Just for the sake of having a fun discussion I thought I would list (what I think) went wrong with SoD.
Vanilla WoW always had a ‘lull’ betweens level 30 and 50. Where the quality of zones sort of drops, and many players quit out during that. So a lot of people just hit that good ol’ drop off point in season 2 of SoD when the level cap was raised.
Focused too much on raiding. Raiding was originally designed as a cheap way to keep players engaged who had already beaten all the other content. How MMO fans ever came to view that as the “real content” is very confusing to me. Especially consider most players in Vanilla never did Molten Core.
A focus on end game in general. Just creates the same problem every modern MMO has of the leveling experience being a chore to unlock the “real game”
“exploration” how did the SoD devolopers get it in their head that players like to comb every inch of Azeroth looking for essential abilities? 99% of people just looked up a guide for their runes.
A fresh coat of paint for classes was welcome but that’s all they needed. They didn’t every modern retail spec imported into the game, that just creates bloat.
Some spells were not well thought out. Crusader strike for my Paladin felt great, felt like something that the class should always have baseline. But the wraith ability for my druid completely ruined the leveling experience. Making wraith manaless is dumb. I just spammed wraith all the way to max level and had 0 fun.
World PVP valued over instanced PVP. Sorry world pvp fans, but it’s just never been that popular compared to instanced PVP.
No “new” content. No new classes, or full specs. No New instanced PVP… No new zones. No dungeons. (but I think they have one in the works). Sorry but it doesn’t matter how good you make the bosses in BFD, it’s still a glorified wet cave.
Runes were easily swappable, essentially adding a backdoor “duel spec” system in the game. And being able to easily swap specs promotes people jumping on flavor of the month builds. (I remember being very annoyed that every single hunter had the exact same build)
I have 2 raid nights a week and I just got dawns gambit to make the extra reals out of Scholomance easier to get while I am tanking on my shaman for groups having a lot of fun.
I have been enjoying my Refined Arcanite Reaper
I need 6 more Lava Cores and 1 more Fiery Core to make my Molten Dark Iron Destroyer and my Ebon Fist weapons for raid.
And then I need to start on my Skymaster’s Masterwork Stormhammer
[Edit: just bought three more Lava Cores with Reals, so now I only need 3 more of those.]
I wouldn’t say ‘failed’ – I’m having tremendous fun playing a Hunter with a boar that has an actual taunt and Trap Launcher (which should have been the original 31-point talent in the Survival tree).
My main complaint is not using a TBC core. The Dark Portal can be locked and all travel to Outland removed (which sets the stage for TBC SoD). Talent trees were better in TBC. Both factions having Paladins and Shamans means less need for ability like Heart of the Lion, and the blatant “SHAMAN LOL” imbalance isn’t so bad when both factions have access to the class. Alliance have a flight path to north STV; there’s flight path added in south Felwood.
That’s where Runes come into play and player decision is an issue. I don’t have the patience to theorycraft every possibility, but I’ll give you two.
Feral Druids have to choose between Mangle and Omen of Clarity. Rune of Mangle removes the need to put 41 points into Feral (so you could be 40/11). If you’re a Cat-Druid in a guild that uses a Bear-Druid as a main tank, you could skip the Rune of Mangle (and Mangle talent) because the MT is bringing Mangle to the raid. And get Omen of Clarity with a 40/11 spec.
Paladins get Crusader Strike as a Rune. So if you’re a Ret-Paladin, you wouldn’t need to put 41 points into Retribution. Or, you forego the Rune of Crusader Strike (and you use another Rune in that slot) and put 41 points into Retribution. This also means that Holy Paladins and Protection Paladins could get access to Crusader Strike (at the cost of another Rune).
Some Runes could be removed by using TBC talent trees (like Rune of Crusader Strike), but I wouldn’t favor that method because getting access to these abilities at earlier levels via the Rune is part of the fun.
so true I guess it’s like “the best players are doing end game raiding, therefore only end game raiding matters” and it just spiraled out of control from there.
The only issue I might have with this is that TBC (and even more so WOTLK, which had some very cool talents also) moved to dehomogize the rolls. People always talk about classes homoginizing. But they never talk about how tanks have had more of their power put into mitigation over time, and healers have had more of their power allocated towards healing.
In classic/vanilla the roles matter a lot less and I really like that.
I understand that perspective, but I genuinely think that perpsective is the minority of players. At least nowadays. I probably thought differently about it when WoW was new in 2004-06.
I think Level 60 WoW had too much class specialization but I also think Level 80 WoW also had too much class homogenization. I think Level 70/TBC got it just about perfect with spreading out some abilities so that raid formation was less class-/spec-dependent.
Another specific thing that Level 60 and Level 80 WoW got wrong was the Meditation talents for Druids and Priests. Three talent points for 15% Spirit-based mana regen in combat is too little, but 50% Spirit-based mana regen for Three talent points was too much.
The interesting thing is Classic total player base has dropped. It usually peaks at a combined 600K-700K when some new big release happens. WoTLK, SoD, etc. It is currently sitting around 320K combined. There are a lot less people in the Classic ecosystem, in general, than 8 months ago. Cataclysm has lost a lot as of late, as well.
Classic+ is probably going to be that thing that spikes the numbers again. Hopefully that brings a massive amount brand new content and they treat it like an ever-living version of the game. Not a seasonal, fresh or re-release, which have a finite amount of time before people lose interest.
Patch 0.7 (2004-06-15): Damage increased. Now an instant cast spell.
Patch 0.6 (2004-04-13):
Ability thunderbolt [Holy Strike] and Crusader Strike are now considered spells and no longer supersede previous versions.
Crusader Strike causes physical damage, has a damage bonus and has replacements at levels 22 and 34.
wowpedia.fandom: /wiki/Crusader_Strike#Patch_changes
Or…it lets you quickly jump into a role. Holy or Ret spec? They need a tank? No problem!
I’ll be super egotistical and say the reason SoD failed was because I was not there to direct the changes.
The goal of every game design(er) should be to make a world so enticing that the player contemplates “do I keep playing or go to bed because I have work/school/obligations tomorrow”…and for a fractional moment in time, your game almost convinced them to keep playing.
WoW hasn’t done that for me since November of 2006, where I played 33hrs. Straight.
I guess it’s like “the best players are doing end game raiding, therefore only end game raiding matters” and it just spiraled out of control from there.