This thread is more directed at the devs than the players, but feel free to chime in begging for my stuff or w/e other forum degeneracy suites you. I’ll try and keep things in more outline form for easier digestibility.
My background: Longtime player ( maybe 1 year total not subscribed since OG vanilla launch, the majority of it during BfA/Shadowlands waiting on classic to launch). Classic-vanilla enthusiast. PvP enthusiast. Warlock main. Alts include basically everything but druid and paladin for vanilla era play. Brief stint as content creator. Professional “proven right over time” person with vanilla era opinions on where the game could/should have gone and was going to go, and probably someone who ya’ll should have tried to hire as a consultant to fix your game and/or not have many of the problems SoD is currently facing.
SoD Feedback/Reason for quitting: The overall take on SoD is that I’m fighting the bad game design more than I’m fighting the dragon or player I’m trying to actually fight.
The dev team is obviously small, and since you can’t MTX the hell out of it like retail, that probably won’t change. This means that dev resources are limited generally speaking, but it also points to the largest single problem with SoD: The gameplay itself is bad. It’s a genuinely and obviously inferior product to real vanilla, and that starts with class design decisions… because class design decisions directly and catastrophically impacted all the other game systems and balancing, which creates a massive back end workload to fix, that then cannibalizes any potential dev time from actually fixing the game’s shortcomings. Many of these changes where done with an extremely shortsighted viewpoint, without consideration or redressment of downstream consequences
Some examples:
- You changed warlock pets from sacrificial buffs/ a phase shifted stamina totem (normal vanilla)… but you somehow, after 9 months of live time, still haven’t given warlock pets the same raid aoe damage reduction they get in literally every non vanilla version of the game. I’ve had an onyxia pull where my imp was 1 shot by the boss SEVEN separate times by an unavoidable floor aoe. That’s a minimum of 60 seconds (more if she fears mid cast) just summoning/resummoning pets. Do you even grasp how terrible that is gameplay wise?
Also HOW can that possibly still be an issue, 9 months later. What kind of gross incompetence/negligence is this? Then pets also only summon at a fraction of full health/mana, leaving them open to get clapped again immediately. I’ve been playing this class for almost 20 years… SoD is the first time I actively hated it.
- We can talk pvp design as it relates to class design. When you gave every class normal vanilla naxxramas geared level damage output before even hitting 51 you caused problems in pvp as well. Then you have to bandaid that by slowing pvp down with blanket stamina buffs and/or (depending on the SoD phase) blanket pvp damage nerfs.
But again, you don’t consider the downstream consequences… Food, even the REALLY good food (AV mana biscuits) require TWO full eats to restore health to full in a bg, and can’t outheal a well geared dot class loading you up. You never rebalanced food for the new stat levels, so food now sucks. Mages literally couldn’t even kill a player last phase without going oom (and I can’t remember the last time I saw a mage pvping in SoD)
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Speaking of mages and pvp problems caused by SoD abilities getting thrown into the mix. Are you aware that Warrior currently counters mage? Yeah snare break (and in combat) charge, snare break intercept, and the new deathgrip… Warrior actually has one more button to press than a non frost mage has to defend with (and frost mages haven’t been a thing in SoD yet)
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There’s other examples from many classes that break things in various ways… The most egregious of which is probably STILL hunter entrapment-with how short the cd is on their traps. If there’s a single non potato hunter on the opposing team, you might as well not have melee on yours.
This is only a short list of grievances/problems with the game right now, but all of it relating to the most critical issue for whatever next “Vanilla + Fresh” comes out sometime next year after SoD finishes the naxx tier: Class design.
So what should we have done instead?:
That’s actually pretty obvious and goes back to something I was saying when SoD development was announced: Don’t change anything about vanilla specs rotationally. At most, ditch the debuff limit ( you did) , and MAYBE notch some of the underperforming specs upwards in ways that might aid pvE viability but don’t break them in PvP… For example, 31 points in ret might grant the ret melee haste to improve their dps, but NOT grant them anything like crusader strike. Enhance might get something similar for stormstrike and the ability to use earth shock without it generating catastrophic amounts of threat. Most of the hybrids also likely need some form of mana efficiency gains so they can actually use their kits, but without making mana completely irrelevant to them.
If you don’t change class design/rotation and so many things start falling back into place:
- You don’t need pvp rulesets to offset pvp damage, normal vanilla was fairly close to balanced
- You don’t need to redesign every PvE encounter with bigger numbers to account for players doing 2x or more of the damage
- Food actually works as intended again. Ditto bandages.
- Warriors stop countering their own counter class.
- Hunters stop being terrorists.
- Rogues can only ambush/backstab without using tea/rentakis and aren’t just spamming people down.
- Mages actually exist again in pvp
- DoT-flation stops being an issue in pvp (whereupon you step inside 36 yards and immediately get 145091240912409140914209 debuffs stacked upon you)
- You don’t need convoluted ramping mechanics to avoid pvp burst damage (SoD destro is a case study in stacking convoluted ramping mechanics up before you do real damage)
Then with the time you’re now saving NOT rebalancing every item, npc, and instance for power creep, you actually address real issues with the game (and that list is long too)… Things like AV being the only bg worth doing rewards wise, and WSG rampant terrain exploitation being two of the bigger pvp ones.
Now there’s a massive amount more that can/should/would need to get addressed, and even admittedly a lot of things you guys actually got right with SoD!..That said, I’m going to give you the company, the same level of respect you demonstrate to me, the player, and speak to you in a language you actually understand:
I’ll fix your game for you, and I’ll retain far more players doing it than SoD has, but this info is behind a MTX paywall.
Hope you have a great day Drosul 
