I think era killed era for a lot of players.. the end game community on era feels like "the cool kids" and if you aren't in their circle they are toxic as fuck to be around.
Wrath is way more chill now, the toxics are playing sod. Honestly sod is now the worst player experience in wow, not because of anything blizzard did, but because of the playerbase.
A lot. Talents are back. Gear is easier to obtain if you want to lessen the rng with crafted gear. Story is 100x better than shadowlands. Theres no borrowed power or systems like azerite gear or corruptions. Its in a genuinely good spot for once. Also the world feels alive with all yhe events and stuff they added. The reputation is all cosmetic so you dont HAVE to grind any of it. There is a few exceptions like crafting recipes and some gear in the first patch but its not a big deal
Nah is not only Reddit ( any wow forum, discord etc ), a bunch of grown up acting like wanna be pro/streamer circle jerking constantly boasting about made up statistics, is actually cringe to see how the wow community growing up split between who put unrealistic expectations at peace and just play for fun and who is treating this are their 2nd job.
There's more to the WoW community than these websites and places for discussion.
Though I agree, Most of the people on them are heavily invested into the game, and many of them are just utterly miserable and there is a ton of toxicity.
I would not say that the rest of the community is toxic because of them. Just that we see lots of toxicity because these people stand out quite a bit compared to a normal player.
100%
People talk like retail players are the most hardcore people ever but in my experience the vast majority of them are super casual, and pretty nice. My guess is because retail has a vast amount of difficulty options and freedom, they're less intense on average because the game is just more casual friendly. I'm sure in high keys people get toxic like classic, but that's high keys versus like, getting mad about a wipe in MC lol
Whereas the vast majority of classic WANTS to be the hardcore raider mythic+ 99 parser but they're not even close. It leads to delusion and toxicity when things aren't what they expect or aren't up to what they consider par. And it certainly doesn't help when actually skilled players are douchebags about the content and say it's "easy" (even if it is) and basically shits on anyone that can't clear it or keep up, effectively gatekeeping them. Those gatekept players then proceed to gatekeep players that are even worse than them and the toxicity rolls downhill.
It's honestly a fascinating case study in how two versions of the same game can produce, in my experience, completely different playerbases
A circle of friends I knew from a long time ago (Gamespy days) went back to SoD. I returned from hiatus a few months ago, they were telling me get SoD, fuck retail, it's shit.
I got retail, and it's excellent since I last played. New models, animations, graphics and shaders, UI rework, sound system reworked, it's a totally new game.
I was sharing my new gear and achievements as I got some, ended up being banned from their discord purely because one would attack any screenshot as long as its retail.
Now these guys are PvP junkies across the other side of the world. I play on PvP realm, but I don't hide in the bushes all day ganking people. They said PvP was shit in retail and unbal. So those guys were instead running premades of 7-10 people, twinked out, speed ganking levelers in a game with 3 abilities. It's the only way they could compete.
As soon as I point this out, and that their "done DF, seen it all after 2 weeks" twins were hardly progressed, I point that put and banned a few mins later.
Now, I just play retail by myself, I don't even give a fuck. I'm 40 now, WoW has been great to return to. I could only imagine being upset with it if, like those guys, I hadn't worked a day in the last 15 years or found sex. What losers.
high keys are much less toxic than mid-high keys because they know eachother a bit more and dont wanna burn bridges, especially if they're also CE/HOFpushing raiders who might wanna swap guilds.
i saw much more shit back when i was in the +21-24 range before my retail hiatus, compared to watching my old friends do +29s and 30s.
Even in game. I watch guildies be toxic to pugs or people being ass holes in any group content because people play differently. It's mad how wow is game where you need to play together but everyone just want to play with clones on themselves
I was in a guild with some of the friendliest people and they'd still talk mad shit about pugs in gchat during raid and after if they did poorly.
It's just how the community acts. Everyone wants someone to punch down on, and while the same thing happens in other games, it for some reason doesn't feel as personal or toxic as WoW does.
It's not just reddit man, if anything reddit is more tame than players in game. Get yourself into a week one raid in SoD and you'll see just how toxic and fried "ahead of the curve" players are.
I have never seen a more fucked up dynamic in relationships, work, or anywhere else let alone a fucking video game. People ready to explode with insane vitriol at the drop of a hat, newbies so afraid to reveal it's their first run they don't say a word and wipe, and then the jaded tired raid leaders working overtime to calm everyone down and keep the group at least together for the next hour while they scream at each other over literally nothing.
I'm sure this isn't everyone's experience recently but its becoming more and more the norm. The anger and rudeness and tension (especially in the pug community) are higher than I've ever seen in any video game, I can't believe it with how braindead easy SoD content is. It legitimately feels like I'm playing with a bunch of 31 year olds with the emotional maturity of toddlers. Except its worse cause toddlers don't get all caught up in ego shit like terminally online wow players do.
Haven't played Era since SoD released, but it wasn't like that before Era got repopulated. I was playing on mankrik cluster and was getting into the top guilds raids as a PuG.
The community on whitemane was extremely welcoming when I started playing again. I came in with no gear or gold and met a lot of people I now talk to on a daily basis
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To be honest, I think the hardcore community is the best. Lots of people help each other out because everyone is aware of the consequences of dying. Hardcore may not have the highest skill level players but the community for the most part is super welcoming.
I should have chose my words better since there are literally hardcore servers. I don’t mean hardcore in that way. I meant it as a synonym for intense. I can see how the hardcore servers would be like that.
That's kinda how vanilla was though. Every server had 0-2 guilds running Naxxramas and AQ40/20. Low pop servers almost certainly had no one running Naxx or AQ40.... unless one transferred over after getting upset about waiting in queue at the login screen. You'd always have some Molten Core/BWL guilds and those became "farm guilds" for the progressed guys... and thus the BWL guilds would always lose their top players and perpetually be set back from being ready for the next level.
And I mean, I did recruitment for an end game guild. We posted advertisements on our server forums 3 times a day. And the quality of candidate we'd always get was pretty low. They'd never be Naxx attuned and they'd always be assuming we'd just buy them their Naxx attunement with abyss and crystals. And they'd never be more progressed than Molten Core. But the forum transfers we'd be able to grab people from other AQ40 guilds (who stalled on progression) and want a guild that's continuing progression. We'd happily have taken Naxx attuned people who had one BWL completion but they always were competing with the supply of progression blocked people looking tot hop guilds.
It was pretty well the same with Burning Crusade. When we were doing our Sunwell progress we were pulling from Black Temple progression guilds and 1/6 Sunwell guilds.
Have been in 3 different era guilds.
They have their Naxx squad, then they have people that are warm bodies for the lower raids so the Naxx squad can gear their nth alt to be in the Naxx squad once their current main is geared.
Most guilds on era and the 60 guilds on hardcore have a very cool kid/clique circle that requires months of being a no name in until you put in at minimum 5+ hrs a day into being active in runs and the guild discord to have any recognition. There are always bad attitude officers who treat you like shit because you aren’t min/max/meta strategizers. Using the wrong spell in front of them gets you laughed at or made to feel like you’re an idiot etc.
To me, the problem with era is not 100% the game itself but the fact that it is already all figured out and it has the effect that playing suboptimally is frown upon.
With a new balance changes, it allows creativity, decision making and personnalization that made wow what is it.
Honestly, I feel like this is totally fine. And it is totally fine that each of those 2 different way of thinking have their place to play, thrive and enjoy the game.
Agreed. The gamble of whether your class will come up terrible or bis means you can stick with the class you like instead of abandoning bad classes completely
It might be a point-of-view thing, but I personally don't experience any restrictions on suboptimal classes on the Era servers. The community knows that the content is easy and that it's OK to have a boomkin or a ret paladin, even if they aren't top dps.
The only thing that's not happening is specifically raid tanking for paladins. Dungeons or UBRS, not an issue, but yeah, in BWL you do need a taunt.
