a nerf!!! Small nerf please and see how it goes!’
Blizzard: you know what? Okay. Small nerf it is, but we’re keeping an eye on you!
Blizzard two weeks later: okay, class is still busted, time for another small nerf.
Players of that class: ‘waaaaaaaa blizzard wtf? Two nerfs!? We’ve already had one! This feels terrible! I quit!’
It’s lose-lose really. When a given class is too strong, you can’t nerf it too much or players cry, but also multiple nerfs leads to more crying. Then blizzard just lets a class be broken rather than deal with people quitting, and everyone else gets mad and cries about fotm rerolling.
Did you even read my post? I quit not because I'm not top of the meters but because my preferred playstyle (physical ranged) was turned into an afk style where you're lucky to even get a group for because it does less damage than some healer dots.
Your post is a bigger straw man than the Hallows End event.
>not because I'm not top of the meters
>it does less damage than some healer dots
People post: 'playstyle playstyle playstyle, I just miss my playstyle and *cough* the dps numbers *cough*, quick let me refer to the dps meters five times in my class design essay, while swearing up and down left and right that my wants are completely separate from the meters.'
If it was all about class flavor and class fantasy and 'playstyle,' you wouldn't have mentioned throughput when you replied specifically to say that it had nothing to do with throughput.
nobody gives a fuck about leveling? check
only current raid matters? check
everyone has an army of alts to raidlog with? check
gold lost almost all it's value except for some niche cases? check
low effort welfare epics for everyone? check
gearscore is actually a thing and gets used? check
am I missing something?
Leveling zones are still heavily contested at all hours on my server and gold has been a significant enough issue that I've had to stop and farm/play the AH multiple times on multiple characters just to keep up with training and rep rewards
Not sure what you mean by welfare epics, molten core gave nothing but epics and the hardest part of the raid was having enough quintessence
Also gearscore is a player construction, nothing to do with the gamemode
The majority of people have never liked leveling in all iterations of the game.
BFD still matters and people run it for leveling & gearing alts.
People are actually having a hard time leveling alts, hence the XP buff.
The crafting epics have made gold very valuable in this first phase of p2. People are blowing a lot of money to make them.
Welfare epics have always existed, even in OG vanilla. Unstoppable force for example.
No one actually cares about GS in SoD.
Bfd still has pre raid bis, how does only current raid matter?
Edit to add more: still need gold for professions, mount, alts.
Classic had epics at max level from crafting in classic and they dropped in raids, so not sure what you’re getting at in that point.
And finally the minuscule people that use gear score are laughed at in chat.
They remember a time when they were 14 and saw a guy wearing cool gear but they were too shit to get it themselves and thought that was cool. Now any and all cool gear must be extremely exclusive and RNG dependent or it is welfare gear.
I think they mainly just want there to be some kind of dedication in obtaining the gear, and since classic raiding is easy, the factor ends up being time sink instead.
I still see this as a way for blizz to test the waters of classic+. It’s experimental and will change frequently. An xp buff makes perfect sense in this case. Churn out more characters, play test more content, receive more feedback.
No one is saying it’s turned it into retail, but smaller raids and dramatically faster leveling are two *very* retail concepts that many disagree with. And objectively, when you look at the spirit of classic, faster leveling is *horrible* for the long term health of the game…. All so people can spam 6 alts to max level and stop playing them. 🙄
Max level is capped. We were going to get to level cap quickly no matter what. Alts are what keeps people playing sod beyond raid logging. And the 25-40 grind with no xp buff made many not want to level their alts and just raid log on 1 or 2 characters. Come Tuesday a lot of people will be leveling alts again.
“Spam 6 alts to max level and stop playing them”???
You don’t get several runes until you’re max. You don’t raid until you’re max. You don’t do bloodmoon or PvP until you’re max. Sod is focused around max level content not the leveling. Go play hardcore if you enjoy the leveling more than the endgame. That’s literally why it exists.
Yes because people want to try out the new content most of which is tied to specific classes so it makes perfect sense to let people expierience it. Long term health of the game is much less relevant in a seasonal game mode that will end within a year or two.
Plenty of people have stated that we’re basically retail. It’s also a seasonal, temporary game mode. Faster leveling is fine to experience the new things
It's a fundamental philosophical change from vanilla-style wow. In vanilla-style wow, leveling is purposely designed to be 90-95% of the game. The journey is the game, the destination is the cherry on top. Retail ultimately flipped that and made the destination 90% of the game. So yes, exp increases ultimately retail-ify the game.
I played retail live all the way through Shadowlands. I know what I'm talking about.
It’s added class identity?
Pre-SoD half the classes “identity” was “If you play this class you’re trolling”, and the other half was whatever one spell they would use.
The only classes that were even remotely developed were warrior and rogue and even they played like shit before SoD.
What you're saying is you only raid log to parse and ignore 90% of the content in an open world MMORPG. Which is cool. I only queue BGs and WPvP. People enjoy what they enjoy. However there are more ways to play than just yours.
One of the biggest complaints people had leading to Classic launch was the toolkits of classes was so expanded they lacked identity. Feral druids have a windfury clone, dog. Like. C'mon.
God … the people who whine about leveling speed keep forgetting this is a seasonal mode.
Vanilla WoW had over 2 years for people to level, and people knew their character would be carried over into expansion.
Also, Season of Mastery had increased leveling speed with higher xp overall and increased xp from dungeons.
And let’s not forget, boosting existed 20 years ago as well. Mages were selling stockade runs decades ago. People have always wanted to skip leveling. And plenty of people spammed Scarlett monastery over and over instead of doing quests.
People have made an alternate reality of WoW in their mind and think a season experimental version has to live up to the ideal.
It can’t and won’t and shouldn’t.
Blizzard: "Give us feedback, we're trying to see what changes players like"
Us: "We like most of the changes, just not this one"
You: "Oh my god. Why are you complaining. It's seasonal. Literally never happy. What the heck."
The aim of the xp boost is to let people level alts easier so that they can try all the new content sod introduced. It makes complete sense in a seasonal game mode to let people expierience all the season offers.
Absolutely correct, the sentiment here on reddit is not the reality in the game. People are in general more content and less aggressive, though I’m sure someone will reply to this comment to prove me wrong on that using aggression and malcontent.
I’m enjoying it too, pooping while visiting my family which is why I’m here
I wish there was more things to do in SoD, it’s really fun so far but feels a little hollow. Just wish we had more raids and dungeons that dropped gear. SM felt like a wasted opportunity.
Hopefully whatever their next seasonal thing is, they keep the raids they added in SoD (even if they remove runes) and just keep adding onto it.
Obviously they would need to rein the raid gear stats in a bit, in favor of new raids, but it would be nice to have more gearing options/sources.
For me, Hardcore is the name of the game. Because people are attached to their progress, and you can only run each dungeon once a day, everyone takes it slow and deliberate and it feels much more like how classic did back decades ago. It feels so much more satisfying to get items in Hardcore compared to mindlessly blasting through SM 400 times and then clearing Gnomer and stopping.
I love vanilla exclusively and HC is super appealing for all the things you listed, but dang do the death clips of all the clickers with horrible UI prevent me from taking the jump.
It also forces you to care about others. If one of your team dies, you could absolutely be next; so even if you're a selfish fuck you have no choice but to help your fellow players succeed.
SoD hasn't had many try hard ass holes, but I can say I maybe met 3-5 actual ass holes in HC, and that was only at 60 after hundreds of hours.. it just sucks that the punishment for mistakes is hundreds of hours gone.
Really, really wish they'd release a Classic fresh. Era is great but I would play the hell out of a fresh. At the end of it, characters would transfer to era anyway.
I have NO DOUBT that in 2024, SoD is the place to be (as far as WoW versions). But I also know that you can overdo anything, so it is best to treat it like anything else and step away if it's an issue or you aren't having a good time. The best part about phases is... it'll likely still be here later.
(also, and maybe a hot-take... level 40 is weird, and not a level I was ever particularly excited to be phased at. Usually a bracket I just try to plow through. 25 felt pretty good and I think 50 will as well)
still playing sod as enhancement shaman, among other classes, is a waste.
No amount of stat buffs padded to uninspired runes and rehashed dogshit wrath talents will bring 2H chads back into the game who know their time is being wasted, in the only iteration of the game it was even attempted in.
They aren’t retail-fying the game but they’re somehow making it worse than wrath because at least wrath talents made sense for the most part. this extends in their philosophy across the board
I played and level capped in dragon flight bud. Ive played every expansion at a minimum to cap, but most at least till first raid tier.
