The Casual Take on SoD

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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Listen guys, girls, anything in-between. I’m not a 40 year old dad with 10 kids working 100 hours a week and can only play for 7 minutes… but I am a working millennial and let’s be real, it’s getting nice out lately and I like walk outside when this time of the year comes, so I’m putting myself into the “casual” bucket of players as I usually will try to hop on 2-3 nights a week to game.

I loved SoD. Like LOVED. And if you didn’t notice the past-tense use of the word - I’m pointing it out now to you.

Since P3 started, I’ve been bored. I’ve been disappointed, I’ve been struggling to even log on. All my giga-nerd-sweat-lord friends finished it all within a week. Emerald whatever, PvP gear, they did Raid without me (all fine). It was my decision, I just didn’t have the itch to play as much. And by the time I got to Raid in week 3 - we only had like 3/4th’s of our guild consistently logging in for raid. Important note that this is AFTER a guild merge of two full 10/10 guilds coming together WITH extra bench, all just to be absolutely rarted on Wednesday night.

I watched the streams of them raiding weeks 1 and 2, I sat in discord to enjoy the experience even though I was only level 44 and I was so excited to hit 50 and join them. But then some things happened… Week 2…

Around this time, I saw a big change. Everyone had a blast for about 20 hours, then… nothing.

Last night, May 8th, we tried to raid (my third of the Phase) . We had 16 people sign-up yes, but 4 just strait up ghosted. They were honest, they don’t want to play. They are bored. They claim they will come back p4, but let’s be real, we all know they won’t. And that’s ok, it was annoying but fine. We had everyone show up late too. Which again, annoying but whatever, we’re all friends. So we PUG but between people expecting Summons (which we can’t do since Alliance farm the entrance - not complaining about it, just a fact) or they themselves complaining about it and saying “nevermind” and leaving, we finally fill our squad. But guess what? We still only had 19 people LOL. So f*** it, let’s just do it with 19. We clap raid in like 1 hour (I think we finally pulled boss at 9:45 and were done by 10:45).

All good, but…

I’m sad now. This was the most fun I ever had playing WoW. I’ve never done insane content and don’t really want to - I’m a casual. I parse Blue/Purple on my best days. I have zero input/thoughts on if “pure classic” or “classic+” is better - you people are nerds for arguing about that. Who TF cares?

But what I will say is this.

I don’t like incursions or ANYTHING like it. Giant waste of time.
I don’t like grinding some stupid rep in a temporary game mode.
I don’t like grinding BGs against pre-mades (problem still exists).
I don’t like sitting for 27 minutes to join a BG because no one plays the game anymore.
I don’t like getting DESTROYED by enemy faction trying to just GET INTO RAID.
I don’t like having to kill 5000000 mobs to get to a boss once in.
I don’t like my guild falling apart before the phase is even over.

But what I do like?

I like clapping cheeks with my squad in STVietnam (best Wow content ever).
I like clapping boss cheeks in raid (once we finally f-ing get to the boss).
I like clapping Alliance cheeks in open world PvP.
I like hitting big f-king giant numbers against bosses that make my screen go BOOM.
I like when the city is popping and people are doing dumb things, emoting, yelling, trading.
I like getting around the map easier (you nerds who love walking 20 minutes - I got stuff to do).
I like having fun after dinner on a work-night and it NOT feeling like a freaking chore.
I like making sick clips with my boys of someone getting murked or murking someone else or getting a 99 parse and celebrating.
I like feeling like a kid again…

The whole point of playing this game was to have fun. Now it’s just not fun.

I feel like this isn’t hard to figure out as a game dev. Like people literally write novels (like I’m guilty of doing) and I keep seeing the same things on Reddit, here, twitter, etc just going ignored with no good changes.

“I’m done with P3, I’ll come back in P4”. -SoD gamers, 2024.

We all know this isn’t happening, so this seems to be the death of SoD. I just wanted to acknowledge it was super fun (until it wasn’t) and I urge Blizzard to just do better.

Cheers friends! Maybe we’ll cross paths in Azeroth next month.

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Yep, this phase is garbage and I’m more or less done with it. However, to counter your doomerism, I WILL come back for p4 because 60 is where all the content is. There are more routes to gearing yourself out if you aren’t a min/maxxer. When I get bored of doing AB I can do AV.

