What Went Wrong with WoW Season of Discovery and How to Fix It | SOD Phase 3
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- My opinion, and bit of a rant, on where Season of Discovery has gone wrong, why Phase 3 feels so stale, and what to do about it. Opinion only. Agree, or am I off my rocker?
I mentioned RestedXP at one point. I've used it for leveling pretty much constantly in all of Classic and Hardcore. Its awesome. www.restedxp.c...
Did you like the level caps? Let me know why! Just want to say I really appreciate these comments - Even (& especially) those that don't agree with my points. Appreciate you guys. EDIT: Seeing lots of good points and arguments for the level caps. I was so focused on the negatives that maybe I overlook some of these. It was good to get to focus on quests and dungeons and gear we'd have typically blown past. Again - really appreciate everyone who comments. THANK YOU!
From 50 to 60 will be a waste of time. Should have been 25 to 60. Make the game better with newer quests, gear, etc.
Level caps are one of the best features of season of discovery. This UA-camr is clearly out of touch with majority of SOD fans. SOD was clearly made for casuals, not people who look up “BIS” lists in a casual mode of the game who treat game like a job
I really really like the weird level caps. At the start it was the reason I didnt play. Lvl 25 really didnt seem appealing to me but the lvls 40 and 50 make the leveling experience a lot less draining. And Im saying that as someone who loves the leveling in classic. I had around 6 level 60s. But its just too much. The odd levels make it a lot more exiting and easy to prep alts for the next phase.
What were they thinking with the Incursions. Holy moly.
incursions are an amazing idea, there is so much more that could be done there, the issue is the EXP/gold that was first earned... it made all over forms of leveling irrelevant.
Imagine This, The Green Dragon are there like they are supposed to be, respawn on a three day cooldown and drop an item (lootable by all raid members) that starts a quest chain that attunes you to travel into the nightmare incursion (gives you a wearable item). incursions bigger, lvl 25 lvl 40 lvl 50 and lvl 60 raid level trash with similar quests.. upon completing all the quests it spawns a raid boss
This is genuinely one of the best Classic Videos I have seen in forever, put together all my issues so well and so well put together. Absolutely wonderful video dude.
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts. What are you on about? 😂
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
@@Giggles4692 who?
Don't really agree with the first point. I was super hyped with lvl25 cap which allowed me to do all quests that I normally skip and benefit from all green/blue items that normally are put into a trash because of too fast progression.
You may say that I can still do that with normal game version (nobody stops me), the problem is that everybody else are rushing. And I don't want to be behind. I would like to compete while simultaneously enjoying low lvl content. That was the biggest win of phase 1 for me.
That's a great point - I was curious how many actually like the level caps, and many seem to. Maybe they're just too long. Its also true that everyone has their own pace. People like me rush the leveling then complain we have nothing to do - kind of creating the problem ourselves. Really appreciate your taking the time to comment. Thank you!
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts.
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
You omitted the ramifications of incursions in p3 - not only did they nullify a lot of "natural" gold-making processes, but completely nullified the normal gearing progression via dungeons and previous content. You can hit "friendly" or "honored" with the reputation asap, and the gear that you get from it is astoundingly good. Incursions alone forced me to pause my enthusiasm for SoD and am now, unfortunately, more or less focused on Cataclysm classic. If the SoD dev team think that bland and chaotic content like incursions is the way to go, then I have no hope for future phases.
Phase 3 has been particularly rough. First week was great but after struggling to find enjoyable things to do (especially after getting bored with solo farms) I started raidlogging really quickly and don’t even have the motivation to log on outside of that hour a week.
I think a large part of it is that level 60 and end-game content feels so close but instead we got access to like 10% of the end-game content (parts of BRD and max-level professions) and now have to wait months to get the other 90%, which is especially unsatisfying.
Really hope p4 delivers or SoD might be in trouble.
I think it already is. Last time I played was Week 1 P3, I had 2 toons in 2 different guilds and I noticed a huge portion of the guilds were gone. All the guys I was doing dungeons and raids with during P1 were long gone (left early to mid P2)
There was so much hype around SOD during P1, but I don't see any of it anymore. Even the guys making SOD content aren't doing much anymore.
First week was broken af and we still pay for it. Looking at incursions.
Actually, the level cap is what set SoD apart. Gave us a chance to experience a few aspects of the game we would normally just breeze through. As a quest fan, I welcomed the opportunity to do every available quest without feeling like I was falling behind.
The dungeon to raid conversion was a good idea. The raids chosen were the most indifferent or even hated ones sometimes. The dungeons people would only do ones to be done with. And at least in the first two cases, they did a good job on making them interesting.
I doubt we will be getting another capped season, and if we do, the phases will be shorter as the content is largely done now. And as for SoD, it's a moot point now as next month will be the end of capping. Sure new content would be better and might come but we must remember Blizzard never promised classic+. They offered a seasonal classic server with a few twists focused on class changes and items, maybe hinting at some new content towards the end.
