Are other people feeling the same as me and quitting SOD

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Hi,

I just quickly want to address before I start that I understand people play games at different paces, this is just my take on how I feel about SOD P2 right now, and why am am quitting (until p3 launches)

I’ve been playing this game for about 12 years (Since cata launched) and I have had great memories throughout - the SOD launch was up there as one of the best. However the main issue im having now is its purely a raidlog patch, just like WOTLK/TBC/CLASSIC. There isnt any real Classic + Experience.

Outside of getting runes etc which doesnt take too long, the questlines for the epics (Helm/Boots) also dont take too long - Ashenvale and STV (Which most agree are not a great experience) and the new raids which are just way too easy - there is nothing else to do in the game.

Im all for a classic experience, I much prefer classic to retail, however this is just too easy and its now boring. When pugs are able to just clear an entire raid in 1 reset, it ruins the need for a grind as you can just clear the raid and get full bis within a few resets.

When I imagined classic +, I didnt see raidlogging in my vision. Sure raiding is a fundamental part of the game, and ofcourse it should be a source of some BIS items etc, but all P2 is, is a reskin of P1 and im worried this is how its just going to be every patch.

Im hoping Blizzard can experiment more, have something to really grind that is fun and meaningful. Make the PVP zone actually have an infinite reward system, so the more you play, the more reward you get. Doesn’t have to be massive buffs or anything, im thinking more like at the start or legion where you could run M+ consistantly for a small ammount of artifact power, and the grind was huge and kept you busy. This game takes little to no time to get you to full power, and its not fun once you hit max.

I know the main argument will be to level and alt, but not all of us want to do that, some of us including me want to play a main and have a reason to play our main only every day. At the moment there is no reason for me to log in at all. I have full bis, I didnt rush it, I am a healer main. My first raid I got almost half my BIS items. Im not an elitest, I play maybe 4 hours a week.

For those saying there shouldn’t be a grind, then I just flat out disagree with you. MMO’s SHOULD be a grind. Look at OSRS and how successful it still is. This is a game for blizzard to discover what works and what doesn’t. And by just releasing the same type of patch each time, you wont discover anything. Change it up next patch, and I mean REALLY change it up. Try REALLY new things. Dont make it so 95% of your BIS comes from a raid.

Thats just my take on this, would be interested to see if people agree with what I am saying or if im just the odd one out here!

Edit 14/04/2024 (Responding to you guys!)

Looking at some of the replies I want to address some comments made with my opinion

So regarding the grind - some people mentioned WSG and AB rep grinding. Which would be completely awesome if there was a reward, but there just isnt. Why not have a legendary PVP weapon or something for hitting exalted? Its not a balanced game as everyone agrees, so why not have a REAL reason to hit exalted. At the moment there is no reward from exalted that beats the gear from Gnomer.

Another thing I saw was about this being a “second game” that people play, and it shouldn’t be the main game. Which I really dont agree with. This has the potential to be a main game for sure, it just needs a few bits added in to make it happen. Look at STV, most players dont bother with it anymore because after maybe 3/4 runs, you had all the coins for the items and have no need of going there (Outside of the mount). Why is this? Why not have it so every 50 silver coins you can upgrade your ring by a small margain, and do this multiple times? Just a thought?

The last thing is a comment about playing alts is part of the game, which I can see why you would think that, but I and many others simply dont want to level more characters up. I know the only class I want to play is priest, and I just wish there was more to do.

Why not add Mythic + maybe? Or a legendary questline, and by that I mean legendary?

I understand the team is small, but if you want to keep a real community I believe these things will help

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2

I think a lot of others feel the same way or at least, similar to you.

P2 has been incredibly lacklustre for me personally and I feel the Devs missed the boat on a whole host of things they could’ve done differently and improved upon. They missed a huge opportunity to tweak dungeon rewards and loot for the lead up to 40 but again, were probably lumbered with time-constraints.

They are, however, a small team as we’re told so they’ll be restricted to what they can and can’t do within the timescales they have, that’s just the reality of it.

I’ll keep playing of course because I’m enjoying PvP and raiding but I do hope P3 is a little sooner than the P1 > P2 was.

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I am playing like 3-4 different games.

I don’t need this one to take up more time than it already does.

It’s fun and fine where it is.

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OSRS’s grinds are insane, Imagine doing a 30 minute raid 2000 times and not getting the bow to drop (chambers of xerics). On the other hand you never run out of bossing content in OSRS whereas in SoD you only get a 30-40min raid twice a week then jump around in Org for hours with the rest of the playerbase.