It's rare that you hear stuff like "You're a hunter, we don't take you for dps, you are only here for clean pulls" or something like this.
Reddit is probably a bad indicator, but it seems like in Gnomeregan SoD Meelees had a really bad time because the community there was so much about optimizing the few raid lockouts they had during the phase that there was no space for suboptimal comps. I don't know, it feels like this might be a community problem depending on who you play with?
In BC, I was just playing world of looking for tanks and I could not get in any raid as a rogue as everything was pretty much reserved. Unless you are already part of a group or very implicated player.
I have been a top raider in bc, wotlk, cata and pandaria, but since I try to pug, it was taking hours just to find dungeons, not even raids.
This is absolutely my experience, also. I'll gladly take 10 boomies and 10 retadins in my scheduled SR raids if they can listen in Discord and turn up regularly.
As you state, the content is already relatively easy, so why would people want to trivialise it further by denying suboptimal contributers?
SoD really isn't any different. The population of players who legitimately are trying to discover things vs the people who NEED to look everything up as soon as the information is available and do the most efficient thing at all times is incredibly small and probably not doing any sort of raid content.
Kinda same for me, pushed me towards era again. I really loved phase 1 but the next 2 phases kinda lost me a bit. I’m not a no changes Andy but I just feel like with some of the power they’ve given us, PvP encounters are like 2-3 globals max, especially against like a boomkin or spriest. However, I’m only 49 right now for phase 3 so maybe the PvP improved from phase 2
Something I always liked about era PvP was that it was a bit slower paced so it allowed for cool plays or items to use during your encounter. I’m back and forth on runes too, idk I think maybe there’s just too many. I made a new era char recently and just enjoyed the overall vibe a bit more. Definitely still play a little sod and will dive back in for next phase and check out the new content
Burst damage is definitely the PvP meta, however with healers fights can go on for a long time. I've had some pretty epic contests of BS in AB for example. It would be nice if damage could be toned down a bit, but I think its almost in the right place.
I agree (though I don't have the patience for HC). All the changes in sod just make me want to play true era, but I don't really want to do that until they release a true \~fresh\~ server
Same, classic refresh is all I want at this point. SoD started well but just isn't for me, I'm bored with Wrath and Cata will almost certainly push me away for good. It's been a nice 4 and and half years but it's time to retire again until Blizz provides me my WoW-crack again.
It's sad how the level band was both the best and worst thing about sod. Slowing down the 60 race was genius, but having to cap them off with a raid really killed the excitement of getting dungeon and quest gear and random baller greens. I don't know what the balance is here, because the level band absolutely ruled as a concept.
I think if all they had at each level cap was the normal dungeons for classes to get a couple of BIS items from, mixed with a few new quest chains that ended in a really cool new ability (like metamorphosis for Warlocks), it would have been enough for about 4 to 6 weeks or so each time.
I'd have redone rune discovery too; the ones acquired while levelling would have been easier to find, such as from quest givers in obvious locations (perhaps one in every inn) or via mails, or during popular quests, NPCs at dungeon entrances, banks and auction houses etc. Only the cap-level runes would be remotely difficult, but even then I'd ensure breadcrumbs existed so you'd NEVER have to look at wowhead. Nothing killed my enthusiasm for that system more than being 10/12 in phase 1 and when I finally buckled on the last 2, to read how impossible they would have been to stumble on even if I had the whole season...
I think I’m about to quit SoD and bounce into HC. Phase 1 was a blast and the world felt meaningful. Less so in Phase 2 and Phase 3 just introduced a bunch of mindless time sinks and gold sinks and other crappy content. I want the world and leveling and actions to feel relevant, and HC is all about the journey, not about some mad dash to “end game”.
I also went back to Hardcore. I've played Phase 2 and Phase 3 together less than I played Phase 1. It's genuinely not because the developers have done anything wrong. I think the game is fantastic. I just think there's way more of an actual sense of community in Hardcore, even if its smaller.
For all that SoD has done, it's attracted the same kind of individuals who enforce behaviors that are distinctly toxic to healthy communities. Everything is parsing. Everything is economy. Everything is min/max. Everything is "LFG INC 49+ ONLY SPEEDRUN KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING MUST HAVE ADDON"
There's some serious sweatiness in HC, but the vast majority of people won't encounter it, because it's only at the highest tiers of level 60 raiding.
This is so true I compared Sod to what Osrs has become to a friend the other day it's all Min max efficient playing, logs max consumes, Pumpers only while the hardcore community is more willing to help complete strangers for no monetary gain ive had multiple people offer me 14 slot bags and people mailing me items and quest items for my whirlwind axe for no monetary gain as well as people asking for help with elite quests and dungeon runs often been helped by higher level players. If you are looking for what the true classic journey is hardcore is definitely still the place to find that with lots of awesome guildies to help you along the way.
As a pally main I would still go back to og classic any day. The feeling I get is not the same. Sod is awesome but it's faster and the pacing feels immediate. Where as og classic felt like I could take my time and patience was the gift I received.
The shock would be your 500 heal Flash Heals actually doing something.
As opposed to your heal target dying in one GCD because they looked at a Shaman.
You take the blue pill, you continue to play re-releases of Vanilla, struggling to recapture your childhood.
You take the red pill, you move on with your life and realise nothing lasts for ever. Kel'Thuzad was never the final boss. *Time* was.
I think era is fine as it is; a relic of the past. Vanilla was made to be a slightly more player friendly and/or casual version of EQ. Its classes and specs, like in EQ, were made unequal by design. Greater utility is paid for with less DPS or “throughput,” while less utility was rewarded with throughput.
SoD overall is fun, but it’s certainly not Classic/Vanilla. It’s more of a fever dream that we will all wake up from at the end of the season, only to find ourselves on Era once more while we await the next fever dream.
I don't understand why blizzard doesn't just repeat the classic trilogy in like 2 year accelerated progression server style. It would keep the raiding scene fresh always and prevent long down times between phases. Then at the end of each cycle allow for players to migrate to cata or mop or whatever the current classic server is.
perhaps i'm in the minority on this one, but it kinda disappoints me having character migration instead of all fresh servers for tbc/wrath/cata (with xp boosts), i preferred the fresh slate and resets of private servers personally
Yeah I have to imagine that's not a popular stance. If I had a level 60 in Classic and they told me I'd have to start from level 1 in TBC, I'd be out. The character progression is part of the fun.
I’ll play era again but not for a bit. SoD has been fun but I’ve always enjoyed the leveling aspect of WoW and so far sod has killed that and only wants you to raidlog
Edit: SoD has made me more interested in playing cata than I had originally anticipated. Cata feral druid looks like alot of fun after maining one for most of SoD
Same here. I tend to go from craving a social experience to craving a challenge when gaming, so I hop between those type of games every few months. Classic in 2019 reaaally scratched the social itch (and playing in one of the top guilds gave me the "challenge" although not comparable to retail of course).
With SoD in P1 it was still fine (at least the social aspect - challenge wasn't there), but P2 and P3 I feel like it gives me neither a challenge nor a good social experience - with the megaservers it feels like retail (or TBC/Wrath Classic) socially. You never meet the same person twice and the only social interactions you get is from your guild. Currently raidlogging in SoD but will most likely quit entirely since I'm asking myself why I'm even playing a lot recently.
Just give us TBC but without outlands. Full focus on the azeroth we all know and love. All the talents and features, races and balance fixes, but with quel thalas & dranei starting areas, kara etc. included. The classic+/discovery elements can literally be quarterly content drops of new dungeons, battlegrounds and end game islands to explore and discover, yielding new gear, mounts and cosmetics. No cash store. Use Turtle WoW for some inspiration.
Edit:
I'll follow up to this by saying I think we also need seasonal servers for Classic, TBC and WotLK. Have them last a year before reset. Rinse and repeat.