It could have been more and it should have been better implemented, at least in the latest phase. It all hangs on what they do in the next phase. They have one last chance to redeem it. If people one month in are still not having fun, it will probably mean the end of it effectively. I myself will probably start looking into other servers or just take a break if that's what happens
His point was about the unnatural stopping points. Vanilla WoW wasn’t designed to have artificial level caps and putting them in without adjusting spell ranks and removing leveling dungeons caused issues.
Agree. I'd argue that the stopping points (25, 40, 50) may be my favorite feature of SoD. Otherwise everyone would be bored at level 60 because people rush everything. I enjoy the forced, slower pace.
I have to tell you man -- Getting lots of great comments on this video and I appreciate them all -- but yours: You really went to the trouble to lay out great points/counter-points to many of my topics so well. I appreciate it so much. I was so focused on the negatives in my video I didn't give enough credit to the positives of the pauses in leveling. It was nice to get to focus on quests, dungeons and gear that we'd normally blow by in leveling. And yes...I've been working under the assumption that SOD IS Classic+, which was neve really promised. Like you, I'm holding out lots of hope for redemption in P4. Again - really appreciate your taking the time to provide this feedback. THANK YOU!
I myself actually feel that I stop doing quests when I reached current max level because I feel like I should use them to level up
@@720zone Good to hear I wasn't the only one. I was also working under that assumption until this latest patch when the devs began making comments like "thanks for helping us with this experiment" or "...we're going to carry a lot of what we've learned forward if we decide to do something like this again". That paired with the xp boost gains on release of this phase made me realize that this isn't Classic+ unfortunately but somewhat relieved that all this is perhaps a taste of what's to come...hopefully.
I think they did a great job until incursions. They basically deleted any need to do other stuff for xp or gold and the economy gets inflated like crazy.
It blows my mind how a group of grown men cry and cry about having options. Key word OPTIONS. I did incursions on day one, hated them and then moved on to questing. The answer so so simple.. just don't do the incursions. You are the kind of person that blames McDonald's why your fat because it's easier to get McDonald's than to go to the grocery store and eat some carrots. Gimme a break.
@@ryangraperIts not really an option when the alternatives are objectively by and far worse.
Like telling a starving homeless man to not take advantage of the all you can eat free Mc Donald’s and to instead buy a plot of land tend a garden so he can eat a fucking salad for lunch.
Dude people just cry/complain about everything nowadays. Doesnt matter if the game is a 10/10 (not saying SoD is but its great) but people just always complain. All this energy into complaining about a game you are clearly not enjoying....then just find a new game to play fuck
@@shad0ws0rr0w86 SoD is just okay at its best. Population wouldn’t be down if it were actually great.
@@ryangraper if you didn’t do incursions, everybody would be max level and you would still be level 52
You don't realise one thing! That SoD is not meant to be Classic+ SoD is ALWAYS supposed to be experimental a way for Blizzard to test things and to see what works and what does not work.
You know you're right. I'm 100% assuming SOD is Classic Plus, which its really not. Good point man...I've seen you comment before; really appreciate it!
Agree with some of what you say but the Rune system is honestly the biggest blunder. New skills is cool to an extent but what is wrong with having them be skill books like with Tranq Shot or the AQ20 spell ranks? Why are the ways you get most runes so jarring and incongruous with the world (random ice blocks and the like). Why do they function like weird psuedo-enchants? It feels like a strange retail-like system stapled on like Azurite or Legion legendaries. Additionally there's just way too many of them and so many utterly invalidate base spells like Sinister Strike being nearly pointless, while also so many of them make the game feel nothing like Classic. Imo they should release a server that is nearly no-changes (maybe some small QOL stuff like cheap respecs or similar) but then also has bonus dungeons and instead of having gear better than MC gear at level 25 they could have new trinkets/idols/skill books/talents that help make unplayable stuff playable like maybe a moonkin idol that does the "crits regen mana" thing from WotLK or something. I was just so disappointed in SoD after phase 1 and it seemed like everything after was even worse. The truth is all I want is Classic but then with some more content(+), not with content that completely invalidates everything about Classic (Retail-)
I don't think most of the things you mentioned are a problem, I wanted a new experience and I got a new experience, you're right that some of the stuff is a bit wonky but that's what I'm here for, and my experience is pretty casual, nobody is gatekeeping dungeons i'm doing, all classes are fairly capable. As far as I am concerned this is a big win.
Fair points man; for sure. There are a lot of positives, which I could have focused on more. Appreciate you watching and commenting; thanks!
