The problem isn't the "momentum" at all, it's that the somewhat solid overarching ideas were badly botched. They simply didn't do a good job with the abilities or their balance, and the new events were trash as well. None of it was particularly good. People would have stuck around if the execution was better.
its not because of momentum. It's because P2 and P3 varied so far off course from the foundation of Classic. And people that took their time to grind gold or what would normally be valuable resources for later phases get punished when people that have day 1 of P3 off level to 50 in 4 hours and make 750 gold doing braindead repeatable quest circuits. I was already out by week 2 of P2, but once I saw others on the P3 launch I knew I made the right choice quitting SoD
@@Bossbabyy99 Not only was phase 2 and 3 bad but in phase 1 twinking was a thing too. Lvl 19 bgs with less than 3 minute que time. Last time i logged on SoD at lvl 50 the que time in weekends the que time for bgs was15-30 min at max lvl. I did not have time sit and wait for be able to play so i start playing cata with less than 5 minutes que time for bgs. Only thing i care about is get fast bgs so i can play while i am online not sit in TB and fish while in que. They should do something to attaract more people do BGs. Like gold rewards same as incursion. Also how you gonna get to rank 14 with these que times in phase 4?
Nice video. There is though one big misconception which lead to misalignment between Blizzard plans, and community feedback/intention. SoD was never meant to be "Classic+" - it was supposed to be a very gimmicky seasonal version of Vanilla. People started to herald it as a demo version of Classic+, wanting more "Classic+ level changes", that lead to what you mention in the video - Retail-
Turtle has done many things right, but also has quite a few weaknesses: - The client is antiquated and it shows -They have actually gone overboard with the zone quests. Too many new quests and many of them uninteresting. Just feels overloaded -Many bugs still -Not enough class changes. Basically Vanilla. I suppose that is a good thing for many, but that means some specs are just unplayable. SoD is not classic+ and it was never marketed as such despite what people wished for. Trying to balance the game and add event based content with the player base as it is, is a very tall order. Not saying they did a good job in everything, in fact some things like incursions were obviously untested, but people tend to be a lot more patient and forgiving with turtle or similar efforts since they are free. I think they are doing a good effort with trying at least to balance the classes and with itemization. If a second iteration of sod is ever done, or whatever comes next based on that experience, can be a lot better. Still if classic+ is what you want, I think epoch will be the one to go for. I hope it achieves a middle ground between changes and new content as well as an at least somewhat more modern client
Sod has been one of the best wow version for me, but also with stuff like incursions they really ruined p3. Also yah pvp content should be balanced I find it way more replayable, then raid logging not sure why pvp is so ignored
I’d be curious in checking it out again if they would make new fresh SoD servers for p4( I highly doubt they would). I feel like having a fresh 1-60 SoD experience with all the changes made is important to test out if Blizzard plans on doing any sort of version of classic+
I agree with everything besides the number of abilities. They have been making sod rotations more and more simple(rogue).Look at both cata and retail where combat is strictly 100% better than vanilla in every respect. I was extremely disappointed in og classic because I invested all this time in leveling and gearing only to find out my rotation was 1 button and all the raids were boring as shit. You can't add real mechanics in classic cause people would cry but you can at least make sure ppl have like 4 buttons to press on the regular.
Blizzards philosophy of game design is that gamers stop playing after a couple months. So they dont put much effort into new content. But that just makes it a self fulfilling prophecy.