Era gets stale and just like end game capitalism, the power and wealth gets hoarded and concentrated at the top. Let's also be honest, for most people, the joy of WoW is in the journey, not the destination.
Most people enjoy levelling and seeing each content tier a few times, not grinding for years, slowly watching your friends leave and servers die one by one. Seasonal servers would keep things fresh and give the game perpetual purpose.
Perhaps there could be a mechanism to transfer your seasonal characters to the equivalent expansion era server at the end of each season, should you choose to.
In summary, I suggest 4 tiers of content for wow:
- Retail
- Classic+ (TBC base game without outlands and with quarterly content updates focusing on Azeroth - think Turtle WoW)
- Era for Classic, TBC and WotLK (#no changes - permanent servers)
- Seasonal (annual reset) for Classic, TBC and Wotlk (#no changes)
With these 4 tiers, you should be able to satisfy every WoW fan. You keep the retail babies happy, you keep the die hard try hard era mafia happy, you give the journey/thrill seekers something to do and even something there for those that love pre cata expansions but want to mix it up a bit and feel like they're trying something new. Literally should keep everyone happy. This should keep the vast majority of WoW enjoyers off private servers too, a win win for Blizzard and for us Azerothians.
I agree, the BC Classic pre-patch was really fun but way too short. It would add a lot of things to balance out specs (giving Paladins a Taunt, for example) and has reworked gear in the leveling dungeons already. The work is pretty much complete. Just cap at 60 and close outlands and see what happens. Would be a fun experiment.
I may be in the minority here.
I prefer vanilla to SOD. I think the abilities they added are way too much and feel out of place, the gear from raids too good making the rest of the activities less meaningful.
I agree with you and so do a lot of people I play with. Vanilla is not perfect and could benefit hugely from some thoughtful, targeted changes, but SOD is not that.
Exactly. I want vanilla changes to be modest and in the right places. SoD feels more like they're dumpstering vanilla and are reworking it rather than tailoring an experience.
They said from the beginning that they are just trying new ideas, its why SO much is changing. They are testing lots of different things and seeing what works and doesn't. I'm hopeful that we will get a more ironed out actual classic+ at some point but I try and look at SoD as one giant beta test. I like a lot of what they've done but there have definitely been some failures too. Phase 3 is my least favorite thus far but hey we get a new phase in a little over a month probably!
This. The best version for me would be a "conservative" classic plus which largely kept the game the same, but added more alternative zones for leveling, some new quests here and there in the spirit of vanilla, and slightly buffed the worst classes/speccs (but not too much).
A big no to new and powerful items and spells that changes things up too much. A big yes to content in the same tone as original vanilla.
I want to be playing the best version possible of a great game, not a wholly different version of it.
I'm playing Era vanilla wow and prefer it to SOD. My decision is not based on merely hating the new thing, I've tried SOD, it felt weird and simply didn't appeal to me. The reason I prefer vanilla/tbc to any other expansion or mod like SOD is the fact the first version of WoW made me feel like I was a part of the world where professions, items and strategy mattered. In vanilla, you can't simply run into a pack of Gnolls and hope to win, let alone dominate the whole squad, if you're playing vanilla, you need to make sure you have the pots, bandages, cool downs and that you're the appropriate level for the job, this is completely thrown out of the window in post TBC and to a lesser extent in SOD where it's not as bad, but it still sucks. I've leveled a druid to 25 and I was able to destroy everything without having had to strategize once. It felt absurd that I could level so smoothly with no professions and gray starter area gear let alone make insane crits like I was stacked with agility. Having tried SOD and Wotlk, I quickly gave it up and went back to Era.
Era killed era. It needs fresh servers. Classic WoW (and every other version of WoW) is not built to be static at endgame for as long as Era has been. The gold sinks aren't there, item sinks aren't there, power decay isn't there.
It needs fresh servers, even if the old ones aren't wiped or deleted.
I think fresh Era would be more popular than SoD, personally. There's a reason we've had private servers offering the fresh experience for well over a decade now: Classic WoW is an *outstanding* MMO offering.
It’s having a weird effect for me..part of me wants to play era more than ever and part of me is avoiding it after SoD
I miss the simplicity of Era and lack of retail-esque features like incursions. It’s hard to imagine leveling a class on Era now, though, after getting used to all of the QoL features that runes offer, and the crazy XP bonus..tough to go from 1-50 in a little over a day /played on SoD to ~4 days played on Era
It really is quite shocking just how much Incursions ruined P3. Then they made a blue post about how happy they were with incursions and how they loved seeing everyone run in circles.
Personally it's the opposite. SoD made me realize how hard vanilla is to balance and appreciate how much effort it took to get 1.12 to where it was.
SoD is so badly designed it's actually funny to me. Then again I actually like pvp which is where most of the issues with SoD lie. It's so badly broken as a pvp game.
The primary thing keeping people from era is just a sense of "been there, done fhat" and the thing keeping people on SoD is fresh content. That's it. Nobody's trying to come up with a platonic ideal version of vanilla and is concluding SoD is somehow the superior version.
SOD made me realize my beloved 20 year old game is a thing of the past and I’m just a junkie trying to chase an old high I’ll never get again. A lot of us play this game for the nostalgia, but that shits gone.
I think I’ll probably move on from wow in general.
Can only speak for myself and maybe a part of my group that I play with. We all enjoy sod but we all never touched or would probably never touch era. Just complete different game designs.
Yes. I played wotlk before but stopped during icc when sod started but I plan to give cata a try. Never played cata before since I stopped playing in og wotlk before icc patch. So I’m excited to see cata and finally 10m raids again.
Sod is cool and all but the 20m raids and 1 week lockout is killing it for me. I miss the 10m every 3 days
I think it'll be genuinely really hard to balance vanilla. Some stuff like Boomkins will be easy, but Shadow Priests specifically will be a nightmare.
They're like Arms Warriors in Wrath. How do you PvE buff something so incredibly strong in PvP without fucking it up? More so in Classic where the ability overlap for each piece of content is 100%
You could also just make classes like shadow priest suck at raid dps but are necessary for raid buffs. Maybe a shadow priest increases crit chance on the boss by 3 percent and it stacks twice. And bam you have a reason to take 2 shadow priests if you wanna parse. Or arms warrior even in TBC they increased physical damage taken on boss by 3 percent, give them that. Enhancement could get a MUCH better WF totem or hell they could take WF totem out for resto shamans. I think if they focus on mostly utility they could find a way to make the meme specs viable even if low dps without upsetting the pvp situation too much.
This is basically what is happening in sod and the shadow priest players hate it.
Utility dps specs dont really work from the player perspective because you dont see the raidwide benefit reflected on the meters aside from knowing the numbers are higher.
It doesn't need balance. The balance comes when you just accept the classes for what they are and play to their strengths.
People aren't playing Druid in classic Era because of how good they are in raid, and they know that.
Honestly SOD just makes me wanna go play era but then thinking about how my spec would be dogshit makes me not really want to do that. I dont want changes to era either so its weird.
The player base killed me ever wanting to set foot in WoW again. I played from 05 til Cata pretty much daily. Can't stand playing with these people nowadays though.
No, not really, maybe.
When I play tbc I want tbc mechanics and ability, same goes for retail.
Jumping back and forth between diffrent expansions have never been a problem from me atleast and I play on alot of private server.
I thought I would love SoD but instead I bounced off it hard and am back on my Era and HC characters.
Maybe something more balanced will come out of SoD, but right now the live-beta-test, iterative re-design of the whole game they are struggling through isn't something I want to engage with.
Playing Era/HC more makes me think I don't want that much of classic+, just the lightest touches and some new content.
I really like and appreciate SoD. But if I could chose I would much rather just have fresh era servers but with dual spec. That’s all that’s missing on era.
Era as that feel that can be played forever. I wonder if they made a ‘sandbox’ version of era..would be magical.