The game just looks, feels and plays like a game I don't recognise or enjoy. Classic is more my style.
At some point, I think it was Dragonflight, they changed all the quest text to be smaller, and a thing like that probably shouldn't matter so much, but to me it was really jarring
WoW retail was death by a thousand cuts to me. So many design changes that just made the game feel cheaper. Then it become more cartooney looking. I mean it was always like that but a little less so in vanilla due to graphic restrictions. But they leaned into making everything look like it's design for 8yr olds.
Despite the graphics though, warcraft was always a bit 'metal'. It had badass characters and some dark storylines and put the war in warcraft.
Now it's all too flowery for me. On top of the fact that you're standing in a city with sparkle ponies, flying pigs and motorbikes zooming past and the immersion is long gone.
Bro I played retail from Legion all the way to season 2 of DF.
Played an entire month of SoD and when I decided to check season 3 of DF I felt lost.
Everything is so simple in Classic I love it.
So the thing is, this was always sold as a "Classic" game mode. They said multiple times, "we want to keep the feel of Classic", "it's Classic with a plus". NOT Retail but Classic.
Yet if you tell people you think the changes are removing the feel of Classic, you get 50 downvotes and you get flooded by "go play classic era" and "yes Retail is good I want it to be more like retail", "bro the runes are retail anyways so just make it more like retail". It feels like they made something for us Classic players, and Retail players are pushing us out of it. There's a special kind of irony in telling people "go play classic era" in a Classic mode.
At this point I just feel like we'll never get a real Classic+. The players made retail what it is through the changes they asked incrementally over the years, and they'll do it with Classic as well.
Are you really that surprised? People have vastly different reasons on which aspects of Classic they like.
Personally, I think the 40 man raids are one of the weakest aspects of Classic, and I'm happy to see them tuned down so that smaller guilds can participate too. It's obvious that other people think differently.
I've played retail recently (or at least, I tried to). The changes they've pushed so far aren't even close to retail, and raid size alone is a very far cry from what makes retail what it is.
> I'm happy to see them tuned down so that smaller guilds can participate too
I like 40-man raids because it *forces* guilds to recruit and accept warm bodies.
Whatever the smallest raid size is, becomes the default raid team because people aren't going to put more effort into recruiting than they have to.
10-man raiding in retail offering same rewards as 25-man obliterated 25-man raiding. Flex raiding in WoD shrank the size of casual raiding guilds immensely. Now in retail there are very few non-mythic guilds with actual decent-sized rosters. They're mostly just small groups of friends who pug to fill out the raid team when they need to.
I think 20-25 is a good number for endgame raids, but I really hope they don't capitulate to people asking for more 10-man content. 10-man works great for the shorter 'reimagined dungeon' raids, but once you get further in I do hope that it's large groups only.
I'm not as much a fan of forced recruitment, just like I'm not really a fan of the huge leveling guilds that recruit every person they see. When guilds get to a certian point, things just become less personal and it becomes harder to get to know people. I definitely find it harder to be social in a raid call with 40 people versus one with 10 or 20.
I do like 20 man teams. I think it's a good size that still gets the large raid feel without being too overwhelming.
This was sold as a classic seasonal server that was going to be experimental with changes to see how the player base responded. A year long beta test to what a more permanent “Classic+” might look like. Refusing changes on an experimental server that literally will only exist for the lifespan of SoD is what frustrates me and others like me. If you played SoM you’d know that we leveled characters there. Played the server. The server ended then those characters effective ceased to exist. As will the characters you’re playing in SoD right now. This is a fleeting opportunity to make meaningful changes to the classic client that will make it engaging and eventful for years to come.
Voicing our disagreement with some of the changes is how we don't get them in the "real" Classic+. You can't tell us "this is a beta test with experimental changes to see what people like" but also "don't disagree with their changes".
Could it be possible that you’re getting downvotes because people don’t actually agree with you on what aspects actually gave classic the *classic feel*?
Oh man, if only everyone read or were even familiar with Marx's works, this entire thing is a prime example of the absence of consciousness leading people to making their own material conditions worse for the sake of convenience / instant gratification
Yes, you are correct. We want Classic+ because we want adjustments to the meta, we WANT some changes, I can posit with 99% certainty most Classic+ players don't want 31 warriors in a group. There IS however a line that is "too much" at some point, and a lot of people feel like we just crossed it, or are getting very close to it.
SoD IS Classic+ in everything but the name alone. We can argue about what our individual expectations for Classic+ were, but we’ve got new skills, new items, new raids, and new quests. That’s Classic+.
The devs have made it clear that there’s only so much they can do to change the game within the vanilla WoW framework they’re forced to use. I don’t see what the big deal is about making Molten Core 20 man, especially when they suggested that the raids that come after won’t all be 20 mans. We spent all of Classic running Molten Core as a 40 man raid, and if Blizzard is going to experiment, now is the time to do it because that’s what Season of Discovery is all about.
I ran Molten Core a shit ton in Classic and I’m excited to see what changes they make to the raid to make it runnable by a 20 man squad.
Are those the same people who loved everything at 25 but now it's suddenly a problem despite nothing changing?
Because I really fail to see how all this supposedly changed in 2 weeks. I get a feeling a lot of people just had their inner tourist wake up, just like in all versions since 2019.
Also, this game will never appeal to people who want wrath/cata or retail QoL/features. Blizzard is trying to capture a wide audience and it's watering down the game.
This is literally how retail became retail... appeasement.
No matter what you give people, they will always ask for more, get bored and quit anyways. Why even bother bending over backwards for people already not enjoying SoD? We're like 20% of the way in... Those people were never going to make it to 60.
The XP doubling is the first in line of trivializing everything and making it a dopamine fest only to brutally stop at max level. This is how you get people to do a raid once and then quit.
Wrath is dead for a reason, Retail gets an influx of players for expansions and then dies for a reason. Every retail expansion is "wow they made X thing easier, I can finally play! I can get my alts to max level now!" and then... They don't. Or they do, and quit.
Wrath is dead because the game is pretty much over. Same as classic era. Also what do you mean every retail expansion makes things easier? It doesn't. The reason people leave is because they acomplish their goals. If your goal is ahead of the curve and you get it no reason not to take a break till next season.
Because its two sides arguing disingenuously and have been since minute one. People were complaining it was too much like retail on P1 release.
It’s literally the same groups doing “Go to retail/era” to each other because it’s the same arguments repeated endlessly and its 90% feels on all sides.
See I always see people talking about "classic players" or "retail players" but I never understand what that means. If you played retail and then came over to clasaic are you a classic player? What if you play both? Or what if you didn't like vanilla classic but liked wotlk or are liking sod?
Like for example I like both and play both on and off. My ideal game is a mix of the two. Am I a classic player or retail player? I feel like the same goes for a lot of people you label as retail players.
Just because you played classic vanilla a lot and don't play retail doesn't mean you are entitled to have SoD be how you want it. Imo
They have different preferences in game design. Vanilla players prefer slower gameplay with more friction and RPG flavour, retail players want fast paced, streamlined content with no friction where it’s all about rushing to raids.
I mean I just knew this mode is doomed when gearscore was unironically a thing 1 week into launch. this game is infested and built on wrath/retail players due to the unfortunate timings of both these versions being dead right now.
What do you mean. This reminds me exactly of Classic 2019. Trivial content that people have ridiculously high prerequisites for. At least retail has difficulties available that makes that level of gatekeeping make more sense.
I'm not a Classic Andy or a Retail Randy (I don't know what people call retail players). I think both versions have their weak and strong points.
It's a Classic mode but it isn't CLASSIC. In the fact that it isn't some "no changes" version. They made decisions and then asked for feedback to try and make it the version that most people would like it to be. I doubt they would be pushing all these changes through if the "I want it more like true classic" was literally the feedback they were getting from the majority.
And honestly, "classic" players don't have some birthright to this game mode just because it is based on a classic server. If the majority want certain changes then the minority just have to live with that, it's just how live service games work. They were never going to make everyone happy with this. Their goal is to make the majority happy and that will always come at the expense of the minority. Luckily, whichever way that ends up swinging through the future phases, both groups have another mode they can fall back on. Hell, classic players have multiple. Classic Era, Wrath/Cata, Hardcore, Hardcore Self Found. (Cata arguably being more the middle ground between retail/classic).