I really agree with your idea of BiS gear "spreading." One of the biggest motivators in Burning Crusades (for me) was having to get a piece from each dungeon, and questlines for unlocking dungeons. Titles, although trivial, drive me forward as well. When Wrath was coming out and the "Champion of the Naaru" title was going to be deleted, me and 3 others basically ran the dungeon requirements three nights straight (on top of my day job) so I got maybe 6 hours of sleep in 4 days to beat the deadline. Some of the most fun I've had, and the four of us stayed friends for years afterwards. Those dungeons also required some pretty serious cc which was probably half the reason we bonded so much, because we had to learn to work so well together. SoD just seems to lack the driving force to bond people except for trying to beat the end game raid for BiS each stopping point. Once my guildies hit raid lockout, they run the raid, then log out completely until next raid night. That's it. The odd time now they'll hop on alts to farm the mats to make pots and get enchants they need, but other than that, nothing. There isn't much drive to really DO anything right now, and I'm hoping that changes at 60. SoD is giving "old feel" vibes to some extent, but as you say, it needs more, not less.
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts.
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
Phase 3 has been the most enjoyable for me. I didn’t play phase 1. Had heavy server issues with them being locked for population balance and my friends not being able to join that server, launch day was unplayable etc. so just gave up on it and raiding at 25 seemed boring anyway.
Started at launch of p2, Was unable to join a pug for gnomer from the gate keeping. All I did was PvP and that was mind numbing. I did enjoy the release of blood moon whenever it wasn’t laggy.
Finally joined a raiding guild in ST in p3 now I’m pulling 97 avg parses. Really felt agitated because I knew I was an above average player and could still never get a gnomer invite months prior.
Got exalted with WSG and AB, farmed the wild offerings, got my last runes. Farmed BOED, Committed many hours to gold farms and saving up money. and now I’m just working on parsing even higher in the raid.
I only did incursions in hinterlands to get the friendly rune. So all the incursion drama I just look the other way because I didn’t partake in it. Made my 3000g farming fel cloth and rune cloth and selling voracity librams. I never experienced the mind numbing routes of the incursions and it feels great. Still made great gold and didn’t get burned out. I didnt follow the brain dead masses into the incursions and it has been wonderful I just quested and played the game normally to level to 50 and was barely behind the incursion kids. Avoided the burnout from the incursion grind. W
Yeah other farms also pay since incursions inflated the whole economy
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
I love your videos; you're absolutely right that these restrictions undermine the very spirit of the classic. Blizzard had a million opportunities to do this 'right.' It's Classic+, after all. The original WoW from 2004 had so much content cut that it was enough for three expansions ahead. Even such a basic thing as dwarf mages, what stopped them from adding those in SoD? Instead, we got portals filled with bot-runner caravans and gear that already surpasses PreBIS for level 60
Thank you so much for the comment man. Appreciate it, and you're spot on. There were so many opportunities to add back cut content. They did a lot right, but a few small missteps seemed to have really derailed SOD.
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts. 🤦♂️
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
Well said. But we do need to lock professions if we do phases in the future. I don’t want Chinese botters with 9 million dark iron ores teleporting at lvl 1. We also need to tone down Hunter runes. The Chinese botters use hunters to farm ZF and Uld by having their pet fly in the sky. They also have perm evocation, and can bypass the speed boost / slow immunity mobs by abusing glitchy interactions with frost trap + feign death.
I think perhaps the sentiment now is that all of SoD is a giant PTR for the actual classic plus what might come after phase4.
I tried the first phase but overall got bored really fast and I disliked how they went with all the new abilities, especially for classes that were fine. I guess this isn't what I hoped the game would be. In my view some of the changes felt like going the retail route instead of just making more classes viable and fix the things from 1.12 that over the last 20 years we learned were broken.
I like how vanilla was unbalanced and classes were distinct. Homogenisation of the classes is something I wish they stayed away from.
I think a good starting point would be bringing all the class talent changes from TBC without the level increase (start talent points at lvl1)
I totally agree with all points but especially the level bands! I hope the next classic+ iteration doesn't have them. Really enjoyed your perspective here
My honest problem with sod atm is after like a week, you run out of things to do on one character outside of raid log or wsg/ab rep grinds.
With incursions, it is brainless grind from 40 to 50 with a decent 300-400 gold reward from turn ins. Usually need just 2 runes to play one spec and those range from very easy to travel grind (dark rides/wild offerings/layline thing for clothies+ paladin). If you raided the last phase, the raid gear is basically prebis outside of most non caster weapons and some dungeon loot. Bloodmoon has like a 3-8 event grind to get whatever item you need from it. Only thing else to do is either farm gold or mats for the next raid you do, world pvp, or play something else.
Spot on, because the game was never designed to be stopped at 25, 40, or 50, so it instantly becomes stale.
Not sure the solution but one of my favorite parts of SOD was the level gating not sure if I would have played without it. Yes it’s weird to be at 25 40 50 but it opens up a part of wow that is very often skipped entirely so I found that one of the best parts of SOD
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts.
