I have a feeling the phase is coming sooner than the devs made it out to be. The population is hanging on by a thread. I have been trying to do Blood Moon PVP all day on Lone Wolf US and there are maybe 3-5 groups playing around LOA now. It’s EMPTY. BG queues are at an all time low. There are only 3k listings on the auction house for crying out loud. I’m so deluded that I’m trying to play and continue farming for items locked behind reputation but it requires REAL PEOPLE for PVP that don’t exist. The only thing that is consistently in LFG chat anymore are summons for 3 gold to which no one is buying.
Devs are in a tight spot right now just like the Federal Reserve debating on lowering interest rates. Something is about to break. Phase 4 incoming VERY SOON or risk losing everything.
The comment on “giving Cataclysm the release it deserves” is mind boggling to me. I actually can’t believe that was the PR statement we were given. It’s a slap in the face to all players who care about the SoD iteration of the game. I said it before and I’ll say it again. OSRS did it better. At least they have a dedicated development team for the Old School version of the game. And Jagex is a fraction of the size of Blizzard by comparison. Incredible.
No one cares about retail. =P If it were free I would’ve tried it out. After D4 I wont be giving blizzard anymore dollar except for my sub so I can play Era and SoD and mess around in Cata.
If phase 4 comes soon, then the delay was pointless and the phase will probably be terrible. Though to be fair, they did a similar thing with the shadowlands delay, so ykno, Blizzard does what Blizzard will do.
/shrug
Blizzard literally posted an announcement saying “SoD is on pause while we launch Cata Classic because our bosses are forcing us to develop both side by side”
And you’ve managed to convince yourself Phase 4 is coming out any day. Oof.
All I’m saying is the longer they drag this out the worse it will get. And it’s already pretty abysmal from an active population point of view. They might release Phase 4 out of nowhere just like they did with Phase 3. We all remember how Phase 3 was released. A random presentation was dropped on YouTube and a statement that Phase 3 would be out next week. Everyone was blindsided.
Personally I’d say it’s the opposite at this point.
SoD has effectively hit rock bottom with Phase 3. Everyone I personally know has even quit SoD to play Cataclysm Classic of all things. This is in spite of many of those people saying they “would never play Cata Classic”
But here we are.
At this point, the only way to save SoD is through a soft reboot. Make Phase 4/the lvl 60 endgame its own ‘thing’. Set it apart from Phase 1-3 by a couple months, let Cataclysm Hype die off (because we all know it’s going to probably die FAST) and use the Phase 4 PTR to make Phase 4’s launch ten times smoother than Phase 2 or Phase 3 was.
That’s the only way for Phase 4 to be successful at this point in my opinion. Releasing Phase 4 any time in the next few weeks will be the final nail in SoD’s coffin, because it’ll be released unfinished, half-baked, and bug-filled just like Phase 2 and Phase 3 were.
Why do people keep repeating the lie that the delay is so they can spend more time working on SoD P4?
The delay is purely because they are completely ignoring SoD in favour of cata. The delay is because they don’t want cata numbers cannibalized by the Cata launch. The delay is because all resources are being 110% channeled into fixing the broken, buggy mess than Cata is.
When they eventually release P4, it will have had less development time and effort put into it than they originally planned.
You know cata is just an old release with some minor improvements. It won’t take too much time to do. As you are not designing anything.
The challenge sod had and on which the devs failed is you are creating something new to the game and still need to keep the old vanilla taste.
Sod is an experiment and at least it exposes how incompetent the devs are in terms of designing a game
you should honestly give D4 a shot this season is really what it should have been at release. Its really a fresh take on all the annoying things that arent annoying anymore. It’s not perfect but its a leap and bounds better than before.
No i dont work for bliz or stream.
I’m just an old guy gamer than likes to kill stuff in games and finally for me D4 has it right