Well isn't that one of the issues with any potential Classic+? There are far too many old quests that are invalidated by new raid acquisitions. If you upgrade them, then raids become too irrelevant. "felt like a chaotic unbalanced mess" Yeah that was always going to be the case when you have a community that min/maxes as hard as WoW. I thought we were all on the same board that since there's no QA, this would reinvigorate the feeling of experiencing Vanilla again with the inherent patch changes constantly changing classes, pvp, and party/raid compositions. I genuinely don't understand what people's expectations for this game were when people are crying for Classic+ without fully accepting the original Vanilla didn't come out as all at once as 1.12.1 or 1.4 with Classic relaunch in 2019. These were in a lot of cases progressive changes that, at the time, were highly unbalanced. In 1.1 raid members wouldn't show up on your map, no pvp rewards, no honor incentive until 1.4, duels allowed you to change entire armor sets, and there were no diminishing returns. So basically rogues and mages were kings in ganksquads. Even with 1.4 cleints, players still exploited mechanics over decades until a concrete, static meta arose. tldr: I have no doubt in my mind that people will look back fondly on SoD Classic when they redo the Vanilla > TBC > Wrath experience again, and each season will seemingly follow original Vanilla philosophy where everything was iterative in order for there to be enough unknowns in-game to allow for a certain degree of fresh experience before we read wowhead guides ad infinitum. I will always argue that the community is the worst part of WoW and that no balance team can ever account for the min/max mindset.
blizzard just pressed the "on" button on classic in 2019 and saw sub increases not seen since wrath. I understand SOD devs needed to produce exciting content, but it seems pretty clear that less=more as a design philosophy.
Forcing people who just want to pvp to have to pve is an L take, especially given how toxic the pve scene is in wow ex. checking logs for top parses, gdkp, ect..
While the tiered leveling approach was good. It was stapled to a game that never was designed for it which is why it feels so weird. P4 will feel better only because the game around it was built with activities to do
I agree with most of the points. They could have stopped at phase 1 and called it a success. Dungeons and gear were relevant outside of raids, runes mattered to utilize different specs. Ashenvale was kinda meh but everything else worked.
Blizzard are so out of touch they don't know what the community wants I started playing on Turtle WoW yesterday and it's really a breath of fresh air compared to SoD. I'm addicted!
Only people who have infinite time, or play WoW as their job complain about Nightmare Incursions. Why in the world would a normal person with a job, and family want to grind leveling or gold for weeks on end before they do dungeon, raids, etc? This is a 20 year old game and the player base doesn't have that luxury anymore, its all been done already. We just want to get to the new stuff.
I love Sod :O The only bad thing was Incursions so far, and yeah, it was such a failure. Also, I think the specs are doing too much dmg, specially casters.
Imagine complaints about PvP hot zones in stv event, agreed the turn in system should be revised but who wants to walk the entirety of stv for a fight? Stv event was top tier imo
I’m apathetic towards it based on how they’re treating rogues. I rolled a rogue to pvp in SoD and they have done nothing but make PVE changes to them. It’s blatant at this point that they’re afraid to do anything with them. Yay let’s add aoe so we can kill AQ 40 trash faster yayyyy….. cringe
The devs are trying to guide the classic andys to retail cash cow. Its just a cold hard fact they dont make thier money off classic content. Subs dont pay the bills the store does. Just a cold hard fact sadly. Even if they lost most the classic players they would still make money off retail and the store.
Most game companies would sell their customers souls for the classic community subs for their games. "Don't make money off classic content." No, they make millions off of classic content, it's just that retail makes more because of the cash shop. That's like saying. "Hey, this multi million dollar business venture is a failure because this multi billion dollar venture is worth more." its still a multi million dollar venture, what the classic community brings in is the foundation that blizzard based itself off of.
@@HamboneOG Again. I'm not saying that retail or the shop makes less money. I'm saying it makes more money then classic. I ain't disagreeing with that. But the amount of money the subs make from classic isn't small either. Any business would sell their first born child for the subs classic has every month. To say. "Well, this product sells more! So ignore this other product that still makes a ton of money." Is stupid and short sighted.
Turtle WoW has some of the most narcissistic staff members and GMs I've ever seen anywhere. If you so much as say something one of them doesn't like you are getting banned permanently. Bloated egos and political agendas run that server. Their custom content is quite lackluster as well. Just zones with mobs dropped in every corner, yeah, very cool.
Bots and layering are the real problems. Platform nine and tree quarters ruined it for me nevermind having to relayer every time mine dies or I want more players to kill. Oh and no mog meant constant migraines ngl.