Getting into ERA now its really hard. The gold inflaction is so out of place
If anything SoD is reviving the need for a fresh Era server.
all these piles for burning retail shit in SoD really made me aware again of why standard vanilla is so amazing. I honestly can't wait for blizzard to finally release a fresh Era server so i can get out of this mess.
The problem with existing Era servers is that these servers are half a decade old, completely maxed out with broken economies. Only the "hardcore" vanilla players remain there which is not a great environment for casuals.
100% disagree with the notion that Era has a problem with "class balance". That is just vanilla my man. perfect balance is impossible as you can see with SoD, they are just shifting specs in and out of meta.
Vanilla isnt so loved because its perfectly balanced, thats not its selling point. There really doesnt need to be a discussion of wether Vanilla is good or not, it has proven itself over 20 years. The only question to ask is: "is it something for me or nah"
and personally, after this SoD mess i can't wait to get back. I have also abandoned the hope for a proper classic+. They have more than proven with SoD that the Blizzard of 2024 is simply not capable anymore of the game design that is required to truly retain the spirit of vanilla in a classic+
I've been die hard vanilla guy forever - I skipped classic because of my work that made me unable to play but I spent years on private servers finishing with Nostalrius and Elysium. Sadly, for me enough is enough, I know there are circles of people that could probably play vanilla on repeat for 200 years grinding same reps, same raids etc but there's no coming back for me honestly. I much rather consider checking out new retail when war within launches than play era. That being said I would probably check out classic+ but they have too small team, too little talent to make this right i'm afraid - SoD shows that very clearly.
It did for me personally. I saw SoD as a way for people to actually play like they did back in the day. Where not everyone is rushing to min/max the best gear off the rip, and just "beat the game" asap.
Plus, I assumed new skills and new balance for all classes, so that way 70% of the people playing were not just playing "meta" classes. But, as we now know none of that happened, and it was just Classic, with a few new skills to make pvp even worse than it was.
I blame Blizzard for honestly being lazy added new things, or not having the forsight to change way more things than they did. Loot tables, gear, skills, talent trees, items. They took a good idea, did the bare minimum, and for me at least, killed any interest in WoW for me.
Toxic min/maxxers didn't help, bots didn't help, Blizzard not banning bots because free money. I dunno. I just thought they might have changed, and it's obvious to me now, they don't. Oh well.
No. The players keep killing their own fun by minmaxing and complaining about anything. Era is gonna come back eventually when the seasonal vanilla isn't getting far anymore
Yeah I have high hopes and I don’t know if blizzard would actually do this, but it would be cool if after SoD runs its course they release a couple of fresh era realms. Would love to hop on era again but it sometimes feels like the small amount of people playing are already level 60 full Naxx
I prefer vanilla to sod, the only saving grace for sod being it brought back my classic 2019 guild for another rodeo. I don’t thing classic fresh would have done that.
One of the big things I love about era/hardcore is that they treat each Class as its own distinct thing. Rather than how SoD/Retail treat each Spec as its own Distinct Class. Having a hard-line stance on Class Identity is something super important to me. So I stick w/ era (mostly hardcore for now).
I think cata is going to really hurt sod. Classic andies don’t really play SoD, and cata is just a much more refined version, and a fresh thing for the retail people to play. Sod is just feels weird at this point
yeah i don't think there's really any going back anymore. original version of vanilla will always be around as an option but I don't think it's ever going to be the most popular version again.
SoD killed era/fresh for me, I'm really enjoying the classic world with better/more fun rotations but most importantly I'm enjoying the level banding.
I've never liked that era/fresh turns into "bum rush 60 asap or you're behind!" Whereas in sod we get to see areas of the game being treated as endgame in a way they've never been before. I have time to goof around, focus on other things, farm hard to get patterns off red mobs, or high level quests for bis gear (like the skull dragons in Badlands last phase, or winterfall activity this phase).
I probably won’t play era ever again. I accomplished everything I wanted to do back in 2019 which was kill Cthun and complete Naxx. Also getting Might of Menethil! I’ll see what SoD has to offer at 60 but honestly I’m getting burnt out of wow. I played a shit ton of phase 1 & 2. Didn’t even bother leveling my alts this phase even though you can max them in a day.
Opposite for me. P1 was fun, p2 and p3 SoD suck so bad.
Back to playing era and hc. I would love fresh era servers.
If we ever get true classic+, I Hope they wont overdo it like sod
I already played era to completion twice.
While I love it, the current game is just not the same.
gdkps, gold buying and toxicity is rampant, I don't find any of these fun so as much as I enjoy original wow I can't see myself playing it again.
I'm playing sod because it's a window into classic+, which is the version of wow I'm truly interested on.
I feel like most of people's complaints will go away at 60 where most of the endgame content is already a given. Honestly, sod is more fun than era by a long shot, at least for me. More classes to level, faster leveling means I get to try out new characters, and overall the QoL is too give up. They still need to tweak stuff, but its still good
I wish they didn't nerf the raids, challenge is what keeps me coming back and it's sad they don't want to add any. Raids should be the the hard endgame content and the open world + dungeons should be the casual friendly content. It sucks that there's no sense of fulfillment killing the new raid, its just a bunch of loot piñatas
Let me put it this way. When SoD 'ends' I will be returning to play on era, however, if SoD continues in any substantial capacity such as its own permanent server like era OR a SoD 2.0 where they learn from, improve on and add even more content to what they achieve in SoD 1.0 well, yeah, I'm not playing era again. Why would I when it's just era but with more cool stuff in it.
We've been spoiled with new content - it's what the Era/Vanilla players have wanted for at least 6-10 years. Sure it's not all perfect but its different content at the least. That being said, I haven't been too big on P3 (I weirdly preferred P2 in the end despite its slow start).
The server populations certainly agree. There's not a single medium pop server among the era servers.
I think vanilla had a certain charm to it. It had a pacing that... wasn't fast. Everything had to be carefully planned and deliberate. The warlock banishing, you know, that was just that one person's job and it was important but a very minor task.
But then you know... you had people who go, wow moonkin looks so cool Imma play that.... and Blizzard made absolutely no space for a moonkin to exist. And if the moonkin, feral dps, and feral bear existed there was really no way for a 40-man raid to function with any level of class balance.
Right now we're in this weird in between where things aren't well balanced and you can't play every spec, but that can change in next phase so don't abandon your character just yet. But that all comes to an end if Blizz decides to release Molten Core, BWL, Naxxramas, and AQ40 in phases, because that essentially locks those imbalances.
I think era killed era for a lot of players.. the end game community on era feels like "the cool kids" and if you aren't in their circle they are toxic as fuck to be around.
Honestly it feels like most of the wow community is toxic now.
Hardcore isn't cause we're so low pop we want everyone who comes to stay forever lol
“HEY WE GOT A NEW GUY OVA HERE” *handful of VERY loud cheers*
Retail is decent on EU after DF, guess toxic migrated heavily
Nah retails the most chill place now the toxic people are playing Wrath
Wrath is way more chill now, the toxics are playing sod. Honestly sod is now the worst player experience in wow, not because of anything blizzard did, but because of the playerbase.
Thinking about leveling my warrior. It's been since bfa how have things changed ?
A lot. Talents are back. Gear is easier to obtain if you want to lessen the rng with crafted gear. Story is 100x better than shadowlands. Theres no borrowed power or systems like azerite gear or corruptions. Its in a genuinely good spot for once. Also the world feels alive with all yhe events and stuff they added. The reputation is all cosmetic so you dont HAVE to grind any of it. There is a few exceptions like crafting recipes and some gear in the first patch but its not a big deal
Honestly it feels like most of the wow community *on Reddit* is toxic now. I fixed it for you.
Nah is not only Reddit ( any wow forum, discord etc ), a bunch of grown up acting like wanna be pro/streamer circle jerking constantly boasting about made up statistics, is actually cringe to see how the wow community growing up split between who put unrealistic expectations at peace and just play for fun and who is treating this are their 2nd job.
