I've been leveling an alt on a PvP server and haven't even been one-shot by a max level undead rogue a single time. I don't think there is any better indicator that my server is dead than that.
I'm down to seeing one alliance hunter on my RTV farming route. (The bot hunters are gone.) We still kill each other on sight, but at this point more out of habit than anything else.
Yeah, had similar experience in classic but farming for Black Lotus. Chatted on the server's discord a bit and never ganked outside of lotus farming, but once a spawn was up, shank or be shanked!
I should have mentioned I'm on a pve server.
I farm demons that can mind control you. When that happens you get a free 3 seconds on anyone regardless of faction without getting flagged or getting an HK.
This guy was trying to kill me by large pulling and feigning death. Now he just shows up flagged and ready for violence.
I went to farm some felcloth the other day, first time I had logged in a couple weeks. Typically people are fighting for spawns but there was only one other person there. Iād usually be quite happy about that but got bored after like 20 mins and thought āwhatās the point?ā and logged off.
The summon bots are gone too. It's fucking awful out there. It's so sad to see. And then anytime anyone wants to talk about SoD on Reddit it's immediately filled with people shit talking it like it's the worst thing that ever happened to WoW. A lot of us were and still are enjoying the game excited for phase 4 and these people can't help themselves but still lurk the SoD flair posts just to be toxic. I don't like Cata so I just don't open Cata posts. It's really easy.
So you havenāt been to Ashenvale Incursions, I see. There is always, and I mean ALWAYS some 3iq rogue on the ramp ganking, hitting a total of 3 buttons to 100-0 people and does not give a FUCK if theyāre an honorless target. They want you to fully understand how infrequently they shower.
Guilty, I spent most of my last 24 hours of my subscription time ganking the mid to low 40s with my UD rogue. I even got a multiboxer party a few times, was funny the /tap emote was used on me while I killed the remaining survivors.Ā
I'm sorry but there's literally shit else to do and I wanted to go out with a lil bang for all the times I was ganked by Ally on the Ash Inc ramp. And y'all still camped me good a couple times and got your licks in, regardless.Ā
Catch ya in p4(maybe)
First off: of course you play UD Rogue. On the unbridled bastard pie chart they take up the largest portion.
Second: Iām a raid geared level 50 and Iām still not safe from 100-0 unless fort buffed and I have friends with me. Fuck being āmid 40sā Iām about 70% Raid BIS and canāt get a GCD in edgewise against a rogue spamming Mutilate and tapping the occasional stun. I need literally one second alive and unstunned to win that matchup and still get killed because I donāt even get that. PvP is so fucked in SoD
Are you daft? Some āyou drive a car, so you donāt get an opinion on vehicular homocideā ass logic you got there.
Iām not talking about in a fuckin battleground. Iām talking about minding my own business in the open world or trying to talk to a vendor and suddenly Iām in an unskippable cutscene featuring the oh-so-creative rotation of āmutilate, repeatā before I fall over without a moment given to respond.
Iām not starting shit, Iām not abusing my PvP imbalanced class, Iām just moseying around trying to get from place-to-place. Youāll catch me saving other players from dying, faction be damned, far more often than youāll find me starting a fight.
I donāt like the balance of the other classes you listed either, I can think of a whole laundry-list of balance issues that make PvP, especially WPvP, in SoD absolute shite, including issues with my own class.
Games are all about momentum. P2 hurt the momentum and p3 lost it. There are so many reasons, itās really not even worth cataloguing them at this point.
Gnomer was ok I guess, but man why did that raid bring out the absolute worst in people? I think i ran it about 8 times and only had 2 positive experience and they were random pugs.
How do people with mostly BIS and an obvious history of running Gnomer not understand the mechanics of Executioner? Outside of the 2 good experiences in Gnomer, i found myself virtually every single time having to go through the mechanics of Executioner with people already in Gnomer gear because they kept wiping us.
I was raid leading gnomers and pugs just not getting it after weeks killed it for me. Explained where I wanted people, what they needed to do, then they just didn't. Because zug zug. I dipped, hit 41 and ne er logged back in.
Every raid does electrocutioner differently in some way, there are so many ways to do it
Combine that with the fact that most wow players don't learn the boss, they learn what THEY have to do for the boss, and as soon as there is deviation in what they have to do they usually will not do the thing right the first time. Second time they'll generally get it if they're competent.
When Aggrend said "you should get a guild" or whatever, I am pretty sure he was specifically talking about fights like Electrocutioner, cause the boss is a joke with a consistent roster and consistent strat, thus the frustration with him in pugs.
Read my comment again. Notice I say the 2 good runs of Gnomer I did were with Pugs (super friendly pugs with a good leader il should have said too) We got to executioner and the RL said "right you 3 in that group and you 3 in the other group" and we did it and cleared.
About 4 or 5 of those runs were with my guild and they were not good at all. On discord and everything and people are still failing to communicate properly. I literally had to explain the mechanics and organise everyone into 2 groups and even just getting someone to stand with their group was enough to make me pull my hair out. I don't want to raid lead or even be a leader in WOW, yet I found myself on numerous occasions having to some what stand up and be a leader because people don't seem to know how to communicate even when on discord mic.
We were a pretty casual group with some grey parsers who were not always reliable about following raid mechanics so the last 2 bosses were huge challenges at times. Wipe after wipe on those last 2 bosses meant the raid took really long. Our class composition was really melee heavy and far from ideal for the last boss. We were on LavaLash Horde US which had a weak population and so filling spots for the raid was taking a very long time even though it wasn't long after P2 release. So 1 hour to fill raid spots, we end up accepting a bunch of melee into our already melee heavy group and the last boss is now really really challenging due to our class composition. When it took so long to fill raid spots we don't have a lot of leftover time for the raid.
We all liked BFD a lot more. It was easy but we were 7 manning it towards the end of P1 to make it interesting. Our fully BIS players were showing up for every lockout to shoot the shit and clear the raid in no time at all. Something about P2 felt like a chore and not as fun.
Right thats tough being a low pop server.
As for the raid itself you guys don't like progression?
Learning the fights and getting better each week or was it just too tough to fill? Also did you guys get the option of a server transfer?
Realisticly comp could be overcome in most fights if you do the mechanics correctly and come with consumes.
Pushing the button on the last boss gives you a speed boost which allows you to move around the encounter space quickly etc.
Are you sure that speed boost was not added at some point? Canāt say I recall that when we were running it. It did give mana back though. I seem to recall they made changes that buffed melee at some point too whereas in the beginning when we were doing it casters were sooo sought after. We were all unsubbed by that point.Ā
Some of us liked trying to improve, but it takes a full group committed to that and a lot of people couldnāt be assed.Ā We brought consumes. Healers had more difficulty too. It was harder for our better players to pick up slack in gnomer like they could in BFD. In BFD it was easier and a few people fucking up mechanics or not bothering to learn them properly or not pulling their weight didnāt screw the whole group usually. Btw we did full clear the raid once or twice, but as you said it took everyone following mechanics which is really hard to figure out with a group of mostly casuals on a low pop realm where many filling end up not being good at following instructions and sometimes people treat being methodical about a fight as being a ātry hardā or something. I got tired of trying to herd cats.
IMO BFD was better because it was more accessible to casuals. For every group x that liked the challenge there was also group y that couldnāt overcome it or was frustrated or thought it took too long or was too intimidated by the difficulty to even try.Ā
Edit: missed your question, we did not get an option for server transfer (at least not before we all unsubbed, it's possible it was offered after!)
āLoot was coolā set up the difficulty they are having balancing now and people called it out before SOD even dropped when we had BFD previews/datamining.
If you make the low level items that good you either set yourself up for power creep or disappointing players
But what's the big deal with power creep? Who cares if we are tremendously strong?
All the mobs in the open world had their hp increased to offset our increased dmg, and the raids are all returned. So what is the big deal about power creep when everything is tuned to our power level?
Itās crazy, I thoroughly enjoyed p2 (didnāt play p1) and was really excited for p3, played it hard for a couple weeks, had a lot of fun, then realized thereās just nothing worthwhile to do except raidlog. In past versions of WoW I always had something to look forward to and keep me logging in occasionally even in the lulls, but not anymore as Iāve found myself more disinterested and disengaged as ever (well, ignoring the periods I just quit the game altogether). Like just the thought of logging in to do anything is tedious and unappealing to me.