I finally get it. Finally.. Blizzard was trying to match this stupid turtle wow thing. When i and many others just wanted classic wow with class changes and gear updates (not as much as what the blizzard team has done) There is a group of people like me that main paladin and just wanted specs like ret and prot to be viable in a classic version of the game, but its gone to far and the community is demanding to much. Id be more than happy with a classic with just class fixes and nothing else. I dont want all these extra things. I just wanted prot and ret to be viable. Now its a clown show with what they have done and no wonder people are complaining
Just FYI, i'll be trying out p4 when it comes. For now im mostly playing on the PTR
The main problem is that it lost its momentum. It got sidetracked for Cata, Retail S4, MoP Remix, etc
That's what I feel happened. SoD's team is doing Cata and MoP Remix, and they have a lot of plate spinning.
Nah, it was on its way out long before. Phase 2 and 3 were bad.
The problem isn't the "momentum" at all, it's that the somewhat solid overarching ideas were badly botched. They simply didn't do a good job with the abilities or their balance, and the new events were trash as well. None of it was particularly good. People would have stuck around if the execution was better.
its not because of momentum. It's because P2 and P3 varied so far off course from the foundation of Classic. And people that took their time to grind gold or what would normally be valuable resources for later phases get punished when people that have day 1 of P3 off level to 50 in 4 hours and make 750 gold doing braindead repeatable quest circuits. I was already out by week 2 of P2, but once I saw others on the P3 launch I knew I made the right choice quitting SoD
@@Bossbabyy99 Not only was phase 2 and 3 bad but in phase 1 twinking was a thing too. Lvl 19 bgs with less than 3 minute que time. Last time i logged on SoD at lvl 50 the que time in weekends the que time for bgs was15-30 min at max lvl. I did not have time sit and wait for be able to play so i start playing cata with less than 5 minutes que time for bgs. Only thing i care about is get fast bgs so i can play while i am online not sit in TB and fish while in que. They should do something to attaract more people do BGs. Like gold rewards same as incursion. Also how you gonna get to rank 14 with these que times in phase 4?
Retail minus is the best description ive heard. Ill stick to hc
same
Wow's got a lot of hamster wheels running now. Feel sorry for people who keep taking the bait. 😢😂
Nice video.
There is though one big misconception which lead to misalignment between Blizzard plans, and community feedback/intention.
SoD was never meant to be "Classic+" - it was supposed to be a very gimmicky seasonal version of Vanilla. People started to herald it as a demo version of Classic+, wanting more "Classic+ level changes", that lead to what you mention in the video - Retail-
Turtle has done many things right, but also has quite a few weaknesses:
- The client is antiquated and it shows
-They have actually gone overboard with the zone quests. Too many new quests and many of them uninteresting. Just feels overloaded
-Many bugs still
-Not enough class changes. Basically Vanilla. I suppose that is a good thing for many, but that means some specs are just unplayable.
SoD is not classic+ and it was never marketed as such despite what people wished for.
Trying to balance the game and add event based content with the player base as it is, is a very tall order. Not saying they did a good job in everything, in fact some things like incursions were obviously untested, but people tend to be a lot more patient and forgiving with turtle or similar efforts since they are free.
I think they are doing a good effort with trying at least to balance the classes and with itemization. If a second iteration of sod is ever done, or whatever comes next based on that experience, can be a lot better.
Still if classic+ is what you want, I think epoch will be the one to go for. I hope it achieves a middle ground between changes and new content as well as an at least somewhat more modern client
I’m also excited for project epoch. Hopefully it’s ready soon.
Epoch is dead on arrival.
@@MikeyPaper What makes you say that?
@GoodOmenGaming don't mind her, she's a blizzard undercover
"SoD is not classic+ and it was never marketed as such despite what people wished for." Literally Aggrend at Blizzcon "Classic PLUS so much more"
Sod has been one of the best wow version for me, but also with stuff like incursions they really ruined p3. Also yah pvp content should be balanced I find it way more replayable, then raid logging not sure why pvp is so ignored
I’d be curious in checking it out again if they would make new fresh SoD servers for p4( I highly doubt they would). I feel like having a fresh 1-60 SoD experience with all the changes made is important to test out if Blizzard plans on doing any sort of version of classic+
I agree with everything besides the number of abilities. They have been making sod rotations more and more simple(rogue).Look at both cata and retail where combat is strictly 100% better than vanilla in every respect.