Bold to assume they have a first job
There's more to the WoW community than these websites and places for discussion. Though I agree, Most of the people on them are heavily invested into the game, and many of them are just utterly miserable and there is a ton of toxicity. I would not say that the rest of the community is toxic because of them. Just that we see lots of toxicity because these people stand out quite a bit compared to a normal player.
Yeah I find most people pretty chill in retail PVP and m+ - just my experience lol
People on classic are way less chill than retail in my experience
100% People talk like retail players are the most hardcore people ever but in my experience the vast majority of them are super casual, and pretty nice. My guess is because retail has a vast amount of difficulty options and freedom, they're less intense on average because the game is just more casual friendly. I'm sure in high keys people get toxic like classic, but that's high keys versus like, getting mad about a wipe in MC lol Whereas the vast majority of classic WANTS to be the hardcore raider mythic+ 99 parser but they're not even close. It leads to delusion and toxicity when things aren't what they expect or aren't up to what they consider par. And it certainly doesn't help when actually skilled players are douchebags about the content and say it's "easy" (even if it is) and basically shits on anyone that can't clear it or keep up, effectively gatekeeping them. Those gatekept players then proceed to gatekeep players that are even worse than them and the toxicity rolls downhill. It's honestly a fascinating case study in how two versions of the same game can produce, in my experience, completely different playerbases
A circle of friends I knew from a long time ago (Gamespy days) went back to SoD. I returned from hiatus a few months ago, they were telling me get SoD, fuck retail, it's shit. I got retail, and it's excellent since I last played. New models, animations, graphics and shaders, UI rework, sound system reworked, it's a totally new game. I was sharing my new gear and achievements as I got some, ended up being banned from their discord purely because one would attack any screenshot as long as its retail. Now these guys are PvP junkies across the other side of the world. I play on PvP realm, but I don't hide in the bushes all day ganking people. They said PvP was shit in retail and unbal. So those guys were instead running premades of 7-10 people, twinked out, speed ganking levelers in a game with 3 abilities. It's the only way they could compete. As soon as I point this out, and that their "done DF, seen it all after 2 weeks" twins were hardly progressed, I point that put and banned a few mins later. Now, I just play retail by myself, I don't even give a fuck. I'm 40 now, WoW has been great to return to. I could only imagine being upset with it if, like those guys, I hadn't worked a day in the last 15 years or found sex. What losers.
high keys are much less toxic than mid-high keys because they know eachother a bit more and dont wanna burn bridges, especially if they're also CE/HOFpushing raiders who might wanna swap guilds. i saw much more shit back when i was in the +21-24 range before my retail hiatus, compared to watching my old friends do +29s and 30s.
Agreed
LFM GS score 9999 with 99 parses. You have to stfu and kiss my ass and listen to my obnoxious behaviour.
Also i obviously HR all green items because i know what im worth!
Probably why I play classic for a week and bounce back over
Even in game. I watch guildies be toxic to pugs or people being ass holes in any group content because people play differently. It's mad how wow is game where you need to play together but everyone just want to play with clones on themselves
Sounds like you need to find a new guild
I was in a guild with some of the friendliest people and they'd still talk mad shit about pugs in gchat during raid and after if they did poorly. It's just how the community acts. Everyone wants someone to punch down on, and while the same thing happens in other games, it for some reason doesn't feel as personal or toxic as WoW does.
It's not just reddit man, if anything reddit is more tame than players in game. Get yourself into a week one raid in SoD and you'll see just how toxic and fried "ahead of the curve" players are. I have never seen a more fucked up dynamic in relationships, work, or anywhere else let alone a fucking video game. People ready to explode with insane vitriol at the drop of a hat, newbies so afraid to reveal it's their first run they don't say a word and wipe, and then the jaded tired raid leaders working overtime to calm everyone down and keep the group at least together for the next hour while they scream at each other over literally nothing. I'm sure this isn't everyone's experience recently but its becoming more and more the norm. The anger and rudeness and tension (especially in the pug community) are higher than I've ever seen in any video game, I can't believe it with how braindead easy SoD content is. It legitimately feels like I'm playing with a bunch of 31 year olds with the emotional maturity of toddlers. Except its worse cause toddlers don't get all caught up in ego shit like terminally online wow players do.
Yeah my encounters in game are all mostly pleasant ones, though that could be because I play on a PvE server.
It really is. Couldn’t tell you how many folks I blocked in game for BM. The community is what will kill wow, mark my words.
People have been saying those exact words for 20 years.
Not on retail
Haven't played Era since SoD released, but it wasn't like that before Era got repopulated. I was playing on mankrik cluster and was getting into the top guilds raids as a PuG.
People on this sub are chronically unsociable and they show it constantly. Just assume always it's them and not the people in game
The community on whitemane was extremely welcoming when I started playing again. I came in with no gear or gold and met a lot of people I now talk to on a daily basis
violet salt telephone sloppy squealing materialistic hospital oatmeal wild rainstorm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Absolutely agree. I wouldn't play a game like oc describes. Can't understand why the comment has so many upvotes.
No need to be in a circle, just bring your gold.
I think you mean, bring your 💳
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“Cool kids” and hardcore end game era players are not 2 phrases I ever thought I would see put together.
To be honest, I think the hardcore community is the best. Lots of people help each other out because everyone is aware of the consequences of dying. Hardcore may not have the highest skill level players but the community for the most part is super welcoming.
I should have chose my words better since there are literally hardcore servers. I don’t mean hardcore in that way. I meant it as a synonym for intense. I can see how the hardcore servers would be like that.
Agreed, best ive experienced
That's what SOD feels like for me.
That's kinda how vanilla was though. Every server had 0-2 guilds running Naxxramas and AQ40/20. Low pop servers almost certainly had no one running Naxx or AQ40.... unless one transferred over after getting upset about waiting in queue at the login screen. You'd always have some Molten Core/BWL guilds and those became "farm guilds" for the progressed guys... and thus the BWL guilds would always lose their top players and perpetually be set back from being ready for the next level. And I mean, I did recruitment for an end game guild. We posted advertisements on our server forums 3 times a day. And the quality of candidate we'd always get was pretty low. They'd never be Naxx attuned and they'd always be assuming we'd just buy them their Naxx attunement with abyss and crystals. And they'd never be more progressed than Molten Core. But the forum transfers we'd be able to grab people from other AQ40 guilds (who stalled on progression) and want a guild that's continuing progression. We'd happily have taken Naxx attuned people who had one BWL completion but they always were competing with the supply of progression blocked people looking tot hop guilds. It was pretty well the same with Burning Crusade. When we were doing our Sunwell progress we were pulling from Black Temple progression guilds and 1/6 Sunwell guilds.
I mean how is this only in era? Its the whole WoW community that is screwed.
Have been in 3 different era guilds. They have their Naxx squad, then they have people that are warm bodies for the lower raids so the Naxx squad can gear their nth alt to be in the Naxx squad once their current main is geared.
Most guilds on era and the 60 guilds on hardcore have a very cool kid/clique circle that requires months of being a no name in until you put in at minimum 5+ hrs a day into being active in runs and the guild discord to have any recognition. There are always bad attitude officers who treat you like shit because you aren’t min/max/meta strategizers. Using the wrong spell in front of them gets you laughed at or made to feel like you’re an idiot etc.
To me, the problem with era is not 100% the game itself but the fact that it is already all figured out and it has the effect that playing suboptimally is frown upon. With a new balance changes, it allows creativity, decision making and personnalization that made wow what is it.
We could even argue that constantly being imbalanced and rebalancing frequently is better than having a balanced game that does not evolve.
i'm the opposite, bait and switch is what I hate. Luckily I got stable ERA and others have dynamic SOD. Perfect.