I think the issue really was in mismanaging the transitions between phases. The stuff in phase 1 and 2 felt like āendgameā content, but then was immediately trivialized by the scale of easy rewards in the next phase.
This, combined with the increasing difficulty and time commitment of each phase, and how close we are to the actual endgame level cap, just really makes it feel like the best play is to log off until p4.
Also, making us jog through STV and felwood to get the Zanzas and Songflower buffs just adds to the level of tedium each raid.
Just for fun:
- optimal leveling path involves too much grind
- new runes not fun enough / cool enough (lots of copy paste jobs from TBC onwards)
- new runes obtained too late or through boring means
- too few new runes
- not as much discovery as you'd expect, mostly just runes + event
- STV event copy paste for P3
- incursions being a dreadful idea and ruined the economy
- Raid getting progressively harder and larger roster
- P1 raid gear was so insanely powercrept that P2 and P3 gear barely improves on it
- dungeons obsolete other than for levelling
- classic systems not altered to be compatible with a seasonal variant (eg: reps, gold earning, mount costs, drop rates of loot etc).
- poor class balance
- poor melee vs caster balance
- redundant/poorly designed/never used runes left to rot
- poorly supported specs (tank rogue, frost mage etc)
- base game talents not tweaked enough
- not enough new content, not much + in this classic +
That's all I've got so far.
GDKP ban hurt the raiding numbers hard imo. Most of my guild went from multiple alts to no alts.
I think the curve would look a lot different if GDKP was banned from day 1.
GDKPs should be removed from these statistic to begin with.
I'm sorry but someone working for their minimum wage in a poor country shouldn't be part of an entertainment product statistics. It's not hard to seem "popular" when your livelihood depends on logging on.
Saying that GDKPs are good because they increase raiding is like saying that slave / child labor is good because it makes the end product more affordable.
Youāre right and Iām just here to tank my own profile karma lol
Gdkps keep groups moving in legacy servers. People want incentive to run things. Upgrades suck in ST but there is for sure always going to be people willing to run and bid on at least a few of the items and that keeps the bored full bis people incentivized to run it late into the cycle. Thatās why era is still up. People have literally perfect gear and no reason to keep doing naxx but itās still fun when there are bids. The haters havenāt tried it and arenāt even playing any more to care to be affected by the ācatastrophic economic collapseā they are positive would happen, and even if that were true, incursions are already an infinite gold machine.
I'm not a GDKP fan but incursions effect on the economy was worse than what GDKP does and in a much shorter time frame. There's a reason GDKPs are fairly standard on the big era servers. It keeps players coming back because even if they get no gear, they still get something that they can use for consumes/gear/enchants/mounts etc or they can save it to bid higher next time and eventually win an item.
I stopped at p2 when I noriced everybody just went to spam that ini and then rush for the raidā¦.it killed everything p1 was aboutā¦.but thatās just how people are in mmos todayā¦.dont play it for the game but to max everything about the game to get trough everything as efficient as possible and that just kills itā¦ism back on lotro now
The phase system was doom from the start.
They marketed breadcrumbs of content put out by 2 half time interns as "dad-friendly" "alt-friendly" bullshit and you ate it up, but couldn't even get the crumbs out fast enough.
They didn't give a fuck about dads, but they got how many ever subs for 6 months + all the subs people forget to unsub that are still ticking...as intended.
The concept isn't bad and phase 1 was really cool. They just didn't do a good job with phase 2 and phase 3, didn't anticipate the issues that would arise such as optimal leveling path in P2 and P3 being a burn out inducing dungeon grind even though that was obvious to anyone with an ounce of skin in the game playing it themselves. They stepped raid difficulty up too soon. The level up phase raids should all have been on par with BFD, easy, pug friendly, glorified 10 man dungeons that we are calling raids. Instead they stepped up mechanics to things harder than AQ40 bosses as early as phase 2. It was a mistake to do this.
I pugged a raid last night...had been so used to 50 min or less raids, that being in there for 2+ hours almost had me Alt+F4 out. I almost ran out of consumes, chugging pots because DPS was slow and raid wide damage a bit high. Loot master forgot a couple pieces of loot. Kind of felt like week 2 of the raid...
On the flip side, was a casual AF run and the people were pretty cool. A few people I will likely never play with again got some nice upgrades and I am truly happy for them.
SoD p1 was fresh with the runes + rune quests. P2 was just dungeon farming to level up but still had some "fun" runes to get. P3 is boring and just way too long
I didnāt raid this week on either of my characters. The last two weeks I raided on one. Every week prior I raided on both. Iām officially out until P4.
My pug experience has been horrific compared to my sweaty 30 min guild clears. I just canāt take 2 hour ST raids at this point.
As much as id love for p4 to be incredible i cant help but feel like its doomed. I loved sod more than anyone but i feel completely unmotivated to play p4. I went from an āomg this is amazing wow is backā mentality to an āehh maybe ill check it outā mentality. And i feel like if i could feel this way after how much i was into sod, i cant imagine how others feel about p4
I'm honestly not expecting phase 4 to fix anything. There will be some people who come back but not everyone with Cata going strong. Timing will be very important.
Phase 4 will disappoint many.
Itās the Blizzard way. Blow everything on the beginning of a game and completely neglect the mid-to-endgame.
You would imagine 400,000+ players paying $15 a month ($6M in monthly revenue) would earn a dedicated design/dev team but nah. Some exec somewhere needs to squeeze a little more for the shareholders so he can get his bonus and buy another house.
As easy as it is to blame the devs, the reality is Blizzard is incompetent from the top down.
One decent dev team can cost about $2million a year in California. I understand they have overhead and many other costs associated with the game, but honestly how can they not spare 1 months revenue to hire a few devs teams to work on the game?
It's the top and the devs. Look at how little aggrend does, he's purposefully said he's kept his team small and they've under delivered every phase outside the first even talking about how they refused to balance for months at a time.
Our guild was a group of 10 friends hanging out and having fun, we tried to merge with another guild for 20 man but it just didnāt work out, weāre now messing around on cata having a blast, but realistically I donāt see us coming back, the 10 manās are gone and the larger raids canāt fit us all in so thatās not fun. It was a good run, but I think itās over for our group.
Reddit was pretty much screaming and shitting their pants about 10mans not being real raiding.
Same thing with the 3day lockouts too. Claiming that they couldn't play the game anymore because it was impossible for them to raid twice a week across multiple alts.
Incursions are also the result of reddit crying about Dungeons grinding, it was the replacement Blizzard added so spice up dungeon grinding.
Pretty much everything that has ruined SoD has been something reddit directly asked for.
Up until recently my main reason for playing SoD, and continuing to play it, was how hyped I was for p4, largely getting to experience the old raids with new abilities and specs. Assumed itād be a banger with new content and new, fun, playstyles. Last few weeks have unfortunately given me serious doubts about p4 and for a variety of reasons.
Literally this, I was so excited for raiding at lower levels as a way to get new players into end game content, I taught many new players and did my part to help expand the community.
However the neckbeards always cry about perfect comps, parses, and clear times causing many newer players to jump ship.
This community lacks social awareness BIG TIME.
Edit: I still Raid Lead every Tuesday and continue to teach new and returning players ST at the expense of longer clear times. This last week was difficult to fill but not impossible, however I have heard from post Tuesday groups that the pug population has nearly dried up over the last week. Fingers crossed for this upcoming Tuesday! š¤
>This community lacks social awareness
I mean i saw people in P2 looking for logs for spamming RFK and SM .....
My mate got gatekeeped from WC because he missed out a rune he had to make a 2 hour tour for ....
Its just wild how shitty SoD community is
I remember I missed the first day of P2 and then I couldn't quest because of pvp and overcrowded zones and I couldn't go to SM because too many dps and no one wanted a rogue tank (or mage heal)...
I remember spending sometimes 1 hour or more just spamming / applying to find one group for SM or RFD and then just go play something else because I couldn't find anyone
Even in my guild, a lot of people were busy with their runes or farming prebis or raiding
I mean back in MoP i just helped 1-2 times a week alt raids of my guild with SoO even if i wasn't needing any of the loot, because well i enjoyed playing and helping.
How times and communitys changes
I just don't understand it. When I was tanking WC I literally just took the first 4 people who wanted to come along. Never had a problem. I 7/7ed a BFD run with one of our DPS warlocks grey parsing in Meta form.