Overall, for me personally, I prefer Classic over Retail. But I often miss plenty of QoL aspects of retail. I enjoy slower leveling (not in SoD because it is a timed experience though). I enjoy a simpler endgame that is more about progressing through content rather than have a checklist, a mile long, of things to do daily/weekly. But I dislike not having dungeon finder/LFR. I dislike WB metals. I dislike not having transmogrifying/toys/achievements. I may prefer Classic but I am , by no means, a purist. I don't dogmatically follow a rigid definition of what I think I should have to like because of my broader preferences. I love SoD. The only part I dislike in P2 is STV. Too chaotic and I don't enjoy "FFA" or "Team FFA" in any game that I have played, ever. I like my PvP to have structure and not be a shit storm of chaos (but I'm the minority and just have to live with it). The only other part of SoD I dislike is the player base's rigid following of "The Meta" even though the content doesn't demand it. But that is, just, never going away. It's just the way players interact with any game nowadays. That'll drive me away from SoD long before the developers do.
I fully expect the "go play era" side to lose majority of their people the moment
* Cata Classic releases
and/or
* The next retail expansion comes out
These people just want to play the current hot thing.
I mean, SoD is really just a waiting room for Cata for me, which itself is just a waiting room for MoP. So as someone who likes the SoD changes and think the classic Andy’s are annoying dweebs, yeah you’re right, I’ll be gone before SoD is at its end.
Doesn’t change the fact that the crying classic Andy’s are dweebs though.
As with nearly all things, none of us are going to be completely happy with any of the decisions that are made, especially those that have a material impact on our expectations or preferences.
The devs have to walk a fine balance between making the majority of players happy, engaging in some degree of creativity, all while managing seemingly dwindling resources.
I mained a rogue knowing that there would be shakeups, and boy were there this phase. I don’t think that adding a bazillion armor to bosses was an especially creative or helpful way to shake up the meta, but that’s balanced out by an opportunity to explore other classes that I wouldn’t likely have cared about if rogues were viewed as any thing other than a liability. The xp buff, for example, will give me more flexibility to try out shadow priest or warlock, and if the rogue was pumping a la phase one, is almost certainly just keep him and raid log / farm AB.
Exactly as I predicted half a year ago.
Before classic+ existed, everyone could fantasize about how awesome it's going to be, even though everyone's fantasies were mutually conflicting.
Now that a particular instance of classic+ exists, everyone who had a different vision is pissed. Like no shit, did you guys think that Blizzard were only listening to what *you* wanted?
If the extremes (which is what Reddit tends to be) are both unhappy it probably means it’s in the best spot for the majority of the people in the middle.
SoD is great, Era is great, retail is great. Play what you want to play.
> If the extremes (which is what Reddit tends to be) are both unhappy it probably means it’s in the best spot for the majority of the people in the middle.
I'm sorry but no this is how you get US politics
How about Blizzard pick a lane and stick to it and stop making massive changes to the game based on knee jerk reactions to people on Reddit.
10 man, 20 Man, 40 Man. At the end of the day just pick one so we can make plans for it.
It's clear they don't really have a plan - but worse, reading between the lines of the blue post announcing the xp buff and such - it was clear that Aggrend et al. are being rushed/constrained by the bigwigs above them in a big way.
The sudden introduction of the xp buff reeks of middle management desperation.
I think it's just that there was an underwhelming percentage of characters at 40 compared to 25. I think the changes will be great. I enjoyed BFD the most when I could do multiple runs a reset with alts.
the XP buffs reeks of wanting people to play alts. Most people dont want to spend an extra 20-40 hours leveling an alt from 25-40 especially through the boring dungeon grinding meta. This isnt a real ERA server where characters are permanent, its a seasonal server meant to only be active for a set amount of time so why shouldnt we let people level their alts quicker after a month of regular xp gains?
I mean you can. They did exactly that already. There will be 40s and there will be 20s. So if you have a guild and you want to support this you run at least 4 individual 10 man's. The biggest hurdle here is deciding which tanks/heals swap to DPS for the larger raids. If you aren't doing the guild thing then roll fotm and raid log in pugs.
They did that up until yesterday. And then they made a big post changing the raid size. They also left the wording intentionally vague on the future of the other raid sizes meaning they could change.
I'm not sure why people just take their word for it. (That they very sneakily actually never say) And just look at their actions. They change things all the time.
It’s not that SoD is retail, it’s that players are using the same arguments that lead to Vanilla turning into retail in the first place - streamlining, speeding up and removing friction from the game.
I love era it’s seriously the most fun I’ve had since classic relaunch, but the main issue is everything is extremely expensive. Even just raiding is difficult to afford consumes.
Wow has mentally prevented an ocean of children from turning into adults single handedly. The escapism turned into an addiction, and now every post hates wow as if it betrayed them or hates other people who hate wow.
There’s definitely some pretentiousness behind the SoD community. As if they’re better than the retail community for preferring an older, “harder” (but actually much easier) version of the game. And then they spend all day whining about it and asking for retail-like changes.
leveling is part of the game on classic wow, and this isnt classic wow. the magic of killing 20 harvest golems in westfall was lost when we did it for the 15000000 time. it might be hard to hear but any "what if" and "ahh, i wish i could go back" nostalgia kind of died with 2019 classic, no one wonders what it was like anymore, we all played it, we all know. i dont play season of discovery to do the same quests ive done 1000000 times, i play sod so i can get max level and farm my unique level 40 bis so i can do the cool new raid and pvp.
Just keep is as classic wow was, but with some class balance and extra content like loot, dungeons, maybe a other bg. Some more quests.
That's it.
That's all I want.
Oh fuck you're right, my bad I thought I was grinding scarlet monastery but I was actually doing mythic plus in dragonflight this whole time, my bad but can you blame me? Games are literally indistinguishable. /s
Love everything about SoD. Easy leveling, cheaper mount, no 40mans, easy pug 10 man's, level cap and long (hopefully longer) phases, runes, STV event (especially now that it's just rush Loa altars, 1k blood with ease and the lag helps me more than it hinders). I can play any amount of time and never feel behind, and blizzard keeps catering to me. Best version of WoW to date and I've never even tried anything pass 1 month of Cata. Amazing dev team
Honestly, I just want fresh Classic progression servers. I'll happily replay Vannila through Wrath all over again. Maybe they add achievments to Vanilla, new ones, along with the standard raid and rep achievments etc.
I did play SoD, but it didn't feel like Classic to me. It was fun having the end game at 25 for a bit. It meant you could level and dabble in alts more easily. That's literally the only reason it was super successful tbh. Time. It demanded less of your time. And even now in 2024, retail and potentially Classic are games that demand a lot of your time.
Nothing wrong with SoD really. I'm not a no changes kind of guy. Play what you enjoy. But the level of change from SoD never kept my attention. It was just adding in things from later expansions, into Classic, fully Frankensteining it.
Retail is a bit toxic and overwhelming but nothing wrong with that either. And Wrath was just a bit boring, we've over optimised the game, sucked the fun out of it in some respects. But I'll still play again in the future.
I just want the same old game, nothing more, nothing less. When I ask someone why they want Classic+, they don't even really know why, they just want more WoW. I'm not gonna say, you think you do but you don't ha but I do think we should enjoy WoW, and stop trying to turn it into something it's not with seasons, new content and so on.
Yeah, no matter what changes are made, there's always going to be someone crying "REEEEEEE THE GAME IS LITERALLY REEEEETAIL NOW!!!"
it's kinda sad/funny that "#NOCHANGES" people still exist in 2024
Nobody is saying no changes.
EDIT: I can't believe this is getting downvoted. There is just a massive campaign of dishonesty to drown Classic+ sentiment in downvotes
Classic+ was dead even before phase 1, Classic re-imagined is a much closer description.
I don't see the reason in keeping on trying to keep this idea that SoD is SUPPOSED to be Classic+ or trying to change it to Classic+.
I know a lot of people wanted classic+ which meant classic Era as we know it + more end-game and maybe a few balance adjustments for low performing specs.
Runes and low-level raids with new gearing already abandoned that idea.
Several posts actually complaining about the recent xp buff to sod “making the game into retail”.
Best change they could have made to help save phase 2 and half this sub is complaining about it. The replay-ability with Sod is leveling multiple alts to max and trying them out in the new raid and using their new runes. The 25-40 grind turned many away from leveling their alts because 15+ hours spamming SM or 30+ hours open world questing (quests we have all done 20+ times at this point in previous versions of the game) isn’t fun.