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode. ❤️
7:06: at the risk of spam, I would argue its the inverse. The lore and context behind why your character is performing a certain action is the point of the more traditional, down-to-earth style of Classic WoW over newer MMOs like Retail or FFXIV. Understanding why the Warlock quests needed sacrifices, understanding how the Paladin and Warlock class quests converged on one another through quest text to give you an in-game reason to have contextual faction conflicts around zones that weren't really that fleshed out in the OG classic was the entire point of the game for me. If I wanted better gameplay mechanics, I would've just bought Dragonflight.
Some great points here man. You gained a new subscriber. I do want to say I actually love the idea of phases and stop points. That first phase at 25 was so much fun since the game was very simple and we got to experience something in a totally different way. The issue was they took away content like you said and the phases were too long.
Yo! Really appreciate your comment and the sub. Great point - and I think many people share the same opinion. Maybe the level caps should have been shorter and slightly adjusted? Not sure. Thanks again man!
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts. What are you on about? 😂
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
Some "minuses" are actually good. Like not having to have crowd pummelers stacked and wolfshead helm as druid. Also I don't mind the upcoming racial changes in the way that people don't need to get edgemasters. Level caps during season felt good because now I had time to enjoy all levelings dungeons. Usually when I level I end up skipping some of the dungeons. Still I think you had many good points. Anywa I think classic plus should have WAY less changes to the classes than current SoD has. I think just implementing TBC talent builds with couple new abilities will make every class and spec quite viable and fun.
You know that's a fair point - some oversights actually worked out for the better. I really appreciate the comment.
The dungeon raids should have been treated like UBRS tbh, which was basically just a 5 man with stronger mobs so people brought 10. I do got to say I loved the STV blood moon thing, even when I was a lowbie leveling through the zone. I had tons of fun with that. I haven't really done incursions since I just leveled to level 50 through questing, and I quit not long after hitting 50, but to me they seem like the daily grind areas that were added in TBC and there were more and more of each retail expansion until they finally decided to make them weeklies instead. I have never liked those zones unless they are extremely densely packed with no guards so that they might as well be PvP zones (i.e. Isle of Quel'Danas, Timeless Isle, etc.). I think they borrowed from retail too much. Some was cool, like having more buttons to push since they added a lot of TBC/Wrath abilities, or the new unique specs like tank lock or healing mage, or hiding new stuff in the world, etc. But I think "end game" burrows too heavily from retail. All that said, it's _season_ of discovery, so I expected it to all be experimental stuff and not really "Classic+" So I think more people should make their opinion known of what they have done right and what was screwed up badly.
EDIT: Also, I loved going in blind and finding new runes and stuff, I didn't look anything up until after hitting max level. So speak for yourself on that one.
Im a lvl 50 hunter. Ive farmed 3 mature blue dragon sinew, an eye of shadow, and crusader enchant. Ive got 7.5k gold, im already kiling mobs and elites 6-9 lvls higher than me. 14/6000 honored hydraxian waterlords, revered zandalar tribe. Are they going to open up outland for me to farm next phase? Kek
I think all the negatives on incursions are overblown.
The gold was launch night and the no kill loop xp was fixed the following Tuesday. The economy has had time to reset and the buffs/nerfs have made dungeons and questing fine and comparable.
Yea true, but even after the fixes many players still used them to level, meaning the rest of the world was more empty - less players for 'legit' levelers to group with, and just a quieter world. That was my point with incursions. These fixes could have been made prior to launch very easily with a bit of testing.
This vid is spitting’ straight 📠. I quit right before sod p2 launched after going hard on 2019 classic through wrath. Was server first Druid to finish Atiesh on Fairbanks and managed to finish two Valanyrs on priest/shaman. Was really disappointed when SoD launched and killed our wrath guild before we could finish H LK. Not happy to have traded ICC and Ruby Sanctum for some shiny new version that caps at level 25/40/50. And what we’re definitely seeing now is a classic team stretched way too thin across its many diverse game modes. Did we really need SoD? I don’t think so.
I don't mind the leveling caps. Helps to bridge the gap between sweat heads and former sweats. People would have been lvl 60 in week 1 of launch and it would have been a totally different experience
I liked the unnatural stopping points because I'm a massive completionist who was trying to do all the quests before outleveling them (no more than 5 levels above quest level). The stopping points did cause some interesting problems that I think they should have fixed (like hunters being able to kill stuff 10 levels higher and nobody else), but I don't think the stopping points were inherently bad.
That being said, I still 100% agree SoD has now fallen flat for me. It has become a celebration of the most toxic aspects of WoW and for proof I'd say look no further than the new Archon addon being implemented in SoD where a players parse can now show up on the in-game tooltip. Elitism, plus min/maxing to the extreme where incursions are the ONLY efficient activity, plus 10 man dungeon runs... the discovery is gone. The incursions could have been good but all this no-kill quest crap combined with the toxic pvp is a nightmare.
