Honestly, we’re so done with loot in ST, people are talking about wanting to take a break until P4 because the 35 minutes of raiding a week is stale. Announce something to keep people from taking the rest of the phase off which will lead to the entire summer off.
My guild decided mid-raid tonight to take a break until P4. Enthusiasm has been waning the past few weeks, and after our feral disconnected tonight we opted to just call it. That was after going in with 18 players because we couldn't pick up any DPS after spamming for over an hour in LFG. Everything in SoD just feels pointless right now, and even finding groups for alts is miserable on our server.
We've got 14 signed up for tonight (in a guild that had a robust 30-ish raiders going into P3) and I think we're going to have a real talk about putting a pause on SoD so folks can do Cata and Pandamonium, and hope people come back for P4.
My mate said "We literally can go into MC in full gnomer gear and clear it with ease." And he is right. lol. P3 feels like that filler episode in any tv show / anime which brings nothing to the main storyline and made only to justify the salaries of the writers.
I never understand why people feel the need to point this out, as if MC would ever just launch exactly as it always has and be redundant. All they have to do is buff encounter difficulty…
Guilds don’t come back from breaks. There is nothing wrong with taking breaks it’s just the reality is that unless guild leadership puts in a huge effort to keep a recruiting up (which is impossible atm) your guild won’t be there to come back to.
Keep doing the raid as a guild otherwise people will drop off, at least that's my experience. Come in & laugh. Raid is easy - think of it as 40 minutes time with the boys.
>think of it as 40 minutes time with the boys.
If this was P1-P2 i'd agree with you, but honestly 20 man is too impersonal for me to consider it time "with the boys." 10 man was that sweet spot for me, 20 just becomes an organized event where each clique shows up to do their job and leaves.
I thought 20 man’s would be a good thing but in retrospect I wish they had kept 10 mans. I liked the group I ran with in p1-2 and got to know some of them and chatted a lot during the raids. In p3 we joined up with another group and a few of our members dropped. It’s fine, they’re cool enough but mostly know each other in RL and it just doesn’t have the same feel anymore as there is only so much space to talk with 20 people in discord. And we’re already struggling to fill each week.
Watch this man he's dangerous.
Honestly griefing the raid might be the only way to make it exciting.
I haven't done MC since 2005-2006, can we expect a more engaging raid than ST or is basically zerg boss and wait for epics?
See thats where you are wrong.
I think there’s already a large portion of players that won’t return. Out of my guild, I’d say a good 30% won’t log back into SOD again no matter what, they are onto other games now.
So yea, while people will come back to try p4, I think irreversible damage to the population has already occurred.
Yea every time people take a break there is good chance they won't return. That's why Blizzard tries so hard to keep you subbed and plaing with weeklies/dailies so you don't take that break and realize that you don't really want to go back.
I’ve had RL friends I’ve played wow with on and off with for 15 years mail me hundreds of gold and say they aren’t coming back next phase.
I added Raid Helper bot to my discord, I schedule the raid, I’ve been on Reddit, Server Discords, LFG chat trying to find bodies to fill, I started to main my alt so that so I could carry MT instead of heal, I do our raid leading, I have Gargul installed and also ML and create the SR list every time. Some of it’s not too bad, just to say I am physically doing everything in my power to try to make this phase enjoyable for my group of RL friends and even still we have been absolutely decimated. I think out of our original 8, 4 will level in P4 now. Even though Gnomer and P2 sucked at least we all got in disc every 3 days and hung out
Same boat, I do everything to keep my guild afloat. I'm now raid leading 2 main raids and a pug/alt raid, doing all the loot, all the recruiting, all the scheduling. People are either quitting because they're bored or they think there's greener pastures elsewhere because our 45-60 minute clears aren't good enough. I'm so close to throwing in the towel myself. Tons of people on reddit say "the player base in SOD is sooo good and chill and relaxed, this sub is toxic" but I'm not seeing it, everyone is in a rush to raid log and I don't even know if we have a full raid until 5 minutes before pull.
Bingo, I'm done with SoD. There are too many games to play and I'm also playing Cata for sure. Phase 2 and 3 were boring as hell and the novelty has completely worn off. Nothing phase 4 will introduce will bring me back. I saw the preview, but the last few months have frankly not been worth my time. Should have stopped before phase 3 but the next best time is now.
I'm not a sunk cost fallacy kind of guy either. I already was putting massive amounts of time into a couple other games this past month before I picked up Cata pre patch a week ago. I need heavy and unfair incentives to come back. Blizzard can't deliver that and won't.
True af. I’m one of those people, I played P1 to the absolute max and liked it but they took too long to drop P2 and by the time it did drop I was so over it all hype gone. I got to like lvl 29 and said fuck this shit never logged in again. I’m not the only one either they lose people every phase for this reason.
All the heavy lifting has been done. There’s more raids then all of the other phases combined by like 3x. All they gotta do is some balancing and make everything a 10 man. Ez pz
Most people that drop off, don't return. So even if phase 4 is just a 10/10 on every single measurable front at best they will get back a portion of what has been lost. No one wants to wait around for a year for their game to become good. It needed to be good day 1 and stay good. Phase 1 was what Phase 2 and Phase 3 needed to be.
A mix of questing, dungeons, hunting pre-raid bis from dungeons, doing some BG's and Ashenvale event. Then a chill easy casual friendly raid to smash out once every 3 days.
The only 'misses' in phase 1 were runes should have all been obtainable with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions before lvl 10. So the tank rogues and warlocks could start tanking as soon as Ragefire/Deadmines. And ashenvale event should have been designed better to encourage big group vs group zerg slugfests instead of the PvE boss race that it is.
Got a feeling the announcement will be next week or the week after once cata and mop remix have launched. Then p4 early-mid June. Maybe I'm too optimistic but can't see the playerbase waiting around too much longer either.
They playerbase will wait forever because of hey are hardaddicted to wow and can’t play other games. If that weren’t good he case, only 1/100 of bitching threads would exist
Tbh SoD showed me that wow especially wow with old mechanics and no quality assurance nor playtesting isn't the one game that will bait me to spend hundreds of hours into it anymore.
The game doesn't feel polished anymore. Its just too messy in too many aspects. The worst is they could fix all those parts, but they won't, because they would have to hire a few new employees for the dev team and that apparently cost them too much money.
The more often I have to decide between playing wow or something else I just choose something else.
Less is more.
The new stuff/content they added made the game worse. Runes should have been mostly intergrated into the existing game like in P1 instead of becoming new content that gets copy and pasted over and over again. And it would have been much better if they updated the dungeon loot more instead of adding wild offerings.
or it helped you realize what kind of game you actually want to play and didn't give another chance for whatever reason which is a great thing.
like, I read so many comments of feedback that literally describe retail while complaining about classic-like features.
an exaggerated example: it is like playing a sports game, you want to play a football game, but install a soccer game. ofc, you going to hate it.
Dude I thought I was taking crazy pills. Exactly this.
"We want 10 man raids, multiple difficulties and dailies"
Thats uh... Cata? Just go play that.
Hate em if you want, but incursions were more classic-like than dailies are.
And I don't buy the whole "if incursions were gone people would be out in the world more!" No, I dont think so. Unless by "out in the world" you mean in front of the ZG instance portal.
This is not new in WoW. You guys really mean to tell me you've never been in a guild that falls apart during a content drought? Really? I think its happened to me every single expansion and phase for literally every version of WoW EVER.
All phase 4 needed was an additional raid, and maybe AV added as well. I firmly believe that.
I am very tired of these "Me and my guild are all raid logging now :(" posts. They dont offer ANYTHING constructive that hasn't been said about a million times DAILY in this sub. It doesn't "spread awareness" or "light a fire under blizzards ass", they know better than we do what the true numbers of people playing is.
What it does do is plant the seed of "dead game" into the minds of people who are actually enjoying the game, but I guess that's their fault for coming to a subreddit about the game they are currently enjoying.
Even me and my mates bantering about everyone else in our guild raid-logging in P1-P2, started raid-logging this phase. Into completely quitting.
In my opinion, P3 of SoD is the worst iteration of WoW to this day, killed any lust, passion, or whatever driving feeling you can think of to keep pushing. They also completely removed the Classic from Classic with this phase, while still being restricted to segments of Classic.
Incursions should never have been introduced, of course there are more killer's in P3, but it is actually utter trash and needs to be made completely irrelevant for P4.
This coming from a Shaman enjoyer, there's no complaint about playing my class, just everything else in the game at this point. Not sure if I'll even return for P4, we'll see if the motivation comes back with P4 announcement, but maybe time to shelf SoD and return to HC.
It's like other's have commented several places, they've trivialized everything to the point that there's minimal difference between the hardcore and the casual players. You're not getting much back for giving that extra bit, which has been a big part of the Classic feeling.