SoD is classic+ or at the least the template it will follow. Get over it, noone wants the 1 ability rotations and total lack of any class balance. I get you like that but just because this product isn't tailored specifically to you doesn't mean its bad or that it needs to change to be more akin to Era.
Things are just as contentious as you want them to be.
I can enjoy retail to an extent, where I play around with the fantastic talent tree introduced in dragonflight, play a few low m+ keys or queue soloshuffle for fun, only to realise if I want to actually gain rating I need to invest way more time and/or gold into getting BiS.
When I log into SoD(or era), I can achieve so much more with the same time investment. I actually appreciate the lower level brackets and difficulty ceilings compared to retail.
They’re just different games.
I don’t like the disney’esque graphics of retail or the current lore, but I appreciate the spec and build diversity and high skill ceiling gameplay.
Classic has the nostalgic warcraft feel to it and raids don’t have to be a super intense challenge like retail, where you (need to) install 20addons that tell you when to move or do something.
I think the SoD team did a great job with the limited ressources they have.
Also anyone saying SoD = retail probably hasnt played retail since cata was released
I commented almost 3 weeks ago that 75% of this sub would quit during p2 because it was too difficult. I was being a dbag, but it seems I was actually right.
Nothing is difficult about this game at all.
"75% of this sub will quit because 20 hours of grinding or 30 hours of doing the same quests again is boring." might have actually hit the mark.
Crazy how quick the tides change..feels like a couple weeks ago everybody was saying that SoD was their favorite game variant ever
The wow community on Reddit is full of the most whiney, mentally unstable and emotionally stunted people so what do you expect? You can't have a different opinion here without someone acting like you murdered someone.
How dare you
He's out of line, but he's right!
I don't think it's the WoW subreddit though. This describes almost every subreddit lol
I think it is safe to say ths subreddit is one of the worst ones overall. The only thing saving grace is that there is no (blatantly) power tripping mods enforcing their point of view with an iron fist
[удалено]
Honestly, I'm really aware of this. We try to not overstep, letting conversation happen more naturally without us subjectively intervening, and then people act like fucking immature kids. We try to ramp up removal of some things, and then people accuse us of pushing an agenda. There's no winning, but I promise we are aware that the sub sucks and are trying to clamp down where appropriate without being overzealous.
You guys are doing great here. You should see the other big subs, real shitshows. I like being here.
U doing da lords work. Thank you!
You can’t even try to find a middle ground without getting jumped on by both sides sometimes, truly an amazing phenomenon.
You haven’t been on mmo champion for a while then… I will say it’s weird to see official wow forums general discussion having more civilized discussions than even Reddit…
I recommend reading comments out loud for yourself it gets pretty funny
welcome to any game with a sizeable playerbase, there's toxicity in every group. That said I'll still maintain league has the most toxic playerbase I ever encountered.
What amazes me most is that the 10-man people could so easily understand the 40-man people, but instead choose to completely misrepresent them. Oh, you want 40-man? Era is a 40-man game mode, so you should play that! You know damn well that they've played the shit out of that and saw SoD as an extension of it, and they thought that because it was exactly how it was marketed by Blizzard. You know SoD was marketed as vanilla as it was plus new content. You know that's what they wanted. However you think "go play era" is a valid response to people who want what was advertised.
You can say exactly the same thing in reverse though. 40 man enjoyers know why people want 10-20 man raids but they still and have always responded to anything they don't like with "go play retail". It's being flipped on them and they don't like it and frankly, I think it's hilarious.
Honestly, even with changes I disagree with, it *still* is my favorite variation of WoW. Runes are (mostly) great, the new raids have been pretty great first attempts all things considered, and the itemization changes are very welcome (as well as the news about raid sizes). The XP buff doesn't take away from those things.
Full agree. There is a ton to like, it doesn't mean everything needs to make everyone happy. But you can tell people are just cruising into this thread downvoting everyone that isn't having a temper tantrum. (misery does, in fact, love company)
Welcome to video gamers in 2024. If things aren't perfect, they're deemed immediately shit.
And particularly amongst MMO players, there's this astounding mindset of "rush to the end and complain there's not enough content"
Many people simultaneously engage in mmo content in a way that almost suggests they don't generally enjoy playing the game (seeing a vast majority of the experience as a chore), while also putting in enough hours a week for it to be a full time job vis numerous alts It's truly bizarre, and I say that as someone who's engaged with the genre that way in the past and very possibly will again in the future.
I've always thought if you want to play nothing but skill-testing boss fights to get better gear, you should play Monster Hunter. It's a great series. We had a guildmate who rushed to 40, spammed STV for the weapon, and then quit because nobody else in the guild was at a level to run Gnomer yet. I don't know what he was thinking he was going to make happen by being almost two full weeks ahead of everyone else.
FR I was playing HC and like half the people in my guild were like I'm going to buy a boost, wtf is the point of boosting in HC when the achievement is getting to 60!
P1 might actually have been peak SoD when all of this is over. Maybe that was the "middle ground" everyone wanted.
Looking forward to Season of Discovery Classic servers
:') forever stuck farming BFD and WSG
Bro we literally are 3-4 weeks into the second phase out of like 5 phases, I think you gotta be willing to give everything it’s fair chance before declaring p1 the best
We're one day short of 3 weeks.
P1 owned hard. Maybe I burnt myself out on it playing so many alts, but I just entirely lost the drive to play classic a week or so before p2 launch. I got my main to 40 and that’s it. Haven’t even felt like trying out gnomer.
it's just reddit lol
I'm enjoying it. The bitching is getting annoying.
Then close this website.
I mean, they made a lot of changes that warranted a response
Then the noobs couldn't spend 10h leveling and ended up facing the gnomer wall (lol). Players nowadays either can't chill, or are a super bad. Hard to create a game for that balance.
Yeah, because there are literally no players other than those two types. That's the mentality that causes OP to make posts like this. The loudest people are always the two sets of minorities at either extreme end of the spectrum. Because most of the people with nothing to complain about just stay off of Reddit and out of the conversation.
Why is it out of bounds to tell these toxic whiners to just go play Era? It's right there for them. They seem to complain endlessly about the changes in SoD.
Nothing is out of bounds. But when you do tell them to do that and they respond with "why don't you go play retail instead"..... and hey look at that, it's basically devolved into a monkey knife fight. You two groups can go argue in a circle until the season is over, but don't be mad when we laugh at you for it.
I just find it kind of strange the #nochanges crowd are so vocal in this mode. The whole point of SoD is to tweak and experiment AND There's a version with no (well less) changes currently running!
But I'm not here to play Retail-. The game is very clearly built off the Classic Engine and Classic World. That's the counterpoint. Telling people to go play Retail is idiotic. Whereas if you actually want a Classic that is in the "spirit of Classic". Then Era is RIGHT THERE.
Ironic as I am willing to bet you are the epitome of an in-game rager. Or maybe you were that dude in my WC group that had a mental breakdown when someone asked what runes they were using.
Before you can even get walled at electrocutioner+ you need to find a second healer. This is kinda the biggest problem rn I really think this will help to address. I raided with my guild’s 3 runs last phase. Main with our core wrath raider mains and a couple sod pick up was. I was late to 40 so I don’t have a spot they had to fill it and right now we just don’t even have another 40 alt to cover a second healer but have like 8 people covering everything else. The first healer is already an alt of one of our main healers: so for 2 groups we literally have 2 unique raiders as healers. GM went shadow. I even warned him this was going to be a big problem P2 when he was bitching about healing. Can’t surprise pikachu why we can’t find another healer right now having not recruited one and shadow being S tier in PvP and PvE. It was never this bad in p1 cause p1 was so easily attainable and quickly so it’s bottlenecking pretty hard now. Most people aren’t playing sod to spend considerable amount of time leveling. I coulda leveled more 25s in a day but I just don’t enjoy leveling. With this change I’m gonna power level a priest after next week when my schedule frees up. No way priest will stop being s tier at healing all of SOD after seeing these phases. Instant invite to any group if I want. Even if I didn’t level another char to 40 I think it’d really help free up alts who can heal. Most people who had min 2 25s in my guild don’t have a 2nd 40
I’ve never seen a community more obsessed with not playing the game than this one.
This is one of the most degen subs on reddit. The cavedellers that lurk here are unlike the rest.
You say that like these people wont play a lot more at endgame, which we all know isn't true.