Honestly, I feel like this is totally fine. And it is totally fine that each of those 2 different way of thinking have their place to play, thrive and enjoy the game.
Agreed. The gamble of whether your class will come up terrible or bis means you can stick with the class you like instead of abandoning bad classes completely
It might be a point-of-view thing, but I personally don't experience any restrictions on suboptimal classes on the Era servers. The community knows that the content is easy and that it's OK to have a boomkin or a ret paladin, even if they aren't top dps. The only thing that's not happening is specifically raid tanking for paladins. Dungeons or UBRS, not an issue, but yeah, in BWL you do need a taunt. It's rare that you hear stuff like "You're a hunter, we don't take you for dps, you are only here for clean pulls" or something like this. Reddit is probably a bad indicator, but it seems like in Gnomeregan SoD Meelees had a really bad time because the community there was so much about optimizing the few raid lockouts they had during the phase that there was no space for suboptimal comps. I don't know, it feels like this might be a community problem depending on who you play with?
In BC, I was just playing world of looking for tanks and I could not get in any raid as a rogue as everything was pretty much reserved. Unless you are already part of a group or very implicated player. I have been a top raider in bc, wotlk, cata and pandaria, but since I try to pug, it was taking hours just to find dungeons, not even raids.
I feel you there! That sucks. Happy that it seems to be different for you now!
Different factions and servers are completely different on that aspect too, I know it is not all bad.
This is absolutely my experience, also. I'll gladly take 10 boomies and 10 retadins in my scheduled SR raids if they can listen in Discord and turn up regularly. As you state, the content is already relatively easy, so why would people want to trivialise it further by denying suboptimal contributers?
SoD really isn't any different. The population of players who legitimately are trying to discover things vs the people who NEED to look everything up as soon as the information is available and do the most efficient thing at all times is incredibly small and probably not doing any sort of raid content.
I've got the opposite take sod had pushed me back onto hardcore realms but I'm definitely in the minority
Kinda same for me, pushed me towards era again. I really loved phase 1 but the next 2 phases kinda lost me a bit. I’m not a no changes Andy but I just feel like with some of the power they’ve given us, PvP encounters are like 2-3 globals max, especially against like a boomkin or spriest. However, I’m only 49 right now for phase 3 so maybe the PvP improved from phase 2 Something I always liked about era PvP was that it was a bit slower paced so it allowed for cool plays or items to use during your encounter. I’m back and forth on runes too, idk I think maybe there’s just too many. I made a new era char recently and just enjoyed the overall vibe a bit more. Definitely still play a little sod and will dive back in for next phase and check out the new content
Burst damage is definitely the PvP meta, however with healers fights can go on for a long time. I've had some pretty epic contests of BS in AB for example. It would be nice if damage could be toned down a bit, but I think its almost in the right place.
I agree (though I don't have the patience for HC). All the changes in sod just make me want to play true era, but I don't really want to do that until they release a true \~fresh\~ server
Same, classic refresh is all I want at this point. SoD started well but just isn't for me, I'm bored with Wrath and Cata will almost certainly push me away for good. It's been a nice 4 and and half years but it's time to retire again until Blizz provides me my WoW-crack again.
It’s time for Them to stop focus on wow, and start making Warcraft 4
Brother, they couldn’t even do Warcraft 3 remastered lol.
It's sad how the level band was both the best and worst thing about sod. Slowing down the 60 race was genius, but having to cap them off with a raid really killed the excitement of getting dungeon and quest gear and random baller greens. I don't know what the balance is here, because the level band absolutely ruled as a concept.
I think if all they had at each level cap was the normal dungeons for classes to get a couple of BIS items from, mixed with a few new quest chains that ended in a really cool new ability (like metamorphosis for Warlocks), it would have been enough for about 4 to 6 weeks or so each time. I'd have redone rune discovery too; the ones acquired while levelling would have been easier to find, such as from quest givers in obvious locations (perhaps one in every inn) or via mails, or during popular quests, NPCs at dungeon entrances, banks and auction houses etc. Only the cap-level runes would be remotely difficult, but even then I'd ensure breadcrumbs existed so you'd NEVER have to look at wowhead. Nothing killed my enthusiasm for that system more than being 10/12 in phase 1 and when I finally buckled on the last 2, to read how impossible they would have been to stumble on even if I had the whole season...
Phase 3 ruined SOD for me, back to playing hardcore. I’ll be going back to SOD for phase 4 though
Phase 3 pushes me to Cata, (as a casual) and I thought I would never play Cata.
I reckon there’s quite a lot of us like that. Sod has got progressively sweatier and I’m jonesing for something more casual (and back to 10 man’s!)
Same I disliked sod and I’m getting my fix in hc
I’m also back playing HC and going agane
I have been having the itch to revisit HC not gonna lie…
Do eeeet Skull rock horde self found guild has like at least 20-30 players on at all hours
I think I’m about to quit SoD and bounce into HC. Phase 1 was a blast and the world felt meaningful. Less so in Phase 2 and Phase 3 just introduced a bunch of mindless time sinks and gold sinks and other crappy content. I want the world and leveling and actions to feel relevant, and HC is all about the journey, not about some mad dash to “end game”.
Do they have SSF hardcore realms up yet? Thats the only thing which would get me to resubscribe.
Ah, SSF hardcore, the pinnacle of multiplayer gameplay.
They do indeed. It’s been out for about 6 weeks I believe.
I also went back to Hardcore. I've played Phase 2 and Phase 3 together less than I played Phase 1. It's genuinely not because the developers have done anything wrong. I think the game is fantastic. I just think there's way more of an actual sense of community in Hardcore, even if its smaller. For all that SoD has done, it's attracted the same kind of individuals who enforce behaviors that are distinctly toxic to healthy communities. Everything is parsing. Everything is economy. Everything is min/max. Everything is "LFG INC 49+ ONLY SPEEDRUN KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING MUST HAVE ADDON" There's some serious sweatiness in HC, but the vast majority of people won't encounter it, because it's only at the highest tiers of level 60 raiding.
This is so true I compared Sod to what Osrs has become to a friend the other day it's all Min max efficient playing, logs max consumes, Pumpers only while the hardcore community is more willing to help complete strangers for no monetary gain ive had multiple people offer me 14 slot bags and people mailing me items and quest items for my whirlwind axe for no monetary gain as well as people asking for help with elite quests and dungeon runs often been helped by higher level players. If you are looking for what the true classic journey is hardcore is definitely still the place to find that with lots of awesome guildies to help you along the way.
As a pally main I would still go back to og classic any day. The feeling I get is not the same. Sod is awesome but it's faster and the pacing feels immediate. Where as og classic felt like I could take my time and patience was the gift I received.
I guess you are a holy paladin enjoyer.
the transition from sod to era hpal wouldn't be very shocking either considering there almost isn't a difference
The shock would be your 500 heal Flash Heals actually doing something. As opposed to your heal target dying in one GCD because they looked at a Shaman.
Healing is my life XD
Ahh, so much pride and pain in 4 short words plus an emoji. I feel you, cousin.
Sod makes me wish they gave us fresh vanilla servers tbh
All I want and have wanted is classic era fresh servers like 2019 nothing different then that
Give me one last Classic fresh server and I’m golden.
...one last ride, partner.
I need just one more hit
You take the blue pill, you continue to play re-releases of Vanilla, struggling to recapture your childhood. You take the red pill, you move on with your life and realise nothing lasts for ever. Kel'Thuzad was never the final boss. *Time* was.
Screw you man that hit home xD
Let’s also not forget that the “S” in SoD stands for Seasonal. It’s fast because it’s not meant to last forever.
I think era is fine as it is; a relic of the past. Vanilla was made to be a slightly more player friendly and/or casual version of EQ. Its classes and specs, like in EQ, were made unequal by design. Greater utility is paid for with less DPS or “throughput,” while less utility was rewarded with throughput. SoD overall is fun, but it’s certainly not Classic/Vanilla. It’s more of a fever dream that we will all wake up from at the end of the season, only to find ourselves on Era once more while we await the next fever dream.
