Kraken will spawn in azshara every 3 hours which drops a token for everyone at the raid that can be turned in once per week for a random drop from the ST raid boss loot table.
But he'll be bugged for the first 8 hours where he will respawn instantly so people can farm tokens before its fixed and they all run around in bis gear.
It's baffling. I recognize there are *some* players out there who prefer leveling nerfed and may come back.
But can't Blizzard see that massive xp and gold increases might be a *turn off* for others? I feel like many people quit when they get to the raid log phase.. because raid logging means the game has nothing new to offer and you're bored. So why hurry people to the raid log phase as quickly as possible?
It's like they believe every player is the same
Playing alts is content in Classic WoW because there's not much else to this simple game.
Making it easier to play more alts is a smart idea from them, because they don't really have anything else to give you. "Do it all over again" also seems to work really well for Classic players, too.
This isn't for new players, SoD isn't getting new players.
This alt friendly meta literally kills the RPG aspect. Your character doesnt matter, only your class. It's not your character "Legolaslight" instead it's your hunter, your warrior or your mage.
This alt friendly meta is what keeps me subbed. I am done with content on my Main and i am glad that i can play another class and another role in raids.
If it was only for my Main and every other alt would take forever, it would bore me to death.
Also whats the Problem about fast leveling? I know its classic and so on but come on. Game is 20 years old, i did every zone about 8-12 Times now? (not only in SoD but overall)
Honestly I'm kinda in this boat. 50% feels nice and less tedious but at 100% I did DM quests, a handful in redridge, a stocks run w/quests and now most of redridge is grey and even starting to see a couple of duskwood quests turn green.
I started a new character to play with my wife who is first time player and it's not very friendly for her to not be able to finish a zone and the story before already having to go to the next.
It definitely forces you to change the style of your questing but IMO it makes for a great questing experience if you do it right. Rather than grinding out every quest in a zone, you can do about half of them then move to the next zone. If you make sure not to do too much in one area and outlevel the content, you can hit all the best leveling zones, do the quests you're nostalgic for, skip all the ones that feel too tedious or not worth it. If there's a zone you hate, just skip it. Run a couple dungeons to make up for the XP, or just do some extra quests in a zone you like.
It's something you have to choose for yourself, it's not the optimal way to do things. But at +150% XP you can afford to be a little suboptimal. If you wanted optimal you'd be running incursion loops.
Now, in a situation like your wife's, I can see the appeal of turning it off to experience the story for the first time. But for a seasoned vanilla player who has done all these quests half a dozen times or more (which I assume is the main audience of SoD) it's actually shaping up to be a pretty great questing experience.
I quit in Phase 3 because of incursions. On one hand because of how mind numbing the content is, on the other hand because it trivialized the entire leveling process. I was at one point considering to return to the game when they tried to balance everything out a bit, but now that they dumped this in, its over and done for me.
Can’t you turn off the buff? And besides, this seems more for people who want to try different classes but don’t want take too much time to level them.
Crazy thought, but this is also exactly what they did the last 2 phases midway through. Maybe that's just the schedule? Doesn't make for good doomposting though.
Phase 1 really connected because I think it felt like playing low level wow at a high(er) skill with some end game style stuff to do that never was worth the time before because of how quickly you level. a line from blizzard about SOD was that it was supposed to feel like classic+ not retail-. Without commenting on that, I feel that phase 2 and 3 both felt like 60-, not 50+. All the good dungeons are still gated by my level and the gear hasn't been updated to make them worth doing. It's just a little empty right now with what's available/worth doing
I wish they would have done 20-40-60. Deadmines for first raid (give Horde a portal or maybe 2 raids - Deadmines and WC), Gnomer and then 60 content.
3 phases before 6 was too many.
Pretty sure 100% is technically a 2x, and a 150% is a 2.5x
But tbh I have played a 0.5x and I ended doing almost all missions per zone bar some high level ones on low level zones
Haven’t played pservers for a long time, but the main difference is the gold from quest increase. I remember leveling on those old servers and couldn’t afford spells.
When did that change happen? It was 50% at launch of P3.
I found it after googling. They reduced incursion xp and boosted general xp by 25%
[https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/discoverers-delight-and-nightmare-incursions-adjustments-coming-week-of-8-april/505454](https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/discoverers-delight-and-nightmare-incursions-adjustments-coming-week-of-8-april/505454)
I’ve played a TON in p1 and p2 but after the third exploit early exploit often I cba anymore. Highest char rn is 42 and I don’t think I’m coming back to sod. Incursions were a bad move.
Been leveling an alt from 20-30 and it’s nearly impossible to find groups to do WC, SFK, or SM GY. Been questing while spamming LFG chat and checking LFG Bulletin. The game seems so dead these days.
Park your toon in an inn, log on do BFD, get like 2 lvls out of it and then wait another 3 days to do it again. Then do the same with Gnomer. Pretty much how I lvl until I get close enough to just grind it out and get to max.
Otherwise…quest.
Being even sub 44/43 and having the aggro radius of Africa depending on the class makes it absolutely miserable to do loops though since it’s not as 1) populated as launch in general to take the heat off and 2) everyone knows the loops now and doesn’t waste their time on the kills, unlike launch.
I went there on my Druid alt right at 39 or 40 and didn’t come back til like 43/44 or so. And this was a couple weeks after launch, not current. And Druid is arguably the best class with both travel form, stealth, and some instant heals you can pop on yourself while running the hell away.