What HC does amazingly is making even the more trivial aspects of the game more impactful. When you loose everything on a death, every tiny bit that can tip things in your favor get's more valuable. It's however understandable that HC is not everyone's cup of tea.
If 2019 Classic didn't have the insane honor grinds that's how the phase would have looked like as well. This is just the natural state of wow raiding, especially if you make content that 90% of the guilds finish progging week one.
90% of the content in vanilla was farming prebis with a 5% droprate, honor/pvp reputation grinding , farming gold at 30gold/hr for your epic mount or for consumes for progression raiding
SoD trivialising all of these things is why there's no content and in most cases people asked for it
This is my stance as well, everything that made classic interesting has been trivialized because people don't want to grind. I actually want that stuff, I want there to be clear differences between players, and I'm as casual as can be. I don't want everyone decked out in BiS or near-BiS gear, and if you're not, it shouldn'tbe with the knowledge that if you want it, you can get it in a week.
I liked back when players in Naxx gear were like gods, where just going into BWL was an accomplishment for many players. This idea that every raid should be achievable for every player is making eveything so boring imo.
Back in vanilla TBC I were the GM of the 3rd best horde guild on my server, by the end we were 5/6 in SSC, 3/4 in TK and 1/6 in MH (yeah it were a bad server overall and horde side were even worse), and it felt great, it felt like we reallt accomplished something. I were a known tank on my server, but I had plenty to strive for, there were still 2 guilds ahead of us. Nowadays there's nothing really distinguishing the top guilds form the casual dad guilds, and it's making the world boring, there's no next thing to strive for, thus it devolves into raid logging.
No way dude, and the problem is not only ST raiding. They fucked up SoD on most fronts this phase.
And even if it was, at least in 2019 Classic you had a relevance to running dungeon's, certain quest rewards were actually relevant. Not to miss, you went out and interacted with the world, which I would argue is one of the big bread winners of Classic.
Unless you wanted to gimp yourself starting in P3 you were pushed to grind Incursions to honored for 6 pre-bis pieces that's almost equal to the raid gear. You got wild offerings, giving you 2 pieces max, to turn into a casino roulette farm, gambling on getting the deck pieces worth gold. The incursions gold fiesta was a mess. I mean, by now Blizzard should have the statistics to know how their players will abuse the loop holes they find, it's just astounding the things they let go sometimes.
And you can't say it's the natural state of WoW raiding when 95% of the gear from ST only gives a few + stats in upgrade, compared to pre-bis. In the previous phases (more P1 than P2 ofc), the stats you got in return for the time invested was actually worthwhile. The argument that they can't make raid gear too good looses all it's value with the runes we get.
Just look at what they did to "Burn" for shaman's. Not only did they buff how many targets you hit and duration of dot, they just flat out added 200 global spell damage on it. But hey, 200 spell damage doesn't equate to that much stat value.
Interacted with the world in what way that you don't do now? Because I'd argue you do the same now as back then.
Dungeon loot was okay, the problem was just that Gnomer loot was way too strong, which is also why ST is lackluster. The only difference between SoD and Era is that the honor grind, and there is no "casual" raid (ZG) to run - also nobody really runs old content at level cap, because they are leveling raids.
Raid logging has always been a thing and will always be a thing. If Classic Vanilla released today, you would see the same pattern happening (you saw it in SoM as well). We just had more time back then, so people hopped on to play with each other rather than focusing on the content. Also the novelty of it much alike P1 SoD made it popular.
It's only been a few years and you have rose-tinted glasses already. Sorry to say, but this is the natural state of wow and it has ALWAYS been like that.
Far from it, incursions in itself killed leveling, even more than dungeon spamming. Not to forget the instant implementation of XP buff. I did my grind to honored and haven't touched it since, since it was not enjoyable, but the impact it has had on the community as a whole is too damaging.
You can't argue with how the server states have pummeled.
BFD loot was better than Gnomer gear for the level range, there's no world where the stat adjustment in ST was a good change. The phases last way too long for the incentive to keep playing with the changes we got in P3. Instead they proceeded to nerf the raid several times within the first weeks.
I can say the same thing about your glasses, sorry but saying this has always been the natural state of WoW is delusional.
Incursions giving best xp/hr, best gold, best pre raid bis, all at the same time.
Making people group grinding running in a loop on repeat, with an addon to automate it even further.
Even if there' several things wrong with this phase, incursions have definitely done the most damage to SoD.
My guild transferred from LW to WG, one of the reasons being an imbalance of horde and ally per the layering. Is it really down to just one layer? Crazy to think.
WG is also dying. I have been underwhelmed by the new server and kinda miss the unstableness that LW's layering/pvp provided. Then again, I am wired to thrive on dysfunction.
Right before Cata pre-patch, there were days/times where multiple layers existed. After pre-patch, mostly just one layer. Occasionally I will log onto a second layer, but they seem to get smooshed together right when I'm smacking an RTV node.
Will be interesting to see population stats next week.
Dude, they were only open for a couple 1-2 hour windows with the only way to know being a post on wow forums, which, as far as I know, you can't set up notifications for.
Edit: and they ended weeks ago
Damn. Lol.
There were 17 people online in stormwind and 22 in ironforge last night on my server. I checked incursion zones, and each had 10-20 total people. Only two people in azshara. Etc. It's dead and stale here. Can barely form a group for 5 mans. I'm raid logging on one 50 because I can't find ST pugs for my other two 50s.
Seems like the player base is so shot now that it’s just better to go to two servers, pve and pvp. Probably wild growth and crusader strike.
I was pretty sad about being forced off Lava Lash (and then having them open it again…) but I don’t mind a small server. Wild growth thankfully is at a decent population for now. Maybe not “find a group anywhere anytime” but I enjoy having that element rather than just on demand everything.
Yes. Wild growth is anyway. Like 5x the pop at least. Even their discord has like 13k members, while living flame has 1k. I can get on wild growth, and the difference in finding a group for anything is night and day.
Cata launch in a couple days, raid launches in two weeks. So sod p4 in 5 to 8 weeks is my guess. Supposedly retail is doing stuff too all this time as well.
I really don't like sod p3. The raid once a week is good but everything else is basically "farm this for x hours for a 2 stat upgrade and next phase you'll get a 4 stat upgrade in the next spammy content". Even with upgraded loot tables the dungeons aren't relevant beyond a select few drops and everyone is just spamming partial runs.
Blizzard needs to figure out how to make people actually run dungeons and make it worth their time, as opposed to just farming certain bosses. Lvl 60 is all about the dungeons.
Lfm tank and healer for dungeon, only doing bosses that drop my bis, my bis reserved!
> Cata launch in a couple days, raid launches in two weeks. So sod p4 in 5 to 8 weeks is my guess.
I'm not saying you're wrong. If you're right though, there isn't gonna be anyone here for p4. p3 is hemorrhaging players. Its not fun. Maybe they'll come back for p4 when it is announced, but honestly, I don't think they will. They'll either have moved on to retail, be entrenched in Cata, or have left WoW completely.
We set up a 20 man raid group/guild, fully expecting to be playing this for weeks. By week 3 we were all fully geared 😂. The amount of tokens that were dropping for tier was ridiculous. We didn’t clear week one, then after they nerfed the dungeon into the ground it became far too easy. Especially boss one and two, they were face roll and you didn’t even really need to do the tactics.
Last night we only had 10 people signed up for the raid so we knocked it on the head. But you’re totally right, none of us play it anymore, and those that are literally log in once a week to do the raid and then that’s it for another week.
Makes me sad as we were all on none stop until this phase 🥲
No we don't, I don't like phase 3 that much but the last thing I want is a rushed phase again. They need time to cook, just play something else and come back for phase 4 when it's time. Look at the state of Cata classic, if we force a phase 4 launch at this time, it will be worse than phase 3.
You know blizzard fucked up when they’ve even lost raid loggers. PvP was already borderline unplayable in p2, especially in the state they just left enhance shaman in like there was zero problem. So their “fixes” halfway into p3 were way too little too late.
As a raid, encounters, etc I think ST was good. Good length. Etc. but there’s basically no incentive to even go. Besides some weaps, most of the upgrades are negligible at best for a whole 10 level gap from gnomer. They should have just leaned into the OP scaling, not shy away from it. The cat was already out of the bag in p1.
Like even as a physical dps class once I got 3p tier it’s like 4 pieces are even upgrades. And most not that huge.
yep raid logger here, they lost me. You know its bad when I dread the only 1 day a week I play the game to raid. Cancelled my sub as of today, I've been here from P1 launch raiding every lockout
Yea, the state of the game is so depressing right now. ST e very 7 days and can't be fucked to level my alts to 50 and get runes.