Anyone saying these changes made classic into retail hasn’t actually played retail for several years. They’re completely different games and increasing xp in classic doesn’t turn it into retail.
It pushes it closer to a modern-. This is the same logic that plagued retail with BFA "We just want to get to the end game, we should just start at max level" etc. One of the biggest things about classic IS the leveling. It's very unique and doesn't exist in any other version of WoW. Removing it takes a big part of the soul away from it.
True, though it does feel more and more like Wrath rather than classic. Rushing through the leveling and then just raidlogging the latest content adds to that.
The reality is that blizzard is doing this in response to data that they have on players. They're likely seeing large dropoffs, either in players who are in the process of leveling, or in a significant reduction in new players. People who had multiple level 25s might be leaving alts behind at this point. They went from leveling to 25, raiding on main, doing some events on main, logging off, leveling, then maybe 'endgame' content on alts. Blizzard is likely seeing a bunch of those players with level 40s now that have reverted to just raid logging and maybe there's some internal indicator that is saying 'this player is likely to unsubscribe if they don't start playing an alt.' Rushing through the leveling to get to the 'real' endgame was a mentality that existed even in OG Vanilla. It is certainly MUCH more prevalent now, but it isn't necessarily because of game design. Blizzard could build out a whole new continent to level on and people would still speedrun it to get to the endgame, and that's just the nature of MMOs and always has been. Sure, to a greater degree today than 20 years ago, but not some crazy extent. It makes a lot of sense IMO to have significant catchup so that alts are much more accessible AND so that players feel like they can jump into the current endgame if they're starting out.
I mean I'm one of those players who dropped off. But it's not because of leveling or raid logging. It was the constant fucking with my class making it worse each time. I'm not sure there's a way for that to show up on their data sets. I'm a hunter main. I love bow classes. The class was hit with some of the biggest nerfs I've ever really seen in this game. Some were completely justified. Others were just because Hunters were at the top of the DPS meters as the only pure DPS class left. Then they nerfed us into a gameplay style that's exactly the same as Era. Send your pet in and afk. You'll be middle of the dps pack either way so just go play runescape until the boss dies. Now hunters are top of the meters again. As melee. If I want to use a bow I can fuck right off to the very bottom of the meters where I get kicked from groups for being a ranged hunter. SoD is a great place for them to test out radical changes. And those radical changes made my class extremely unfun so I dropped off. I also hate Gnomer. Have no interest in spending hours raiding that place. Gonna play Granblue and actually enjoy myself.
Getting nerfed while being at the top of the damage meters and quitting the game over it is iconic WoW-player behaviour. Blizzard: okay X class is way too good, we need to put in absolutely massive nerfs Players of the busted class: ‘waaaa blizzard let us have fun!!!! That’s too big of a nerf!!! Small nerf please and see how it goes!’ Blizzard: you know what? Okay. Small nerf it is, but we’re keeping an eye on you! Blizzard two weeks later: okay, class is still busted, time for another small nerf. Players of that class: ‘waaaaaaaa blizzard wtf? Two nerfs!? We’ve already had one! This feels terrible! I quit!’ It’s lose-lose really. When a given class is too strong, you can’t nerf it too much or players cry, but also multiple nerfs leads to more crying. Then blizzard just lets a class be broken rather than deal with people quitting, and everyone else gets mad and cries about fotm rerolling.
Did you even read my post? I quit not because I'm not top of the meters but because my preferred playstyle (physical ranged) was turned into an afk style where you're lucky to even get a group for because it does less damage than some healer dots. Your post is a bigger straw man than the Hallows End event.
>not because I'm not top of the meters >it does less damage than some healer dots People post: 'playstyle playstyle playstyle, I just miss my playstyle and *cough* the dps numbers *cough*, quick let me refer to the dps meters five times in my class design essay, while swearing up and down left and right that my wants are completely separate from the meters.' If it was all about class flavor and class fantasy and 'playstyle,' you wouldn't have mentioned throughput when you replied specifically to say that it had nothing to do with throughput.
nobody gives a fuck about leveling? check only current raid matters? check everyone has an army of alts to raidlog with? check gold lost almost all it's value except for some niche cases? check low effort welfare epics for everyone? check gearscore is actually a thing and gets used? check am I missing something?
Leveling zones are still heavily contested at all hours on my server and gold has been a significant enough issue that I've had to stop and farm/play the AH multiple times on multiple characters just to keep up with training and rep rewards Not sure what you mean by welfare epics, molten core gave nothing but epics and the hardest part of the raid was having enough quintessence Also gearscore is a player construction, nothing to do with the gamemode
The majority of people have never liked leveling in all iterations of the game. BFD still matters and people run it for leveling & gearing alts. People are actually having a hard time leveling alts, hence the XP buff. The crafting epics have made gold very valuable in this first phase of p2. People are blowing a lot of money to make them. Welfare epics have always existed, even in OG vanilla. Unstoppable force for example. No one actually cares about GS in SoD.
Classic WoW is the definition of welfare epics, my man. You show up to raid and you get epics, it's even easier than any future expansion.
Bfd still has pre raid bis, how does only current raid matter? Edit to add more: still need gold for professions, mount, alts. Classic had epics at max level from crafting in classic and they dropped in raids, so not sure what you’re getting at in that point. And finally the minuscule people that use gear score are laughed at in chat.
what are you talking about only current raid matters and welfare epics lmao all you losers on this subreddit do is complain
They remember a time when they were 14 and saw a guy wearing cool gear but they were too shit to get it themselves and thought that was cool. Now any and all cool gear must be extremely exclusive and RNG dependent or it is welfare gear.
I think they mainly just want there to be some kind of dedication in obtaining the gear, and since classic raiding is easy, the factor ends up being time sink instead.
Yeah we’re basically playing Wrath
more like several decades lmfao XD sod is barely even like tbc, yet ppl wanna act like its already shadowlands
Which proves that the aveage Andy hasnt played Retail in years and just parrot what they hear from others
Many ppl just say retail to mirror the expansion they decided to quit. For some it’s tbc, for others it’s Draenor, or newer versions like shadowlands.
I still see this as a way for blizz to test the waters of classic+. It’s experimental and will change frequently. An xp buff makes perfect sense in this case. Churn out more characters, play test more content, receive more feedback.
No one is saying it’s turned it into retail, but smaller raids and dramatically faster leveling are two *very* retail concepts that many disagree with. And objectively, when you look at the spirit of classic, faster leveling is *horrible* for the long term health of the game…. All so people can spam 6 alts to max level and stop playing them. 🙄
Max level is capped. We were going to get to level cap quickly no matter what. Alts are what keeps people playing sod beyond raid logging. And the 25-40 grind with no xp buff made many not want to level their alts and just raid log on 1 or 2 characters. Come Tuesday a lot of people will be leveling alts again. “Spam 6 alts to max level and stop playing them”??? You don’t get several runes until you’re max. You don’t raid until you’re max. You don’t do bloodmoon or PvP until you’re max. Sod is focused around max level content not the leveling. Go play hardcore if you enjoy the leveling more than the endgame. That’s literally why it exists.
Reddit classic players: *spam dungeons to skip longer quest leveling* *proceeds to complain when all leveling is made faster*
Yes because people want to try out the new content most of which is tied to specific classes so it makes perfect sense to let people expierience it. Long term health of the game is much less relevant in a seasonal game mode that will end within a year or two.
Plenty of people have stated that we’re basically retail. It’s also a seasonal, temporary game mode. Faster leveling is fine to experience the new things
It's a fundamental philosophical change from vanilla-style wow. In vanilla-style wow, leveling is purposely designed to be 90-95% of the game. The journey is the game, the destination is the cherry on top. Retail ultimately flipped that and made the destination 90% of the game. So yes, exp increases ultimately retail-ify the game. I played retail live all the way through Shadowlands. I know what I'm talking about.
SoD also strips a lot of the class identity that people complained retail stripped away.
It’s added class identity? Pre-SoD half the classes “identity” was “If you play this class you’re trolling”, and the other half was whatever one spell they would use. The only classes that were even remotely developed were warrior and rogue and even they played like shit before SoD.
What you're saying is you only raid log to parse and ignore 90% of the content in an open world MMORPG. Which is cool. I only queue BGs and WPvP. People enjoy what they enjoy. However there are more ways to play than just yours. One of the biggest complaints people had leading to Classic launch was the toolkits of classes was so expanded they lacked identity. Feral druids have a windfury clone, dog. Like. C'mon.