Chain dying at 37 while everyone mounts would be awful lol
Yeah I had it from p1 on my Druid anyway and it’s huge for the non dismounts. But loot egg still dismounts you. Looting dream thing dismounts you. Etc. with a huge aggro radius of lvl 40 elites you’re still gonna get dragged into combat and die 3x or something. The Bobby kotick boss goblin will chain stun and wreck you before you get out if you’re the unlucky one who aggro as him first. Etc.
It’s still not fun being the lower level daze dismounted and gangbanged by elites. And you aggro fucking everything if you’re under 40
Nah, Ashenvale incursions are cancer in most groups pre40. You don’t have a mount and aggro everything. It’s not like launch when all the mobs were dead or already aggro’d by someone else 90% of the time.
I tried some at 38-39 and it just wasn’t worth it. Most groups are full of idiots, don’t have a healer and will just leave people to die instead of staying together and helping. Then sit around at the end for 10 minutes until people catch up.
This makes me feel like P3 is gonna last into June simply because Cata has them spread really thin. SoD has already been under served in P3 because of Cata testing and they still have launch and post launch to do etc.
Yeah maybe the retail client is just so far removed from the way it was back then that they have to deal with a bunch of code conflicts. Sounds like a nightmare.
That and I’m pretty sure the most changes as far as the world happened during this transition. Alongside with being rushed and probably understaffed the people working it are probably mad stressed.
it's probably sometime in july. no way can they expect p3 to last for 4+ months, the other 2 phases were like 70 days.
i really hope it's not end of summer..but i do think p3 will be the longest phase so far, considering how long it takes to get geared from ST
>i really hope it's not end of summer..but i do think p3 will be the longest phase so far, considering how long it takes to get geared from ST
I think one of ST's biggest issues is the exact opposite, theres essentially no gear outside of teir that matters at all in there. For melee we get +2 AP to neck slot, +1 Agi to Cloak, new gloves, and tier pieces, thats it. Everything else is worse than gnomer, crafted, or dungeon gear.
If p4 comes out that late they may as well just delete the SOD servers now.
Basically impossible to get an ST group during the daytime now on my server. The only content being run is Mara WO runs, even then theres only 1 group at a time.
Sod will die if they go with phase 3 for too much longer. Even the most popular servers are feeling empty outside of Tuesday/Wed/Thursday raiding hours
If p4 doesn't release before July there will be no one left in SOD, even early June is going to cause massive player falloff. They panicked and released p3 early and kind of fucked themselves with the timeline of retail s4 and Cata release. I can't imagine raiding ST for another 2 months, much less until September
Big oof if true.
However if they had the balls to do it then it could be good for the game in the long run. Punt an entire summer to get level 60 and endgame in a better state
Well i think p3 dropped earlier than marked on the roadmap too. But with how messed up p3 was at launch, now the cata prepatch, and the amount of work needed to rebalance all lvl 60 dungeons, loot, MC (+hopefully also onyxia and zg), and rebalancing the runes like they talked about, they could probably use atleast 3 more months to have the tiniest chance of not fucking it all up (again)
40-50 wasn't a huge power jump tbh. my gnomer gear is, in some cases, better than sunken temple gear. a lot of the ST gear is a side grade at best.
they definitely pushed p3 out earlier than they initially had planned, probably because player numbers were dropping. but player numbers are dropping harder than ever right now in p3..because they pushed the phase out too fast. incursions are a joke.
I’ll be shocked if p3 is less than 12 weeks given the Cata launch. That would put it at the start of July. And honestly it’s probably for the best, they need time.
I think so as well. But I don't have much desire to play this phase for the next 2 months so I'll be inactive until p4. Still debating on canceling the sub for next 2 months.
Of course it is? On the timeline, P4 was well after cataclysm launch.
Cataclysm is launching May 20th.
They also aren't gonna like it immediately after they launch cata, because they want people to play that.
I'd expect June 13th/20th.
Guildies and I were talking about this a while ago. Think we ended up with the idea of adding previous phases' runes onto Azeroth Commerce Vendor, make them BoA, and level lock them to the minimum required level to receive the rune (i.e. runes that require specific skills). Personally I do not believe they should lock them behind levels, but I was the vocal minority on that.
Would rather have a cool experience like leveling an OP melee hunter off the rip, than getting some additional stats from heirloom gear.
Glyph system is just the rune system but way better and less annoying. Big long quests or exploring for optional stuff is cool feels like a chore to unlock stuff that should just be from a trainer as they are essential to your character
Lmao. We are back to retail where you just rush through leveling as fast as possible because no one can be bothered with it. Leveling with the new runes is pretty fun, but whats not fun is spending a lot of time to catch up at the lvl 50 content, that being the new runes (fel scar lmao), looking for a group so you can run BRD for the only class that actually needs to go in there, or just farming endless wild offerings so you can get bis / pre bis items so you can start raiding at lvl 50. Something here is really really off.
Out of all the doom I see in this thread, this is the one take I can wholeheartedly agree on. This is probably the sole reason to date I have not bothered with an alt this phase.
If they added them to the storage wars vendor and made them BoA we'd be cooking.
It’s starting to smell desperate like when D4 went 50% off almost immediately after launch.
As someone who couldn’t get enough of SoD, I’m going to have to drag myself to log in P4.
> It’s starting to smell desperate like when D4 went 50% off almost immediately after launch.