But yeah I’m losing interest this phase, Gnomeregan was way too easy I didnt even bother to run it this reset as I only need one or two items.

PvP has been a mess which has killed horde queue times, P1 I had more fun even with all the premades. There was also a fun duelling community at the TB battlemasters which is not possible in Org.

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I woudn’t call “full bis” if you still have items from BFD, but anyway. Healer gear is easy to get cuz he is quite common and it needs set tokens. But saying you get full bis after few runs can be true only for lucky minority.

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SOD is a huge playground. If you are the type of player who needs to chase a carrot that someone sets for you or he doesn’t have fun, SOD is not clearly for you. There are so many things to do, so I cannot decide what to do first, and I haven’t even stepped in gnomer yet.
I can’t imagine playing a game like SOD only for raiding and gearing.

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7

Things to do without reason.

Things that actually have a reason:

Warsong / Arathi exalted - check
Almost BiS Gear - check
Professions on max level (primary and secondary ones; including fishing) - check
All quests in all areas (almost) done - check
World top 20 logs - check

Only thing left for me is rank 5 in pvp.

8

Whilst I’m not quitting, I am considering unsubbing until phase 3. Before someone says “get a life and go touch grass”, I’ve only been level 40 for a week, so I certainly took my time and don’t “no life” it.

The main problem in my opinion is that SoD doesn’t know what it wants to be. Whilst Blizzard never claimed it was Classic +, if was hinted that this was something of a test for Classic + and that’s what many people expected. For others it’s an experimental server where they get to play a new version of their class and mess around whilst playing other versions of the game like retail or wotlk.

When they announced SoD, a lot of people called it 'Classic -" and we’re upset. Most of these folks were classic players who realistically just wanted Classic +, many of them didn’t try it. For those of us who did, it unironically is Classic -. Whilst it’s enjoyable at times, it doesn’t really do anything new. For the most part it’s the Vanilla world with staggered levelling, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However the “new” runes are 90% just spells from later expansions that are far too powerful in relation to the level at which they are granted and more often than not, have been impossible to balance or simply game breaking.

In regards to content, there is again very little that’s actually been done here. The P1 rune quest lines were interesting, In phase 2 less so. Things like the Sleeping bag quest were nice. But there simply isn’t enough of this to fill anytime with the staggered levelling.

The Raids they have launched have been good from a mechanical POV but feel quite retail esque as opposed to classic. On the whole I don’t have much of a problem with this, but again there’s only been one per phase and their both just rehashed classic dungeons.

PvP event wise, these have been objectively bad. Ashenvale had the potential to be great but was done in the weirdest most illogical way. Not only was it not fun, but more of a lame PvE event, the servers couldn’t handle it so blizzard kept up too many layers making the world feel totally dead and boring. Completely against the spirit of vanilla. With STV, they did the same thing but thankfully reverted this change quite quickly. However, the STV event whilst better, was also done in the weirdest most illogical way. Having a boss that patrols and gives more coins is great and adds flavour, but this should have been a 1v1 free for all or simply an ever present “event” in which the boss patrols around adding a sense of danger, perhaps with a hidden loot table for future phases. Any honourable kills made in STV should just have awarded coins directly into the inventory that could be cashed in, promoting and enhancing the STV vanilla danger. Alternatively if they’d kept it as it, could have just made it a free for all at least.

I think if you’re a classic player who enjoys classic, SoD hasn’t really delivered so far. It’s fun in its own right but it’s not classic, it’s set in the classic world sure but it’s more “retail lite”.

For those who came from retail or wotlk (realistically, not a classic expansion but the earliest retail one), the raids are probably good fun and a nice addition to the other servers. You can see this from how people compete with their logs and “parses”. But this also causes friction in the community. If you’re a retail meta gamer, you are only really concerned with min maxxing and raid performance. The rest of the game is irrelevant, which goes against the vanilla experience. It also means that when classic players want to try the new raids and content, they often can’t even get a group without showing their “log”. Speaking for myself, I. 20 years of playing this game I’ve never logged a raid or even had a DPS meter installed since 2014. I have no inclination to do so so if rather just skip the content altogether than deal with that gatekeeping nonsense and I’m sure many players feel the same.

I honestly think blizzard just needs to commit to SoD being a “downtime” fun server for retail players and just focus on the raids and silly abilities or take it a bit more seriously as a sort of beta for classic +.