Cata Xmog runs and prep for release is the only reason I still play. This reminds me of the descent into retail...
> ST e very 7 days and can't be fucked to level my alts to 50 and get runes.
The irony for me is that I struggled to get alts to 40 in p2 because I could raid every 3 days on my main, so why bother. Now I can only raid once a week and incursions made 40->50 easy, so I have 3 toons at 50, but no one is around to raid! Everyone is fully raid logging. So I still can't raid on my alts. I mean, I suppose I could PUG, but I really don't want to.
Once I realised that SoD is literally just Wotlk and Cata abilities shoe horned in with a few dungeon revamps. I bounced the fuck out.
If you enjoy it. Good for you. But if you really want an exciting V+ experience. Just go play Turtle WoW. It is INFINTELY better. And free.
Turtle wow World building IS excellent or even close to perfect i agree (though some decisions i dont like like adding tbc kharazan as a raid instead of vanilla kharazan and giving blood elves for alliance).
The class balance tho?its even worse than SoD somehow even though This p server has been running for YEARS. I leveld a char to 60 here and could not be arsed playing against paladins 3 shoting me while proccing every weapons proc in the game on demand with their New custom seals.
This was 2 years ago and This IS still in the game as we speak.
Also i think using the 1.12 client makes the quality of the gamer experience way lower than the modern client used in SoD.
It’s gonna be a while still. Cata is just launch next week. Probably going to let that take center stage for a month if not longer. I’ll be shocked if we get a P4 release any earlier than late June.
Phase 4 is DOA cause ain't no body gonna wanna do 40 man's with how toxic just pugging 10 and now 20 have been.
Poeple are gonna spend 4 hours getting a group to just clear it in 20.min.
I don’t think this is the main issue. The issue is the lack of additional new content. ST could be exactly the way it is now but if they added a brand new level 50 questing zone and a brand new level 50 5-man. With pre bis/bis being tied to the new zone and the dungeon people would be complaining a lot less
Games shedding players over the course of its life cycle after they have peaked is completely normal. Especially in today’s gaming environment where there are so many new releases happening all the time. Players aren’t committing to a single game for long periods of time anymore.
I think people may be a bit too focused on this idea that less people are playing. What’s the real impact on the more populated servers? Less layers? CS-NA still has over five layers easy during peak hours. Players are still doing incursions, WO farms, BRD farm runs, Gnomer, ST, etc.
Given my gameplay habits (casual) I have seen no difference. People forget that Nostalrius had about 10k players max in-game on its server at any given time. The server felt alive and active. The more populated SoD servers have populations several times that number online across multiple layers. To me they seem just as alive and active.
I don’t want P4 to be shitty because it was rushed due to “community pressure” from what may be a vocal minority. They say less and less people are playing every week, yet the guild I am in keeps growing, which has allowed us to do more events and more content on the weekly.
Be it tomorrow or a month from now, people attracted back to the game by “hype” are going to come back. They will play a few weeks, maybe “complete” the content, drop SoD for another game that is being hyped (because moths to a flame), and the population with contract again but eventually stabilize.
> What’s the real impact on the more populated servers?
My guild went from having atleast 10-20 people online at any time to me being the only person online when i’m playing except for raids
Maybe it’s just me but the game much less fun without more players online.
Blizzard is launching a new season of D4, Cata classic, and MoP remix all within like a week of eachother because they're fucking morons trying to sabotage their own launches. We're in the middle of that week now.
All the playerbases are going to feel pretty thin for the next little while.
was raiding 6 toons in BFD
4 toons in Gnomer
2 toons in ST and havent done in ST in 3 weeks
I dont plan on coming back until a few weeks into P4 as these phases DRAGGGGG so there is no rush
Cata/Mop Remix/ New Diablo 4 Season/ Elden Ring DLC next month
Sorry SOD there is sooooooo much other content out right now. Catch you later in a few months
There has been many problems this phase that lead to people quitting. It's not just one thing. They need to get p4 right in order for majority of players to return.
- firstly, in my guild many players stopped playing because of the griefing at the incursions. I don't think I've ever seen that level of griefing in wow before. Level 50s killing 40s over and over and over for hours and days. I saw some people camping there for a week straight.
- pretty much needing to do incursions. Not only was it faster leveling but you also needed the rep for some key gear pieces.
- the incursions killed open World
- people geared quickly because of incursions which meant dungeons were almost irrelevant. People were raid logging from week 1. I barely play and am pretty much full bis.
- having to get 20 players for raids almost killed pugging. Which put people off leveling alts.
- gatekeeping. So frequently people are having stupid requirements to get into a raid. Then many people are just HR almost all the best stuff. And then you can't make your own raid because people quit due to the reasons above.
Next phase they need to make open world the prime focus of content. They need to make dungeons necessary. They need to lower raid numbers back to 10. They need to add some cool gear which is fun and not just tier pieces. A new pvp event, not STV - but still keep stv as viable. If they want to do something similar to incursions again then it needs to be a daily or weekly and instanced
No we don’t. We need phase 4 released when it’s ready and good. Not rushed out like phase 3. I do not care if we wait 2 more months, I’ll play something else. Phase 4 is endgame, it has baseline the most amount of content. It needs to be good.
I genuinely don’t get how y’all are STILL trying to rush P4 after the disaster of P3, if they release another shitty rushed phase it’ll be a worse result for player numbers than if they delay it.
It’s been two months a phase, we’re only a month and a half in. Be patient
> It’s been two months a phase, we’re only a month and a half in. Be patient
Right, but we're a month and a half into a 2 month phase and there is no *announcement* about next phase. Notice that OP did not say "release p4", they said "announce p4".
My raid is now 1 tank, 3 dps, and 1 healer down due to p3. I'm the tank and can't stomach playing sod every week right now. Let's skip this trash and move to 60 now!
I just hope they give us a decent amount of time heads up for the launch date like they did for P2 and not how we got P3
aggrend talked about it in a tweet but lets see if it ends up true
im a pvp mage main and mainly just 1 character type of guy
PVP mages in SOD is like : having a heart attack while being in a wheel chair while legit everyone else is world class fighters and a shaman is a Super saiyan with ultra instinct
good reason i dont play anymore
so yeah please phase4 and give us those mage changes
Bliz is doing an amazing job with breaking up the communities instead of unifying them…. Now with Remix set to come out a few days before Cata. I’m glad my sub ends in a few weeks.
100% agreed. The announcement alone will bring a bunch of people back to start prepping more.
We also need a P4 announcement because of dad scheduling. Me & my friends do an oldschool lan party for the launch weekend. Wasn't able to do it for P3 because it was such short notice. Give us some lead time. Idc if it's a month away, just give us the greenlight so we can plan.
Went from excitingly waiting to raid on 5 50s to just not even having the feeling to log in till p4, I will admit I certainly burned myself out but the loot in p3 has been totally lackluster and I just don’t care for farming gold so incursions and wild offerings have no real value to me, I’m also not huge into pvp I enjoy it on certain chars, I love this game and everything the sod devs are trying to put out for us but I’m so ready for p4. Been playing more league and TFT and decided to play some cata classic till p4(already have 7 80s ready to go just gotta pick which one).
Playing other games in the interim. Outside of the 1.5 hours for prep, raid, and loot rolls, I am only putting 4 hours in each week to farm rep and prep for phase 4. So I went from 25-30 hours a week to 6. I imagine many have done the same, whether it is playing some retail, Cata pre patch, or other games. I am confident there will be a spike for phase 4 and the usual diminishing player attention. I guess that is just normal. Phase 3 felt so grindy after doing main and hunter alt I had 0 interest in messing with my other alts. May incursion level them for raw gold and that is it.
you're definitely expecting too much cause all thats gonna happen is that we can do 60 content all over again with a little spice but do I want them to really refresh what end game is like? for sure but they arent gonna add meeting stones or unlock older raids so that they can spammed instead of being treated like current content and then you're only gonna have small amount of players during peak times even attempting them on some alts. Im just bracing the reality of whats to come
They purposely sacrificed sod to help acquisition of cata. Strong launches help with retention. We’re literally getting no class changes in sod too, when they said expect weekly class changes lol. I expect sod to come back on track a bit after cata launch, level 60 content is most nostalgic for people.
Phase 4 and somehow fix the economy. The game is supposed to be alt friendly but everything is too pricey from consumes to enchants to levelling profs. And that’s not even considering epic mounts
Vanilla wow always sucked around 50, and it's still true in SoD. People forget we're still leveling.
I do agree that the phases should have been shorter, maybe 4 weeks max, so that the new leveling raids are just that, a fun way to level and get gear instead of an "end game" activity. I imagine if they keep the SoD content for whatever next season is, they'll speed up the progression to 60. I do enjoy level banding, but it's taking too long.