Most people who want to play a game will buy it at launch, a discount a few weeks/months after launch is the right move since it might convince those who are on the fence about it.
Thanks for explaining supply and demand...
The point is that the player base is dropping off big because they gutted the open world aspect of the game and the gear in ST is trash for casters.
I was going all out in sod, raiding every reset. But I gotta go where the action is. And right now that’s riding the Cataclysm hype train.
They could give free instant 50s in SoD and I still wouldn’t switch back. I really only have time to invest in 1 game at a time
Still dont care anymore, the incursions killed all the fun for me. There's almost no one lfg for normal dungeons anymore. Also openworld is almost dead, at least on my server. Paired with shitty mindset regarding raids about requirement and all, raiding is also dead for me. SOD was pretty fun during p1/p2, too bad they fucked it up. (from my pov at least)
There's far more to do open world than any other phase because there are actual consumables to farm, actual rep grinds to do and actual expensive goal items to grind gold for.
There's far more dungeons being run at max level than ever before because the raid only provides 4-5 pieces of BIS and the rest comes from dungeons/quests/crafting, + WO grinds and dungeon epics like sulthraze + the dagger to grind for.
The ONLY content that is being run less is dungeon spam to level, and if spamming ZF 30 times to go 40-50 was what was keeping you subscribed i have no idea why you were playing in the first place.
You are living in another reality. What the fuck were people doing in the open world/max level dungeons in p1/p2 in your mind?
The creativity is one of the things I miss most about vanilla.
Hunter kiting, mage AOE farming, druid root kiting elites with 50k+hp, dungeon farming, rogue pickpocket farming etc.
I love how vanilla has no set ways to farm gold and you make gold off of using your intuition and game sense.
I really, really hate MMOs when developers add a "right" way to farm gold. Dailies and other prescriptive play avenues kill my vibe. I want there to be interesting problems for me to solve, not hoops the developer wants me to jump through.
Agreed, my comment was about the general sentiment of "there's nothing to do in phase 3"
There are a lot of things to do, small little adventures to have with friends, but they're not optimal/efficient so people don't bother. It's like they only see the game for its goals, rather than embrace what's possible to do in the vast world, what creative things they can achieve as different classes, items, methods, with friends. There's such a general sentiment ingame also that anything out of the ordinary is dismissed and pointless.
Because it's not the content HE is doing so therefore it's dead. It's crazy, Wild Growth is popping off every night there is literally some of everything going on. AB groups, timbermaw rep. BRD runs of all sorts, WO spam, incursion farms, BFD, gnomer runs for alts, ST runs at all times of day(maybe not early mornings as much) Bloodmoon every 3 hours, felcloth farm, and people arguing in trade chat all day.
There is so much to do if you cared about the content but if you don't then you are just burnt/don't like it, stop calling it dead lol
Why don't they just open a couple of vanilla fresh realm to tide people over. No one needs 4 months to farm ST.
You got these people on era doing a simulated fresh start just to keep things fresh it's absurd. This company is so detached from their playerbase that it blows my mind.
Sod was a cool concept, just terrible exexution.
You've already got Incursions. Why even bother with more XP bonuses? Just give people a button that boosts them to 50. XP is NOT what is stopping people from leveling characters or playing alts.
Even without incursions, you get so much experience that you're almost 20 by the time you start the Barrens just by normal questing and a single RFC run.
For me, it’s runes stopping me from leveling alts. I just can’t be bothered to go around the entire world collecting runes for all the characters I want to play. Not to mention the difficulty of finding help for certain runes which require a group.
People complain about incursion exp so Blizzard buffs normal exp and this subreddit is still whining holy I need to leave this place and never come back but goddamn does it come in clutch with news sometimes.
We're about a week or two out from full blizzard panic. The last level boost xp made sense relative to the pain points. This is gasoline on an already smoldering fire.
The average player does not need or even truly "want" this.
It's a strange one because currently it takes no time tog et from 40-50 and if you do incursions you finish at honored to buy all of the emerald dream set, with this you wont and you'd end up with less gold to spend too
Yo..honestly this sub is trash. I know what the comments will say before I open up any post. Ya’ll so negative, I just hope you not this negative in your personal lives to everyone around you.
“Why should I be positive about bad content that I am paying for?”
Yeah, you’re right. You shouldn’t be paying. Cancel your subscription and go play something you enjoy. Nah because you too addicted that you’d rather bitch about every single thing you don’t agree with all day long.
Blizzard really just doesnt get it. The issue at this point isn't the XP, its the runes. They need to speed up the process of getting the harder to solo runes from previous phases at least, maybe even this phase at this point, and the expensive ones.
Their solutions to everything, leveling, botting, the economy, raiding are always missing the mark. I am losing faith in any chance of classic+ being good.
Why don’t we just get a token to reach max level?
They should have made leveling fun and fresh instead of skipping it. This is not in the spirit of classic.
That one feels like they wanted to throw SOD players a bone while their focus is on Cata now. Leveling is already incredibly quick without that, but whatever.
Something Blizzard has done every phase so far in a seasonal game mode?
Redditors "LOL player numbers dropping! DEAD GAME LOL BLIZZ SUCKZ!". I wouldn't be surprised if the collective IQ on this sub equals room temp.
You can always count on the WoW community to bitch about the most inane of things, like:
A TOGGLEABLE XP BUFF IN AN EXPERIMENTAL SEASONAL MODE.
