Phase 2 is a dud because of the leveling speed, terrible pvp event, and poor class balancing.
Also, they cut gdkps so a massive portion of the players left, including all of the streamers who don’t have time to farm gold and just want to buy it and play the game.
So the hype train is nonexistent, unlike phase 1, which had a ton of streamer hype.
Before I pull aggro on the forum trolls…
I have 2 40s and working on a third. I have never done a gdkp in my life.
What RMT site are you running?
Your only valid point is the PvP issues. Stamina and mitigation has not kept up with player power and this this to be addressed. We need more health and we need a resilience stat.
TBC was the best state of PvP in WoW’s history, and this reference point is the gold standard blizzard should be aspiring towards. WotLK arena participation fell off a cliff once the PvP got way too bursts and brain dead and classes became homogenized. TBC battles were well paced, methodical, and classes were distinct.
All of your other points are just you preferring retail. None of the classic fanbase wants welfare epics, light speed progression, and gold being worthless. We want delayed gratification and meaningful grinds to work towards great rewards.
Gnomeregon not being pug friendly early on is good. We need more challenging raids, I was pleasantly surprised by the last 2 bosses. Sunken temple should be another hike in difficulty, and this should prepare anyone for a beefed up molten core with new harder mechanics.
They never took making this season into a progression realm down the road off the table. Making it a “season” right now just gives them an out to pull the plug on development if it fails. So far it continues to be a huge success, even with the current problems with PvP.
The classic fan base enjoys leveling and the slow pace of vanilla. Only retail players cry about this, and they are irrelevant.
tldr. im having fun
Huh? None of the streamers quit they’re all still there getting gold sent to them from their followers. They’re doing just fine.
Phase 2 is great and everyone i play with is having a great time. Blizzard team involved in this just needs to keep doing their thing. The positives from phase 1 and 2 are almost too many to list. There are somethings that I would like to see changed but almost all of the them boil down to personal preference. Keep up the good work SoD team.
Its really simple.
They struck it with Phase 1, it was nice, it worked well… but then they realized the numbers went down after a month and the content virutally became not as relevant…
So what do they do?
They put walls all up and down Phase 2 and create a entire system based around this… upgrading to naspar blade is garbage… it should be something that required skill and a combination of things and the blade shouldnt be like the 5th best equip in the game.
Looking at WSG and realizing people werent dying because of the restraints WSG had on damage and the healing meta… they thought… hey lets just put in one shot mechanics because thats going to be fun… well… I hit 1 2 3… thats my keys… as long as im not cc’d and you arent in a pally bubble… you are dead… but a lot of things are broken like this… rogue… shadowstep ambush mutilate… gg… cry more… the boomkins dropping starsurges in the beginning… the shadow pain death… its just mind boggling why they would think that 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 v 5 v 4 v 3 v 1 v 5… v oh half my team melded into another layer… is actually considered “fun”… If they dont throw Un’goro next phase into a raid v raid v raid v raid instance with Giant flame wall maze and king of the volcano… then they already lost on potential…
75 G trinket sink
15 G to make items
25 G for Patterns
100 G for Mounts
That move alone wiped out about 40% of players. You come out with this stoic “We will stop GDKPs”… then come back in with a “AND MURDER ALL YOU FILTHY LEGIT PLAYERS THAT BUILT UP YOUR TIME AND HOURS SO WE CAN FIX OUR PROBLEM!! MUHA MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH”.
I mean…Gnomer is great… but how long before you bend to the people that are crying about the armor reduction… when you should double down and increase bosses magic resistance… they only complain about armor reduction because boohoo my parsleys… my parsleys arent 90 :( I cant beat der mage… I cant beat der priest… why is melee hunters on top… they evade da arma??? :(
You took a promising product and literally gutted it in phase 2 by trying to create length with walls… literally every single problem youve ever had in ever iteration of WoW.
This is what you shouldve DONE in phase 2 though
Instanced STV Event - 40 man raid v 40 man raid
STV has a north road and a south road. It shouldve been like a lumber type of thing… the cart comes from the north and grom’gol… horde and alliance… base the gap time difference on speed of the lumber carts.
The troll god Loa can be used by either group once x amount of kills are done per side to topple the lumber carts on their track to in turn raise more lumber for opposing faction.
I mean this is just random and something I came up with off the top of my head… Im sure I could build a more robust system around the idea than what we currently have, and thats not a slight against the FFA game you created… I actually thought the first iteration prior to changes was the best you couldve brought of the event, but then… it was changed… but it seems as it continuously changes the more intolerable it becomes… Now everyone just measures the timer in which someone dies and will reach before making it to an altar and fight there prior to reaching said altar.
All the gear shouldve been behind rep for AB… shouldve revamped that… that way you have people doing AB inbetween and doing the event as well.
If you’d like for me to draw up a map for my vision of what an amazing 8 Raid Instanced Un’goro Maze of the Volcano would look like, id be happy to do so…
btw… I was a GM for 20+ years on a small game thats now on steam and is pretty irrelevant… so I kind of understand the mind of the current gamer, but really understand the mind of the older gamers as well 
Player progression.
it sounds to me like you made the leveling experience worse than it had to be.