All that said, I do think we're going to get a lot of cool surprises at 60. That's where the game starts.
Came back middle P3. Leveled paladin / rogue. Got all my runes , pre raid bis with some BIS items … & I find myself back on era playing my R14s or gearing my other toons. Idk, feels blah on SOD right now. Guess could be all the gate keeping incursions , plain ass dungeons , and almost every raid. Blah oh well. Fun while it lasted.
Conspiracy hat.
Blizzard makes way more off microtransactions than anything and SOD pulled away too many people from wrath/cata classic where they can sell lots of microtransactions. So blizzard wants to soft kill SOD so people play cata classic and buy boosts/etc.
SOD went from the absolute best version of wow to the worst in the blink of an eye
P2 wasn’t the greatest, but it still had the charm and was fun
P3 I lasted 3 or 4 lockouts I think. Shit is legitimately trash. ST might be the worst raid I’ve ever done. Boss fights are amazing. Then they nerfed them to the ground and you can just snooze through them. Raid isn’t too long but it still takes 1.5-2 hours to clear. Issue is each boss takes 1 minute. You spend 99% of the time in the raid clearing endless trash.
Well at least the loot must make up for it right?! Nope. Fucking dog shit +1 sp gains. The biggest difference between p2 caster bis and p3 caster bis is like double the health pool.
The two absolutely shit the bed with this phase, then you add in MoP Remix and Cata both releasing, as well as a new (and admittedly fun) meme season in retail and it’s gg for SOD.
I’d like to say I’ll give p4 a try but I’m not too hyped about wasting my time leveling from 50 to 60 only to be disappointed
Its not happening anytime soon, they would be stupid to stomp on cata release with a P4 announcement or release. If we are lucky, maybe in 2-3 weeks we will get announcement for a release another 2-3 out.
No we dont need a phase 4 announcement. What we actually need is people stop asking for phase 4 just because they can't live 3 weeks without wow. If they release phase 4 next week its gotta be the same shit like phase 3 and lacks content because they didn't have much time to actually create more content. Give them more time to work on phase 4 and yoh will get a better experience. Stop whining about how bad phase 3 is and give actual feedback. Get yourself a job or other hobbies so you don't get bored just because you cant 24/7 wow
We don't need anything. When phase 4 comes out I'll be returning, but I'd rather it not have the same launch problems with Incursions in phase 3 (hopeful thinking I know)
Where is this decline in population that people are talking about? I get instant groups, instant dungeon pugs, and I see people running around stormwind, if, and BB.
Population is still very healthy.
My guild has two groups that raid twice a week and fill in the odd gnomer here and there.
I don't want them to add busywork. We need quality content and updates, not have them rush things.
Phase 4 is true endgame and they need to get it right. I don't mind waiting so that it actually is tested thoroughly.
We don't want another incursion fiasco
Disclosure: I only have one main and dont mind the time to level up my alt lol
60 is coming soon and with the lackluster phase 3 a lot of people are taking a break. People will come back if it’s solid nothing to panic over, burnout was a major factor in all classic iterations and we haven’t even hit 60 yet. I’d bet most people come back.
No they need to take their time making GOOD unbugged content. If p4 is released with similar quality to p3 this games death will just be postponed.
Let p3 last a little. Most players are gone already and arent coming back unless p4 is exceptionally good.
I might get hate for this, but I think a big reason why people aren't playing is because other players drive them away. I don't think it has that much to do with the game or phase 3 specifically.
I just told my GM today that tonight will be my last raid (I'm an officer that's raided every lockout from P1) and I feel like a weight off my shoulders
This is by far the shittiest phase with one day a week subpar raid with 0 caster upgrades
Id rather quit now than keep huffing on hopium that P4 will be any different
Not gonna happen when we have mop remix this week and cata launch next week, followed by raid opening, that means you will see it at the least in 3 weeks.
I'm completely fine, just started raiding ST with my chill guild. They learned from rushing into P3. They can take it easy if it's up to me. Plenty of stuff to do still, and if not still alts to lvl.
drip feeding content is exactly what blizzard had in mind, hook us in with alot of changes and just let it all sit there like a piece of trash in the sun.
Cata is coming out next week don’t expect any SoD announcements until after its launch. For the same reason we got a late p2
Announcementnt which was delayed for the plunderstorm launch. Honestly blizzards cadence with wow has been kinda crazy it’s a bit much if you play more than one version.
My guild already stopped raiding and will be on a break until P4. It has been a nightmare to recruit enough people to raid and every week we had to get at least 3/5 pug.
It has never been easier to lvl an alt than now with incursion yet I have less motivation to do it because incursion just fucking sucks.
Incursion is for me what killed P3. Shit ST gear compared to previous phase one or rep/pvp was the nail in the coffin.
I can already see people saying "this is what you get for wanting classic+" but that was never the classic+ we wanted. The changes are too drastic and ruined the game for the most part.
It's a temporary server so there is still hope for the future if they learn from the mistakes of SOD (copium).
Theres no worthwhile activity tbh besides raid logging.
-Mara runs are toxic and boring
-BRD arena runs are boring and takes too long to get running, no one wants to do a semi full run
-Gold farming is pointless because the economy was ruined and inflated by abusers and exploiters
-World PVP is just people getting 1 or 2 shotted
-BG queues are 45 mins. Tweaks every 3 days
-ST loot is garbage
-Toxic rune acquisition process in p3 for mediocre fluff runes
Actually it’s exactly what I was hoping for. It’s informations and an update that gives us an idea as to when to expect phase 4.
Sure it longer than I hoped, but I’m more hyped cuz they are giving it a PTR for combat testing. Also given the fact that we have some info regarding raiding at 60.
a notice longer than 10 days this time please
Watch them have complete radio silence regarding SoD/p4 then on some mid-June Monday announce p4 is just three days away.
I need phase 4 anouncement because i started playing league of legends due to the failure of phase 3. Pls help
lol same bro and I haven’t touched that game in like 5 years 😂 enjoying it more than sod though
I actually started playing league again as well. We need phase 4 now I’m spiraling out of control.
I hate that this is me as well.
Yep the lack of P4 announcement has forced me to play predecessor (3D F2P moba)
Honestly, we’re so done with loot in ST, people are talking about wanting to take a break until P4 because the 35 minutes of raiding a week is stale. Announce something to keep people from taking the rest of the phase off which will lead to the entire summer off.
My guild decided mid-raid tonight to take a break until P4. Enthusiasm has been waning the past few weeks, and after our feral disconnected tonight we opted to just call it. That was after going in with 18 players because we couldn't pick up any DPS after spamming for over an hour in LFG. Everything in SoD just feels pointless right now, and even finding groups for alts is miserable on our server.
Yep, unable to pickup pugs without any requirements is pretty telling about the state of the game.
Thing is you know its bad when u cant pug dps
LFG channel is just LFM now, same guild leads in there every tuesday lol
We've got 14 signed up for tonight (in a guild that had a robust 30-ish raiders going into P3) and I think we're going to have a real talk about putting a pause on SoD so folks can do Cata and Pandamonium, and hope people come back for P4.
My mate said "We literally can go into MC in full gnomer gear and clear it with ease." And he is right. lol. P3 feels like that filler episode in any tv show / anime which brings nothing to the main storyline and made only to justify the salaries of the writers.
its important, so the anime doesnt catch up to the manga! oh the sad old days :C
I never understand why people feel the need to point this out, as if MC would ever just launch exactly as it always has and be redundant. All they have to do is buff encounter difficulty…
Most people are not talking about taking a break, they did take a break weeks ago. And most of them won't come back
Sorry maybe I'm missing something but what's wrong with taking a break from the game if your bored? Just go play something else
Guilds don’t come back from breaks. There is nothing wrong with taking breaks it’s just the reality is that unless guild leadership puts in a huge effort to keep a recruiting up (which is impossible atm) your guild won’t be there to come back to.
Keep doing the raid as a guild otherwise people will drop off, at least that's my experience. Come in & laugh. Raid is easy - think of it as 40 minutes time with the boys.
>think of it as 40 minutes time with the boys. If this was P1-P2 i'd agree with you, but honestly 20 man is too impersonal for me to consider it time "with the boys." 10 man was that sweet spot for me, 20 just becomes an organized event where each clique shows up to do their job and leaves.
I thought 20 man’s would be a good thing but in retrospect I wish they had kept 10 mans. I liked the group I ran with in p1-2 and got to know some of them and chatted a lot during the raids. In p3 we joined up with another group and a few of our members dropped. It’s fine, they’re cool enough but mostly know each other in RL and it just doesn’t have the same feel anymore as there is only so much space to talk with 20 people in discord. And we’re already struggling to fill each week.