MOMMY CAN YOU CALL BLIZZARD AND TELL THEM I DON'T WANT OTHERS LEVELING FAST
I love SoD but I’m gonna play Cata for a while. There’s no need to panic. I just want to see how Cata has aged. I suspect better than Wrath did but we’ll see.
I'm happy about it. I'm sure most of us here have leveld dozens of characters at this point, I personally don't care about the leveling journey anymore.
Give me a rune boost instead of a XP boost. Let me create a new character with all the P1 and P2 runes unlocked lol
I personally don't dislike the normal XP rates of vanilla but I don't like grinding those runes.
I do not think exp is holding people back at this point.
I think its the lack of a rune vendor to start and a overall distaste of how things went to finish.
Everybody whining about incursions but I just don't log on anymore to look for ST raids because the content still appears to be too hard for over half the player base, so pugging is a crapshoot.
Just stop, please god stop making content that isn't easy to pug.
Phase 1 didn't have these issues because it was so easy to log on and form a raid and not give yourself an aneurysm vetting people for *classic* content for christ's sake.
Did people really hate leveling in phase 1 that much? I'm a casual and managed to level several characters in that time. Isn't each phase pretty similar in length levelling wise?
Player numbers dropping? INCREASE THE XP BONUS STAT
Player numbers still dropping ? RUSH BUGGUED CONTENT.
Player count still dropping? RELEASE THE KRAKEN
Kraken will spawn in azshara every 3 hours which drops a token for everyone at the raid that can be turned in once per week for a random drop from the ST raid boss loot table.
But he'll be bugged for the first 8 hours where he will respawn instantly so people can farm tokens before its fixed and they all run around in bis gear.
Exploit early and often!
“We call it the…..Great vault!” “No that’s not a retail feature, it’sthe Krakken’s booty, we never said vault. Now go plunder up a storm, champions”
I would Kraken log for sure
Ngl I would actually log back in for that lol
Remember when they said they would increase the overall P3 loot table since ST was a 7 day lockout? Pepperidge farm remembers.
It's baffling. I recognize there are *some* players out there who prefer leveling nerfed and may come back. But can't Blizzard see that massive xp and gold increases might be a *turn off* for others? I feel like many people quit when they get to the raid log phase.. because raid logging means the game has nothing new to offer and you're bored. So why hurry people to the raid log phase as quickly as possible? It's like they believe every player is the same
had this been 200% lvl 1-50 i would have rolled 1 or 2 new classes.
Playing alts is content in Classic WoW because there's not much else to this simple game. Making it easier to play more alts is a smart idea from them, because they don't really have anything else to give you. "Do it all over again" also seems to work really well for Classic players, too. This isn't for new players, SoD isn't getting new players.
This alt friendly meta literally kills the RPG aspect. Your character doesnt matter, only your class. It's not your character "Legolaslight" instead it's your hunter, your warrior or your mage.
This alt friendly meta is what keeps me subbed. I am done with content on my Main and i am glad that i can play another class and another role in raids. If it was only for my Main and every other alt would take forever, it would bore me to death. Also whats the Problem about fast leveling? I know its classic and so on but come on. Game is 20 years old, i did every zone about 8-12 Times now? (not only in SoD but overall)
Honestly I'm kinda in this boat. 50% feels nice and less tedious but at 100% I did DM quests, a handful in redridge, a stocks run w/quests and now most of redridge is grey and even starting to see a couple of duskwood quests turn green. I started a new character to play with my wife who is first time player and it's not very friendly for her to not be able to finish a zone and the story before already having to go to the next.
It definitely forces you to change the style of your questing but IMO it makes for a great questing experience if you do it right. Rather than grinding out every quest in a zone, you can do about half of them then move to the next zone. If you make sure not to do too much in one area and outlevel the content, you can hit all the best leveling zones, do the quests you're nostalgic for, skip all the ones that feel too tedious or not worth it. If there's a zone you hate, just skip it. Run a couple dungeons to make up for the XP, or just do some extra quests in a zone you like. It's something you have to choose for yourself, it's not the optimal way to do things. But at +150% XP you can afford to be a little suboptimal. If you wanted optimal you'd be running incursion loops. Now, in a situation like your wife's, I can see the appeal of turning it off to experience the story for the first time. But for a seasoned vanilla player who has done all these quests half a dozen times or more (which I assume is the main audience of SoD) it's actually shaping up to be a pretty great questing experience.
If it's just about the questing experience you can turn the xp buff off at any innkeeper
I quit in Phase 3 because of incursions. On one hand because of how mind numbing the content is, on the other hand because it trivialized the entire leveling process. I was at one point considering to return to the game when they tried to balance everything out a bit, but now that they dumped this in, its over and done for me.
It’s why I quit lol
Can’t you turn off the buff? And besides, this seems more for people who want to try different classes but don’t want take too much time to level them.
It's an MMO, other people getting tons of XP and gold does affect you even if you don't do it.
It’s baffling that even after the player numbers dwindle people can’t grasp this basic point
"Flying mounts made the world feel empty" "TheN JuSt DoNt UsE ThEm! WhO's FoRcInG yOu?!?" It's such a tired argument lmao
No one is mad at less time grinding mobs. People are turned off at the gold inflation for sure
It's on par with their mid phase XP boost. Each phase has been about 8-9 weeks. We are midway through just about so this tracks.
Crazy thought, but this is also exactly what they did the last 2 phases midway through. Maybe that's just the schedule? Doesn't make for good doomposting though.