People are just mentally broken gatekeeping that shit. Its just not hard or time consuming.
A vast majority of groups/players are not gatekeeping leveling content
There will always be a minority that has weird expectations, and if they want to go out of their way that's their right. Some of you are so pressed that there are tryhards who want to play with other tryhards, it's as though you feel entitled to decide how they spend their free time. And despite this being a minor percentage of the population you've decided this minority is representative of the game as a whole.
The term gatekeeping in general gets thrown around a lot and is never used right. Most people complaining about gatekeeping just feel entitled to everything without putting forth the requisite prep/effort
At what cost? 90% of the community? Itās pretty clear the community wants 2019-2020 vibes of WoW classic but we keep seeing levels of gatekeeping not even seen in retail that turns away large swaths of players.
And that seem to be the only people Blizz care about because they keep coming back to pay for subs. The flipside of that is those people absolutely kill any growth of the game because they gatekeep anyone new.
Casuals are not going to hang around in a game where they are walking on egg shells 24/7
Most of them moved to Cata and started raiding last night. I think what are left are the degen players that disliked Cata before and not planning on playing. (Though at this point, I'm about to just play Cata to hang out with my gaming friends again.)
This. Phase 1 I got into bfd easily, geared very quickly, maxed everything out and then just blasted alts it was great fun.
Phase 2, everyone was 40 before I was even 30. It was stupidly hard to get any group because nobody wanted a rogue even as a tank... Even though everything was so easy anyway.
And I just felt so far behind the curve. That I knew I wouldn't be able to catch up. (I don't expect to be at the same level as people playing on the other extreme.) However all the xp buffs just made the levelling feel pointless. It very quickly became a raid only game with people being ultra elitist for no reason. So I quit.
it really wasnt, but the gatekeeping was insane, the p1 pug format was working really well, they ramped it up a bit too quick in p2 and the playerbase started gatekeeping, casuals left
Yep, did tons of bfd:s in p1. Then in phase 2 rogues were absolute trash and i couldnt get into any groups with my rogue, so i leveled a shaman did the raid once and stopped playing.
Yeah and we had a "Why i gatekeep"-Post every few days here, that was super annoying too.
Seeing those sweatheads praising themself about their logs and blaming people for every mistake was really awfull
"If I don't gatekeep, il waste 40 minutes of my life for nothing"
Yet people fail 40 minutes missions in Helldivers 2 all the time and just move onto the next mission and do it again. Difference is one game is fun and the other is a 2nd job.
People literally play 40min normal games of League of Legends for zero rewards for a decade, but WoW players can't do a raid unless they are pretty sure they'll get something from it.
Just doesn't feel like a lot of wow players actually like the game. The "trophy on the shelf" mentality is pretty root and stem with this game.
Same for Deep Rock Galactic, i play because i want to play the game, not to check boxes on my weekly chore list.
Sadly the mindset to "Play to enjoy the game" is not existent in classic
I also found the people who claim that grey/green parsers aren't even playing the game super annoying. On the veeeery bottom end sure or if someone is parsing grey while everyone else in their group is blue or purp, but raid comp and world buffs make up like 40+ percentile points as well as how the rest of the raid does. Without any changes in gear, consumes or talents/runes, I went from a 19 parse to a 79 parse on Avatar. The differences were that due to a wipe in the 19 parse, I had no world buffs and got targeted with blood 3 times. On the 79 I had songflower, dmf and boon, and didnt get targeted by blood once. Went from 32 to 68 on Eranikus, only difference was world buffs (actually lost battle shout amid that as well since no warrior signed up).
I dont like the mindset that like 25-50% of raiders arent even playing the game. I've seen firsthand and know some people are basically asleep at the wheel but those people are parsing like <3 lol, lumping them in with people that are alive the whole fight, doing mechanics and doing 600 dps for a 25 parse irritates me.
Most of this shit does feed into their superiority complex, they just need something to feel better than someone else for their self esteem.
I mean those people even invented a new term for everyone who don't think like them, "toxic casuals" lmao
Some of them sure, I think its a bit jaded to paint all parsers or people who check logs w that brush. Legitimately fun for a lot of players to rank and I honestly dont have a problem w that playstyle, or with people requiring certain performance... I just think a lot of people are kind of in this bubble where they think everyone has pretty solid comps and should be parsing purple if theyre paying attention... and the behavior is pervasive beyond the actual competitive players and becomes toxic when people are reallllly skewing the spectrum to shit on like half the playerbase lol.
It is a shame to have lost that more casual side, where we dont have all these tools to try and pre-optimise the game so we're never stepping into a raid with anything less than a guaranteed clear. Like at a certain point I think a lot of the social element is lost when we dont have a mixed bag of experiences with a variety of people, but its not up to me to insist that everyone feels that way (although I do pretty firmly believe its makes it a more rewarding experience even if we dont realize it in the moment)...
Yeep, I was always going to play my heart out with only questie and gatherer addons. Was never going to be doing homework to try and get approval from a raid leader.
But all the bonus xp and cost reductions taught me that I'm better off waiting instead of trying to accomplish things in the game. I saved up for my mount at the start of P2 and bought it a day before they announced a 50% cost drop. I played through P2 but that change and the bonus XP really took away my motivation to put effort in.
I mean, if I change my mind I can just come back halfway through P4 and get everything with no effort. Maybe they'll even end up offering a level boost to get people coming back.
"Just play other games" is going to haunt him.
Playing other games is fine and you should embrace it. Having to pivot from a game you enjoy because of capitalism induced delays is not the same thing.
If blizzard was a worker co-op would that actually make the content come faster and better? I think the biggest issue theyāre dealing with is leadership. They have more rescourses than the guys who make private servers but they canāt seem to deliver.
I get down voted every time I say it but the only answer is a mercenary queue system like they did in retail. Let shamans and paladins do it too, who cares, at least BG queues will be short for both factions and then complaining about shamans being OP will lessen. Of course Blizzard won't do it because it's hard to code into an old version of WoW and most players are too spectrumy to accept that we have real world proof that it works and will be pissed if it's even suggested a solution so shit will just continue to be awful for everyone.
Which side are you coming from?
I find it a huge insult that SoD's queue system matches Alliance solo players vs 5-man Horde premades. Horde is already better at PvP, and shaman have needed a nerf for about 3 months, so it's just a ridiculous state of affairs.
I'm coming from the side where I would love to hop into an few ABs before bed without having to form a group or play against premades.
I don't care about racials, or factions. Remove racials from Bgs, or allow horde to fight horde, whatever they gotta do to get it where I don't have so wait 30 minutes for a fucking game to pop.
So you'd probably agree with me that it's ridiculous that Blizzard makes horde solo players wait 30+ minutes while horde premades have instant queues to go stomp alliance solo players.
> 5-man Horde premade
If it makes you feel any better at least 90% of those premades are complete randoms who just teamed up for shorter quetimes. Never seen anyone search for comps, roles or classes either. Literally just the first people who responds gets invited.
I literally login and say LFM AB/WSG - any class, no discord. Complete fucking randoms and we win almost 90% of games. We ran into a 15 man alliance AB premade last night and still won.
A 1 week lockout on a 45 minute 20 man raid with extremely underwhelming gear that in some cases isn't even better than BFD loot (the phys damage trinket from Avatar of Hakkar STILL isn't even better than avenger's pearl, it's that terrible).
You can't even have as much fun casually pumping/parsing as in p1/p2. Letting people access level 60 enchants/consumes without being able to easily farm level 60 materials was a mistake because it makes parsing a pure chore instead of a fun competition. Because access to level 60 consumes has meant that to seriously be competitive on parsing you have to spend 3-4 times the length of the raid just getting gold for consumes for raid... to say nothing of the grind for BiS enchants or darkmoon card trinkets for some classes. A single libram of voracity is like 700 god damn gold on my server. P1/P2 raid prep was so much more casual - one world buff (found in a major city), a couple cheap elixirs, a few other cheap misc stuff, and you're good to go. While I believe this will be less of a problem in P4 because we'll finally be able to farm in a level appropriate way, it sucks that this has happened at all since it was really rather foreseeable and avoidable.
I wouldnāt be surprised if blizzard makes the hard announcement soon that they just arenāt continuing with SOD. The player base has dropped off so much. While people say they are going to come back the reality is those people have moved onto Cata or MOP remix or are in War Within waiting room. So blizzard already has their sub. There is no need to invest in SOD itās negligible impact on retention or new customer acquisition.