I’m just hoping these smooth brained devs don’t create more content like incursions and wild offering because then phase 4 will also die a quick death. And I won’t be coming back for phase 5 or 6 if that’s the case.

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Level 50 incursions are still gonna be the best way to level to 60. We’re just moving from Ashenvale to Feralas/Hinterlands.

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I was watching a live stream with some prominent UK classic players and they are loathing SoD because they have a feeling Phase 4 is gonna be just MC. Then they are gonna do Phase 5: BWL, Phase 6: Zg, Phase 7: AQ 20, Phase 8: AQ 40, Phase 9: Naxx.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they kill SoD with the phase roll outs themselves. It’s too slow. We need more per phase.

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:sweat:

Attrition has been rough this phase.

Phase 1 was awesome but too long, phase 2 was also pretty good. Phase 3 started off so strong but then fell off so hard I don’t get it. Literally just two weeks ago phase 3 was popping, somehow the phase just died almost overnight. It’s insane.

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Everyone incursioned to 50 first day, spammed a few hours of WO for a gear piece or two, did the raid once and found out it’s long and barely worth any of the loot, then quit.

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Proper PvP balancing is the only hope for SoD

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No shot. No shot. Phase 4 has to be MC and Kara. Phase 5 will be bwl and zg, phase 6 AQ 20/40, then phase 7 will be Naxx and Hyjal.

Copium_Frog.jpg

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Could be because 80% of the loot that’s dropping is getting vendored?

You’re forgetting Scarlet Crusade.

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Nothing last forever. Love is not the exception.

Try to take a step back. It really helps. For me after a week or two wow feels new again.

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Wooo wee that’s some fine zopium. :exploding_head:

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Mannnnnn…

It’s crazy to me that the Classic team is wasting time on Cata when they could be cooking up some juicy content like this.

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This phase has been Season of Discovering how to Grind and be Frustrated for me at least.

Great take OP, I felt every word of that post like it was my own.

Sadly Blizzard Devs are the most arrogant Developers of any game on the market. They will not listen and will continue to shove THEIR vision of what we want to play down our throat.

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Cata is merely a conduit in which I will GDKP for free game time. That’s all. I’m not wasting a minute more than I have to on that game.

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Some of this is of your own creation. Join larger guilds with people that respect other people’s time.

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P3 Runes are a grind to get and copy-paste from other xpacs, nothing that adds to or changes gameplay to any degree… just some passives or slightly altered spell mods. Very weak.

Incursions and WO farming killed questing and dungeon runs.
20 man killed guilds that were 10 man for months
Punishing raid mechanics killed pugs

I’ve levelled up five alts without incursions - just some light questing, a handful of dungeon runs and gnomer raid logging for XP. Been in two ST pugs, neither successful. I’m ready for P4. I sure hope they learn from what has truly been an emerald nightmare.

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SOD is a unbalanced mess. Pretty much everything about phase 3 is garbage. Nightmare incusions garbage
Sunken temple garbage
Pvp garbage
Hopefully Phase 4 is better

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P1 was great, P2 was alrighty but felt like they did the bare minimum and just tried to ride p1s success and yeah, P3 has been absolute garbage. I think I ran ST for the first 2 lockouts and quit after that. Huffing the copium that they have decided to put a bit of effort into P4 but not going to return until a week or 2 into it to make sure it’s not as bad as P3 has been. Not going to give my money to a company that is trying to do the bare minimum to get my money.

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Bad devs = bad game essentially

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there’s big problem. part of if is the game. part of it is the player base. “Your boys”. The community. They’re the ones that chose the route of least resistance. They grinded to 50 in 5 hours. They got bored. To what i believe is the majority, this game isn’t necessarily about “fun”. People dungeon grinded for a reason. People do the most efficient thing for a reason. Having fun, wasting time, and doing random stuff isn’t built into a players DNA.

That and fun is subjective.

SoD will filter out those that don’t like it. the ones that do like it enough will continue to play. I continue to play and will play because we don’t know what crazy thing blizzard will do next, and that makes things interesting. I’d love it if they made molten core ice themed and threw the players a curve ball.