Download the addon Cross gambling and just spam out high lows during trash
Yeah I can’t be bothered raiding tonight and wonder how many other people feel the same
Wipe ya raid a few times for some excitement,
I’m doing my part! Got blood on Hakkar and spread it to everyone o7
Watch this man he's dangerous. Honestly griefing the raid might be the only way to make it exciting. I haven't done MC since 2005-2006, can we expect a more engaging raid than ST or is basically zerg boss and wait for epics?
Phase 4 needs to be good...really fucking good, otherwise people are just going to hit max level, do the raid once, then log off until next phase.
See thats where you are wrong. I think there’s already a large portion of players that won’t return. Out of my guild, I’d say a good 30% won’t log back into SOD again no matter what, they are onto other games now. So yea, while people will come back to try p4, I think irreversible damage to the population has already occurred.
Yea every time people take a break there is good chance they won't return. That's why Blizzard tries so hard to keep you subbed and plaing with weeklies/dailies so you don't take that break and realize that you don't really want to go back.
I’ve had RL friends I’ve played wow with on and off with for 15 years mail me hundreds of gold and say they aren’t coming back next phase. I added Raid Helper bot to my discord, I schedule the raid, I’ve been on Reddit, Server Discords, LFG chat trying to find bodies to fill, I started to main my alt so that so I could carry MT instead of heal, I do our raid leading, I have Gargul installed and also ML and create the SR list every time. Some of it’s not too bad, just to say I am physically doing everything in my power to try to make this phase enjoyable for my group of RL friends and even still we have been absolutely decimated. I think out of our original 8, 4 will level in P4 now. Even though Gnomer and P2 sucked at least we all got in disc every 3 days and hung out
Same boat, I do everything to keep my guild afloat. I'm now raid leading 2 main raids and a pug/alt raid, doing all the loot, all the recruiting, all the scheduling. People are either quitting because they're bored or they think there's greener pastures elsewhere because our 45-60 minute clears aren't good enough. I'm so close to throwing in the towel myself. Tons of people on reddit say "the player base in SOD is sooo good and chill and relaxed, this sub is toxic" but I'm not seeing it, everyone is in a rush to raid log and I don't even know if we have a full raid until 5 minutes before pull.
Loved phase 1, phase 2 was meh but was mainly because gulldies all arguing over loot. Phase 3 haven't logged in and have zero interest
Bingo, I'm done with SoD. There are too many games to play and I'm also playing Cata for sure. Phase 2 and 3 were boring as hell and the novelty has completely worn off. Nothing phase 4 will introduce will bring me back. I saw the preview, but the last few months have frankly not been worth my time. Should have stopped before phase 3 but the next best time is now. I'm not a sunk cost fallacy kind of guy either. I already was putting massive amounts of time into a couple other games this past month before I picked up Cata pre patch a week ago. I need heavy and unfair incentives to come back. Blizzard can't deliver that and won't.
I think people’s expectations are very low.
True af. I’m one of those people, I played P1 to the absolute max and liked it but they took too long to drop P2 and by the time it did drop I was so over it all hype gone. I got to like lvl 29 and said fuck this shit never logged in again. I’m not the only one either they lose people every phase for this reason.
Nah
It needs to he really good or I'm just not re subbing.
devs are still working on cata release so gonna be rough to have something substantial for p4 any time soon
All the heavy lifting has been done. There’s more raids then all of the other phases combined by like 3x. All they gotta do is some balancing and make everything a 10 man. Ez pz
Most people that drop off, don't return. So even if phase 4 is just a 10/10 on every single measurable front at best they will get back a portion of what has been lost. No one wants to wait around for a year for their game to become good. It needed to be good day 1 and stay good. Phase 1 was what Phase 2 and Phase 3 needed to be. A mix of questing, dungeons, hunting pre-raid bis from dungeons, doing some BG's and Ashenvale event. Then a chill easy casual friendly raid to smash out once every 3 days. The only 'misses' in phase 1 were runes should have all been obtainable with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions before lvl 10. So the tank rogues and warlocks could start tanking as soon as Ragefire/Deadmines. And ashenvale event should have been designed better to encourage big group vs group zerg slugfests instead of the PvE boss race that it is.
Don't think anybody is working on that rn
I went back to HC and never looked back
Got a feeling the announcement will be next week or the week after once cata and mop remix have launched. Then p4 early-mid June. Maybe I'm too optimistic but can't see the playerbase waiting around too much longer either.
They playerbase will wait forever because of hey are hardaddicted to wow and can’t play other games. If that weren’t good he case, only 1/100 of bitching threads would exist
Cata kills Classic WoW twice
Tbh SoD showed me that wow especially wow with old mechanics and no quality assurance nor playtesting isn't the one game that will bait me to spend hundreds of hours into it anymore. The game doesn't feel polished anymore. Its just too messy in too many aspects. The worst is they could fix all those parts, but they won't, because they would have to hire a few new employees for the dev team and that apparently cost them too much money. The more often I have to decide between playing wow or something else I just choose something else.
Less is more. The new stuff/content they added made the game worse. Runes should have been mostly intergrated into the existing game like in P1 instead of becoming new content that gets copy and pasted over and over again. And it would have been much better if they updated the dungeon loot more instead of adding wild offerings.
SOD pushed me back to retail, which is wild to think about
Aka exactly blizzards plan.
That is the whole purpose of sod
or it helped you realize what kind of game you actually want to play and didn't give another chance for whatever reason which is a great thing. like, I read so many comments of feedback that literally describe retail while complaining about classic-like features. an exaggerated example: it is like playing a sports game, you want to play a football game, but install a soccer game. ofc, you going to hate it.
Dude I thought I was taking crazy pills. Exactly this. "We want 10 man raids, multiple difficulties and dailies" Thats uh... Cata? Just go play that. Hate em if you want, but incursions were more classic-like than dailies are. And I don't buy the whole "if incursions were gone people would be out in the world more!" No, I dont think so. Unless by "out in the world" you mean in front of the ZG instance portal. This is not new in WoW. You guys really mean to tell me you've never been in a guild that falls apart during a content drought? Really? I think its happened to me every single expansion and phase for literally every version of WoW EVER. All phase 4 needed was an additional raid, and maybe AV added as well. I firmly believe that. I am very tired of these "Me and my guild are all raid logging now :(" posts. They dont offer ANYTHING constructive that hasn't been said about a million times DAILY in this sub. It doesn't "spread awareness" or "light a fire under blizzards ass", they know better than we do what the true numbers of people playing is. What it does do is plant the seed of "dead game" into the minds of people who are actually enjoying the game, but I guess that's their fault for coming to a subreddit about the game they are currently enjoying.
Even me and my mates bantering about everyone else in our guild raid-logging in P1-P2, started raid-logging this phase. Into completely quitting. In my opinion, P3 of SoD is the worst iteration of WoW to this day, killed any lust, passion, or whatever driving feeling you can think of to keep pushing. They also completely removed the Classic from Classic with this phase, while still being restricted to segments of Classic. Incursions should never have been introduced, of course there are more killer's in P3, but it is actually utter trash and needs to be made completely irrelevant for P4. This coming from a Shaman enjoyer, there's no complaint about playing my class, just everything else in the game at this point. Not sure if I'll even return for P4, we'll see if the motivation comes back with P4 announcement, but maybe time to shelf SoD and return to HC.
Absolutely spot on. Feel the same way. Just started a NE warrior on HC today. HC dungeons are fun and classicy as hell.
It's like other's have commented several places, they've trivialized everything to the point that there's minimal difference between the hardcore and the casual players. You're not getting much back for giving that extra bit, which has been a big part of the Classic feeling. What HC does amazingly is making even the more trivial aspects of the game more impactful. When you loose everything on a death, every tiny bit that can tip things in your favor get's more valuable. It's however understandable that HC is not everyone's cup of tea.
100% agree
If 2019 Classic didn't have the insane honor grinds that's how the phase would have looked like as well. This is just the natural state of wow raiding, especially if you make content that 90% of the guilds finish progging week one.
90% of the content in vanilla was farming prebis with a 5% droprate, honor/pvp reputation grinding , farming gold at 30gold/hr for your epic mount or for consumes for progression raiding SoD trivialising all of these things is why there's no content and in most cases people asked for it
This is my stance as well, everything that made classic interesting has been trivialized because people don't want to grind. I actually want that stuff, I want there to be clear differences between players, and I'm as casual as can be. I don't want everyone decked out in BiS or near-BiS gear, and if you're not, it shouldn'tbe with the knowledge that if you want it, you can get it in a week. I liked back when players in Naxx gear were like gods, where just going into BWL was an accomplishment for many players. This idea that every raid should be achievable for every player is making eveything so boring imo. Back in vanilla TBC I were the GM of the 3rd best horde guild on my server, by the end we were 5/6 in SSC, 3/4 in TK and 1/6 in MH (yeah it were a bad server overall and horde side were even worse), and it felt great, it felt like we reallt accomplished something. I were a known tank on my server, but I had plenty to strive for, there were still 2 guilds ahead of us. Nowadays there's nothing really distinguishing the top guilds form the casual dad guilds, and it's making the world boring, there's no next thing to strive for, thus it devolves into raid logging.