I don't know about you but I have enough to do in the game and I get never bored. I don't need more dungeons or more stuff 😂😅😆. I am fine with what it is right now. I love this. There is always too much to do (look at retail for example).
well made and well-reasoned video. it is a shame SoD will end next phase and not be able to implement half of the fixes you proposed, as they would have made phase 1-3 way more enjoyable
Thanks so much. Appreciate it!
„99% of the players just look up where to go“. I‘m one of these players. In P1 I discovered a few runes by my own, which was great, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed doing that for all of them. However, the 1% who wants to do that can still do so, no matter if there is a PTR or not, so 100% agreeing with this! The level brackets on the other hand were very much appreciated by me. I‘m an altoholic and therefore I could catch up easily with all my toons without feeling too far behind. It was also hilarious what people were able to achieve at 25, like killing an elite raptor in un goro with 3 raid groups. So maybe these are unnatural stopping points, but it was also a lot of fun. 😅❤
Solid video fam and I respect your ideas of were your coming from. I really want SOD to be successful. However, I can admit when they are dropping the ball and yea it hasn't been totally great as of lately for SOD. I do hope for the best and expect the worst from this seasonal realm.
Hello J Tello!!! - Just subbed and have been checking out your channel. I like your style man & really appreciate te comment . www.youtube.com/@HelloJTello
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts.
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode. 🤷♂️
SoD is fine tbh. The only thing I don't like is Incursions causing inflation AND too many abilities to all the classes. The Classic audience just asked a fix to certain classes and specs and more content.
I would have put new raids at each level cap, simple, easy(One or two hard bosses) and optional bosses with gear that is just slightly better than what was already in the game. Plus some new PVP gear to farm . No incursions.
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts.
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode. 👍
I had a lot of faith in SOD team, but the release of P3 was done so badly that I felt forced to quit.
Maybe if they try SOD again, and do it properly, I'll try it again. Until then I'm not touching any blizzard products.
Sad - but very very true. You don't think you'll at least come back to try Phase 4; real end-game?
@@720zone I may give it a shot, when / if it looks refined, but I fear that I'd be late to the party, and I'm getting the vibe that they will be doing SOD again, after having learned from their mistakes, but I might be wrong on that.
After playing sod and switching to cata I’m of the opinion that cata would have made the better sod 1-60 exp.
It looks better it plays better.
Use the old dungeons for lvling use the redesigned dungeons in cata for raids.
I dunno just throwing it out there..
I have leveled on both and dislike Cata leveling more in maybe ~75% of zones. A lot of them felt like one long quest chain that lasted the whole zone.
Blizzard doing what blizzard does best gate keeping. This video is 100% on point very well done!
Appreciate your comment so much man. Thank you!
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts.
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job. Level caps reduced gate keeping this way.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
I think one level stop at 40 for one month (or max 2) for people to catch up or the chance to level an alt to this point would be nice.
You know I like that suggestion - maybe just less phases would have worked. I'm seeing great comments here explaining many of the phase cap benefits that I missed out on.
i think maybe with "new" content this might work well. It would help semi casuals to be left not to far behind and allow exploration without hurting progression.
A bunch of hot takes here that are definitely going to upset people but a lot of great points were made, even if I don’t agree with everything in this video.
Really appreciate the comment, and your outlook in general. Thank you!
The easiest and best thing they could have done was a bunch of additional kill/collect quests in level 20-60 zones and new dungeon quests to help with leveling and gold.
Great video - I'm glad I skipped SOD, I 100% knew it was gonna be this mess of unbalanced garbage where they constantly change classes through buffs/nerfs; why would I want to play when they keep changing my class and I have no idea how it will function, I just want to play when its done and everything is solved lmao
You were one of the smart ones man. Really appreciate the comment.
I love the level caps, they just take a bit long to move on
Interesting. I was wondering if people do like the stopping points. Maybe like you said, the phases should just be shorter. Appreciate the comment.
I would also add that the push to play alts generally is not 'content' and is extremely negative for the game. Alts are the result of nothing to do on your main (whatever that means for someone). And the more alts, which they have supercharged the levelling for, messes with the economy and everything that it entails. It leans into the same issue as garrisons when everyone has access to so many professions they weren't intended to have access to.
Man - this is such a good comment. I wish I'd added that. Really appreciate your watching and commenting man; thank you!
I love watching Kurt Russell critique my favorite game
KR = gigachad
I quit because of the incursions. Made all gold farms trivial. Ruined gear progression with the free gear. And made leveling trivial cause everywhere else leveling was 5x slower. And made dungeons pointless to run. Also the wild offerings was almost as bad just raiding mara
This is a perfect explanation of how Blizzard is ruining sod
Underrated content man. Keep it up
Hey - thank you so much for this comment. Really appreciate it.