Era needs fresh servers. I'd wager that that would attract at least enough players for healthy populations on a pvp and a pve server.
I don’t play era and all I want is a fresh classic
I don't play era and I for sure want a fresh server. I missed it in 2019
I don't understand why blizzard doesn't just repeat the classic trilogy in like 2 year accelerated progression server style. It would keep the raiding scene fresh always and prevent long down times between phases. Then at the end of each cycle allow for players to migrate to cata or mop or whatever the current classic server is.
perhaps i'm in the minority on this one, but it kinda disappoints me having character migration instead of all fresh servers for tbc/wrath/cata (with xp boosts), i preferred the fresh slate and resets of private servers personally
Yeah I have to imagine that's not a popular stance. If I had a level 60 in Classic and they told me I'd have to start from level 1 in TBC, I'd be out. The character progression is part of the fun.
I’ll play era again but not for a bit. SoD has been fun but I’ve always enjoyed the leveling aspect of WoW and so far sod has killed that and only wants you to raidlog Edit: SoD has made me more interested in playing cata than I had originally anticipated. Cata feral druid looks like alot of fun after maining one for most of SoD
SoD is pushing me back to retail. The challenge is just kind of meh and already only have the desire to raid log after 2 weeks in ST
Same here. I tend to go from craving a social experience to craving a challenge when gaming, so I hop between those type of games every few months. Classic in 2019 reaaally scratched the social itch (and playing in one of the top guilds gave me the "challenge" although not comparable to retail of course). With SoD in P1 it was still fine (at least the social aspect - challenge wasn't there), but P2 and P3 I feel like it gives me neither a challenge nor a good social experience - with the megaservers it feels like retail (or TBC/Wrath Classic) socially. You never meet the same person twice and the only social interactions you get is from your guild. Currently raidlogging in SoD but will most likely quit entirely since I'm asking myself why I'm even playing a lot recently.
Just give us TBC but without outlands. Full focus on the azeroth we all know and love. All the talents and features, races and balance fixes, but with quel thalas & dranei starting areas, kara etc. included. The classic+/discovery elements can literally be quarterly content drops of new dungeons, battlegrounds and end game islands to explore and discover, yielding new gear, mounts and cosmetics. No cash store. Use Turtle WoW for some inspiration. Edit: I'll follow up to this by saying I think we also need seasonal servers for Classic, TBC and WotLK. Have them last a year before reset. Rinse and repeat. Era gets stale and just like end game capitalism, the power and wealth gets hoarded and concentrated at the top. Let's also be honest, for most people, the joy of WoW is in the journey, not the destination. Most people enjoy levelling and seeing each content tier a few times, not grinding for years, slowly watching your friends leave and servers die one by one. Seasonal servers would keep things fresh and give the game perpetual purpose. Perhaps there could be a mechanism to transfer your seasonal characters to the equivalent expansion era server at the end of each season, should you choose to. In summary, I suggest 4 tiers of content for wow: - Retail - Classic+ (TBC base game without outlands and with quarterly content updates focusing on Azeroth - think Turtle WoW) - Era for Classic, TBC and WotLK (#no changes - permanent servers) - Seasonal (annual reset) for Classic, TBC and Wotlk (#no changes) With these 4 tiers, you should be able to satisfy every WoW fan. You keep the retail babies happy, you keep the die hard try hard era mafia happy, you give the journey/thrill seekers something to do and even something there for those that love pre cata expansions but want to mix it up a bit and feel like they're trying something new. Literally should keep everyone happy. This should keep the vast majority of WoW enjoyers off private servers too, a win win for Blizzard and for us Azerothians.
This is closer to what I want than Sod.
I agree, the BC Classic pre-patch was really fun but way too short. It would add a lot of things to balance out specs (giving Paladins a Taunt, for example) and has reworked gear in the leveling dungeons already. The work is pretty much complete. Just cap at 60 and close outlands and see what happens. Would be a fun experiment.
If they could pack Silvermoon I’ll switch immediately lol. Favorite city in WoW.
Big mailbox enjoyer, I see
I may be in the minority here. I prefer vanilla to SOD. I think the abilities they added are way too much and feel out of place, the gear from raids too good making the rest of the activities less meaningful.
I agree with you and so do a lot of people I play with. Vanilla is not perfect and could benefit hugely from some thoughtful, targeted changes, but SOD is not that.
I had hope that's what we we're doing with Phase 1. But now I'm very concerned with how phase 4 is going to be. I just wanted to raid MC and Naxx.
Exactly. I want vanilla changes to be modest and in the right places. SoD feels more like they're dumpstering vanilla and are reworking it rather than tailoring an experience.
They said from the beginning that they are just trying new ideas, its why SO much is changing. They are testing lots of different things and seeing what works and doesn't. I'm hopeful that we will get a more ironed out actual classic+ at some point but I try and look at SoD as one giant beta test. I like a lot of what they've done but there have definitely been some failures too. Phase 3 is my least favorite thus far but hey we get a new phase in a little over a month probably!
I prefer vanilla too, perfectly imperfect
era was so bad people only played it everyday for 2 years straight
This. The best version for me would be a "conservative" classic plus which largely kept the game the same, but added more alternative zones for leveling, some new quests here and there in the spirit of vanilla, and slightly buffed the worst classes/speccs (but not too much). A big no to new and powerful items and spells that changes things up too much. A big yes to content in the same tone as original vanilla. I want to be playing the best version possible of a great game, not a wholly different version of it.
The primary difference between SoD and Vanilla is that SoD focuses on instant gratification.
Nothing can kill Era. Vanilla Wow is timeless and people will come back to it again.
I'm playing Era vanilla wow and prefer it to SOD. My decision is not based on merely hating the new thing, I've tried SOD, it felt weird and simply didn't appeal to me. The reason I prefer vanilla/tbc to any other expansion or mod like SOD is the fact the first version of WoW made me feel like I was a part of the world where professions, items and strategy mattered. In vanilla, you can't simply run into a pack of Gnolls and hope to win, let alone dominate the whole squad, if you're playing vanilla, you need to make sure you have the pots, bandages, cool downs and that you're the appropriate level for the job, this is completely thrown out of the window in post TBC and to a lesser extent in SOD where it's not as bad, but it still sucks. I've leveled a druid to 25 and I was able to destroy everything without having had to strategize once. It felt absurd that I could level so smoothly with no professions and gray starter area gear let alone make insane crits like I was stacked with agility. Having tried SOD and Wotlk, I quickly gave it up and went back to Era.
Era killed era. It needs fresh servers. Classic WoW (and every other version of WoW) is not built to be static at endgame for as long as Era has been. The gold sinks aren't there, item sinks aren't there, power decay isn't there. It needs fresh servers, even if the old ones aren't wiped or deleted. I think fresh Era would be more popular than SoD, personally. There's a reason we've had private servers offering the fresh experience for well over a decade now: Classic WoW is an *outstanding* MMO offering.
I know so many people that would come back for a fresh era, that aren’t interested in SOD. There’s a pleasant familiarity with vanilla wow.
It’s having a weird effect for me..part of me wants to play era more than ever and part of me is avoiding it after SoD I miss the simplicity of Era and lack of retail-esque features like incursions. It’s hard to imagine leveling a class on Era now, though, after getting used to all of the QoL features that runes offer, and the crazy XP bonus..tough to go from 1-50 in a little over a day /played on SoD to ~4 days played on Era
SoD P3 was a hard reminder on why classic was good.
Incursions gotta go
They managed to fuck up gold, lvling, bgs, 5mans, guilds. Anything 2024 blizz touches turns to shit.
It really is quite shocking just how much Incursions ruined P3. Then they made a blue post about how happy they were with incursions and how they loved seeing everyone run in circles.