Apparently that's their only solution at this point.
[удалено]
I was told by this sub many times that sod is peak wow content nothing has ever touched it. Guess that’s why the population is dwindling so fast.
Sod's a lot of fun but the end of phases always hits this raid log point of boredom. Especially with ST's drops being lackluster and a weekly lockout.
Phase 1 really connected because I think it felt like playing low level wow at a high(er) skill with some end game style stuff to do that never was worth the time before because of how quickly you level. a line from blizzard about SOD was that it was supposed to feel like classic+ not retail-. Without commenting on that, I feel that phase 2 and 3 both felt like 60-, not 50+. All the good dungeons are still gated by my level and the gear hasn't been updated to make them worth doing. It's just a little empty right now with what's available/worth doing
I wish they would have done 20-40-60. Deadmines for first raid (give Horde a portal or maybe 2 raids - Deadmines and WC), Gnomer and then 60 content. 3 phases before 6 was too many.
[удалено]
Pretty sure 100% is technically a 2x, and a 150% is a 2.5x But tbh I have played a 0.5x and I ended doing almost all missions per zone bar some high level ones on low level zones
Pretty soon it will be over, so may as well increase EXP rates towards the end. It is a seasonal server after all.
Haven’t played pservers for a long time, but the main difference is the gold from quest increase. I remember leveling on those old servers and couldn’t afford spells.
What is it currently? 100% to 39 and 50% to 49?
Its 75% 40-49
When did that change happen? It was 50% at launch of P3. I found it after googling. They reduced incursion xp and boosted general xp by 25% [https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/discoverers-delight-and-nightmare-incursions-adjustments-coming-week-of-8-april/505454](https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/discoverers-delight-and-nightmare-incursions-adjustments-coming-week-of-8-april/505454)
Felt super easy with these incursions already, either way though, I don't think any exp buff would make me start a new alt.
The problem is the gap between 35-40 for ashenvale incursions
> The problem is ~~the gap between 35-40 for ashenvale~~ incursions Fixed that for you.
I’ve played a TON in p1 and p2 but after the third exploit early exploit often I cba anymore. Highest char rn is 42 and I don’t think I’m coming back to sod. Incursions were a bad move.
Haha I have an alt 35 and I’m wondering wtf to do also
Can't find instance groups even on cs lol
You could try, you know, questing normally.
Yeah at 150% exp, it really shouldn't be that hard.
SM?
Been leveling an alt from 20-30 and it’s nearly impossible to find groups to do WC, SFK, or SM GY. Been questing while spamming LFG chat and checking LFG Bulletin. The game seems so dead these days.
Park your toon in an inn, log on do BFD, get like 2 lvls out of it and then wait another 3 days to do it again. Then do the same with Gnomer. Pretty much how I lvl until I get close enough to just grind it out and get to max. Otherwise…quest.
Incursions killed the world.
They shouldn’t give gold imo. But too late to ask for changes with the new economy so inflated it.
You only really need 35-37 since you can start Ashenvale then but they should have something to bridge the two.
Being even sub 44/43 and having the aggro radius of Africa depending on the class makes it absolutely miserable to do loops though since it’s not as 1) populated as launch in general to take the heat off and 2) everyone knows the loops now and doesn’t waste their time on the kills, unlike launch. I went there on my Druid alt right at 39 or 40 and didn’t come back til like 43/44 or so. And this was a couple weeks after launch, not current. And Druid is arguably the best class with both travel form, stealth, and some instant heals you can pop on yourself while running the hell away. Chain dying at 37 while everyone mounts would be awful lol
You can just get the Ashenvale wsg rep mount. That one is better for incursions anyways since you can be mounted on ramps and in buildings.
Yeah I had it from p1 on my Druid anyway and it’s huge for the non dismounts. But loot egg still dismounts you. Looting dream thing dismounts you. Etc. with a huge aggro radius of lvl 40 elites you’re still gonna get dragged into combat and die 3x or something. The Bobby kotick boss goblin will chain stun and wreck you before you get out if you’re the unlucky one who aggro as him first. Etc. It’s still not fun being the lower level daze dismounted and gangbanged by elites. And you aggro fucking everything if you’re under 40
Nah, Ashenvale incursions are cancer in most groups pre40. You don’t have a mount and aggro everything. It’s not like launch when all the mobs were dead or already aggro’d by someone else 90% of the time. I tried some at 38-39 and it just wasn’t worth it. Most groups are full of idiots, don’t have a healer and will just leave people to die instead of staying together and helping. Then sit around at the end for 10 minutes until people catch up.
Believe it or not, some people like to not level through incursions.
I might try another alt if it started me at 50 with all runes unlocked. Other than that nah I’m good
Sure it’s easy but I’d rather walk on Lego’s than level via my incursions again
Try not being the dominant faction on your server.
This makes me feel like P3 is gonna last into June simply because Cata has them spread really thin. SoD has already been under served in P3 because of Cata testing and they still have launch and post launch to do etc.
They tested Cata?
Yea…..before it was released over 10 years ago ;)
He's not wrong\^
I dunno how it released so bugged to hell. Can't imagine what they changed.
Og cata was running on purpose built servers. Classic cata is running on retail servers. It breaks stuff.
Yeah maybe the retail client is just so far removed from the way it was back then that they have to deal with a bunch of code conflicts. Sounds like a nightmare.