Lvl limit is not a problem at all, first phase was best for me at least for 1 weak. Game is not about dungeon grind and raids only. The problem of this lvl limit is duration of phases and maybe lack of testing, 2 weaks is more then enough for each of this phases up to phase 4. After that they have became booring. And in my opinion they should delay BG's to 4th or even 5th phase and add some more world pvp content. And they should update rare mob's loot table and make them more often to spawn, it was fun to hunt for rares in phase 1.
I disagree. I think the level caps were great. I got to slow down and focus on the level bracket's dungeons and profession items.
SoD P4 would be better if they went back to 10 mans, removed world buffs, and made runes easier to get for alts.
Appreciate the comment - I was curious if I'm an outlier, and many like the new level caps. Maybe they're just too long.
I like the level bracket idea. If the dungeons were more relevant it wouldn't have been a problem.
It was good until phase 2 where they screwed up - with the ideas, the execution and balancing. A lot of exploits early on in phase 3 destroyed the economy and the playerbase for new players, which SOD is great for, in my opinion, dried up because of their policy straight up banning new accounts from using AH and mail for their 30 days, instead of targeted bans for bots. Especially bad because this policy completely undermines all their measures to help new people catch up - including gold/xp bonuses for quest and level caps, etc, which was stupid. Incursions and a lot of the new methods to make money should have never really been a thing because it was simply so much better than everything else.
Not only did it lead to a very strange economy, but I saw far less people while I was travelling around questing, and all the "normal" classic content at lower levels (under 45) had no one to do it with as a result, making it feel essentially like a shitty retail 2.0 in classic. All these issues led to too much frustration for the majority of the player base + no one to replace those who left, due to said policy mentioned earlier with the restrictions on AH/mail.
Incursions killed SoD for me, did one night of them and haven't played again since.
I agree with the issues you identified but disagree with some of the solutions. Mostly on phases. My entire guild simply would not have played without level caps. The grind to 60 is time-consuming, especially when youve done it 3-4 time already. I love leveling, but the rat race to 60 doesn't hit the same after 20 years and most of us want to get to the endgame content where the real fun begins. I also think a lack of PTR is overblown. Blizzard has done a good job balancing stuff relatively quickly and the only major unfixable fuckup is the damage Incursions did to the economy (which is slowly recovering). I do agree though that we need more content and that content should not have been taken away.
Yea - its a great point. I was really focused on the negative aspects of the phases, and overlooked many positives, so my solutions are probably too drastic. Also very true that a real, unadjusted 60 grind feels loooong these days. Appreciate you checking in man; thank you!
Good video
another good one bubba, Keep it going. will back for P4 !!!
This one was born out of our convo man!
@@720zone hit close to home for sure lol.. 100%. Miss everyone already QQ
1. Raid size had a group of 10 friends now we needed to pug and didnt want to
2. Raid lockout instead of gaming with the boys twice a week its once a week
3. Incursions kill the need of any other content
4. Runes.. half the runes i came across where to afk fly 20 minutes across the map click a button then fly across the continent take a boat and afk fly again. Then once you do that 4 or 5 times heres a super elite you cant solo and gives 0 reward for anyone else to help you
5. Why Gnomer and Sunken temple... why not a new Scarlet monestary raid and new Black rock depths or mara raids those were easy slam dunks they just missed
There’s nothing to do after some point, or do too much boring and repetitive content. I’ve stopped playing just because felt exhausted but not curious about all bis
PVP balancing and the pvp dmg reduction aura has nerfed Mages so specific that a class known to be bursty glass canon is just glass now and just do CC support to the few that is not immune to our CCs as it feels like everyone is right now in 1 of the weekends mages was so bad they was unable to kill other non tanky HP classes that is full afk before going oom
and other classes got insane buffed compare to mages(in pvp specific) that warlocks has Mage´s Fireblast with removed cooldown, 10 more yards while being in a tanky form
while mages gets nothing extra to theirs fireblast so PVP is also just unplayable for some classes and even more if you are not having a Shaman on your team
The Community is the real problem.
Staggering content feels so unnatural, the phases need to go or be max 2 weeks pr bracket for C+. However the staggering of the pvp ranks feels somewhat good 🤷♂️
Great point
Level caps were the best part of SoD.
Other things you didn’t touch on are the absolute drudgery of getting world buffs (including waiting out cooldowns on chronoboons and DMF cooldowns) for a raid that you rightly say no one cares about. How incursions became nothing but a mass griefing zone making life miserable for people who were slower to level. How certain classes are completely busted in PvP, which killed battlegrounds.
Great additional points I could have (should have) made. Appreciate it.
I feel that the player base and the majoritys focus on bis and speedruns, parses and deviant hard reserves is holding the game back
Very fair point man. Appreciate it.