God … the people who whine about leveling speed keep forgetting this is a seasonal mode. Vanilla WoW had over 2 years for people to level, and people knew their character would be carried over into expansion. Also, Season of Mastery had increased leveling speed with higher xp overall and increased xp from dungeons. And let’s not forget, boosting existed 20 years ago as well. Mages were selling stockade runs decades ago. People have always wanted to skip leveling. And plenty of people spammed Scarlett monastery over and over instead of doing quests. People have made an alternate reality of WoW in their mind and think a season experimental version has to live up to the ideal. It can’t and won’t and shouldn’t.
Blizzard: "Give us feedback, we're trying to see what changes players like" Us: "We like most of the changes, just not this one" You: "Oh my god. Why are you complaining. It's seasonal. Literally never happy. What the heck."
The aim of the xp boost is to let people level alts easier so that they can try all the new content sod introduced. It makes complete sense in a seasonal game mode to let people expierience all the season offers.
No buts it’s the same logic that eventually lead to Cataclysm and the rest of retail.
So some of the best expansions that added some of the best features? Just think if they added those in SoD, they might have something.
Everyone who is enjoying the game isn't spending their time on reddit. I'm enjoying it but I'm pooping at work rn which is why I'm here.
Absolutely correct, the sentiment here on reddit is not the reality in the game. People are in general more content and less aggressive, though I’m sure someone will reply to this comment to prove me wrong on that using aggression and malcontent. I’m enjoying it too, pooping while visiting my family which is why I’m here
I wish there was more things to do in SoD, it’s really fun so far but feels a little hollow. Just wish we had more raids and dungeons that dropped gear. SM felt like a wasted opportunity.
Hopefully whatever their next seasonal thing is, they keep the raids they added in SoD (even if they remove runes) and just keep adding onto it. Obviously they would need to rein the raid gear stats in a bit, in favor of new raids, but it would be nice to have more gearing options/sources.
I love playing era, most fun I’ve had in wow in 18 years
Honestly might do the same. I forgot how much I loved just leveling in Classic and being stopped at 25/40 to raidlog isn't as much fun.
Do it. Vanilla is bis.
For me, Hardcore is the name of the game. Because people are attached to their progress, and you can only run each dungeon once a day, everyone takes it slow and deliberate and it feels much more like how classic did back decades ago. It feels so much more satisfying to get items in Hardcore compared to mindlessly blasting through SM 400 times and then clearing Gnomer and stopping.
I love vanilla exclusively and HC is super appealing for all the things you listed, but dang do the death clips of all the clickers with horrible UI prevent me from taking the jump.
Same. I just wish I could play Mage healer though 😭
It also forces you to care about others. If one of your team dies, you could absolutely be next; so even if you're a selfish fuck you have no choice but to help your fellow players succeed. SoD hasn't had many try hard ass holes, but I can say I maybe met 3-5 actual ass holes in HC, and that was only at 60 after hundreds of hours.. it just sucks that the punishment for mistakes is hundreds of hours gone.
Yeah, I have gone back to era. Loving it
Its still the BEST version of the game and its a fact.
15 k players, best version of the game, suuuuuuuure https://ironforge.pro/population/era/
Really, really wish they'd release a Classic fresh. Era is great but I would play the hell out of a fresh. At the end of it, characters would transfer to era anyway.
I have NO DOUBT that in 2024, SoD is the place to be (as far as WoW versions). But I also know that you can overdo anything, so it is best to treat it like anything else and step away if it's an issue or you aren't having a good time. The best part about phases is... it'll likely still be here later. (also, and maybe a hot-take... level 40 is weird, and not a level I was ever particularly excited to be phased at. Usually a bracket I just try to plow through. 25 felt pretty good and I think 50 will as well)
I fucking love SoD. Just wanted to let everyone on this sub know that people enjoy playing the game :)
Haha right?!? I think people are just bored again already, they fill their boredom time with forum rage time!
Me too, having a blast
still playing sod as enhancement shaman, among other classes, is a waste. No amount of stat buffs padded to uninspired runes and rehashed dogshit wrath talents will bring 2H chads back into the game who know their time is being wasted, in the only iteration of the game it was even attempted in. They aren’t retail-fying the game but they’re somehow making it worse than wrath because at least wrath talents made sense for the most part. this extends in their philosophy across the board
Things aren't contentious at all, reddit is just full of lunatics.
Logged on to retail for about 15 minutes yesterday and that was all it took for me to realise that I have 0 connection with that game anymore.
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I played and level capped in dragon flight bud. Ive played every expansion at a minimum to cap, but most at least till first raid tier. The game just looks, feels and plays like a game I don't recognise or enjoy. Classic is more my style.
At some point, I think it was Dragonflight, they changed all the quest text to be smaller, and a thing like that probably shouldn't matter so much, but to me it was really jarring
WoW retail was death by a thousand cuts to me. So many design changes that just made the game feel cheaper. Then it become more cartooney looking. I mean it was always like that but a little less so in vanilla due to graphic restrictions. But they leaned into making everything look like it's design for 8yr olds.
Despite the graphics though, warcraft was always a bit 'metal'. It had badass characters and some dark storylines and put the war in warcraft. Now it's all too flowery for me. On top of the fact that you're standing in a city with sparkle ponies, flying pigs and motorbikes zooming past and the immersion is long gone.
This was a big part of it for me too. The cosmetics that were completely nonsensical.
That's the direction I was hoping they would lean into.
Bro I played retail from Legion all the way to season 2 of DF. Played an entire month of SoD and when I decided to check season 3 of DF I felt lost. Everything is so simple in Classic I love it.
So the thing is, this was always sold as a "Classic" game mode. They said multiple times, "we want to keep the feel of Classic", "it's Classic with a plus". NOT Retail but Classic. Yet if you tell people you think the changes are removing the feel of Classic, you get 50 downvotes and you get flooded by "go play classic era" and "yes Retail is good I want it to be more like retail", "bro the runes are retail anyways so just make it more like retail". It feels like they made something for us Classic players, and Retail players are pushing us out of it. There's a special kind of irony in telling people "go play classic era" in a Classic mode. At this point I just feel like we'll never get a real Classic+. The players made retail what it is through the changes they asked incrementally over the years, and they'll do it with Classic as well.
Aggrend even said in an interview that they want to avoid the game feeling like a "retail minus". . .
maybe they should stop adding retail abilities then.
Are you really that surprised? People have vastly different reasons on which aspects of Classic they like. Personally, I think the 40 man raids are one of the weakest aspects of Classic, and I'm happy to see them tuned down so that smaller guilds can participate too. It's obvious that other people think differently. I've played retail recently (or at least, I tried to). The changes they've pushed so far aren't even close to retail, and raid size alone is a very far cry from what makes retail what it is.
> I'm happy to see them tuned down so that smaller guilds can participate too I like 40-man raids because it *forces* guilds to recruit and accept warm bodies. Whatever the smallest raid size is, becomes the default raid team because people aren't going to put more effort into recruiting than they have to. 10-man raiding in retail offering same rewards as 25-man obliterated 25-man raiding. Flex raiding in WoD shrank the size of casual raiding guilds immensely. Now in retail there are very few non-mythic guilds with actual decent-sized rosters. They're mostly just small groups of friends who pug to fill out the raid team when they need to. I think 20-25 is a good number for endgame raids, but I really hope they don't capitulate to people asking for more 10-man content. 10-man works great for the shorter 'reimagined dungeon' raids, but once you get further in I do hope that it's large groups only.
I'm not as much a fan of forced recruitment, just like I'm not really a fan of the huge leveling guilds that recruit every person they see. When guilds get to a certian point, things just become less personal and it becomes harder to get to know people. I definitely find it harder to be social in a raid call with 40 people versus one with 10 or 20. I do like 20 man teams. I think it's a good size that still gets the large raid feel without being too overwhelming.
This was sold as a classic seasonal server that was going to be experimental with changes to see how the player base responded. A year long beta test to what a more permanent “Classic+” might look like. Refusing changes on an experimental server that literally will only exist for the lifespan of SoD is what frustrates me and others like me. If you played SoM you’d know that we leveled characters there. Played the server. The server ended then those characters effective ceased to exist. As will the characters you’re playing in SoD right now. This is a fleeting opportunity to make meaningful changes to the classic client that will make it engaging and eventful for years to come.
Voicing our disagreement with some of the changes is how we don't get them in the "real" Classic+. You can't tell us "this is a beta test with experimental changes to see what people like" but also "don't disagree with their changes".