I was extremely disappointed in og classic because I invested all this time in leveling and gearing only to find out my rotation was 1 button and all the raids were boring as shit.
You can't add real mechanics in classic cause people would cry but you can at least make sure ppl have like 4 buttons to press on the regular.
I think the chaotic, unbalanced mess is your UI at 4:22.
Turtle WoW is what SoD should have been.
Turtle WoW is trash
Tried Turtle, great ideas but that client is ancient.
Questing would be an awesome thing for people who are not big into raiding. Long fun quest lines with good rewards without jumping into raids
Blizzards philosophy of game design is that gamers stop playing after a couple months. So they dont put much effort into new content. But that just makes it a self fulfilling prophecy.
SoD is retail-. Turtle is Vanilla+.
Well isn't that one of the issues with any potential Classic+? There are far too many old quests that are invalidated by new raid acquisitions. If you upgrade them, then raids become too irrelevant.
"felt like a chaotic unbalanced mess"
Yeah that was always going to be the case when you have a community that min/maxes as hard as WoW. I thought we were all on the same board that since there's no QA, this would reinvigorate the feeling of experiencing Vanilla again with the inherent patch changes constantly changing classes, pvp, and party/raid compositions. I genuinely don't understand what people's expectations for this game were when people are crying for Classic+ without fully accepting the original Vanilla didn't come out as all at once as 1.12.1 or 1.4 with Classic relaunch in 2019. These were in a lot of cases progressive changes that, at the time, were highly unbalanced. In 1.1 raid members wouldn't show up on your map, no pvp rewards, no honor incentive until 1.4, duels allowed you to change entire armor sets, and there were no diminishing returns. So basically rogues and mages were kings in ganksquads. Even with 1.4 cleints, players still exploited mechanics over decades until a concrete, static meta arose.
tldr: I have no doubt in my mind that people will look back fondly on SoD Classic when they redo the Vanilla > TBC > Wrath experience again, and each season will seemingly follow original Vanilla philosophy where everything was iterative in order for there to be enough unknowns in-game to allow for a certain degree of fresh experience before we read wowhead guides ad infinitum. I will always argue that the community is the worst part of WoW and that no balance team can ever account for the min/max mindset.
Most people were expecting/hoping for somthing more akin to Turtle wow, a classic+ private server
blizzard just pressed the "on" button on classic in 2019 and saw sub increases not seen since wrath. I understand SOD devs needed to produce exciting content, but it seems pretty clear that less=more as a design philosophy.
Forcing people who just want to pvp to have to pve is an L take, especially given how toxic the pve scene is in wow ex. checking logs for top parses, gdkp, ect..
The amount of bots, hackers, gold buying, and just the overall retailification ruined it.
Are you going to play project epoch when it comes out?
i will deff try it out, yea :)
@@shjelde660 awesome! You should make a video on a classic + version you would create if you could. It’d be an interesting topic I think.
@@patrickobrienstr What a great idea!
people love hating on blizzard, but they never unsub, so the complaints never matters
I'm unsubed as of speaking. That said, im a content creater and i'll be resubbing and covering p4 when it comes
While the tiered leveling approach was good. It was stapled to a game that never was designed for it which is why it feels so weird. P4 will feel better only because the game around it was built with activities to do
I agree with most of the points. They could have stopped at phase 1 and called it a success. Dungeons and gear were relevant outside of raids, runes mattered to utilize different specs. Ashenvale was kinda meh but everything else worked.
Blizzard are so out of touch they don't know what the community wants
I started playing on Turtle WoW yesterday and it's really a breath of fresh air compared to SoD.