Right on the money!
If we didnt have phases, SoD would have been truly dead months ago. Blizzard had to protect us from ourselves. People would have been finishing molten core by the end of the first week of P1 if we didnt lock the content behind phases
Honestly - this is a GREAT point. We speed through everything. That was sort of why I suggested the gear rebalancing. I would remove the level caps, but I would spread BIS gear, BIS Mats for Profs, Runes, Quest Objectives, whatever...spread evenly through all of the end game dungeons to try to extend the end-game.
number 1 issue is PLAYER POWER, Spells and gear are WAY over tuned... It trivialized every original aspect of the game... and as a result it created more problems for the delvs to try and solve. They have been chasing thier tails ever since... you can have all the same abilities and gear, just reduce the numbers so original classic gear and content is relevant again
The level caps should have been 25->40->60
Alliance take......As a horde player, Im loving SOD. If you dont like it go play era or retail no one forcing you.
Fair enough. I'm back on era HC right now, but will come back for P4 for sure. Appreciate the comment.
How is this not retail light. I want classic with more world/rp elements, something between original and eq
Please check your mic gain. The clipping is omnipresent.
Great video. I agree about the lack of PTR. I understood the reasoning for launch when there was a modicum of mystery, but let’s be honest, there’s very little to Discover when the content is data-mined before launch.
I was immediately disappointed with SoD because it felt so rushed and poorly thought out. When I learned BFD was turned into a Raid I knew they were not intent on actually creating Vanilla+. You absolutely have to approach a potential Vanilla+ project with the same mentality and philosophy of the original game or else you end up exploiting the original game design for your subpar project.
Also, whoever is writing their new tooltips doesn’t have a clue how to write them well. I had to get it out ok…good video.
I think a lot of the problem is with the meta game itself. SoD would have been an improved experience if there was no combat logging or parsing and if addons were removed. The fine tuning that meta gaming offers is what destroys the concept of discovery.
You mean, the ideal way to do SOD, is have my action bars always have that blasted effing gryphon on them? Bleugh, that's my least favourite part of the WoW UI.
@@jonslashtroy lol I totally agree with you. Blizz could absolutely introduce more options for UI customization that addons currently do. We players aren't guilty of anything, we just are a goldfish that grows to the size of our aquarium. It's the conditions that create the incentives, then the incentives create the culture. Only Blizzard can set the conditions. I used to parse and metagame in Cata/MoP, now I don't, but now I am so insignificant that the entire game moves on without me.
I'm confused, how long are you level capped at these levels and how do you proceed past it?
So phase 1 , was 1-25, this phase lasted for about 3-4 months, once the new phase was introduced, the level cap was rasied and allowed people to lvl to 40. After another 3 months phase 3 was launched and the cap was then raised to 50. we are currently still in phase 3 and are locked to 50 until phase 4 comes out and then we will be able to lvl t0 60.
Phase 1 lasted 2 months…
For such a big company as Blizzard I had high hopes for this SoD. Expected way more content per phase. Revamped dungeons, new dungeons, new quests, new areas, revamped areas for one. I mean sure treat SoD as a beta testing but you guys is still having players play and acting like its live....also actions or tweaks should be way more intens with this format imo. if its a testing ground treat it like that and do weekly adjustments where needed...The ride been going downhill since P1. Currnently I feel like p4 killed all the vibe there was..only sweatlords remain on the server. Rerolled and just doing a chillaxed leveling experience on a smaller server..just escapism and playing a game.
Great video
Thanks!
Played phase 1, got bis and never played again. Everything felt like a fan made mod, without the Blizzard quality stamp (which being honest, doesn't have any value anymore)
Man...really well said. Completely agree about the "feel" you describe.
nope - you don't build a game around addons that players may or may not be using
Good point.
my feral bis is now returning to gnomer which is very amusing.
Gnomer is the worst, lol
TRUE
5:56 .. isnt it obvious that thats what this is now?
turtle wow did it the best, I hope they don't steal what they've done - best server ever
yea SoD was a letdown for me personally. they didnt expand on existing classic stuff. so much wasted potential
Blizzard should hire you!
i would love to watch a video on how players discover the first runes, if someone knows that content pls let me know.
DOGE :) I agree completely! I'm always surprised at how intricate some of these rune quests are, and wonder how the first people stumbled across them. I wish I knew!
Great analysis!
This video said the best parts of SOD were negatives, while not even naming the actual worst parts…
Incursions heavily incentivize playing the game in a boring way, ruining SOD, but was not mentioned.
Level caps were the best part about SOD because SOD is clearly a mode for casuals. Level claps helped everyone feel like they were “caught up”, instead of only appealing to the people that play the game like it’s a job.
Phases were not long enough. Instead of encouraging everyone to rush the game by shortening phases. They should add more content to each phase by making battlegrounds ranked, having a dueling league, and giving cosmetic rewards for doing dungeons on a super hard mode.