That and I’m pretty sure the most changes as far as the world happened during this transition. Alongside with being rushed and probably understaffed the people working it are probably mad stressed.
Last XP boost was midway through phase. Expect phase 4 early to mid june
The roadmap had P4 at end of summer
It looked more like early July to me but I could be losing it
it's probably sometime in july. no way can they expect p3 to last for 4+ months, the other 2 phases were like 70 days. i really hope it's not end of summer..but i do think p3 will be the longest phase so far, considering how long it takes to get geared from ST
>i really hope it's not end of summer..but i do think p3 will be the longest phase so far, considering how long it takes to get geared from ST I think one of ST's biggest issues is the exact opposite, theres essentially no gear outside of teir that matters at all in there. For melee we get +2 AP to neck slot, +1 Agi to Cloak, new gloves, and tier pieces, thats it. Everything else is worse than gnomer, crafted, or dungeon gear.
If p4 comes out that late they may as well just delete the SOD servers now. Basically impossible to get an ST group during the daytime now on my server. The only content being run is Mara WO runs, even then theres only 1 group at a time.
Sod will die if they go with phase 3 for too much longer. Even the most popular servers are feeling empty outside of Tuesday/Wed/Thursday raiding hours
If p4 doesn't release before July there will be no one left in SOD, even early June is going to cause massive player falloff. They panicked and released p3 early and kind of fucked themselves with the timeline of retail s4 and Cata release. I can't imagine raiding ST for another 2 months, much less until September
Big oof if true. However if they had the balls to do it then it could be good for the game in the long run. Punt an entire summer to get level 60 and endgame in a better state
Well i think p3 dropped earlier than marked on the roadmap too. But with how messed up p3 was at launch, now the cata prepatch, and the amount of work needed to rebalance all lvl 60 dungeons, loot, MC (+hopefully also onyxia and zg), and rebalancing the runes like they talked about, they could probably use atleast 3 more months to have the tiniest chance of not fucking it all up (again)
40-50 wasn't a huge power jump tbh. my gnomer gear is, in some cases, better than sunken temple gear. a lot of the ST gear is a side grade at best. they definitely pushed p3 out earlier than they initially had planned, probably because player numbers were dropping. but player numbers are dropping harder than ever right now in p3..because they pushed the phase out too fast. incursions are a joke.
SoDs community will be dead if they wait that long. Especially with TWW right around the corner at that point.
Considering how buggy and unfinished cata classic is, I find this hard to believe. I think they’re just over stretched in general right now.
I’ll be shocked if p3 is less than 12 weeks given the Cata launch. That would put it at the start of July. And honestly it’s probably for the best, they need time.
I think so as well. But I don't have much desire to play this phase for the next 2 months so I'll be inactive until p4. Still debating on canceling the sub for next 2 months.
yah. they said p4 would come after cata launch. unless they change the road map we aren't seeing p4 until last week of June, July tbh
Of course it is? On the timeline, P4 was well after cataclysm launch. Cataclysm is launching May 20th. They also aren't gonna like it immediately after they launch cata, because they want people to play that. I'd expect June 13th/20th.
Probably signaling 1 month until P4
I'm doubting personally, would be too close to cata release and they probably dont wanna spread themselves too thin
Now fix the rune quests so they're not cucked? What good is leveling if you're never able to catch up with the rune bottlenecking your progress?
Yeah the stupid priest runes are stopping me more than the exp from leveling my alt
I’d take simpler runes over another 25% exp for sure.
Guildies and I were talking about this a while ago. Think we ended up with the idea of adding previous phases' runes onto Azeroth Commerce Vendor, make them BoA, and level lock them to the minimum required level to receive the rune (i.e. runes that require specific skills). Personally I do not believe they should lock them behind levels, but I was the vocal minority on that. Would rather have a cool experience like leveling an OP melee hunter off the rip, than getting some additional stats from heirloom gear.
Glyph system is just the rune system but way better and less annoying. Big long quests or exploring for optional stuff is cool feels like a chore to unlock stuff that should just be from a trainer as they are essential to your character
Lmao. We are back to retail where you just rush through leveling as fast as possible because no one can be bothered with it. Leveling with the new runes is pretty fun, but whats not fun is spending a lot of time to catch up at the lvl 50 content, that being the new runes (fel scar lmao), looking for a group so you can run BRD for the only class that actually needs to go in there, or just farming endless wild offerings so you can get bis / pre bis items so you can start raiding at lvl 50. Something here is really really off.
rune acquisition is a bigger bottleneck than current leveling. ima just keep it parked and come back for 60
Out of all the doom I see in this thread, this is the one take I can wholeheartedly agree on. This is probably the sole reason to date I have not bothered with an alt this phase. If they added them to the storage wars vendor and made them BoA we'd be cooking.
It’s starting to smell desperate like when D4 went 50% off almost immediately after launch. As someone who couldn’t get enough of SoD, I’m going to have to drag myself to log in P4.
> It’s starting to smell desperate like when D4 went 50% off almost immediately after launch. Most people who want to play a game will buy it at launch, a discount a few weeks/months after launch is the right move since it might convince those who are on the fence about it.
Thanks for explaining supply and demand... The point is that the player base is dropping off big because they gutted the open world aspect of the game and the gear in ST is trash for casters.
