WoW Classic's Season of Discovery Phase 4: A Critical Take

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery Phase 4: A Critical Take
Hey everyone,

So, the WoW Classic Development Team has finally broken their silence about the upcoming Season of Discovery Phase 4. As expected, they’ve packed their update with promises and vague assurances. But let’s be real here—there’s a lot more to criticize than to celebrate.

Phase 3 Extension: A Red Flag
First off, they’re extending Phase 3 longer than any previous phase. Translation? They’re either behind schedule or facing serious development issues. The fact that they can’t even give us a tentative release date for Phase 4 screams poor planning and mismanagement. For a game that prides itself on delivering nostalgic, polished content, this indefinite delay is a major letdown.

Divided Attention: Recipe for Mediocrity
The team claims they’re balancing work on Season of Discovery and Cataclysm Classic to avoid player burnout. Nice in theory, but what it really sounds like is they’re spread too thin. By trying to juggle both projects, they risk delivering subpar experiences in both. Instead of focusing on perfecting one expansion, they’re likely to end up with two mediocre ones. Great.

PTR Focus: A Worrying Shift
Their plan for the Phase 4 PTR focuses exclusively on combat and class testing, skipping unique content. This is a huge red flag. It suggests they’re either behind on developing the new content or unsure about its quality. The major class redesigns sound exciting until you realize they’re a desperate attempt to fix balance issues they’ve failed to address so far. Admitting that “perfect balance is not the goal” is just a cop-out.

Raid Rollout: Same Old, Same Old
Rolling out raid tiers like they did in 2019’s Classic is the epitome of playing it safe. Nostalgia is great, but rehashing old content without significant innovation is lazy. They vaguely promise “additional endgame content and surprises,” but given their track record, I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything groundbreaking.

Sunken Temple: Fixing What Shouldn’t Be Broken
Adjusting Sunken Temple gear, especially caster gear, highlights their reactive rather than proactive approach. This isn’t about improving the game; it’s about patching up their mistakes. Instead of creating a well-balanced game from the get-go, they’re relying on player feedback to fix glaring issues post-launch. That’s just sloppy development.

Conclusion: Demand Better
This update is filled with more uncertainty than clarity. The extended Phase 3, the split focus between two major projects, and the reactionary design changes all point to a team that’s struggling to keep it together. We deserve better than vague promises and indefinite delays. Blizzard needs to prioritize delivering quality content and clear communication rather than stringing us along with half-baked updates.

It’s time to demand more from the WoW Classic team. We’re not just players; we’re their loyal community, and we deserve a game that reflects that.

What do you all think? Are you as frustrated as I am with this update?

Cheers,

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Project Epoch in the horizon, what SoD should have been.

I don’t think it’s worth have a discussion anymore regarding SoD as a product. Every soul know they have failed and most likely like every other L blizzard produces p4 will be an L.

Your takes are valid, people who disagree just lives on fat hopium, that says alot of the individuals regarding their feelings to SoD haha, those that are left.

Hope… For … P4

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dude wake up. “poor planning and mismanagement.” is it for you to judge? SOD Classic is not the main asset that Blizzard devotes absolutely all its resources to. This is the third server restart created for amateurs. Even so, did they not do what they said? no one ever promised new content: raids, dungeons.
3 months instead of 2 months and no specific date? What a tragedy. Can’t you understand that there is more work to be done than in phase 1, 2, 3? There will be a change in the balance of level 60 dungeons and several raids and the addition of runes.

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I agree with you on on the poor planing and mismanagement though I reckon they should have 2 separate teams for cata and SoD rather than the same. Now I’m actually happy they decided to take their time in delivering a more polished P4 rather than a rushed one that would have buried SoD for good.

Absolutely agree with you here.

Given the the PvP state of SoD of the past few month it’s clear a strong balancing needs to take place. I think they want to involve players into that balancing (mainly because they can’t do it themselves) BUT they don’t want to spoil the unique content on PTR. They still want everyone to discover those new content at the same time.
Launching a new game version without without PTR was bold, all the more so by a small team having to deal with SoD AND Cata.
Overall I’m glad they decided to go with a PTR to make P4 more balanced.

I’d say wait and see here. They promised new content in between raids so there will be novelty. I’d be happy with a more balanced pvp and the classic content. New content is icing on the cake (unless it’s an incursion-type of new content…)

Once again it’s a small team. If they are reactive enough from the PTR they’ll provide we can hope for a decent P4.