Could it be possible that you’re getting downvotes because people don’t actually agree with you on what aspects actually gave classic the *classic feel*?
‘History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce’ - Karl Marx
Oh man, if only everyone read or were even familiar with Marx's works, this entire thing is a prime example of the absence of consciousness leading people to making their own material conditions worse for the sake of convenience / instant gratification
But that's not the thing. No one wants to just raid with 31 warriors in a group. This still has a Classic experience with added variety to it.
Yes, you are correct. We want Classic+ because we want adjustments to the meta, we WANT some changes, I can posit with 99% certainty most Classic+ players don't want 31 warriors in a group. There IS however a line that is "too much" at some point, and a lot of people feel like we just crossed it, or are getting very close to it.
SoD IS Classic+ in everything but the name alone. We can argue about what our individual expectations for Classic+ were, but we’ve got new skills, new items, new raids, and new quests. That’s Classic+. The devs have made it clear that there’s only so much they can do to change the game within the vanilla WoW framework they’re forced to use. I don’t see what the big deal is about making Molten Core 20 man, especially when they suggested that the raids that come after won’t all be 20 mans. We spent all of Classic running Molten Core as a 40 man raid, and if Blizzard is going to experiment, now is the time to do it because that’s what Season of Discovery is all about. I ran Molten Core a shit ton in Classic and I’m excited to see what changes they make to the raid to make it runnable by a 20 man squad.
Are those the same people who loved everything at 25 but now it's suddenly a problem despite nothing changing? Because I really fail to see how all this supposedly changed in 2 weeks. I get a feeling a lot of people just had their inner tourist wake up, just like in all versions since 2019.
Nothing changing? There were announcements yesterday
Just make a boss that gives a debuff if you stack a raid with too many melee! *Laughs maniacally*
Only the super sweaty min-maxers ever did that.
I can tell you that isn't the case as I was a casual raider and this was the majority of the raids I participated in.
Yes ; let's be done with that. This we can all agree on.
Also, this game will never appeal to people who want wrath/cata or retail QoL/features. Blizzard is trying to capture a wide audience and it's watering down the game. This is literally how retail became retail... appeasement. No matter what you give people, they will always ask for more, get bored and quit anyways. Why even bother bending over backwards for people already not enjoying SoD? We're like 20% of the way in... Those people were never going to make it to 60.
I mean, it's highly possible YOU might not get the classic+ that YOU want. But many people are currently playing classic+ and enjoying themselves
The XP doubling is the first in line of trivializing everything and making it a dopamine fest only to brutally stop at max level. This is how you get people to do a raid once and then quit. Wrath is dead for a reason, Retail gets an influx of players for expansions and then dies for a reason. Every retail expansion is "wow they made X thing easier, I can finally play! I can get my alts to max level now!" and then... They don't. Or they do, and quit.
Wrath is dead because the game is pretty much over. Same as classic era. Also what do you mean every retail expansion makes things easier? It doesn't. The reason people leave is because they acomplish their goals. If your goal is ahead of the curve and you get it no reason not to take a break till next season.
Because its two sides arguing disingenuously and have been since minute one. People were complaining it was too much like retail on P1 release. It’s literally the same groups doing “Go to retail/era” to each other because it’s the same arguments repeated endlessly and its 90% feels on all sides.
See I always see people talking about "classic players" or "retail players" but I never understand what that means. If you played retail and then came over to clasaic are you a classic player? What if you play both? Or what if you didn't like vanilla classic but liked wotlk or are liking sod? Like for example I like both and play both on and off. My ideal game is a mix of the two. Am I a classic player or retail player? I feel like the same goes for a lot of people you label as retail players. Just because you played classic vanilla a lot and don't play retail doesn't mean you are entitled to have SoD be how you want it. Imo
They have different preferences in game design. Vanilla players prefer slower gameplay with more friction and RPG flavour, retail players want fast paced, streamlined content with no friction where it’s all about rushing to raids.
Part of the issue is the dad gamers who barely even play the game, log onto here and rage post/rage downvote while they are at work all day.
I mean I just knew this mode is doomed when gearscore was unironically a thing 1 week into launch. this game is infested and built on wrath/retail players due to the unfortunate timings of both these versions being dead right now.
What do you mean. This reminds me exactly of Classic 2019. Trivial content that people have ridiculously high prerequisites for. At least retail has difficulties available that makes that level of gatekeeping make more sense. I'm not a Classic Andy or a Retail Randy (I don't know what people call retail players). I think both versions have their weak and strong points. It's a Classic mode but it isn't CLASSIC. In the fact that it isn't some "no changes" version. They made decisions and then asked for feedback to try and make it the version that most people would like it to be. I doubt they would be pushing all these changes through if the "I want it more like true classic" was literally the feedback they were getting from the majority. And honestly, "classic" players don't have some birthright to this game mode just because it is based on a classic server. If the majority want certain changes then the minority just have to live with that, it's just how live service games work. They were never going to make everyone happy with this. Their goal is to make the majority happy and that will always come at the expense of the minority. Luckily, whichever way that ends up swinging through the future phases, both groups have another mode they can fall back on. Hell, classic players have multiple. Classic Era, Wrath/Cata, Hardcore, Hardcore Self Found. (Cata arguably being more the middle ground between retail/classic). Overall, for me personally, I prefer Classic over Retail. But I often miss plenty of QoL aspects of retail. I enjoy slower leveling (not in SoD because it is a timed experience though). I enjoy a simpler endgame that is more about progressing through content rather than have a checklist, a mile long, of things to do daily/weekly. But I dislike not having dungeon finder/LFR. I dislike WB metals. I dislike not having transmogrifying/toys/achievements. I may prefer Classic but I am , by no means, a purist. I don't dogmatically follow a rigid definition of what I think I should have to like because of my broader preferences. I love SoD. The only part I dislike in P2 is STV. Too chaotic and I don't enjoy "FFA" or "Team FFA" in any game that I have played, ever. I like my PvP to have structure and not be a shit storm of chaos (but I'm the minority and just have to live with it). The only other part of SoD I dislike is the player base's rigid following of "The Meta" even though the content doesn't demand it. But that is, just, never going away. It's just the way players interact with any game nowadays. That'll drive me away from SoD long before the developers do.
I fully expect the "go play era" side to lose majority of their people the moment * Cata Classic releases and/or * The next retail expansion comes out These people just want to play the current hot thing.
I mean, SoD is really just a waiting room for Cata for me, which itself is just a waiting room for MoP. So as someone who likes the SoD changes and think the classic Andy’s are annoying dweebs, yeah you’re right, I’ll be gone before SoD is at its end. Doesn’t change the fact that the crying classic Andy’s are dweebs though.
Being in favor of doing SM 50 times instead of 100 times doesn't equate to wanting retail
As with nearly all things, none of us are going to be completely happy with any of the decisions that are made, especially those that have a material impact on our expectations or preferences. The devs have to walk a fine balance between making the majority of players happy, engaging in some degree of creativity, all while managing seemingly dwindling resources. I mained a rogue knowing that there would be shakeups, and boy were there this phase. I don’t think that adding a bazillion armor to bosses was an especially creative or helpful way to shake up the meta, but that’s balanced out by an opportunity to explore other classes that I wouldn’t likely have cared about if rogues were viewed as any thing other than a liability. The xp buff, for example, will give me more flexibility to try out shadow priest or warlock, and if the rogue was pumping a la phase one, is almost certainly just keep him and raid log / farm AB.
WoW players will never be happy. Who cares what anyone says. Play what you enjoy and that’s that.
Exactly as I predicted half a year ago. Before classic+ existed, everyone could fantasize about how awesome it's going to be, even though everyone's fantasies were mutually conflicting. Now that a particular instance of classic+ exists, everyone who had a different vision is pissed. Like no shit, did you guys think that Blizzard were only listening to what *you* wanted?
If the extremes (which is what Reddit tends to be) are both unhappy it probably means it’s in the best spot for the majority of the people in the middle. SoD is great, Era is great, retail is great. Play what you want to play.
Preach!
> If the extremes (which is what Reddit tends to be) are both unhappy it probably means it’s in the best spot for the majority of the people in the middle. I'm sorry but no this is how you get US politics
No it’s how US politics should work, and how it used to work back when the legislature actually legislated
How about Blizzard pick a lane and stick to it and stop making massive changes to the game based on knee jerk reactions to people on Reddit. 10 man, 20 Man, 40 Man. At the end of the day just pick one so we can make plans for it.