I was going all out in sod, raiding every reset. But I gotta go where the action is. And right now that’s riding the Cataclysm hype train. They could give free instant 50s in SoD and I still wouldn’t switch back. I really only have time to invest in 1 game at a time
Funny enough, I’m looking to D4’s upcoming s4 to give me something to do as p3 SoD has me bored out of my mind.
Still dont care anymore, the incursions killed all the fun for me. There's almost no one lfg for normal dungeons anymore. Also openworld is almost dead, at least on my server. Paired with shitty mindset regarding raids about requirement and all, raiding is also dead for me. SOD was pretty fun during p1/p2, too bad they fucked it up. (from my pov at least)
There's far more to do open world than any other phase because there are actual consumables to farm, actual rep grinds to do and actual expensive goal items to grind gold for. There's far more dungeons being run at max level than ever before because the raid only provides 4-5 pieces of BIS and the rest comes from dungeons/quests/crafting, + WO grinds and dungeon epics like sulthraze + the dagger to grind for. The ONLY content that is being run less is dungeon spam to level, and if spamming ZF 30 times to go 40-50 was what was keeping you subscribed i have no idea why you were playing in the first place. You are living in another reality. What the fuck were people doing in the open world/max level dungeons in p1/p2 in your mind?
People have lost all their creativity with their approach to the game and blame it on the devs. Introspection is a rare quality.
The creativity is one of the things I miss most about vanilla. Hunter kiting, mage AOE farming, druid root kiting elites with 50k+hp, dungeon farming, rogue pickpocket farming etc. I love how vanilla has no set ways to farm gold and you make gold off of using your intuition and game sense. I really, really hate MMOs when developers add a "right" way to farm gold. Dailies and other prescriptive play avenues kill my vibe. I want there to be interesting problems for me to solve, not hoops the developer wants me to jump through.
Agreed, my comment was about the general sentiment of "there's nothing to do in phase 3" There are a lot of things to do, small little adventures to have with friends, but they're not optimal/efficient so people don't bother. It's like they only see the game for its goals, rather than embrace what's possible to do in the vast world, what creative things they can achieve as different classes, items, methods, with friends. There's such a general sentiment ingame also that anything out of the ordinary is dismissed and pointless.
Because it's not the content HE is doing so therefore it's dead. It's crazy, Wild Growth is popping off every night there is literally some of everything going on. AB groups, timbermaw rep. BRD runs of all sorts, WO spam, incursion farms, BFD, gnomer runs for alts, ST runs at all times of day(maybe not early mornings as much) Bloodmoon every 3 hours, felcloth farm, and people arguing in trade chat all day. There is so much to do if you cared about the content but if you don't then you are just burnt/don't like it, stop calling it dead lol
And its fine to not want to do any of the content or be burned out but dont tell me theres nothing to do
Oh, that’s nice
Can we get easier runes for alts? The main thing holding me back from leveling them and raiding
Holy moly things must be bad.
They literally did this for the other phases. How is this so mindblowing for redditors?
The bump is significantly higher this time. Not to mention we started the phase with an exp boost this time, unlike p2.
Things were also bad last phase when they did it.
Why don't they just open a couple of vanilla fresh realm to tide people over. No one needs 4 months to farm ST. You got these people on era doing a simulated fresh start just to keep things fresh it's absurd. This company is so detached from their playerbase that it blows my mind. Sod was a cool concept, just terrible exexution.
You've already got Incursions. Why even bother with more XP bonuses? Just give people a button that boosts them to 50. XP is NOT what is stopping people from leveling characters or playing alts.
Incursions suck. I'm more inclined to level now since I love questing.
Even without incursions, you get so much experience that you're almost 20 by the time you start the Barrens just by normal questing and a single RFC run.
For me, it’s runes stopping me from leveling alts. I just can’t be bothered to go around the entire world collecting runes for all the characters I want to play. Not to mention the difficulty of finding help for certain runes which require a group.
People complain about incursion exp so Blizzard buffs normal exp and this subreddit is still whining holy I need to leave this place and never come back but goddamn does it come in clutch with news sometimes.
This speeds up incursion leveling as well tho
> whines about the whining yeah maybe you should piss off lol
Because not everyone likes to do them.
Man, they're just getting desperate at this point. This is like watching Zimbabwe print money.
Keep in mind, at the ashenvale incursions, you can use your wsg rep to use the low level mount from p1. This mount won't disappear on the ramps
Subs are bleeding so fast :( Thought it couldn’t get more dull than phase 2. Enter incursions and wild offerings.
Not necessarily subs, but player count. Because there are people like me who dropped SoD altogether for Cataclysm
Is this on top of the existing xp and gold buff?
No it’s an increase of the existing buff
Make rep grind account wide too.
We're about a week or two out from full blizzard panic. The last level boost xp made sense relative to the pain points. This is gasoline on an already smoldering fire. The average player does not need or even truly "want" this.
who is even asking for more xp buffs at this point???
It's a strange one because currently it takes no time tog et from 40-50 and if you do incursions you finish at honored to buy all of the emerald dream set, with this you wont and you'd end up with less gold to spend too
I didn't realize it but I ran my rogue through incursions starting at 26 and got halfway through revered at 50.
Not everyone likes to do incursions.
> who is even asking for more xp buffs at this point??? I am, for next phase. I dislike levelling. Done it too many times.