Sleeping bag quest was fun and rewarding. had lots of PvP adventures along the way. And thats not all they added… they also made BFD give a whole level for 30 mins of your time.
I would do some quests in a new zone until i ran out of easy ones, do some pvp and gather mats for my professions. Then i would go some dungeons, and do quests for new runes. and rinse and repeat. it was not painful at all. and on top of all that it was very fun to level in full bfd gear because i felt very powerful
Crafting and item creation.
Im totally ok with the length of this because it gives me something to slowly work on for the next few months, but im not one of those players that needs the epic on week 2. prices will drop a lot and i will gather mats from raids. slowly working on long quest chains that give you huge epics is on of the things that iv loved most about WoW so this is a W for me.
Player versus Player issues.
damage is a little bursty for my liking i will say that. But people seem to have collectively forgotten that +stam gear is the best stat for PvP. you cant just go into a BG with full raid gear, most of it dosen’t have stam on it. some classes have more than others but having two sets of gear, one for raiding and one for PvP will go miles for you. just try it and then revisit your thoughts on PvP.
Where is the level 40 content?
i dont have enough time in the day to do all the level 40 stuff i want to. there is the raid (that will be a 3 day lockout very soon) there is a PvP event that i enjoy every 2 and a half hours, and i play feral, im not in sweat-lord 5 caster groups. i just go with whatever guildies wana go and we have fun. there are 2 dungeons for me to do for minor upgrades and BoEs and a chance at huge Epics BoEs. WSG pre-mades and solos to flush out my WSG rep. AB and world PvP are fun when i get bored of WSG. I need to finish leveling my 2nd profession, helping guildies with new runes and pre raid bis, and if there is time after all that i’m slowly leveling an alt on the side maybe you could work on that long quest chain you were complaining is too long?
Is it perfect? absolutely not but the unknown is way better than having a PTR and Beta where everything comes out solved and all you do is go to wowhead. The team at blizzard has been tuning and changing things as they go so the obviously do care and Im Personally really enjoying SOD a ton. P2 has been infinitely more fun than P1 for me and i hoping it only gets better from here
You sound like you do not care about the long term popularity of the game. I think your taste is the more Era than SoD. Gamers have changed, grindy with poor rewards is not fun. But hey man, we all enjoy different things I guess.
I would like to see them add the 50% XP buff to all your characters once you have one at level 40.
My main issue was the fact the quest chain was not as fun as in phase one. Just not as rewarding and confusing. I dropped the quest originally because the quest giver gave no indication of what this was for… Yeah noob move for sure. Had to toggle out after the raid to check. Just feel profession rewards were not well implemented phase 2.
I mentioned tea and not mutilate because rogue burst is based around using tea. I could have mentioned a million abilities but arcane surge is the one I picked.
None of those required effort of creating a new expansion. Classic plus does.
As long as you keep playing seasonals, they will NEVER make a full fledged new classic game. You’re free farm, you’ve activated their trap card
An 8 month old construction worker would be sooooo cute! But what did the little guy eat that gave him an upset tummy? 
The mob respawn rate on mobs has been trash this phase. No matter how many people are in the zone, it’s a constant wait for quest mobs. Now that mains have hit 40 the traffic is gone but it was a big reason people went into the mind numbing dungeon grind.
Also… the reason why I say all the “blood moon” gear should be behind Arathai Basin… because even if you had missed with the blood moon… its hard to go wrong with people doing AB for rep to obtain that beautiful gear.\
Simply because…
well I mean it should be obvious… if they don’t like the event… they can just do AB… that takes the strain off all the layers and layers of people that are forced into doing the event to try and get mount… gear etc…
I mean it kind of makes sense, if you think about it right?
It’s very simple, the “World” aspect is becoming instances and the community is as well.
Leveling is a bore and instanced off + little interaction with the world. Phase 1 you were exploring the world, interacting with other players, grouping up etc. The game felt alive again instead of walled away in an instance. There was a feeling that the community aspect of the game was back. In Phase 2, all there is is a miserable grind to 40 in instances, chat is spammed with LFG instead of random convos. IMO next phase they should balance it so that quests are slightly better XP and instances focused on loot.
Layering is not good and makes the world feel dead. Not sure what’s going on here, but it’s slipping into retail territory, which is exactly what people don’t like about the game.
PVP TTK is too quick. For fellow PVP lovers, this is not fun and breaks a key part of the game/ makes it feel more arcade style. Premades in battlegrounds stomp all pugs.
Min/Max everything and only 1 viable class build for each class. This breaks the feeling of really being able to build and customize your character as you work your way through the game.
A combination of all of these is making the game lose its wonder again, but I would say it’s mostly 1 and 2.
4 Is worse than that, some classes don’t even have one viable spec. My guild tried gnomer with 4 paladins and a warrior the first two lockouts. Let’s just say I’m never coming back.
Was not fun. Worst experience in gaming I’ve ever had.
There’s only 1 toilet and they make you all go at the same time.
This phase has three major issues:
The vanilla fan base is the overwhelming audience of SoD. It’s vanilla with changes that fall in line with the old design philosophy.
Retail players are not the target audience. They are financially irrelevant unless they made classic a separate sub.
Better question for you is why aren’t you play retail is you subscribe to the retail mindset?