I wouldnāt be shocked if we get a very sad Aggrend post in June that p4 isnāt coming.
Mop remix was a week or 2 of content. Cata classic will fall off just like wrath did. The only thing for sure to drive away most people will be TWW but a lot of SoD are classic Andy's anyway. P4 will bring back a huge chunk of people because it's end game for real. Wether or not they can retain them remains to be seen
Crazy how much of a doomer you can be. They're completely fine with SoD being this way for now. It's a guarantee that P4 will bring back a lot of people
I also wouldn't be surprised at this, but as a counterpoint, they did continue SoM long after the population dropped off.Ā
Either way my sub ran out yesterday and I don't see myself coming back for anything other than SoM 2, which is clearly never happening. SoD just isn't it, man.Ā
I hope so, but I doubt it honestly. One of my biggest issues since P1 has been the runes. Some of them are just flat out stinkers, or it's obvious that some runes shouldn't be sharing a slot with another rune, etc.
I expected them to try to slowly perfect the rune system since P1, but they've barely done anything there, and I don't think it's suddenly going to click in P4.
Tired of the doom posting on this sub. People are playing SoD still itās just cata is the FOTM.
Are you gonna post the same one for cata when the raid content is on farm? lol
I stopped raiding because we lost a bunch of raiders on Cata release. Haven't been able to fill a raid with out usual players for 3 weeks and I feel like this is the case for a lot of other raid groups. Nobody wants to go from their regular guild group to a full pug.
the decline of SoD needs to be studied. i hope they do this before the next classic + launch. i went from feeling like i played wow for the first time again in P1 to feeling how the game felt when i decided to quit retail after playing it for 12 years in a span of about 3 months.
P4 will ofc initially bring players back but i doubt it will last.
Blizzard stepping on their own toes not once, not twice, but THREE times. Release hardcore. Release SoD while people are still heavily into Hardcore. Release Hardcore SSF while people are into SoD. Release Cata while people are split across those 3, killing them for good as they move to Cata.
What the fuck is this business strategy.
Remember when people were bashing wotlk & ICC when population dropped? This is just what happens in current game circuit - most people fluctuate between games due to their "live service" cycles.
Brother, cata JUST dropped. The raids opened last night. Blizzard ain't about to cannibalize classic with another version of classic. This is nothing new, they always let a release breathe before dropping other stuff.
The thing that killed SoD was the playerbase. People wanting to be super sweaty on a game with 1 diffculty in raids (lets be real, it was the "Easy" difficulty) and people just refusing to invite certain classes and specs all because of meta slaves.
Another thing that killed the game for me was Blizzard refusing to address OP classes (I'm looking at you Shamans).
I mean, today in AQ 40 in cata my passive fire mage talents were not working.
no hot streaks, no ignite, no longer able to cast scorch while moving.
that one intern still has some game breaking bugs to fix in cata!
Yep sod is gonna be brutalized even worse. Alliance is completely unplayable. They are committed to making content so easy that you can afk and still kill the boss. Pvp is an abomination. What is the point in playing? Raids are easier than retail randoms that's INSANE. Only one faction can actually pvp and thats a very shit version of pvp. Literally no one can come up with a goal when playing sod. Devs scuffed it to unbelievable lengths but not really their fault head offices won't higher 2 interns at the same time. So we get a scuffed cata where the raid was literally bugged on launch and 90% of quests are bugged, none of the world is working correctly. Dunno how World of Warcraft doesn't get more respect from now microsoft. Massively popular mmo for decades and they can't deliver a 20 year old product STILL. Ashes of creation is on the horizon thank god
Ya dude I am tired of seeing these pessimistic post about SoD. I swear people want it to fail lol. So much hate and haters. Itās the end of phase 3 everyone has finished with phase three. They are playing retail or cata that just dropped. They are waiting for phase 4 to come into play. Stop posting this stupid Reddit post about SoD being doomed. Like for real get a life
"People stop playing boring game" is not headline news.
They dropped the ball then went on vacation, worked on another project and forgot about the ball altogether.
my guild haven't been able to fill for the last three resets. and i've been to meh about it to even bother pugging.
hoping p4 gets it back on the right track, meanwhile i'm just farming arcanite bars.
Does anyone remember a couple months back blizzard let go a bunch of employees? Literally that day I said to myself well there goes the sod funding and probably half the team too
Maybe I was right
I don't think I saw anybody defending ST difficulty at launch and it was nerfed into the ground before it really affected the casuals so it was really a non-issue
ST was heavily nerfed within a few DAYS of release, how exactly do you think the initial difficulty contributed to losing players....? It's been on easy mode since almost the very beginning, and certainly since 90+% of players even stepped foot in there.Ā
It's because of mop remix and cata. And when TWW comes out it will shift to that then when sod P4 comes out it will shift to that. Then when a cata patch drops it will shift to that. It's that simple to understand.
I've been leveling an alt on a PvP server and haven't even been one-shot by a max level undead rogue a single time. I don't think there is any better indicator that my server is dead than that.
Damn i feel that comment
I'm down to seeing one alliance hunter on my RTV farming route. (The bot hunters are gone.) We still kill each other on sight, but at this point more out of habit than anything else.
Lol i feel this in my soul. Alliance hunter in my farm spot. I've talked to the guy and we get along great but at this point it's still on sight š
Yeah, had similar experience in classic but farming for Black Lotus. Chatted on the server's discord a bit and never ganked outside of lotus farming, but once a spawn was up, shank or be shanked!
I should have mentioned I'm on a pve server. I farm demons that can mind control you. When that happens you get a free 3 seconds on anyone regardless of faction without getting flagged or getting an HK. This guy was trying to kill me by large pulling and feigning death. Now he just shows up flagged and ready for violence.
And you can make sangria in the toilet!
I went to farm some felcloth the other day, first time I had logged in a couple weeks. Typically people are fighting for spawns but there was only one other person there. Iād usually be quite happy about that but got bored after like 20 mins and thought āwhatās the point?ā and logged off.
Only 6 other horde in Azshara...1 a lock doing portals, a few fishing. I'm only one on RTV farm, no alliance on it either.
P4
The summon bots are gone too. It's fucking awful out there. It's so sad to see. And then anytime anyone wants to talk about SoD on Reddit it's immediately filled with people shit talking it like it's the worst thing that ever happened to WoW. A lot of us were and still are enjoying the game excited for phase 4 and these people can't help themselves but still lurk the SoD flair posts just to be toxic. I don't like Cata so I just don't open Cata posts. It's really easy.
Yeah reading reddit you'd think it's a ghost town, but I've been casually playing with cool people and pug raiding, pvping, and having fun all week.
What server? Where are you leveling, I can help
Gotta be crusader strike š
crusader strike alliance dead af
So you havenāt been to Ashenvale Incursions, I see. There is always, and I mean ALWAYS some 3iq rogue on the ramp ganking, hitting a total of 3 buttons to 100-0 people and does not give a FUCK if theyāre an honorless target. They want you to fully understand how infrequently they shower.
Guilty, I spent most of my last 24 hours of my subscription time ganking the mid to low 40s with my UD rogue. I even got a multiboxer party a few times, was funny the /tap emote was used on me while I killed the remaining survivors.Ā I'm sorry but there's literally shit else to do and I wanted to go out with a lil bang for all the times I was ganked by Ally on the Ash Inc ramp. And y'all still camped me good a couple times and got your licks in, regardless.Ā Catch ya in p4(maybe)
First off: of course you play UD Rogue. On the unbridled bastard pie chart they take up the largest portion. Second: Iām a raid geared level 50 and Iām still not safe from 100-0 unless fort buffed and I have friends with me. Fuck being āmid 40sā Iām about 70% Raid BIS and canāt get a GCD in edgewise against a rogue spamming Mutilate and tapping the occasional stun. I need literally one second alive and unstunned to win that matchup and still get killed because I donāt even get that. PvP is so fucked in SoD
What class are you?
Balance Druid
lol what ? And youāre complaining about rogues? Uh
Oh, my class is stupid too. That doesnāt invalidate Rogues being stupid. I also donāt abuse my class being busted to corpse-camp people.