I agree with you here. P3 has been very disappointing to the point I took a break from the game for the past few weeks. and I know I won’t be as forgiving when P4 launches. Either it’s good enough to get me playing or it’s not and I won’t give them the benefice of the doubt for several weeks, I’ll just play something else.

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we appreciate your critical thinking. please follow us in to this dark alley to talk more about it.

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If the end product is a mess then as the customer, yes, it is for us him to judge.

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prove it? where is the bad quality? where are the broken promises? there is only what you imagined

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If I look at incursions I would appreciate if they just stick to old content for P4 and nerf gold gain from incursions by again 90%.

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No. As a customer I dont care what problems company have with delivering their product. They shouldnt put it out there in the begining if they couldnt finish it. Or at least they could adress problems and be in touch with playerbase.

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If you’re incapable of seeing the massive amount of flaws that SoD has suffered from since the beginning then it doesn’t matter what I say because nothing I say will ever snap you out of whatever lala land you’re living in.

This post proves you’re a troll.
/ignored

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I think the developers just now realized that they added so much good raid loot, that they are faced with updating practically all vanilla lvl 60 items.

Unless they buff all dungeon and quest loot, most players will already be pre raid bis when they hit 60.

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The case seems to be the other way around, they know how the 60 loot is going to look like and saw there is little reason for some specs to farm ST if they have Gnomeregan or PvP gear. They then decided to do the ST loot update. ST loot should have been like this from the start.

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My guy, have you ever played WoW before? This is how it’s been for the past 20 years.

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dude stop spreading misinformation.
Aggrend himself literally promised exactly that; new content including new raids. go watch the blizzcon announcement of SOD (and the various panels on it since then) where you will hear those exact words come out of his mouth, before you decide to share your ignorance with everyone else.

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the problem they have created for themselves is that ST loot is now stronger than most of the lvl 60 loot you can obtain in dungeons and from the pvp vendors, thus in order for us to gain more power through gear they need to update the lvl 60 gear to make it worth our while, otherwise everyone will skip all the lvl 60 dungeon content and head straight into MC - where the only viable upgrades can be found.

this is commonly known as “powercreep” and it will end up being a perpetual problem because they didn’t curb this problem when they had the chance, which imo would have been in phase 2 or phase 3…

at first the unimpressive loot from ST led me to believe this was the phase they decided to curb the powercreep by introducing mostly side-grade quality gear among very few actual upgrades… however, now they decided to go back on their decision and basically reintroduce the powercreep by “rebuffing” the gear in ST back to high values.

if you go check the defilers vendor, you’ll quickly realize that even the lvl 60 exalted epic shoulders are actually weaker than what we’ve got right now, and that’s just one example out of many.

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Yes, the gear available now is on par with early lvl 60 gear or in some cases it is better. They probably thought of doing exactly what you suggested above but in the process of re-balancing the lvl 60 gear they decided there was enough room to make ST loot more relevant.

I don’t expect lvl 60 dungeon gear to be that relevant, even if they rework it. One big hope(cope) of mine was that we would have had at lvl 60 a phase(it could have been short even, 2 months max) where dungeon gear and the blue PvP set were the top gear.

In that environment maybe people would have crafted items like Arcanite Reaper/Champion, Frosguard, Heartseeker and farmed items like Felstriker, Ironfoe and the like.

It’s clear now that the lvl 60 blues will never happen, too bad.

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Announcement =/= promise

Especially true when it comes to Blizz. There has been many cases before where announced featured / content was never released / got squished. Path of the Titan, Ogre stuff of WoD, flying pvp in WotLK, dance studio etc.

My hard take: they were cautious / vague when they said new content for SoD. Karazhan crypt etc is not happening with SoD having lost most of its playerbase and having mostly bad buzz.

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bs.
this is shill fanboy talk.
if you don’t intend to do something, don’t announce that you’re going to do it.
people didn’t buy this excuse years ago when they tried to pass it off, and people aren’t buying it now.

put up or shut up, basically. (i hope you realize this is directed at blizzard and not you personally)

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New raids? and they immediately said that this was Blackfathom Deeps, thereby making it clear that these would be redone old dungeons, and not created new ones.

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Schizo. Weren’t you the one who was indignant at Blizzard because they were doing everything wrong? and now it turns out they did something right, but now they decided to change it and you are indignant again. Because of whiners like you, they will never listen to requests from the forum.

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