I'm addicted!
who would win: a Multi billion dollar company, or a bunch of hobbyists?
they need someblody who loves the game and knows his shit to lead the project... maybe polling system from OSRS could be implemented too
Only people who have infinite time, or play WoW as their job complain about Nightmare Incursions. Why in the world would a normal person with a job, and family want to grind leveling or gold for weeks on end before they do dungeon, raids, etc? This is a 20 year old game and the player base doesn't have that luxury anymore, its all been done already. We just want to get to the new stuff.
Phase 1 WAS PERFECT !
Learn from that and move from here🎉
I love Sod :O The only bad thing was Incursions so far, and yeah, it was such a failure. Also, I think the specs are doing too much dmg, specially casters.
Imagine complaints about PvP hot zones in stv event, agreed the turn in system should be revised but who wants to walk the entirety of stv for a fight? Stv event was top tier imo
You've made some valid points. Nicely said.
Same.. incursions screwed the pooch. Also what happened to the extra area's to explore? NONE.
Turtle WoW is for players and SoD for shareholders
Incursions suck, but other than that it is pretty good :)
sod is being made by retail devs. doomed to fail
I mean good thing is your opinion.
Turtle wow is so garbo
SOD is terrible
Season of Discovery is not and never was meant to be 'Classic +'.
thats just cope
I’m apathetic towards it based on how they’re treating rogues. I rolled a rogue to pvp in SoD and they have done nothing but make PVE changes to them. It’s blatant at this point that they’re afraid to do anything with them. Yay let’s add aoe so we can kill AQ 40 trash faster yayyyy….. cringe
videos like this are doing so much damage to something that potentialy can be good
Great vid
All debates about Classic + can be put to rest with two words "Turtle Up".
The devs are trying to guide the classic andys to retail cash cow. Its just a cold hard fact they dont make thier money off classic content. Subs dont pay the bills the store does. Just a cold hard fact sadly. Even if they lost most the classic players they would still make money off retail and the store.
Most game companies would sell their customers souls for the classic community subs for their games. "Don't make money off classic content." No, they make millions off of classic content, it's just that retail makes more because of the cash shop.
That's like saying. "Hey, this multi million dollar business venture is a failure because this multi billion dollar venture is worth more."
its still a multi million dollar venture, what the classic community brings in is the foundation that blizzard based itself off of.
@windatar6351 your 1000% wrong dude they make more money off a new store mount up in a month then they do in classic wow player subs in 6
@@HamboneOG Again. I'm not saying that retail or the shop makes less money. I'm saying it makes more money then classic. I ain't disagreeing with that.
But the amount of money the subs make from classic isn't small either. Any business would sell their first born child for the subs classic has every month. To say. "Well, this product sells more! So ignore this other product that still makes a ton of money." Is stupid and short sighted.
Turtle WoW has some of the most narcissistic staff members and GMs I've ever seen anywhere. If you so much as say something one of them doesn't like you are getting banned permanently. Bloated egos and political agendas run that server. Their custom content is quite lackluster as well. Just zones with mobs dropped in every corner, yeah, very cool.
Bots and layering are the real problems. Platform nine and tree quarters ruined it for me nevermind having to relayer every time mine dies or I want more players to kill. Oh and no mog meant constant migraines ngl.
Season of discovery is dead in the water.
You forgot to mention the ridiculous amounts of bots who are farming same spot 24/7 for months unbanned
Just play on a pvp server
@@Marunius are you an idiot or what?
I finally get it. Finally.. Blizzard was trying to match this stupid turtle wow thing. When i and many others just wanted classic wow with class changes and gear updates (not as much as what the blizzard team has done)
There is a group of people like me that main paladin and just wanted specs like ret and prot to be viable in a classic version of the game, but its gone to far and the community is demanding to much. Id be more than happy with a classic with just class fixes and nothing else. I dont want all these extra things. I just wanted prot and ret to be viable. Now its a clown show with what they have done and no wonder people are complaining
I love that people are still trying to convince themselves that SoD is Classic 😂It's always been Classic for Retail Players since Phase 1
When a private server does your own game better you know there is a problem. Twow ftw!
Warcraft needs more war. Game isnt pushing world pvp. Its an mmorpg, which need war.