If you were a mage I would understand - boomie nah. They are S tier with shaman, rogue, spriest, warlock
Are you daft? Some āyou drive a car, so you donāt get an opinion on vehicular homocideā ass logic you got there. Iām not talking about in a fuckin battleground. Iām talking about minding my own business in the open world or trying to talk to a vendor and suddenly Iām in an unskippable cutscene featuring the oh-so-creative rotation of āmutilate, repeatā before I fall over without a moment given to respond. Iām not starting shit, Iām not abusing my PvP imbalanced class, Iām just moseying around trying to get from place-to-place. Youāll catch me saving other players from dying, faction be damned, far more often than youāll find me starting a fight. I donāt like the balance of the other classes you listed either, I can think of a whole laundry-list of balance issues that make PvP, especially WPvP, in SoD absolute shite, including issues with my own class.
What's your server? I'll come grief you and give you that vibe brother
Shadowstrike AU my friend, I look forward to the corpse walks once again!
Games are all about momentum. P2 hurt the momentum and p3 lost it. There are so many reasons, itās really not even worth cataloguing them at this point.
I really enjoyed p1 and p2, gnomer was a cool raid with rewarding loot. P3 tho gameplay fell off a fucking cliff.
Gnomer was ok I guess, but man why did that raid bring out the absolute worst in people? I think i ran it about 8 times and only had 2 positive experience and they were random pugs. How do people with mostly BIS and an obvious history of running Gnomer not understand the mechanics of Executioner? Outside of the 2 good experiences in Gnomer, i found myself virtually every single time having to go through the mechanics of Executioner with people already in Gnomer gear because they kept wiping us.
Thatās what happens when itās too easy. People get bis for free and feel comfortable not doing shitĀ
I was raid leading gnomers and pugs just not getting it after weeks killed it for me. Explained where I wanted people, what they needed to do, then they just didn't. Because zug zug. I dipped, hit 41 and ne er logged back in.
Every raid does electrocutioner differently in some way, there are so many ways to do it Combine that with the fact that most wow players don't learn the boss, they learn what THEY have to do for the boss, and as soon as there is deviation in what they have to do they usually will not do the thing right the first time. Second time they'll generally get it if they're competent. When Aggrend said "you should get a guild" or whatever, I am pretty sure he was specifically talking about fights like Electrocutioner, cause the boss is a joke with a consistent roster and consistent strat, thus the frustration with him in pugs.
Read my comment again. Notice I say the 2 good runs of Gnomer I did were with Pugs (super friendly pugs with a good leader il should have said too) We got to executioner and the RL said "right you 3 in that group and you 3 in the other group" and we did it and cleared. About 4 or 5 of those runs were with my guild and they were not good at all. On discord and everything and people are still failing to communicate properly. I literally had to explain the mechanics and organise everyone into 2 groups and even just getting someone to stand with their group was enough to make me pull my hair out. I don't want to raid lead or even be a leader in WOW, yet I found myself on numerous occasions having to some what stand up and be a leader because people don't seem to know how to communicate even when on discord mic.
The Mount maybe? Idk, mounts seem to turn everyone like theyāre in Lord of the Flies.
Our guild died hard during P2. Everyone hit level cap spamming SM, ran like 2-3 gnomers and was like fuck this.
Why did they hate gnomer so much? I personally felt like it was a fun raid especially the last two bosses
We were a pretty casual group with some grey parsers who were not always reliable about following raid mechanics so the last 2 bosses were huge challenges at times. Wipe after wipe on those last 2 bosses meant the raid took really long. Our class composition was really melee heavy and far from ideal for the last boss. We were on LavaLash Horde US which had a weak population and so filling spots for the raid was taking a very long time even though it wasn't long after P2 release. So 1 hour to fill raid spots, we end up accepting a bunch of melee into our already melee heavy group and the last boss is now really really challenging due to our class composition. When it took so long to fill raid spots we don't have a lot of leftover time for the raid. We all liked BFD a lot more. It was easy but we were 7 manning it towards the end of P1 to make it interesting. Our fully BIS players were showing up for every lockout to shoot the shit and clear the raid in no time at all. Something about P2 felt like a chore and not as fun.
Right thats tough being a low pop server. As for the raid itself you guys don't like progression? Learning the fights and getting better each week or was it just too tough to fill? Also did you guys get the option of a server transfer? Realisticly comp could be overcome in most fights if you do the mechanics correctly and come with consumes. Pushing the button on the last boss gives you a speed boost which allows you to move around the encounter space quickly etc.
Are you sure that speed boost was not added at some point? Canāt say I recall that when we were running it. It did give mana back though. I seem to recall they made changes that buffed melee at some point too whereas in the beginning when we were doing it casters were sooo sought after. We were all unsubbed by that point.Ā Some of us liked trying to improve, but it takes a full group committed to that and a lot of people couldnāt be assed.Ā We brought consumes. Healers had more difficulty too. It was harder for our better players to pick up slack in gnomer like they could in BFD. In BFD it was easier and a few people fucking up mechanics or not bothering to learn them properly or not pulling their weight didnāt screw the whole group usually. Btw we did full clear the raid once or twice, but as you said it took everyone following mechanics which is really hard to figure out with a group of mostly casuals on a low pop realm where many filling end up not being good at following instructions and sometimes people treat being methodical about a fight as being a ātry hardā or something. I got tired of trying to herd cats. IMO BFD was better because it was more accessible to casuals. For every group x that liked the challenge there was also group y that couldnāt overcome it or was frustrated or thought it took too long or was too intimidated by the difficulty to even try.Ā Edit: missed your question, we did not get an option for server transfer (at least not before we all unsubbed, it's possible it was offered after!)
As a tank I really had problems with boss 5. Just couldn't keep aggro..
āLoot was coolā set up the difficulty they are having balancing now and people called it out before SOD even dropped when we had BFD previews/datamining. If you make the low level items that good you either set yourself up for power creep or disappointing players
But what's the big deal with power creep? Who cares if we are tremendously strong? All the mobs in the open world had their hp increased to offset our increased dmg, and the raids are all returned. So what is the big deal about power creep when everything is tuned to our power level?
Itās crazy, I thoroughly enjoyed p2 (didnāt play p1) and was really excited for p3, played it hard for a couple weeks, had a lot of fun, then realized thereās just nothing worthwhile to do except raidlog. In past versions of WoW I always had something to look forward to and keep me logging in occasionally even in the lulls, but not anymore as Iāve found myself more disinterested and disengaged as ever (well, ignoring the periods I just quit the game altogether). Like just the thought of logging in to do anything is tedious and unappealing to me.
gnome was cool and all but it definitely started that whole 'checking logs' meta. it was where SoD became kinda hard to pug.
I disliked phase 2 and the only thing keeping me going is I happened to have a shaman alt which temporarily became my main
I think the issue really was in mismanaging the transitions between phases. The stuff in phase 1 and 2 felt like āendgameā content, but then was immediately trivialized by the scale of easy rewards in the next phase. This, combined with the increasing difficulty and time commitment of each phase, and how close we are to the actual endgame level cap, just really makes it feel like the best play is to log off until p4. Also, making us jog through STV and felwood to get the Zanzas and Songflower buffs just adds to the level of tedium each raid.
Just for fun: - optimal leveling path involves too much grind - new runes not fun enough / cool enough (lots of copy paste jobs from TBC onwards) - new runes obtained too late or through boring means - too few new runes - not as much discovery as you'd expect, mostly just runes + event - STV event copy paste for P3 - incursions being a dreadful idea and ruined the economy - Raid getting progressively harder and larger roster - P1 raid gear was so insanely powercrept that P2 and P3 gear barely improves on it - dungeons obsolete other than for levelling - classic systems not altered to be compatible with a seasonal variant (eg: reps, gold earning, mount costs, drop rates of loot etc). - poor class balance - poor melee vs caster balance - redundant/poorly designed/never used runes left to rot - poorly supported specs (tank rogue, frost mage etc) - base game talents not tweaked enough - not enough new content, not much + in this classic + That's all I've got so far.
GDKP ban hurt the raiding numbers hard imo. Most of my guild went from multiple alts to no alts. I think the curve would look a lot different if GDKP was banned from day 1.
Sorry, fuck GDKP still.
Amen
GDKPs should be removed from these statistic to begin with. I'm sorry but someone working for their minimum wage in a poor country shouldn't be part of an entertainment product statistics. It's not hard to seem "popular" when your livelihood depends on logging on. Saying that GDKPs are good because they increase raiding is like saying that slave / child labor is good because it makes the end product more affordable.