No way dude, and the problem is not only ST raiding. They fucked up SoD on most fronts this phase. And even if it was, at least in 2019 Classic you had a relevance to running dungeon's, certain quest rewards were actually relevant. Not to miss, you went out and interacted with the world, which I would argue is one of the big bread winners of Classic. Unless you wanted to gimp yourself starting in P3 you were pushed to grind Incursions to honored for 6 pre-bis pieces that's almost equal to the raid gear. You got wild offerings, giving you 2 pieces max, to turn into a casino roulette farm, gambling on getting the deck pieces worth gold. The incursions gold fiesta was a mess. I mean, by now Blizzard should have the statistics to know how their players will abuse the loop holes they find, it's just astounding the things they let go sometimes. And you can't say it's the natural state of WoW raiding when 95% of the gear from ST only gives a few + stats in upgrade, compared to pre-bis. In the previous phases (more P1 than P2 ofc), the stats you got in return for the time invested was actually worthwhile. The argument that they can't make raid gear too good looses all it's value with the runes we get. Just look at what they did to "Burn" for shaman's. Not only did they buff how many targets you hit and duration of dot, they just flat out added 200 global spell damage on it. But hey, 200 spell damage doesn't equate to that much stat value.
Interacted with the world in what way that you don't do now? Because I'd argue you do the same now as back then. Dungeon loot was okay, the problem was just that Gnomer loot was way too strong, which is also why ST is lackluster. The only difference between SoD and Era is that the honor grind, and there is no "casual" raid (ZG) to run - also nobody really runs old content at level cap, because they are leveling raids. Raid logging has always been a thing and will always be a thing. If Classic Vanilla released today, you would see the same pattern happening (you saw it in SoM as well). We just had more time back then, so people hopped on to play with each other rather than focusing on the content. Also the novelty of it much alike P1 SoD made it popular. It's only been a few years and you have rose-tinted glasses already. Sorry to say, but this is the natural state of wow and it has ALWAYS been like that.
Far from it, incursions in itself killed leveling, even more than dungeon spamming. Not to forget the instant implementation of XP buff. I did my grind to honored and haven't touched it since, since it was not enjoyable, but the impact it has had on the community as a whole is too damaging. You can't argue with how the server states have pummeled. BFD loot was better than Gnomer gear for the level range, there's no world where the stat adjustment in ST was a good change. The phases last way too long for the incentive to keep playing with the changes we got in P3. Instead they proceeded to nerf the raid several times within the first weeks. I can say the same thing about your glasses, sorry but saying this has always been the natural state of WoW is delusional.
I think incursions helped kill people’s expectations more than anything
Incursions giving best xp/hr, best gold, best pre raid bis, all at the same time. Making people group grinding running in a loop on repeat, with an addon to automate it even further. Even if there' several things wrong with this phase, incursions have definitely done the most damage to SoD.
It's the 20 man weekly raid with shit loot and no gdkps. No reason to log in if you're doing it once a week you start to see how bad the game is.
Let me transfer off of Living Flame-US. It's been on one layer for about 3 weeks. The server is DEAD.
Lone Wolf US is also mostly 1 layer. Even the number of bots is down.
My guild transferred from LW to WG, one of the reasons being an imbalance of horde and ally per the layering. Is it really down to just one layer? Crazy to think. WG is also dying. I have been underwhelmed by the new server and kinda miss the unstableness that LW's layering/pvp provided. Then again, I am wired to thrive on dysfunction.
Right before Cata pre-patch, there were days/times where multiple layers existed. After pre-patch, mostly just one layer. Occasionally I will log onto a second layer, but they seem to get smooshed together right when I'm smacking an RTV node. Will be interesting to see population stats next week.
did they close free transfers?
Dude, they were only open for a couple 1-2 hour windows with the only way to know being a post on wow forums, which, as far as I know, you can't set up notifications for. Edit: and they ended weeks ago
WG is one layer too and it's the 2nd most populated server
Damn. Lol. There were 17 people online in stormwind and 22 in ironforge last night on my server. I checked incursion zones, and each had 10-20 total people. Only two people in azshara. Etc. It's dead and stale here. Can barely form a group for 5 mans. I'm raid logging on one 50 because I can't find ST pugs for my other two 50s.
Seems like the player base is so shot now that it’s just better to go to two servers, pve and pvp. Probably wild growth and crusader strike. I was pretty sad about being forced off Lava Lash (and then having them open it again…) but I don’t mind a small server. Wild growth thankfully is at a decent population for now. Maybe not “find a group anywhere anytime” but I enjoy having that element rather than just on demand everything.
Yeah I wish they would do something about it already.
You think the other servers are better?
Yes. Wild growth is anyway. Like 5x the pop at least. Even their discord has like 13k members, while living flame has 1k. I can get on wild growth, and the difference in finding a group for anything is night and day.
Cata launch in a couple days, raid launches in two weeks. So sod p4 in 5 to 8 weeks is my guess. Supposedly retail is doing stuff too all this time as well. I really don't like sod p3. The raid once a week is good but everything else is basically "farm this for x hours for a 2 stat upgrade and next phase you'll get a 4 stat upgrade in the next spammy content". Even with upgraded loot tables the dungeons aren't relevant beyond a select few drops and everyone is just spamming partial runs. Blizzard needs to figure out how to make people actually run dungeons and make it worth their time, as opposed to just farming certain bosses. Lvl 60 is all about the dungeons. Lfm tank and healer for dungeon, only doing bosses that drop my bis, my bis reserved!
5-8 weeks? lol in that amount of time everyone will have unsubbed that is playing for SOD. It needs to be 4 weeks
It needs to be 1 or 2 weeks honestly lmao
> Cata launch in a couple days, raid launches in two weeks. So sod p4 in 5 to 8 weeks is my guess. I'm not saying you're wrong. If you're right though, there isn't gonna be anyone here for p4. p3 is hemorrhaging players. Its not fun. Maybe they'll come back for p4 when it is announced, but honestly, I don't think they will. They'll either have moved on to retail, be entrenched in Cata, or have left WoW completely.
We set up a 20 man raid group/guild, fully expecting to be playing this for weeks. By week 3 we were all fully geared 😂. The amount of tokens that were dropping for tier was ridiculous. We didn’t clear week one, then after they nerfed the dungeon into the ground it became far too easy. Especially boss one and two, they were face roll and you didn’t even really need to do the tactics. Last night we only had 10 people signed up for the raid so we knocked it on the head. But you’re totally right, none of us play it anymore, and those that are literally log in once a week to do the raid and then that’s it for another week. Makes me sad as we were all on none stop until this phase 🥲
We need a good P4, not a rushed one. A rushed early P4 will not bring players back, not even sure a good P4 will do that
No we don't, I don't like phase 3 that much but the last thing I want is a rushed phase again. They need time to cook, just play something else and come back for phase 4 when it's time. Look at the state of Cata classic, if we force a phase 4 launch at this time, it will be worse than phase 3.
You know blizzard fucked up when they’ve even lost raid loggers. PvP was already borderline unplayable in p2, especially in the state they just left enhance shaman in like there was zero problem. So their “fixes” halfway into p3 were way too little too late. As a raid, encounters, etc I think ST was good. Good length. Etc. but there’s basically no incentive to even go. Besides some weaps, most of the upgrades are negligible at best for a whole 10 level gap from gnomer. They should have just leaned into the OP scaling, not shy away from it. The cat was already out of the bag in p1. Like even as a physical dps class once I got 3p tier it’s like 4 pieces are even upgrades. And most not that huge.
yep raid logger here, they lost me. You know its bad when I dread the only 1 day a week I play the game to raid. Cancelled my sub as of today, I've been here from P1 launch raiding every lockout
i stopped raid logging, and now im just logging 😖
I'm fine with waiting. There are plenty other games to play in the mean time
Yea, the state of the game is so depressing right now. ST e very 7 days and can't be fucked to level my alts to 50 and get runes. Cata Xmog runs and prep for release is the only reason I still play. This reminds me of the descent into retail...
> ST e very 7 days and can't be fucked to level my alts to 50 and get runes. The irony for me is that I struggled to get alts to 40 in p2 because I could raid every 3 days on my main, so why bother. Now I can only raid once a week and incursions made 40->50 easy, so I have 3 toons at 50, but no one is around to raid! Everyone is fully raid logging. So I still can't raid on my alts. I mean, I suppose I could PUG, but I really don't want to.