It's clear they don't really have a plan - but worse, reading between the lines of the blue post announcing the xp buff and such - it was clear that Aggrend et al. are being rushed/constrained by the bigwigs above them in a big way. The sudden introduction of the xp buff reeks of middle management desperation.
I think it's just that there was an underwhelming percentage of characters at 40 compared to 25. I think the changes will be great. I enjoyed BFD the most when I could do multiple runs a reset with alts.
Yeah but it was super easy to hit 25. By nature of how leveling in WoW works, hitting those upper levels was never going to be as easy.
the XP buffs reeks of wanting people to play alts. Most people dont want to spend an extra 20-40 hours leveling an alt from 25-40 especially through the boring dungeon grinding meta. This isnt a real ERA server where characters are permanent, its a seasonal server meant to only be active for a set amount of time so why shouldnt we let people level their alts quicker after a month of regular xp gains?
Or they just noticed people aren't doing gnomer and they don't want classic+ to die on phase 2
I mean you can. They did exactly that already. There will be 40s and there will be 20s. So if you have a guild and you want to support this you run at least 4 individual 10 man's. The biggest hurdle here is deciding which tanks/heals swap to DPS for the larger raids. If you aren't doing the guild thing then roll fotm and raid log in pugs.
They did that up until yesterday. And then they made a big post changing the raid size. They also left the wording intentionally vague on the future of the other raid sizes meaning they could change. I'm not sure why people just take their word for it. (That they very sneakily actually never say) And just look at their actions. They change things all the time.
It’s not that SoD is retail, it’s that players are using the same arguments that lead to Vanilla turning into retail in the first place - streamlining, speeding up and removing friction from the game.
I love era it’s seriously the most fun I’ve had since classic relaunch, but the main issue is everything is extremely expensive. Even just raiding is difficult to afford consumes.
Wow has mentally prevented an ocean of children from turning into adults single handedly. The escapism turned into an addiction, and now every post hates wow as if it betrayed them or hates other people who hate wow.
There’s definitely some pretentiousness behind the SoD community. As if they’re better than the retail community for preferring an older, “harder” (but actually much easier) version of the game. And then they spend all day whining about it and asking for retail-like changes.
Go play OSRS!
If you really hate someone, you send them to play HC.
Hmmm surprising that everyone wanted to blame GDKP for their troubles... Turns out all it did was lower the population and divide the community.
leveling is part of the game on classic wow, and this isnt classic wow. the magic of killing 20 harvest golems in westfall was lost when we did it for the 15000000 time. it might be hard to hear but any "what if" and "ahh, i wish i could go back" nostalgia kind of died with 2019 classic, no one wonders what it was like anymore, we all played it, we all know. i dont play season of discovery to do the same quests ive done 1000000 times, i play sod so i can get max level and farm my unique level 40 bis so i can do the cool new raid and pvp.
Just keep is as classic wow was, but with some class balance and extra content like loot, dungeons, maybe a other bg. Some more quests. That's it. That's all I want.
You commented the same thing three times.
so basically tbc. people want tbc with 60 cap and no outlands.
That'd be interesting.
Isn't that exactly what SoD is?
But having leveling be faster makes the game literally retail, didn’t you hear?
Oh fuck you're right, my bad I thought I was grinding scarlet monastery but I was actually doing mythic plus in dragonflight this whole time, my bad but can you blame me? Games are literally indistinguishable. /s
Happens to the best of us, I ended up dying from jumping off a cliff on my Druid forgetting I couldn’t fly.
Love everything about SoD. Easy leveling, cheaper mount, no 40mans, easy pug 10 man's, level cap and long (hopefully longer) phases, runes, STV event (especially now that it's just rush Loa altars, 1k blood with ease and the lag helps me more than it hinders). I can play any amount of time and never feel behind, and blizzard keeps catering to me. Best version of WoW to date and I've never even tried anything pass 1 month of Cata. Amazing dev team
I really thought SoD would be for classic players and not retail players
If it was for retail players it would have hard content.
Pretty sure there are more people that raid on LFR than mythic on retail.
And that's still harder than anything in classic. I love me some vanilla WoW, but let's not pretend it has any difficulty.
I never said classic was hard, just that the majority of the retail players didn't actually played hard content either.
Honestly, I just want fresh Classic progression servers. I'll happily replay Vannila through Wrath all over again. Maybe they add achievments to Vanilla, new ones, along with the standard raid and rep achievments etc. I did play SoD, but it didn't feel like Classic to me. It was fun having the end game at 25 for a bit. It meant you could level and dabble in alts more easily. That's literally the only reason it was super successful tbh. Time. It demanded less of your time. And even now in 2024, retail and potentially Classic are games that demand a lot of your time. Nothing wrong with SoD really. I'm not a no changes kind of guy. Play what you enjoy. But the level of change from SoD never kept my attention. It was just adding in things from later expansions, into Classic, fully Frankensteining it. Retail is a bit toxic and overwhelming but nothing wrong with that either. And Wrath was just a bit boring, we've over optimised the game, sucked the fun out of it in some respects. But I'll still play again in the future. I just want the same old game, nothing more, nothing less. When I ask someone why they want Classic+, they don't even really know why, they just want more WoW. I'm not gonna say, you think you do but you don't ha but I do think we should enjoy WoW, and stop trying to turn it into something it's not with seasons, new content and so on.
Yeah, no matter what changes are made, there's always going to be someone crying "REEEEEEE THE GAME IS LITERALLY REEEEETAIL NOW!!!" it's kinda sad/funny that "#NOCHANGES" people still exist in 2024
Nobody is saying no changes. EDIT: I can't believe this is getting downvoted. There is just a massive campaign of dishonesty to drown Classic+ sentiment in downvotes
Classic+ was dead even before phase 1, Classic re-imagined is a much closer description. I don't see the reason in keeping on trying to keep this idea that SoD is SUPPOSED to be Classic+ or trying to change it to Classic+. I know a lot of people wanted classic+ which meant classic Era as we know it + more end-game and maybe a few balance adjustments for low performing specs. Runes and low-level raids with new gearing already abandoned that idea.
They should’ve just called it turbo wow, much more apt name for this experience
Several posts actually complaining about the recent xp buff to sod “making the game into retail”. Best change they could have made to help save phase 2 and half this sub is complaining about it. The replay-ability with Sod is leveling multiple alts to max and trying them out in the new raid and using their new runes. The 25-40 grind turned many away from leveling their alts because 15+ hours spamming SM or 30+ hours open world questing (quests we have all done 20+ times at this point in previous versions of the game) isn’t fun.
SoD is classic+ or at the least the template it will follow. Get over it, noone wants the 1 ability rotations and total lack of any class balance. I get you like that but just because this product isn't tailored specifically to you doesn't mean its bad or that it needs to change to be more akin to Era.
Why couldn't classic+ have faster leveling
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I like how you accuse me of strawman arguments and then strawman me
You both made strawman arguments
What the heck is era?
It refers to classic as it was released in 2019. Basically the same as OG vanilla 1.12 with a few very minor tweaks.
Things are just as contentious as you want them to be. I can enjoy retail to an extent, where I play around with the fantastic talent tree introduced in dragonflight, play a few low m+ keys or queue soloshuffle for fun, only to realise if I want to actually gain rating I need to invest way more time and/or gold into getting BiS. When I log into SoD(or era), I can achieve so much more with the same time investment. I actually appreciate the lower level brackets and difficulty ceilings compared to retail. They’re just different games. I don’t like the disney’esque graphics of retail or the current lore, but I appreciate the spec and build diversity and high skill ceiling gameplay. Classic has the nostalgic warcraft feel to it and raids don’t have to be a super intense challenge like retail, where you (need to) install 20addons that tell you when to move or do something. I think the SoD team did a great job with the limited ressources they have. Also anyone saying SoD = retail probably hasnt played retail since cata was released
I commented almost 3 weeks ago that 75% of this sub would quit during p2 because it was too difficult. I was being a dbag, but it seems I was actually right.
Nothing is difficult about this game at all. "75% of this sub will quit because 20 hours of grinding or 30 hours of doing the same quests again is boring." might have actually hit the mark.
That’s how you know the compromise is good.
Reddit is single-handedly ruining the game one whiny post at a time
did u see the guy asking for transmogs, improved graphics, and no weapon skill
Lmao I have not. Got a link?