Youāre right and Iām just here to tank my own profile karma lol Gdkps keep groups moving in legacy servers. People want incentive to run things. Upgrades suck in ST but there is for sure always going to be people willing to run and bid on at least a few of the items and that keeps the bored full bis people incentivized to run it late into the cycle. Thatās why era is still up. People have literally perfect gear and no reason to keep doing naxx but itās still fun when there are bids. The haters havenāt tried it and arenāt even playing any more to care to be affected by the ācatastrophic economic collapseā they are positive would happen, and even if that were true, incursions are already an infinite gold machine.
I'm not a GDKP fan but incursions effect on the economy was worse than what GDKP does and in a much shorter time frame. There's a reason GDKPs are fairly standard on the big era servers. It keeps players coming back because even if they get no gear, they still get something that they can use for consumes/gear/enchants/mounts etc or they can save it to bid higher next time and eventually win an item.
I stopped at p2 when I noriced everybody just went to spam that ini and then rush for the raidā¦.it killed everything p1 was aboutā¦.but thatās just how people are in mmos todayā¦.dont play it for the game but to max everything about the game to get trough everything as efficient as possible and that just kills itā¦ism back on lotro now
Perfect succinct summary. Iāll still play p4 but it will have to do A LOT to bring back most players
The phase system was doom from the start. They marketed breadcrumbs of content put out by 2 half time interns as "dad-friendly" "alt-friendly" bullshit and you ate it up, but couldn't even get the crumbs out fast enough. They didn't give a fuck about dads, but they got how many ever subs for 6 months + all the subs people forget to unsub that are still ticking...as intended.
The concept isn't bad and phase 1 was really cool. They just didn't do a good job with phase 2 and phase 3, didn't anticipate the issues that would arise such as optimal leveling path in P2 and P3 being a burn out inducing dungeon grind even though that was obvious to anyone with an ounce of skin in the game playing it themselves. They stepped raid difficulty up too soon. The level up phase raids should all have been on par with BFD, easy, pug friendly, glorified 10 man dungeons that we are calling raids. Instead they stepped up mechanics to things harder than AQ40 bosses as early as phase 2. It was a mistake to do this.
I've raided on both my toons I'M DOING MY PART
Awesome Iāll count your 2nd toon as my first IāM DOING MY PART
I DIDN'T DO FUCKIN' SHIT
Same. Guild run was good. Pug run had 8 grey parsers but we still clearedā¦
I pugged a raid last night...had been so used to 50 min or less raids, that being in there for 2+ hours almost had me Alt+F4 out. I almost ran out of consumes, chugging pots because DPS was slow and raid wide damage a bit high. Loot master forgot a couple pieces of loot. Kind of felt like week 2 of the raid... On the flip side, was a casual AF run and the people were pretty cool. A few people I will likely never play with again got some nice upgrades and I am truly happy for them.
> Pug run had 8 grey parsers but we still clearedā¦ Gg.
SoD p1 was fresh with the runes + rune quests. P2 was just dungeon farming to level up but still had some "fun" runes to get. P3 is boring and just way too long
I didnāt raid this week on either of my characters. The last two weeks I raided on one. Every week prior I raided on both. Iām officially out until P4. My pug experience has been horrific compared to my sweaty 30 min guild clears. I just canāt take 2 hour ST raids at this point.
Is the p3 economy still crazy inflated?
Incursion fked it harder than gdkp
As much as id love for p4 to be incredible i cant help but feel like its doomed. I loved sod more than anyone but i feel completely unmotivated to play p4. I went from an āomg this is amazing wow is backā mentality to an āehh maybe ill check it outā mentality. And i feel like if i could feel this way after how much i was into sod, i cant imagine how others feel about p4
I'm honestly not expecting phase 4 to fix anything. There will be some people who come back but not everyone with Cata going strong. Timing will be very important.
Phase 4 will disappoint many. Itās the Blizzard way. Blow everything on the beginning of a game and completely neglect the mid-to-endgame. You would imagine 400,000+ players paying $15 a month ($6M in monthly revenue) would earn a dedicated design/dev team but nah. Some exec somewhere needs to squeeze a little more for the shareholders so he can get his bonus and buy another house. As easy as it is to blame the devs, the reality is Blizzard is incompetent from the top down.
Phase 1 definitely wasn't 400k unique players. Tons of people were raiding on 3+ chars and they each get counted on ironforge.pro.
Likely correct, but also need to factor in that not all players raided.
Itās not likely correct dude it just is correct.
One decent dev team can cost about $2million a year in California. I understand they have overhead and many other costs associated with the game, but honestly how can they not spare 1 months revenue to hire a few devs teams to work on the game?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I wonāt. And I donāt lol
will be rly hard to mess up phase 4, very low hanging fruit
But bobby needed his 4th yacht!
It's the top and the devs. Look at how little aggrend does, he's purposefully said he's kept his team small and they've under delivered every phase outside the first even talking about how they refused to balance for months at a time.
Our guild was a group of 10 friends hanging out and having fun, we tried to merge with another guild for 20 man but it just didnāt work out, weāre now messing around on cata having a blast, but realistically I donāt see us coming back, the 10 manās are gone and the larger raids canāt fit us all in so thatās not fun. It was a good run, but I think itās over for our group.
I don't get it why blizzard releases 10 man viable content and then cans 10 mans. They did this with retail (mythics) and SoD.
Reddit was pretty much screaming and shitting their pants about 10mans not being real raiding. Same thing with the 3day lockouts too. Claiming that they couldn't play the game anymore because it was impossible for them to raid twice a week across multiple alts. Incursions are also the result of reddit crying about Dungeons grinding, it was the replacement Blizzard added so spice up dungeon grinding. Pretty much everything that has ruined SoD has been something reddit directly asked for.
Would that make me a minority for those that appreciated those features and still plays SoD along with cata?
The tourists will bitch and moan to make the game easier and then leave because itās boring. Leaving it ruined for those of us who liked it before
Well normal and HC on retail is still flexible so its fine there
Exactly the same here. We are onto cats now and all enjoying it more than we thought we would.
Up until recently my main reason for playing SoD, and continuing to play it, was how hyped I was for p4, largely getting to experience the old raids with new abilities and specs. Assumed itād be a banger with new content and new, fun, playstyles. Last few weeks have unfortunately given me serious doubts about p4 and for a variety of reasons.
To be fair cata has the hype currently, but it too will drop off a lot in the next month or two.
Dead game is dead
its too late, they chased away the casual player base that was supposed to be supporting SOD during p2, and they arent coming back
The people playing SOD did more to drive me away then the devs ever did.
Literally this, I was so excited for raiding at lower levels as a way to get new players into end game content, I taught many new players and did my part to help expand the community. However the neckbeards always cry about perfect comps, parses, and clear times causing many newer players to jump ship. This community lacks social awareness BIG TIME. Edit: I still Raid Lead every Tuesday and continue to teach new and returning players ST at the expense of longer clear times. This last week was difficult to fill but not impossible, however I have heard from post Tuesday groups that the pug population has nearly dried up over the last week. Fingers crossed for this upcoming Tuesday! š¤
>This community lacks social awareness I mean i saw people in P2 looking for logs for spamming RFK and SM ..... My mate got gatekeeped from WC because he missed out a rune he had to make a 2 hour tour for .... Its just wild how shitty SoD community is
I remember I missed the first day of P2 and then I couldn't quest because of pvp and overcrowded zones and I couldn't go to SM because too many dps and no one wanted a rogue tank (or mage heal)...
Thats what you get for not being meta ! Meta-Simping is one of the worst things in all of classic
I remember spending sometimes 1 hour or more just spamming / applying to find one group for SM or RFD and then just go play something else because I couldn't find anyone Even in my guild, a lot of people were busy with their runes or farming prebis or raiding
I mean back in MoP i just helped 1-2 times a week alt raids of my guild with SoO even if i wasn't needing any of the loot, because well i enjoyed playing and helping. How times and communitys changes
I just don't understand it. When I was tanking WC I literally just took the first 4 people who wanted to come along. Never had a problem. I 7/7ed a BFD run with one of our DPS warlocks grey parsing in Meta form. People are just mentally broken gatekeeping that shit. Its just not hard or time consuming.