Had they launched SoD with fresh abilities that were well thought out and fit classic and it’s progression that would be one thing. But more importantly having new quests implemented all over the world in each phase for players to complete, with new storylines and experiences would have kept players entertained for longer. One raid in P1 and 2 would have been fine too, had the PvP events been better planned and more logical and if they had also perhaps added some new dungeons for players to complete in each phase and perhaps a new battleground or two, some new honour rewards for lower levels etc and implemented minor QoL changes.

Sadly I think that is just out of scope for what blizzard can manage

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9

I don’t know what you are doing, but I am playing a game. So there is only one reason to do anything and that is fun. If it is fun, I will do it; if not, I will do something else. I played thousands of AB games in my life, but I never considered that I would do it for other reasons than enjoying PVP; doing it only for something like reputation, etc. seems crazy in my eyes.

You clearly spend a lot of time doing things that have a reason. So now you can finally play the game (after you will do that rank 5, of course).

Without a joke, you wrote it like it would be nothing, but it seems like hundreds of hours of content if you want to do something like that.

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And what’s the actual audience it tries to receive.

The players that also played Vanilla 2005 and Classic 2019 or just players that have the same attributes/habits (freetime for the game etc.) as the players had back in 2005?
Or is it just filler content for retail players?

Ofc. The team is way too small to have a lot of new questlines that are actually interesting etc.
They are trying to minimize the effort to get the maximum out of it.

I think the mechanics of the bosses offer more gameplay variations to the player than “taunt after 25 seconds…then taunt back when the Offtank gets debuff X…” which imho is great.
I like bringing retail Boss mechanics into Classic because the original design lacks of variations in boss gameplay.

But yeah…only 1 raid and no new dungeons etc. is just not enough to keep people playing this game in their freetime outside of the one 40 minute ID every 3 days.

As i once said: If there would be challenging content there would be no need for parsing…it would be enough if we have players that are able to beat the challenge and those that are not. But Classic and SoD are so easy…there is no challenge at all.

Maybe because nothing feels relevant.
I dunno how others feel but I get no joy fishing for hours…farming roleplay gear…pets…reputation for factions that have nothing as reward.

I want to discover new areas, new zones, beat new monsters and loot new items. But SoD (even Classic) has no real long-term content.
The zones are 20 years old.
The quests are 20 years old
The dungeons are 20 years old.

So yeah no wonder why the only new thing, the 40 min 3 day lockout raid, is not enough to make the players play the game all the time or be happy in it.

Give us a new Dungeon…50 levels deep…a level boss on each level. Every level in scale as big as elwynn forest…increasing difficulty of enemies per level you go deeper…make a dungeon that is a whole “World of Warcraft Vanilla” in it’s own…let people discover old ruins in it or forgotten rituals etc.

And when they have done that…they should do 10 more dungeons like this. But that’s even more than Blizzard does for whole expansions for retail…so i guess it’s off the table.

That’s an issue of the “Instance ID” system. When people face the risk to only beat 5/6 bosses in an ID they won’t be able to complete the raid in a second try within this ID if the group disbands…no one will join a “endboss only” ID. That’s why a lot of people simply want to make sure to have players in their team that are experienced enough to make the raid a safe clear run.

Loot ID would help here. Or a new system with rewards for good players to help others out that haven’t killed all bosses even if the good player has already done the raid this week.
Like: You are a good player. You already killed all bosses and cannot receive any more loot…but here is a group that lost 4 players and the remaining 6 players need help to finish the raid…if ou help them you get 5 gold and a “Mentors Bag” which can contain random greens, blues and even epics.

And I like to have a challenge. The only challenge in WoW SoD is to get a higher rank in the top parse rankings. There is NOTHING challenging in the game besides that.
Neither challenging in terms of “time consuming”, like ultra big dungeons where you can explore for 12 hours before you even get to an end…nor challenging in terms of difficulty.

WoW Classic and SoD feels not like a world. All it offers is a (compared to most modern single player games) small stage (the so called “world”) that’s filled with monotone repetitive tasks that are all non brainers and just time consuming…but even that time consuming aspect is not a real challenge because you can stop and go on whenever you go.
The only thing that keeps me playing is the warmth of the graphics style and nostalgia I have for the game. And Logs ofc…the only challenge in existence in this game.

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Not defending Blizzard, but in reality im sure the Dev team on SoD is very good. But if they had a proper budget and more developers ? Im sure p2 would have been a lot more thicc with content.

As it stands, im expecting less and less as the Season drags on, since they have less time to work on stuff. Case in point, they tried to fix Ashenvale many times, never got there, but they did not give up. In comparison STV which is A LOT more flawed is getting noticeably less fixes and work on it post release.

