Honestly, the current situation is already clearly showing there might not be enough resources for Blizzard to really hot-fix things as needed for SoD. Microsoft will probably be pushing hard to focus on the healthy parts of their game portfolio and SoD as a slightly updated Classic might not really be the focus point.
The class tuning sort of never happened and if we count other issues such as bots, I have some doubts about the future. Simply put I think we will be given SoD seasons as planned but with no maintenance in terms of class tuning, hotfixes, etc.
I’ll give them a chance with Phase 2, if they don’t care, then that’s the last two months of prepaid time I’ve ever purchased.
if people are happy with a low effort cash-cow version of classic+
because for them its just a sandbox on top of retail, than people like me will move on with their life and spend their money elsewhere .
whatever is left can enjoy the game they deserve
I subscribed solely for SOD. I have no interest in Leech King, and I am not at all interested in retail. In SOD, I got what I wanted and the kind of classic gameplay I’ve always desired. I enjoy experiments, even if they “break” the game. I also couldn’t care less about the future of SOD. If it gets shut down, I’ll simply stop paying for the subscription. It’s all fleeting, and I’m just enjoying what’s available now.
From an economic standpoint SoD is quite the success. You have a small team for a part of WoW, that keeps a couple 100.000 Players playing.
In terms of hotfixes: SoD Phase 1 at the moment is at a spot, where alot of content phases have difficulties with - the last days before the next release. New runes and new abilities for lvl 40 will change everything. A hotfix to balance anything now might tune a class too strong or too weak for 40.
If there are class changes I expect them earliest 2 weeks after the first raid clears, so the developers have time to analyze the situation. Obviously if something is broken, they’ll react immediately. They did so in Phase 1. We had weekly hotfixes (for classtuning) in December.
SoD has if anything been a smashing success. A lot of publicity, generally well-received, about half a million logged characters currently. Given the modest resources required to make this happen, SoD has definitely been a worthwhile investment. And let’s be honest, phase 1 was always going to be the least interesting part of SoD.
It did though, perhaps not to the extent one might want, but it did happen. A fair question is how much class tuning is worth doing over the course a phase. Now we’re a week away from the next phase, would there be much point in tuning anything when classes will get new runes and default abilities which in turn will need to be tweaked? At some point it just makes more sense to focus on the next phase than to perfect the current one, and I would hope that’s what they’ve been doing.
Every iteration of WoW has bots, always have, always will. Yet the game soldiers on and people stay subbed.
Hotfix/tuning did happen, SoD has been nothing but successful so far and bots were and will always be part of wow, no matter what iteration you are looking at.
Sure, frequent fixes are welcome…
… but in reality, for me there have been only a few. It has been difficult to tank for two specific classes - warriors and hunters. So I assume they are overly powerful.
I don’t take this season concept too seriously. I imagine competitive players want certain PvP or PvE experiences, but given how easy content appears to be (except for BFD, given group ads it’s Mythic Raiding quality, so I don’t even try), it’s more of a fun journey together to 60 with some updated class designs and overtuned abilities to make everything a little easier. On top of everyone getting pretty buff at each level threshold.
People have been asking for Classic+ and fresh, both have limited life spans.
This Classic+ approach is also a great test towards how people level when the content feels easier, plus new abilities. After all, the most trivial Classic+ is opening the entire retail world, scaled to 60 or 10-60. Which kinda requires these new abilities, too. (Classic pally tank is questionable and BC started at 60, and of course we have the WLK iteration. Same about other stuff like druid with Wild Growth, etc.)
yea. if things arent clearly tuned for pve dps or serious changes done to hunters, i wount be playing much into p2. there are more fun games to waste time on, than being a buffbot in endgame doing melee dps as a ranged class. cba
Yeah I’ve leveled up every other class to 25 for funsies besides Pala and Rogue and unless the runes get an overhaul along with some really good new runes I’m just gonna swap class. Always mained a Hunter but the current kit we got is godawful and needs an extreme rework and if they didn’t tune it in phase 1 and won’t overhaul it in the beginning of phase 2 why would I ever expect them to tune it later?
SoD is not the beta of anything at all, this season was designed to make a lot of money at a low cost. A rune system done in a hurry, a dungeon reworked into a raid, a basic PVE event in Ashenval, a few job recipes and that’s it. I’m pretty sure they started working on SoD just a few days before the official announcement, probably shortly after receiving the green light from management once the business plan was approved…
Seriously, take stock of what SoD offers compared to vanilla WoW. Few classes have any real gameplay evolution, no desire to modify Vanilla in depth, no modifications to the talent trees, nothing new like cosmetic or new races (ogre? High elves? Others?), in short nothing to the height of what Blizzard could have done 20 years after the release of WoW.
We discover nothing, except the decline of Blizzard.
I think hunters can expect to be quite strong at 40. The talents both in the marksman and the beast mastery tree push their damage alot. I assume that the rune nerfs also accounted for that. Imagine the prior focus regeneration from the run in addition to the talent in beast mastery.
Then my question(s) is why give us bad runes that won’t be useful until we hit 40? Why not make phase 1 go to 40 right away? Why not make Explosive Shot and Serpent Spread and Lone Wolf lvl 26-40 runes and replace them with runes that would be useful for early game instead?
because they dont play hunter at blizzard. itemization seems to be strength & agi on mail with intel now. great for shammys, retris and melee hunters. ranged hunters, the actual hunters, loose crit and RAP on endgame gear - even if a rune randomly gives us some powerful ranged attack, u know what they will do… nerf it.