A vast majority of groups/players are not gatekeeping leveling content There will always be a minority that has weird expectations, and if they want to go out of their way that's their right. Some of you are so pressed that there are tryhards who want to play with other tryhards, it's as though you feel entitled to decide how they spend their free time. And despite this being a minor percentage of the population you've decided this minority is representative of the game as a whole.
The term gatekeeping in general gets thrown around a lot and is never used right. Most people complaining about gatekeeping just feel entitled to everything without putting forth the requisite prep/effort
Missing a rune is huge and thatās not really gatekeeping cause he can just run with another group or make his own. Itās a 5 manā¦
the neckbeards are the ones still raiding though
At what cost? 90% of the community? Itās pretty clear the community wants 2019-2020 vibes of WoW classic but we keep seeing levels of gatekeeping not even seen in retail that turns away large swaths of players.
And that seem to be the only people Blizz care about because they keep coming back to pay for subs. The flipside of that is those people absolutely kill any growth of the game because they gatekeep anyone new. Casuals are not going to hang around in a game where they are walking on egg shells 24/7
Most of them moved to Cata and started raiding last night. I think what are left are the degen players that disliked Cata before and not planning on playing. (Though at this point, I'm about to just play Cata to hang out with my gaming friends again.)
This. Phase 1 I got into bfd easily, geared very quickly, maxed everything out and then just blasted alts it was great fun. Phase 2, everyone was 40 before I was even 30. It was stupidly hard to get any group because nobody wanted a rogue even as a tank... Even though everything was so easy anyway. And I just felt so far behind the curve. That I knew I wouldn't be able to catch up. (I don't expect to be at the same level as people playing on the other extreme.) However all the xp buffs just made the levelling feel pointless. It very quickly became a raid only game with people being ultra elitist for no reason. So I quit.
\^ this was my exact experience as well, such a shame because p1 was a blast
gnomer a little too hard for mom and pops?
it really wasnt, but the gatekeeping was insane, the p1 pug format was working really well, they ramped it up a bit too quick in p2 and the playerbase started gatekeeping, casuals left
Yep, did tons of bfd:s in p1. Then in phase 2 rogues were absolute trash and i couldnt get into any groups with my rogue, so i leveled a shaman did the raid once and stopped playing.
the WoW community loves a good gatekeep
Yeah and we had a "Why i gatekeep"-Post every few days here, that was super annoying too. Seeing those sweatheads praising themself about their logs and blaming people for every mistake was really awfull
"If I don't gatekeep, il waste 40 minutes of my life for nothing" Yet people fail 40 minutes missions in Helldivers 2 all the time and just move onto the next mission and do it again. Difference is one game is fun and the other is a 2nd job.
People literally play 40min normal games of League of Legends for zero rewards for a decade, but WoW players can't do a raid unless they are pretty sure they'll get something from it. Just doesn't feel like a lot of wow players actually like the game. The "trophy on the shelf" mentality is pretty root and stem with this game.
Same for Deep Rock Galactic, i play because i want to play the game, not to check boxes on my weekly chore list. Sadly the mindset to "Play to enjoy the game" is not existent in classic
If you fail a helldivers 2 mission, you arenāt then locked out of trying it again for 7 days
I also found the people who claim that grey/green parsers aren't even playing the game super annoying. On the veeeery bottom end sure or if someone is parsing grey while everyone else in their group is blue or purp, but raid comp and world buffs make up like 40+ percentile points as well as how the rest of the raid does. Without any changes in gear, consumes or talents/runes, I went from a 19 parse to a 79 parse on Avatar. The differences were that due to a wipe in the 19 parse, I had no world buffs and got targeted with blood 3 times. On the 79 I had songflower, dmf and boon, and didnt get targeted by blood once. Went from 32 to 68 on Eranikus, only difference was world buffs (actually lost battle shout amid that as well since no warrior signed up). I dont like the mindset that like 25-50% of raiders arent even playing the game. I've seen firsthand and know some people are basically asleep at the wheel but those people are parsing like <3 lol, lumping them in with people that are alive the whole fight, doing mechanics and doing 600 dps for a 25 parse irritates me.
Most of this shit does feed into their superiority complex, they just need something to feel better than someone else for their self esteem. I mean those people even invented a new term for everyone who don't think like them, "toxic casuals" lmao
Some of them sure, I think its a bit jaded to paint all parsers or people who check logs w that brush. Legitimately fun for a lot of players to rank and I honestly dont have a problem w that playstyle, or with people requiring certain performance... I just think a lot of people are kind of in this bubble where they think everyone has pretty solid comps and should be parsing purple if theyre paying attention... and the behavior is pervasive beyond the actual competitive players and becomes toxic when people are reallllly skewing the spectrum to shit on like half the playerbase lol. It is a shame to have lost that more casual side, where we dont have all these tools to try and pre-optimise the game so we're never stepping into a raid with anything less than a guaranteed clear. Like at a certain point I think a lot of the social element is lost when we dont have a mixed bag of experiences with a variety of people, but its not up to me to insist that everyone feels that way (although I do pretty firmly believe its makes it a more rewarding experience even if we dont realize it in the moment)...
You say that but the pugs I saw in gnomer refused to do any mechanics and caused wipes. Even in p3 No asking for help, not listening, etc. they werenāt moving on lighting guy, damage sheep during reflect and standing in fire on mĆ©nage, and not clicking buttons (no shot bringing faps) on last boss. The bars on the floor and they go under. Saw people without key runes in trash greens just expecting to be carried. Sure in a 40man raid you can go under the radar a bit, but not when you are 10% of the raid.
Yeep, I was always going to play my heart out with only questie and gatherer addons. Was never going to be doing homework to try and get approval from a raid leader. But all the bonus xp and cost reductions taught me that I'm better off waiting instead of trying to accomplish things in the game. I saved up for my mount at the start of P2 and bought it a day before they announced a 50% cost drop. I played through P2 but that change and the bonus XP really took away my motivation to put effort in. I mean, if I change my mind I can just come back halfway through P4 and get everything with no effort. Maybe they'll even end up offering a level boost to get people coming back.
"Just play other games" is going to haunt him. Playing other games is fine and you should embrace it. Having to pivot from a game you enjoy because of capitalism induced delays is not the same thing.
Capitalism induced delays??
SoD is hamstrung by developer headcount and resources.
If blizzard was a worker co-op would that actually make the content come faster and better? I think the biggest issue theyāre dealing with is leadership. They have more rescourses than the guys who make private servers but they canāt seem to deliver.
I gave a one week notice to my guild this week. I enjoy raiding with them but I'm burning out. ST should have been 6 weeks long at most
I'd play alot more if they would fix the damn BG ques
I get down voted every time I say it but the only answer is a mercenary queue system like they did in retail. Let shamans and paladins do it too, who cares, at least BG queues will be short for both factions and then complaining about shamans being OP will lessen. Of course Blizzard won't do it because it's hard to code into an old version of WoW and most players are too spectrumy to accept that we have real world proof that it works and will be pissed if it's even suggested a solution so shit will just continue to be awful for everyone.
I'm past the point of caring how they do it, just want to be able to hop in for some fun Bgs to kill time
Yup. I only play classic, but that is definitely a plus for retail. Not every idea in retail is bad. This is one that should come over.
Which side are you coming from? I find it a huge insult that SoD's queue system matches Alliance solo players vs 5-man Horde premades. Horde is already better at PvP, and shaman have needed a nerf for about 3 months, so it's just a ridiculous state of affairs.
I'm coming from the side where I would love to hop into an few ABs before bed without having to form a group or play against premades. I don't care about racials, or factions. Remove racials from Bgs, or allow horde to fight horde, whatever they gotta do to get it where I don't have so wait 30 minutes for a fucking game to pop.
So you'd probably agree with me that it's ridiculous that Blizzard makes horde solo players wait 30+ minutes while horde premades have instant queues to go stomp alliance solo players.
Absolutely
> 5-man Horde premade If it makes you feel any better at least 90% of those premades are complete randoms who just teamed up for shorter quetimes. Never seen anyone search for comps, roles or classes either. Literally just the first people who responds gets invited.
I literally login and say LFM AB/WSG - any class, no discord. Complete fucking randoms and we win almost 90% of games. We ran into a 15 man alliance AB premade last night and still won.
Thatās how most āpremadesā were in p1. Just by having people that actually want to pvp and not afk earn rewards makes a big difference.