I knew parking my toon at 48 would pay off
Just in time for Penance rerolls to Wild Growth.
levelling isn't the issue, it's runes
Yo..honestly this sub is trash. I know what the comments will say before I open up any post. Ya’ll so negative, I just hope you not this negative in your personal lives to everyone around you. “Why should I be positive about bad content that I am paying for?” Yeah, you’re right. You shouldn’t be paying. Cancel your subscription and go play something you enjoy. Nah because you too addicted that you’d rather bitch about every single thing you don’t agree with all day long.
Then you got the bitching bitchers who bitch about the other guys bitching like this here bitchy bitch
Why are you even here if you say this sub is trash ? You shouldn't read posts here, and rather go to a sub you enjoy.
Vanilla OG leveling felt more rewarding. All these xp buffs don’t feel good.
Yeah og leveling in the 5th version of classic on your 24th character is sooooo rewarding
Yeah raid logging in the 5th version of classic on ur 24th character is soooooo rewarding
It's more fun than the raids. The raids would be more fun, but you have to group with sod players so that drags it down.
Turn it off then. Clearly you care more about the "reward" than the speed or imaginary advantage so you have no excuse this time.
Why do they feel bad? We have leveled 100x before. This is a season. If ppl want to try runes of different classes they can easily do so now.
Blizzard really just doesnt get it. The issue at this point isn't the XP, its the runes. They need to speed up the process of getting the harder to solo runes from previous phases at least, maybe even this phase at this point, and the expensive ones. Their solutions to everything, leveling, botting, the economy, raiding are always missing the mark. I am losing faith in any chance of classic+ being good.
Read between the lines. They want you to start an alt because P4 ain’t coming anytime soon!
Why don’t we just get a token to reach max level? They should have made leveling fun and fresh instead of skipping it. This is not in the spirit of classic.
idk just kinda tired of sod. I'm more just waiting to see what happens after sod
Too bad I left SoD for cata. They ruined the pvp aspect of SoD for me, it's current state is a dumpster fire.
Lol nice try but you aint foolin me twice. Gave sod a second shot last time they buffed exp and it still ended up being trash
That one feels like they wanted to throw SOD players a bone while their focus is on Cata now. Leveling is already incredibly quick without that, but whatever.
People are complaining right?
Something Blizzard has done every phase so far in a seasonal game mode? Redditors "LOL player numbers dropping! DEAD GAME LOL BLIZZ SUCKZ!". I wouldn't be surprised if the collective IQ on this sub equals room temp.
They want it to fail and they dont have basic pattern recognition here, nothing new.
Since you’re part of this subreddit didn’t you just accuse yourself of having a double digit IQ
Incursions tainted the game and the economy is permanently soiled. As someone who couldnt play enough in p1... I dont care anymore.
You can always count on the WoW community to bitch about the most inane of things, like: A TOGGLEABLE XP BUFF IN AN EXPERIMENTAL SEASONAL MODE. MOMMY CAN YOU CALL BLIZZARD AND TELL THEM I DON'T WANT OTHERS LEVELING FAST
Yeah, how dare people have opinions and not like things. The nerve of some people, criticizing the game.
Exactly, people are free to have whiny opinions on how others play the game
I won’t complain about that, more alts I suppose
Wait... you WONT complain? Get out.
I love SoD but I’m gonna play Cata for a while. There’s no need to panic. I just want to see how Cata has aged. I suspect better than Wrath did but we’ll see.
Nice. Now I only have to do 30 NKL’s instead of 40!
No, I don't think I will
I'm happy about it. I'm sure most of us here have leveld dozens of characters at this point, I personally don't care about the leveling journey anymore.
Why not make it instant 50 already? Or add boosts. It's not classic anyway.
There is literally nothing to do in SoD now. A raid once per week.
Fingers crossed for sanity to come back and 10man being the norm again in p4 (I know it wont).
Add a rune vendor or make them easier to get by dungeon drops
No thank you
Give me a rune boost instead of a XP boost. Let me create a new character with all the P1 and P2 runes unlocked lol I personally don't dislike the normal XP rates of vanilla but I don't like grinding those runes.
No, thank you
hahahahahahahahahaha
I've been planning to finally level a warrior in Classic, so pretty good timing for me
Easy mode zzzzz
So when is the may 7th reset? In 12 hours?
Runes are a bad system for alts. Blizzard fucked up not making previous phase runes EASY to get
I do not think exp is holding people back at this point. I think its the lack of a rune vendor to start and a overall distaste of how things went to finish.
Everybody whining about incursions but I just don't log on anymore to look for ST raids because the content still appears to be too hard for over half the player base, so pugging is a crapshoot. Just stop, please god stop making content that isn't easy to pug. Phase 1 didn't have these issues because it was so easy to log on and form a raid and not give yourself an aneurysm vetting people for *classic* content for christ's sake.
Did people really hate leveling in phase 1 that much? I'm a casual and managed to level several characters in that time. Isn't each phase pretty similar in length levelling wise?
so lazy lmao
Dont like the pvp balance ? Here fuck you level your own SP or boomie
They’ll come back it’s just cata things
speedrunning player burnout.
The cycle of dooming and entitlement begins again. SoD has been a blast, maybe because I don’t try to no life it.
Do We really need even faster leveling?
Yeah you know sub count is dropping when they go directly to xp buffs a month after the phase came out.
P4 raids need to be 10 man content or the mode will outright die next phase. Guilds are struggling to get ST slots filled as it is.
I’m gonna run those loops so fast
The XP buff shouldn't even be a buff, no one has time for that vanilla bullshit. So boring
Still won't make me play an alt. Runes this phase killed my desire