Kind of screams p3 is behind schedule. Also why some classes are getting the “Experimental” treatment, and others (Like mine, Feral) is a lazy mans copy paste of Wotlk. There are others going thru the same thing.

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Can’t do SoD as your main game. I think blizzard expects you to play this on the side and play retail or wotlk/cata as your main.

Me personally I play other games. SoD is fun when I don’t play it every day. But when I was playing it daily as my main game it was horrendous.

SoD has 0 balance. The team is small. There is hardly any content at all. The one single raid is way too easy. PvP is massively unbalanced. If you play this 8+ hours every single day you will go insane.

But if you play it for an hour or two every few days, it’s very fun

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I agree. Then imagine players like me who think STV is t*** and Gnom boring or others not even getting in raid because of the insane gatekeeping? But actually had a lot of fun in p1.

Currently replaying FF7 remake, going rebirth after. While waiting for either PVP balance pass (which was due last week imo) or p3.

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Pardon! All pugs cant clear whole raid in 1h, you probably had some luck there. I was in some demonic runs 2h and yet no kill on last boss.

Stv is cringe mage fiesta, killing on altar even before u get to turn blood. I dont like it Ashenvale at least had some sense this dont lol

Is not even problem that they take long it is more fact that some of them as alchemy have useless option. Like having prepot which is bop and you cant sell or send to alt. And almost no one with main have alchemy , while enchanter can benefit from enchanting to sell.

Community is toxic, half of classes ruined… If I was not in great guild i would probably quit sod long time ago. Since overall experience is just bad.

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I agree a lot with what you describe! feel the same! has paused until later phases possibly until phase 4. I would like to see more Elite quests added to the game, 5man and make them maybe a little more strategy/challange behind them. Possibly new caves opening up and also redoing the caves that are in the game.

The problem in SoD I think is that we become so limited how to play wow vanilla? Wow vanilla is level 1-60! end gaming is at level 60!! I understand what blizzard is trying to achieve but does it require a lot more content to play when you reach level 40 or 50? it’s not enough with things that are over 20 years old. 1 new raid 10man and pvp event that is good in 1-2 weeks? but not for 2-3 month!

Very simpel tips blizzard! Add Heroic option to Dungons! make it harder for us who want challange!! =)

It would be very fun to challenge myself! come home from work and play RFC on heroic mode at level 14 and try to kill the elites or bosses =)…

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You are clearly grinding classic for way too much time. I suggest you go play a game that requires endless grinds to have fun. I know its a meme to say this at this point but retail offers way more grinds for you to accomplish.

I for one love that i dont have to grind this game for 12h a day and still not behind. And i can play alts i love so much

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Other day I was in a 45 min BG que just to join an ongoing game. I dont see myself staying much more, PvP has never feelt this bad in any itteration of WoW. Its like playing Vanilla at 40 cap with people having nax gear - we knew it would be bad, but this is extreme - no counterplay - blow CD´s insta gibb someone or get blown up in 2 seconds.

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SOD main focus as i see it are Alts, level an alt and try some new play style of diffrent class.

I dont want endless grinds and farming for hours just to prepair for 45 min raid.

If you want somwthing to farm:
Farm PVP rep.
Farm gold, put a goal of your self to get 1k gold and be mount ready and grind it.
Finish Uldaman last boss.
Level all alts to 40.

A lot of us dont want mindless grind and like raid loging when the char is ready.

19

Isn’t every expansion a reskin of the previous one?

Do some killing and collecting quests to fill some xp bars and inflate your gear.
Then do some dungeons to get tier 0.
Then do some harder dungeons or the raid to get tier 1.
Then when the patch comes, catch up and jump into action for tier 2.
Same with PvP.

Either you enjoy the specific places to be, or you don’t.
That’s the content. If you enjoy Northrend, then it’s a good reskin / storyline.
(With SoD, the zones and quests aren’t new.)

About your comment about difficulty, in theory I’d agree, but pugs are struggling as is. It’s an elitist mess already.

It’s fine, but then you’re just missing out on much of the content.
SoD content is the gameplay of classes, and experiencing the raid with them.
Everything else is streamlined - retailified - to ensure that anyone with an iota of desire to raid can at least get to the door.

Big problem with the grind is, what do you want to grind?
First off, much of the player base has one hour a day to play, that is the target audience.

With that in mind, side content could be ground. Mounts, pets, what have you. Problem is, it’s all transient. The servers will go. And while I feel like SoD is more retail than classic, I’m still not sure whether players would appreciate retail client rewards. And then the whole FOMO aspect.

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This game is a big scam. They could have done so much more. Lazy developers.