Man Please invest in a new Micropone. This was a good video, but was hard to listen to with constant static coming from your mic.
So true. I need to improve my whole setup. Appreciate you watching through the static!
SoD is retail not classic.
This is the biggest problem with SoD and those kind of kids playing things like that gets bored very fast and quit and game dies.
WoW needs 1 retail 1 classic that's it!
i find it annoying that blizzard gave warlocks that stupid ass form, its too big and it does not look like it belongs in Classic at alll !!!
activision just dont know whatthey are doing. i'll stick to vanilla, that's where the old blizzard magic is, thank you.
"didn't have anything to do" lol. The problem is that these people play the game the wrong way. sometimes not being spoon fed what to do is the best thing that could happen to them
I think y’all all crazy these level caps SUCK! It’s totally made the game reliant on runes to feel powerful and the leveling is so broken up! It makes the game feel very patch-based like it’s retail.
HAHA. Legit real LOL from your comment man. I appreciate it so much. Made my day.
It's very unhelpful to advocate for the same mistakes that lead to the dross that is retail when it still exists. If you want retail just go play retail.
Well said.
okay i have to say something SoD is not classic plus. the ban of GDKPs is soo good dont put that filth near me, player ruin the game for themself not blizzard, people are bored of the game blizzard even said go play another game until new phase drops. like you said u want to have everything served on a silver plater that wasnt the intention blizzard had with SoD
Fair points - I don't agree with the gdkp stance, but I respect your opinion, and really appreciate you watching and commenting. Thanks!
Just bring back the 10m raids... Forget 20m raids.
YES!! I really should have mentioned this. We were locked into 10 man groups. We had raid teams set up that way...then suddenly we need more, which messed with lots of grouping.
@@720zone not only that, but it also made it a bigger chore for people to organise a raid.. ( ST is very easy to clear after all the nerfing , but it's still a pain in the ass to organise since it is 20m).
The result?
The result is that you can raid only for 3-4 hours per day, ONLY during peak time.
Do u work then? or you are busy then ?
too bad.. u can't play the game.
During P1 and P2, i raided in midnight, after midnight, in the morning, Noon... whenever i felt like.
Now i have to manage my time and be online 19:00-21:00 ST otherwise i will never even see 1 group forming.
It's such a pain in the ass to gather 20m and organise the raid that a lot less people do it.
Really bad decision for the "casual friendly" sod experience.
All the people who cry about SoD,.go make your own MMO then.....its that simple. Oh wait you cant. SOd is great, many problems have been fixed and the content is fun. "But there isnt anything to do outside of sunken temple or incursions". Ok and once you are raiding in tbc and wrath and you maxed yoyr reputations, there isnt anything to do in those xpacs either but no one cried about those.
Really fair point - Its easy to focus on the negative, what you want changed. Fact is, I've been addicted to this game for 20 years. I absolutely love it; and I'm still playing SOD, so Blizz is doing much more right that wrong. Really appreciate the comment man. Thank you.
At the very instant where the devs started nerfing in SOD, I bolted. ANYtime a dev moves to nerf a class, or a skill, or an item, they should be fired and never allowed to work in the games industry ever agan, for the rest of forever. Test your content and know your business before you Eff it up on the public realms - we are NOT your QA team. SOD was a weak and pathetic attempt to pander to the OG players. I prefer the game before they ruined Azeroth with the Cataclysm. At the end of WOTLK in the original game, most of us left because of issues with Ghostcrawler - we were tired of him nerfing healers; MP5, Mana on Crit, mixing chain and plate and armor types, and much more. SOD was supposed to be better, but sadly it is just a joke to the dev team nowadays - it has been a lackluster and sad experience where one day your class is fun and powerful, and the next day it is nerfed back to its original content power levels. What's the point in playing, if all that is going to happen is 1) lack of progress and 2) getting nerfed into oblivion? Blizz should have put some of the A-team on this, not flunkies that don't give a shit about the game.
Hey Tony - You were smart to bolt, and I'm aligned with you 1000% on preferring the pre-Cata wrecked game. I draw a line at Cata, calling that Modern WoW, and everything Wrath and prior true classic...aka the REAL game. My true love in WoW will always be the original 1-60 era. Really appreciate you commenting man; thank you.
I'm sorry but if you're following bis lists and not trying to theory craft your own build. You're failing at critical thought and listening to someone who probably knows less than you
True - I'm a but of a lazy player. Others might be doing more discovery than I'm giving credit for. Appreciate the comment!
Main problem is the community never got to actually play a 10 man raid casue everyone wanted full buffs consumes and insane gear. I quit and went back to wrath classic which is now cata.
Blizzard, hire this man as a consultant!
Hah! Appreciate that!
you don;t want to work for that company