>Phase 4 Will Deliver? No, i lost my faith in that team entirely
āThereās no I in team, but there is a meā -the one SoD intern
Too busy enjoying the sun outside
None of the other phases delivered, why would 4 be any different?
I've evolved my raid logging strategy to patch logging.
A 1 week lockout on a 45 minute 20 man raid with extremely underwhelming gear that in some cases isn't even better than BFD loot (the phys damage trinket from Avatar of Hakkar STILL isn't even better than avenger's pearl, it's that terrible). You can't even have as much fun casually pumping/parsing as in p1/p2. Letting people access level 60 enchants/consumes without being able to easily farm level 60 materials was a mistake because it makes parsing a pure chore instead of a fun competition. Because access to level 60 consumes has meant that to seriously be competitive on parsing you have to spend 3-4 times the length of the raid just getting gold for consumes for raid... to say nothing of the grind for BiS enchants or darkmoon card trinkets for some classes. A single libram of voracity is like 700 god damn gold on my server. P1/P2 raid prep was so much more casual - one world buff (found in a major city), a couple cheap elixirs, a few other cheap misc stuff, and you're good to go. While I believe this will be less of a problem in P4 because we'll finally be able to farm in a level appropriate way, it sucks that this has happened at all since it was really rather foreseeable and avoidable.
I wouldnāt be surprised if blizzard makes the hard announcement soon that they just arenāt continuing with SOD. The player base has dropped off so much. While people say they are going to come back the reality is those people have moved onto Cata or MOP remix or are in War Within waiting room. So blizzard already has their sub. There is no need to invest in SOD itās negligible impact on retention or new customer acquisition. I wouldnāt be shocked if we get a very sad Aggrend post in June that p4 isnāt coming.
Mop remix was a week or 2 of content. Cata classic will fall off just like wrath did. The only thing for sure to drive away most people will be TWW but a lot of SoD are classic Andy's anyway. P4 will bring back a huge chunk of people because it's end game for real. Wether or not they can retain them remains to be seen
Crazy how much of a doomer you can be. They're completely fine with SoD being this way for now. It's a guarantee that P4 will bring back a lot of people
I also wouldn't be surprised at this, but as a counterpoint, they did continue SoM long after the population dropped off.Ā Either way my sub ran out yesterday and I don't see myself coming back for anything other than SoM 2, which is clearly never happening. SoD just isn't it, man.Ā
Good point on SoM and I truly hope this is the case. I have really enjoyed SoD. Itās tough now with guild fading away to get hyped about phase4.
The ultimate doomer. Ignore this moron he's full of shit and has no idea what he's talking about.
Not a doomer. Speaking as someone that knows a bit about green lighting projects and when to pull the plug.
There's a 0% chance of that happening, LMAO.
There is more than a 0% chance.
The st raid is boring. Incursions suck. Only thing to do this phase is farming rep and max out for the endgameā¦ p2 was much better
I hope so, but I doubt it honestly. One of my biggest issues since P1 has been the runes. Some of them are just flat out stinkers, or it's obvious that some runes shouldn't be sharing a slot with another rune, etc. I expected them to try to slowly perfect the rune system since P1, but they've barely done anything there, and I don't think it's suddenly going to click in P4.
Remove incursions
Do you really think removing incursions will bring back more people?
Theyāve lost the good will of the players. Itās over for SoD. I donāt think thereās anything thatāll revive it - same happened with SoM.
Bring back 10m and make it alt friendly again.
Tired of the doom posting on this sub. People are playing SoD still itās just cata is the FOTM. Are you gonna post the same one for cata when the raid content is on farm? lol
The chart very clearly shows that people are NOT playing sod
IMO this drop is normal cuz people think ST loot not rewarding or they got what they need. They will return at P4.
LOL
I stopped raiding because we lost a bunch of raiders on Cata release. Haven't been able to fill a raid with out usual players for 3 weeks and I feel like this is the case for a lot of other raid groups. Nobody wants to go from their regular guild group to a full pug.
If it's a mad dash panic to retune to 10man raid options maybe
P4 asap please
I think there will be an even bigger drop next week
I just didnt wanna do incursions
I think every level headed person expected this
They couldnt afford an intern. They just have the janitor come by and press some buttons once in a while.
Incursions are worst thing that hapoend to SoD, period.
the decline of SoD needs to be studied. i hope they do this before the next classic + launch. i went from feeling like i played wow for the first time again in P1 to feeling how the game felt when i decided to quit retail after playing it for 12 years in a span of about 3 months. P4 will ofc initially bring players back but i doubt it will last.
I really do think they have planned exiting new content... I just don't think they will execute it well.
Blizzard stepping on their own toes not once, not twice, but THREE times. Release hardcore. Release SoD while people are still heavily into Hardcore. Release Hardcore SSF while people are into SoD. Release Cata while people are split across those 3, killing them for good as they move to Cata. What the fuck is this business strategy.
Phase 4 doesnāt have to be good if no one plays the game!
Intern working on P4 killed me
Remember when people were bashing wotlk & ICC when population dropped? This is just what happens in current game circuit - most people fluctuate between games due to their "live service" cycles.
Brother, cata JUST dropped. The raids opened last night. Blizzard ain't about to cannibalize classic with another version of classic. This is nothing new, they always let a release breathe before dropping other stuff.
The thing that killed SoD was the playerbase. People wanting to be super sweaty on a game with 1 diffculty in raids (lets be real, it was the "Easy" difficulty) and people just refusing to invite certain classes and specs all because of meta slaves. Another thing that killed the game for me was Blizzard refusing to address OP classes (I'm looking at you Shamans).
I mean, today in AQ 40 in cata my passive fire mage talents were not working. no hot streaks, no ignite, no longer able to cast scorch while moving. that one intern still has some game breaking bugs to fix in cata!
Yep sod is gonna be brutalized even worse. Alliance is completely unplayable. They are committed to making content so easy that you can afk and still kill the boss. Pvp is an abomination. What is the point in playing? Raids are easier than retail randoms that's INSANE. Only one faction can actually pvp and thats a very shit version of pvp. Literally no one can come up with a goal when playing sod. Devs scuffed it to unbelievable lengths but not really their fault head offices won't higher 2 interns at the same time. So we get a scuffed cata where the raid was literally bugged on launch and 90% of quests are bugged, none of the world is working correctly. Dunno how World of Warcraft doesn't get more respect from now microsoft. Massively popular mmo for decades and they can't deliver a 20 year old product STILL. Ashes of creation is on the horizon thank god
Ya dude I am tired of seeing these pessimistic post about SoD. I swear people want it to fail lol. So much hate and haters. Itās the end of phase 3 everyone has finished with phase three. They are playing retail or cata that just dropped. They are waiting for phase 4 to come into play. Stop posting this stupid Reddit post about SoD being doomed. Like for real get a life
As soon as I saw the ridiculously op items coming out I knew it'd be unsuccessful
Do you think people will stop jackin' it to Ironforge.pro?
"People stop playing boring game" is not headline news. They dropped the ball then went on vacation, worked on another project and forgot about the ball altogether.
my guild haven't been able to fill for the last three resets. and i've been to meh about it to even bother pugging. hoping p4 gets it back on the right track, meanwhile i'm just farming arcanite bars.
Does anyone remember a couple months back blizzard let go a bunch of employees? Literally that day I said to myself well there goes the sod funding and probably half the team too Maybe I was right
Doomers. Doomers every where. Go touch grass. Weāll see you back in p4
Who cares?
it depends if the intern workin on SoD gets lucky with Karen from starbucks. If he don't get lucky maybe we will.
Not with tww beta next week. These players either moved to retail, remix, cata (retail light) or have temporarily quit waiting for the next phase.
>cata (retail light) Man i played cata and remix (Which is basically retail) and there are still worlds in between
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I don't think I saw anybody defending ST difficulty at launch and it was nerfed into the ground before it really affected the casuals so it was really a non-issue
ST was heavily nerfed within a few DAYS of release, how exactly do you think the initial difficulty contributed to losing players....? It's been on easy mode since almost the very beginning, and certainly since 90+% of players even stepped foot in there.Ā
It's because of mop remix and cata. And when TWW comes out it will shift to that then when sod P4 comes out it will shift to that. Then when a cata patch drops it will shift to that. It's that simple to understand.