Dungeon Set 2 is amazing for this reason.
It isn’t particularly difficult to get. It just takes some dedication and time spent playing the game. There is no skill check, aside beating a couple special bosses that are otherwise entirely optional.
SoM failed because they released it right after vanilla ended, as if most people wanted to start fresh on an era that they literally just finished playing for over a year. They also released it alongside TBC, which made people choose between the two. SoM was tailored for more serious players, and nobody has the time to play SoM and TBC seriously at the same time.
I don’t think it failed because people didn’t want hard content. Surely not everyone wants the challenge, but there are definitely enough of us that do that we could have kept SoM alive. I didn’t play SoM because I didn’t have the time to devote to two versions of the game. SoM looked very cool to me, but there was no way in hell I was choosing it over TBC, which I had been dreaming of playing again for over a decade.
This is the answer.
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Raid naked then.
Sometimes the truth hurts.
I haven’t read most of the thread so may have missed something but I made a list not long after I stopped playing SoM (Jul '22) with the reasons why it didn’t retain players early on:
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yes this was a huge unnecessary blunder as well 
it greatly reduced the number of players doing lvl 60 dungeons.
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He said people
He has no right to speak for anyone but himself that’s what I’ve been told here by many esteemed forum posters.
Speaking only for myself, but SoM released at around the same time as both TBC Classic and a new Retail season. I really wanted to play but I was pretty active in Retail then and needed to stay on the curve, so that took priority.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to have overlap between Classic and Retail since, for the most part, they are different crowds. I was probably in the minority of players who enjoyed both versions of the game.
I suspect SoD will be a bit more popular this go since not only is there a lot of space between SoD and Cata, I think that the crowds have separated a lot. By this I mean that when TBC launched you just had one core group of players playing Classic. TBC was the natural destination so they all wanted to go there. Since then though, the WotLK crowd and the Classic Era crowd have separated… likely since WotLK is a pretty different game.
SoD seems primiarly targetted at Classic Era players in terms of experience. We’re getting some new abilities but primiarly we can expect it to play like Classic (ie, slower and simpler). That’s something that folks who really vibe with WotLK or Retail typically enjoy, so I don’t think there will be as much conflict. Though given that WotLK will be 2 months into ICC by then, there will probably be some bleed over.
Basically, all this to say… the timing on SoD is a lot better than it was on SoM 
Season of Mastery didn’t fail… I got to level two toons to level 60 and progress to Naxx and down KT. You just simply missed the wave.
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Biggest cope imaginable LOL.
“Thousands of people” LOL, SoM was an incredible flop… just stop it. Almost nobody played it… the SECOND server was getting free transfers to the main server a month into the game. The game couldnt even support a SECOND NA server.
At the highest point the BIGGEST NA SERVER had 3700 players. One Era server rn has over 9,000 with 23K playing overall. Gigantic flop. 3700 players in all of NA… LOL
Just stop. However, I think by the time SoD gets to level 60 itll be dead. Nobody wants to do MC BWL and especially AQ again. Those raids suck, They need to be replaced with something new and fresh.
Also didnt SoM have a 60% XP boost which went up to 100% almost immediately? And yet you complain about leveling speed in SoD because of some more dmg? KEKL
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I think a lot of the complaints about the low long-term populations are based on unrealistic expectations, though.
2019 classic had a longer staying power because people had been waiting for it for longer, and wanted to experience all the phases. But also don’t forget the drop around BWL and the second wind it got from the pandemic lockdowns…
There is a committed but limited # of people who want to do it all again (and even with some changes, the content is largely the same). You’re going to have people try it for the newness then quit once it starts feeling too much like been there, done that. SoM, HC, SoD, doesn’t matter…
Why did Season of Mastery Fail?
it was mainly the timing and imo looking into SoM, I felt like it was pretty much the same game that you were playing before TBC Classic launched but no world buffs, leveling is fast, faster patch cadence, pvp system on day one and raids have a bit more mechanics, other then that there wasn’t much of a shake up in SoM in terms of the meta of the classes and builds and nothing from SoM didn’t catch my interest so I just bat an eye and just played Retail and TBC.
With SoD, I’m interested on what it has in store, it seems like its what SoM could’ve been imo, something to shake up current class meta and having something new.
It was bad timing. WotLK Classic came out at the time I believe. Also, not as many people play “seasonal” WoW content, because… this is an MMO and things take a very long time and a lot of commitment.
People don’t want to spend 800 hours on a character, thinking there will be a reset in the future. That works for Diablo games, where you can max out a character in a few days.
I never played SoM but it wasn’t because of the perceived difficulty. I was already raiding Naxx weekly in Era and closing in on BiS.
In my mind, whatever SoM was, was just too temporary for most people to give a f about. People knew it wasn’t ultimately leading anywhere and would be shut down at the end of the ‘season’. Who’s going to bother to grind that? especially when all the content is already out in perma-phase 6 on Era.
This had a lot to do with it. Everyone rushed to 60, grinded out R10 for the PVP gear and steamrolled the “harder” raids. That was a huge miss by the devs that the community never asked for.
They did remove world buffs from raids, which a lot of people requested and I think it was a good experiment but ultimately I think that resulted in fewer people playing.
Wpuod you consider rolling a toon with me on SoD launch? We could run a duo.
SoM had to compete partially against wrath. Also the class meta was exactly the same just without debuff limits. New content and new meta, along with timing will help it work.
I played hc on bloodsail and defias pillager. I played SoM very little but will 100% get to max level in SoD. My point is im a classic andy who didnt play SoM and will play SoD. I imagine alot more will be like me as well. That is an assumption tho.
Most of the SoM changes were also raid based. Isn’t the famous figure something like only 20% of the playerbase raids in WoW.
Making all the changes focused around a part of the game only 20% experience is pretty limiting.
I think that’s a part of the reason hardcore had been so popular. It feels like a mode for people who aren’t going to raid and have no interest in doing so, so they don’t feel like they are missing anything.
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