That’s pretty well summed up, I think.
I get that the devs probably are probably limited in some capacity in what they’re even able to day, but yeah, it kinda sucks never really knowing what’s going on or where to invest your time. I got REALLY into SoD, and started working up tradeskills across multiple characters, really trying to go for a “completionist” mindset, including the MANY enchanting formulas. That all just feels like a huge amount of wasted time, when apparently I should have been spending that time on other versions of the game.
I know Blizzard is also probably hesitant to elaborate because it could step on the toes of any future plans, and also that I’m sure a lot of their plans may fluctuate and so they don’t want to say anything they have to commit to. I mean, if they were to even say something like “Don’t worry, some things may change but we’ll make sure there’s some way to convert your SoD characters over to Classic+”, well, that would probably cause friction with the marketing team who would be looking to make a big “announcement” for however Classic+ is going to be handled.
Thing is, considering the hundreds of hours we invest in this game, I do feel like we should be kept a little more in the loop than we currently are.
For my part, it feels like they’ve already kinda-sorta “announced” some kind of Classic+ style project, but if our characters are just stuck in the current state, and the shiny new thing winds up being an entirely separate thing where none of our time or effort in SoD amounts to anything… well, that would just be kind of a big ol’ bummer, imo.
I know they wouldn’t want to launch a “new” game mode with a bunch of maxed-out, BiS characters running around from the very start, but my personal take was that maybe they could start out with “fresh” servers until Classic+ gets all the way through SoD’s content (or whatever the nearest equivalent is), and then allow players from both versions to merge together. That way, SoD’s existing characters don’t upset the balance of the game, but still honoring our time spent playing (even if the “merging” process means throwing up a disclaimer to players that not all of SoD’s systems, abilities, set-bonuses, or item stats will translate over).
But regardless, I agree, communication of any kind is always helpful. For most of SoD’s existence, I didn’t really understand what it was trying to be, and so I didn’t feel comfortable spending time with it early on. Who wants to spend hundreds of hours investing in a character(s) who could potentially be deleted? Having more clear communication upfront probably would go a long ways towards assuaging players’ fears. With SoD activity seemingly dropping off so quickly (at least, that’s what I feel like I’m personally seeing on Wild Growth), there are a whole lot more fears that are filling the vacuum of any concrete answers on what the future looks like.