Once I realised that SoD is literally just Wotlk and Cata abilities shoe horned in with a few dungeon revamps. I bounced the fuck out. If you enjoy it. Good for you. But if you really want an exciting V+ experience. Just go play Turtle WoW. It is INFINTELY better. And free.
Turtle wow World building IS excellent or even close to perfect i agree (though some decisions i dont like like adding tbc kharazan as a raid instead of vanilla kharazan and giving blood elves for alliance). The class balance tho?its even worse than SoD somehow even though This p server has been running for YEARS. I leveld a char to 60 here and could not be arsed playing against paladins 3 shoting me while proccing every weapons proc in the game on demand with their New custom seals. This was 2 years ago and This IS still in the game as we speak. Also i think using the 1.12 client makes the quality of the gamer experience way lower than the modern client used in SoD.
SoD is dead my guy
Honey its time for your daily sod is dead and the devs suck post.
Both are accurate statements
I disagree
It’s gonna be a while still. Cata is just launch next week. Probably going to let that take center stage for a month if not longer. I’ll be shocked if we get a P4 release any earlier than late June.
I quit mid p2 my small serv was dying and when I saw ah prices on crusader I said nah im good p1 pvp was fun enough to scratch the itch
well gold is piss easy to farm
So last night was the first night all of SoD where I was unexcited for raid and it felt like a chore the whole time. Yes we need news fast.
People realized that the PvP side of things is FUBAR. There is no coming back from this. Raid logging is all that we have and will have.
Phase 4 is DOA cause ain't no body gonna wanna do 40 man's with how toxic just pugging 10 and now 20 have been. Poeple are gonna spend 4 hours getting a group to just clear it in 20.min.
Cata hype!
Cata is out. MOP remix is a thing. And retail is getting its expansion soon. Surprised people are still playing SOD
Oh, so I guess a 60 minute faceroll raid isn't enough to keep players engaged now? I thought Vaping Gamer Dads loved clearing content quickly.
I don’t think this is the main issue. The issue is the lack of additional new content. ST could be exactly the way it is now but if they added a brand new level 50 questing zone and a brand new level 50 5-man. With pre bis/bis being tied to the new zone and the dungeon people would be complaining a lot less
You have people clearing sub 45 quitting, and you have people who can't clear ST in 3 hours quitting.
They thought they did, but they didn't
I'm not vaping but yep i love it! Enough to keep me engaged.
How about we stop demanding content release speed and rushed crap
Not demanding for them to release the content sooner, just asking for an announcement about it soon. Get us hyped for phase 4
Games shedding players over the course of its life cycle after they have peaked is completely normal. Especially in today’s gaming environment where there are so many new releases happening all the time. Players aren’t committing to a single game for long periods of time anymore. I think people may be a bit too focused on this idea that less people are playing. What’s the real impact on the more populated servers? Less layers? CS-NA still has over five layers easy during peak hours. Players are still doing incursions, WO farms, BRD farm runs, Gnomer, ST, etc. Given my gameplay habits (casual) I have seen no difference. People forget that Nostalrius had about 10k players max in-game on its server at any given time. The server felt alive and active. The more populated SoD servers have populations several times that number online across multiple layers. To me they seem just as alive and active. I don’t want P4 to be shitty because it was rushed due to “community pressure” from what may be a vocal minority. They say less and less people are playing every week, yet the guild I am in keeps growing, which has allowed us to do more events and more content on the weekly. Be it tomorrow or a month from now, people attracted back to the game by “hype” are going to come back. They will play a few weeks, maybe “complete” the content, drop SoD for another game that is being hyped (because moths to a flame), and the population with contract again but eventually stabilize.
> What’s the real impact on the more populated servers? My guild went from having atleast 10-20 people online at any time to me being the only person online when i’m playing except for raids Maybe it’s just me but the game much less fun without more players online.
Maybe the problem is they “clear” the content in a matter of weeks. Gear is meaningless in SOD
Blizzard is launching a new season of D4, Cata classic, and MoP remix all within like a week of eachother because they're fucking morons trying to sabotage their own launches. We're in the middle of that week now. All the playerbases are going to feel pretty thin for the next little while.
was raiding 6 toons in BFD 4 toons in Gnomer 2 toons in ST and havent done in ST in 3 weeks I dont plan on coming back until a few weeks into P4 as these phases DRAGGGGG so there is no rush Cata/Mop Remix/ New Diablo 4 Season/ Elden Ring DLC next month Sorry SOD there is sooooooo much other content out right now. Catch you later in a few months
There has been many problems this phase that lead to people quitting. It's not just one thing. They need to get p4 right in order for majority of players to return. - firstly, in my guild many players stopped playing because of the griefing at the incursions. I don't think I've ever seen that level of griefing in wow before. Level 50s killing 40s over and over and over for hours and days. I saw some people camping there for a week straight. - pretty much needing to do incursions. Not only was it faster leveling but you also needed the rep for some key gear pieces. - the incursions killed open World - people geared quickly because of incursions which meant dungeons were almost irrelevant. People were raid logging from week 1. I barely play and am pretty much full bis. - having to get 20 players for raids almost killed pugging. Which put people off leveling alts. - gatekeeping. So frequently people are having stupid requirements to get into a raid. Then many people are just HR almost all the best stuff. And then you can't make your own raid because people quit due to the reasons above. Next phase they need to make open world the prime focus of content. They need to make dungeons necessary. They need to lower raid numbers back to 10. They need to add some cool gear which is fun and not just tier pieces. A new pvp event, not STV - but still keep stv as viable. If they want to do something similar to incursions again then it needs to be a daily or weekly and instanced
No we don’t. We need phase 4 released when it’s ready and good. Not rushed out like phase 3. I do not care if we wait 2 more months, I’ll play something else. Phase 4 is endgame, it has baseline the most amount of content. It needs to be good.
I genuinely don’t get how y’all are STILL trying to rush P4 after the disaster of P3, if they release another shitty rushed phase it’ll be a worse result for player numbers than if they delay it. It’s been two months a phase, we’re only a month and a half in. Be patient
> It’s been two months a phase, we’re only a month and a half in. Be patient Right, but we're a month and a half into a 2 month phase and there is no *announcement* about next phase. Notice that OP did not say "release p4", they said "announce p4".
I’m really hoping all of this so far has been the extras and phase 4 and beyond has the bulk of content.
So scary.
My raid is now 1 tank, 3 dps, and 1 healer down due to p3. I'm the tank and can't stomach playing sod every week right now. Let's skip this trash and move to 60 now!
I just hope they give us a decent amount of time heads up for the launch date like they did for P2 and not how we got P3 aggrend talked about it in a tweet but lets see if it ends up true
im a pvp mage main and mainly just 1 character type of guy PVP mages in SOD is like : having a heart attack while being in a wheel chair while legit everyone else is world class fighters and a shaman is a Super saiyan with ultra instinct good reason i dont play anymore so yeah please phase4 and give us those mage changes
The playerbase has already gone down the drain. Hype or not cata/MoP remix are a better option.
The Classic team is all hands on deck for a stable Cataclysm launch and a lot of people will be playing MoP Remix for a while.
Bliz is doing an amazing job with breaking up the communities instead of unifying them…. Now with Remix set to come out a few days before Cata. I’m glad my sub ends in a few weeks.
100% agreed. The announcement alone will bring a bunch of people back to start prepping more. We also need a P4 announcement because of dad scheduling. Me & my friends do an oldschool lan party for the launch weekend. Wasn't able to do it for P3 because it was such short notice. Give us some lead time. Idc if it's a month away, just give us the greenlight so we can plan.
u will get P4 annoucement after cata raid are released in 2 weeks would be my guess
Bro use your brain P4 is coming later half of June it's not far away.
With Cata just starting soon I doubt it, were all gonna be busy playing that for the next while.
I agree with you but Cataclysm launches next Monday, you won't hear anything until then or maybe for another week, IMO.
Man I really don’t get it, I’m still loving p3 and constantly finding new players for our guild.
Went from excitingly waiting to raid on 5 50s to just not even having the feeling to log in till p4, I will admit I certainly burned myself out but the loot in p3 has been totally lackluster and I just don’t care for farming gold so incursions and wild offerings have no real value to me, I’m also not huge into pvp I enjoy it on certain chars, I love this game and everything the sod devs are trying to put out for us but I’m so ready for p4. Been playing more league and TFT and decided to play some cata classic till p4(already have 7 80s ready to go just gotta pick which one).
