I hate to burst your bubble but that loading screen isn’t Scarlet Monastery, it’s Tyr’s Hand. And nobody said it was going to be a raid. It’ll probably just be a dungeon like Demon Fall Canyon.
Even wild growth horde which is usually low side is getting loads of new players since rune vendor update. This is good time to jump in and start playing
Population will go back up as people drop from anniversary and realize it’s the same thing again. Those with hybrid specs that expect to break the meta are in for a rough awakening when they realize the only way to raid is with one spec they don’t want to main. Naxx and the new content will likely give a big jump. Alts are back on the menu with the rune changes.
This is actually the most optimistic look at WoW. Meme one shot PvP is unironically the better version of the game, before it took itself too seriously as anything besides a game (i.e., an “esport”).
I have enjoyed my time and have reached end game but the consumable farm and world buffs are still not optimal for a more casual player. The rune uodate though is great but probably couldve been level gated to give that leveling up power gain feel.
I would say it boils down to different tastes, but both SoD and Retail seem to have approachable low-time-consumption content and then dedicated harder content to commit time to.
Main difference I’ve seen from the little bit of SoD that I’ve played is that the world content/questing isn’t necessarily harder but more dangerous and rewarding.
I don’t ever get a sense of danger doing world content in Retail, which helps with getting it done quickly, but on the flip side world content is relatively low interest long-term, which means I’m only going to get engagement/true difficulty from time commitment content (M+, raiding, and high tier delves).
On the other side of the equation, SoD’s leveling isn’t agonizingly slow due to Discoverer’s Delight, but everything doesn’t just roll over for me. If I screw up and over pull I either commit cooldowns/resources or die.
If you mean it is it despite anniversary and being in the lame zone of aq25 and aq20, yes people might hold off on it until naxx drops because naxx will be zug I think based on the way they did loot we might see well sm arena, and kara(sod) have more offset items and as far as plus it is pretty close they can add more raids and maybe a few new zones into the ones which you can zone over.
It has the best uniqueness when it comes to classes and pvp is mostly people with bug brain trying to get r14 for rng free weapons.