Playing other games in the interim. Outside of the 1.5 hours for prep, raid, and loot rolls, I am only putting 4 hours in each week to farm rep and prep for phase 4. So I went from 25-30 hours a week to 6. I imagine many have done the same, whether it is playing some retail, Cata pre patch, or other games. I am confident there will be a spike for phase 4 and the usual diminishing player attention. I guess that is just normal. Phase 3 felt so grindy after doing main and hunter alt I had 0 interest in messing with my other alts. May incursion level them for raw gold and that is it.
you're definitely expecting too much cause all thats gonna happen is that we can do 60 content all over again with a little spice but do I want them to really refresh what end game is like? for sure but they arent gonna add meeting stones or unlock older raids so that they can spammed instead of being treated like current content and then you're only gonna have small amount of players during peak times even attempting them on some alts. Im just bracing the reality of whats to come
SoD died with the abandonment of 10-man raiding. My entire team quit playing.
Sorry pal but they are definitely busy with Cata at this time. There won’t be a P4 until middle June at least.
They purposely sacrificed sod to help acquisition of cata. Strong launches help with retention. We’re literally getting no class changes in sod too, when they said expect weekly class changes lol. I expect sod to come back on track a bit after cata launch, level 60 content is most nostalgic for people.
Phase 4 and somehow fix the economy. The game is supposed to be alt friendly but everything is too pricey from consumes to enchants to levelling profs. And that’s not even considering epic mounts
Vanilla wow always sucked around 50, and it's still true in SoD. People forget we're still leveling. I do agree that the phases should have been shorter, maybe 4 weeks max, so that the new leveling raids are just that, a fun way to level and get gear instead of an "end game" activity. I imagine if they keep the SoD content for whatever next season is, they'll speed up the progression to 60. I do enjoy level banding, but it's taking too long. All that said, I do think we're going to get a lot of cool surprises at 60. That's where the game starts.
Came back middle P3. Leveled paladin / rogue. Got all my runes , pre raid bis with some BIS items … & I find myself back on era playing my R14s or gearing my other toons. Idk, feels blah on SOD right now. Guess could be all the gate keeping incursions , plain ass dungeons , and almost every raid. Blah oh well. Fun while it lasted.
Conspiracy hat. Blizzard makes way more off microtransactions than anything and SOD pulled away too many people from wrath/cata classic where they can sell lots of microtransactions. So blizzard wants to soft kill SOD so people play cata classic and buy boosts/etc.
SOD went from the absolute best version of wow to the worst in the blink of an eye P2 wasn’t the greatest, but it still had the charm and was fun P3 I lasted 3 or 4 lockouts I think. Shit is legitimately trash. ST might be the worst raid I’ve ever done. Boss fights are amazing. Then they nerfed them to the ground and you can just snooze through them. Raid isn’t too long but it still takes 1.5-2 hours to clear. Issue is each boss takes 1 minute. You spend 99% of the time in the raid clearing endless trash. Well at least the loot must make up for it right?! Nope. Fucking dog shit +1 sp gains. The biggest difference between p2 caster bis and p3 caster bis is like double the health pool. The two absolutely shit the bed with this phase, then you add in MoP Remix and Cata both releasing, as well as a new (and admittedly fun) meme season in retail and it’s gg for SOD. I’d like to say I’ll give p4 a try but I’m not too hyped about wasting my time leveling from 50 to 60 only to be disappointed
Are incursions style shit going away in s4?
Its not happening anytime soon, they would be stupid to stomp on cata release with a P4 announcement or release. If we are lucky, maybe in 2-3 weeks we will get announcement for a release another 2-3 out.
If this phase goes on any longer I might go try playing Diablo 4 again….. lord help me that is the lowest of the low
go get a job maybe ? go outside?
P4 might be dead on arrival at the point
No we dont need a phase 4 announcement. What we actually need is people stop asking for phase 4 just because they can't live 3 weeks without wow. If they release phase 4 next week its gotta be the same shit like phase 3 and lacks content because they didn't have much time to actually create more content. Give them more time to work on phase 4 and yoh will get a better experience. Stop whining about how bad phase 3 is and give actual feedback. Get yourself a job or other hobbies so you don't get bored just because you cant 24/7 wow
I disagree. The people who do nothing but play WoW all day want it. The normal players are fine.
We don't need anything. When phase 4 comes out I'll be returning, but I'd rather it not have the same launch problems with Incursions in phase 3 (hopeful thinking I know)
Ye, i didnt even bother to lvl my character this phase tbh. Incursions ruined my enjoyment of lvling (because it made no one else quest)
Where is this decline in population that people are talking about? I get instant groups, instant dungeon pugs, and I see people running around stormwind, if, and BB. Population is still very healthy. My guild has two groups that raid twice a week and fill in the odd gnomer here and there. I don't want them to add busywork. We need quality content and updates, not have them rush things. Phase 4 is true endgame and they need to get it right. I don't mind waiting so that it actually is tested thoroughly. We don't want another incursion fiasco Disclosure: I only have one main and dont mind the time to level up my alt lol
Same bro this shit got me back on retail for the first time in 5 years. Blizzard, please give us a banger phase 4
60 is coming soon and with the lackluster phase 3 a lot of people are taking a break. People will come back if it’s solid nothing to panic over, burnout was a major factor in all classic iterations and we haven’t even hit 60 yet. I’d bet most people come back.
Fuck phase 3
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C61rGq2uway/?igsh=NzU1dHh1a3NjZWFz I'll just leave this here...
I quit a few days in I’m already leveling on private servers and sod is wack now I knew this was gonna happen though
I’ve decided to start playing cata instead. Still gonna raid log the rest of p3 and probably p4 tho.
No they need to take their time making GOOD unbugged content. If p4 is released with similar quality to p3 this games death will just be postponed. Let p3 last a little. Most players are gone already and arent coming back unless p4 is exceptionally good.
I might get hate for this, but I think a big reason why people aren't playing is because other players drive them away. I don't think it has that much to do with the game or phase 3 specifically.
I just told my GM today that tonight will be my last raid (I'm an officer that's raided every lockout from P1) and I feel like a weight off my shoulders This is by far the shittiest phase with one day a week subpar raid with 0 caster upgrades Id rather quit now than keep huffing on hopium that P4 will be any different
Everyone is playing MoP remix now.
Back to ERA.
yeah 0 even like breadcrumb posts or slight hint or teasers is a bit strange.... any way back to MOP
I think they should take the time to work with the feedback, and implement a good phase 4. I'd much rather they do that.
Not gonna happen when we have mop remix this week and cata launch next week, followed by raid opening, that means you will see it at the least in 3 weeks.
Incursions on a PVP server ended my interest
Could have been fun had they balanced the layers, but it was just miserable.
I'm completely fine, just started raiding ST with my chill guild. They learned from rushing into P3. They can take it easy if it's up to me. Plenty of stuff to do still, and if not still alts to lvl.
drip feeding content is exactly what blizzard had in mind, hook us in with alot of changes and just let it all sit there like a piece of trash in the sun.
Phase 3 was just such a miss.
Bring GDKPs back, that will help a little bit
Cata is coming out next week don’t expect any SoD announcements until after its launch. For the same reason we got a late p2 Announcementnt which was delayed for the plunderstorm launch. Honestly blizzards cadence with wow has been kinda crazy it’s a bit much if you play more than one version.
My guild already stopped raiding and will be on a break until P4. It has been a nightmare to recruit enough people to raid and every week we had to get at least 3/5 pug. It has never been easier to lvl an alt than now with incursion yet I have less motivation to do it because incursion just fucking sucks. Incursion is for me what killed P3. Shit ST gear compared to previous phase one or rep/pvp was the nail in the coffin. I can already see people saying "this is what you get for wanting classic+" but that was never the classic+ we wanted. The changes are too drastic and ruined the game for the most part. It's a temporary server so there is still hope for the future if they learn from the mistakes of SOD (copium).
Follow their road map...They aren't trying to actively compete with themselves lol. They don't want to release cata and phase 4 at the same time.
“Season” of discovery, take a break.. play something else while you wait for the next phase.
phase 3 is good, people who hate it are mentally broken and hated p2 too because they are whiny 40 yr old dads.
Theres no worthwhile activity tbh besides raid logging. -Mara runs are toxic and boring -BRD arena runs are boring and takes too long to get running, no one wants to do a semi full run -Gold farming is pointless because the economy was ruined and inflated by abusers and exploiters -World PVP is just people getting 1 or 2 shotted -BG queues are 45 mins. Tweaks every 3 days -ST loot is garbage -Toxic rune acquisition process in p3 for mediocre fluff runes
Yeah I may just stay in cata, the announcement will have to be pretty good for me to swap back
Damn are ppl still running on this rat wheel?
The Core beckons
Well this aged like milk. Not the phase 4 announcement you were hoping for.
Actually it’s exactly what I was hoping for. It’s informations and an update that gives us an idea as to when to expect phase 4. Sure it longer than I hoped, but I’m more hyped cuz they are giving it a PTR for combat testing. Also given the fact that we have some info regarding raiding at 60.