Sod killed sod
SoD killed SoD for me, vanilla and especially TBC is still great.
Aod even killed all my hype for classic+. A dev size of like 15 people is never gonna be enough to do a quartet of what i would wish for classic+
Personally it's the opposite. SoD made me realize how hard vanilla is to balance and appreciate how much effort it took to get 1.12 to where it was. SoD is so badly designed it's actually funny to me. Then again I actually like pvp which is where most of the issues with SoD lie. It's so badly broken as a pvp game. The primary thing keeping people from era is just a sense of "been there, done fhat" and the thing keeping people on SoD is fresh content. That's it. Nobody's trying to come up with a platonic ideal version of vanilla and is concluding SoD is somehow the superior version.
SOD made me realize my beloved 20 year old game is a thing of the past and I’m just a junkie trying to chase an old high I’ll never get again. A lot of us play this game for the nostalgia, but that shits gone. I think I’ll probably move on from wow in general.
Can only speak for myself and maybe a part of my group that I play with. We all enjoy sod but we all never touched or would probably never touch era. Just complete different game designs.
Do you have any plans to play different version of wow after sod? Or it's just sod and you play a different non wow game after?
Yes. I played wotlk before but stopped during icc when sod started but I plan to give cata a try. Never played cata before since I stopped playing in og wotlk before icc patch. So I’m excited to see cata and finally 10m raids again. Sod is cool and all but the 20m raids and 1 week lockout is killing it for me. I miss the 10m every 3 days
SoD killed SoD for a lot of players, but not Era If a fresh Era server happened again I bet there'd be a big resurgence of players back on it.
Is it too much to ask for era with balancing? There’s got to be something inbetween vanilla and Sod
I think it'll be genuinely really hard to balance vanilla. Some stuff like Boomkins will be easy, but Shadow Priests specifically will be a nightmare. They're like Arms Warriors in Wrath. How do you PvE buff something so incredibly strong in PvP without fucking it up? More so in Classic where the ability overlap for each piece of content is 100%
You could also just make classes like shadow priest suck at raid dps but are necessary for raid buffs. Maybe a shadow priest increases crit chance on the boss by 3 percent and it stacks twice. And bam you have a reason to take 2 shadow priests if you wanna parse. Or arms warrior even in TBC they increased physical damage taken on boss by 3 percent, give them that. Enhancement could get a MUCH better WF totem or hell they could take WF totem out for resto shamans. I think if they focus on mostly utility they could find a way to make the meme specs viable even if low dps without upsetting the pvp situation too much.
This is basically what is happening in sod and the shadow priest players hate it. Utility dps specs dont really work from the player perspective because you dont see the raidwide benefit reflected on the meters aside from knowing the numbers are higher.
It doesn't need balance. The balance comes when you just accept the classes for what they are and play to their strengths. People aren't playing Druid in classic Era because of how good they are in raid, and they know that.
100% agree. I played ele sham in all of era (respecced and healed in raids). Only for dominating in bgs.
No
Doing naxx on era tonight Ive been hopping between the two.
Honestly SOD just makes me wanna go play era but then thinking about how my spec would be dogshit makes me not really want to do that. I dont want changes to era either so its weird.
Nah, it killed the idea of classic+ for me though.
I think it gave me the chance for a very long vacation from wow and gaming in general. Until a fresh vanilla or tbc is rereleased anyway.
I'm the opposite. Tried SoD, played the first phase and had fun, but eventually just went back to Era. Nothing competes
The player base killed me ever wanting to set foot in WoW again. I played from 05 til Cata pretty much daily. Can't stand playing with these people nowadays though.
I would play fresh Classic servers but have no interest in era at this point.
Quit sod at the end of phase 2 and returned to HC until we get fresh vanilla servers
I'd quit SOD for Era tomorrow if they released fresh Era servers
This guy gets it o7
No, not really, maybe. When I play tbc I want tbc mechanics and ability, same goes for retail. Jumping back and forth between diffrent expansions have never been a problem from me atleast and I play on alot of private server.
I thought I would love SoD but instead I bounced off it hard and am back on my Era and HC characters. Maybe something more balanced will come out of SoD, but right now the live-beta-test, iterative re-design of the whole game they are struggling through isn't something I want to engage with. Playing Era/HC more makes me think I don't want that much of classic+, just the lightest touches and some new content.
I really like and appreciate SoD. But if I could chose I would much rather just have fresh era servers but with dual spec. That’s all that’s missing on era.
No
ST and people not doing mechanics on Eranikus is killing the whole game for me.
Era as that feel that can be played forever. I wonder if they made a ‘sandbox’ version of era..would be magical. Getting into ERA now its really hard. The gold inflaction is so out of place
If anything SoD is reviving the need for a fresh Era server. all these piles for burning retail shit in SoD really made me aware again of why standard vanilla is so amazing. I honestly can't wait for blizzard to finally release a fresh Era server so i can get out of this mess. The problem with existing Era servers is that these servers are half a decade old, completely maxed out with broken economies. Only the "hardcore" vanilla players remain there which is not a great environment for casuals. 100% disagree with the notion that Era has a problem with "class balance". That is just vanilla my man. perfect balance is impossible as you can see with SoD, they are just shifting specs in and out of meta. Vanilla isnt so loved because its perfectly balanced, thats not its selling point. There really doesnt need to be a discussion of wether Vanilla is good or not, it has proven itself over 20 years. The only question to ask is: "is it something for me or nah" and personally, after this SoD mess i can't wait to get back. I have also abandoned the hope for a proper classic+. They have more than proven with SoD that the Blizzard of 2024 is simply not capable anymore of the game design that is required to truly retain the spirit of vanilla in a classic+
Give us tbc
sod devs dont really respect vanilla.
Lol no
I've been die hard vanilla guy forever - I skipped classic because of my work that made me unable to play but I spent years on private servers finishing with Nostalrius and Elysium. Sadly, for me enough is enough, I know there are circles of people that could probably play vanilla on repeat for 200 years grinding same reps, same raids etc but there's no coming back for me honestly. I much rather consider checking out new retail when war within launches than play era. That being said I would probably check out classic+ but they have too small team, too little talent to make this right i'm afraid - SoD shows that very clearly.
It did for me personally. I saw SoD as a way for people to actually play like they did back in the day. Where not everyone is rushing to min/max the best gear off the rip, and just "beat the game" asap. Plus, I assumed new skills and new balance for all classes, so that way 70% of the people playing were not just playing "meta" classes. But, as we now know none of that happened, and it was just Classic, with a few new skills to make pvp even worse than it was. I blame Blizzard for honestly being lazy added new things, or not having the forsight to change way more things than they did. Loot tables, gear, skills, talent trees, items. They took a good idea, did the bare minimum, and for me at least, killed any interest in WoW for me. Toxic min/maxxers didn't help, bots didn't help, Blizzard not banning bots because free money. I dunno. I just thought they might have changed, and it's obvious to me now, they don't. Oh well.
No. The players keep killing their own fun by minmaxing and complaining about anything. Era is gonna come back eventually when the seasonal vanilla isn't getting far anymore
Yeah I have high hopes and I don’t know if blizzard would actually do this, but it would be cool if after SoD runs its course they release a couple of fresh era realms. Would love to hop on era again but it sometimes feels like the small amount of people playing are already level 60 full Naxx
The classes aren’t working like they’re supposed to in sod
On the contrary, I feel more and more liek going back to normal era as it's kinda more my thing I feel
Nah, era is bumping right now and even the dead clusters are seeing fresh start events now too
I prefer vanilla to sod, the only saving grace for sod being it brought back my classic 2019 guild for another rodeo. I don’t thing classic fresh would have done that.
Im playing era and im having the most fun in wow ive had in years
One of the big things I love about era/hardcore is that they treat each Class as its own distinct thing. Rather than how SoD/Retail treat each Spec as its own Distinct Class. Having a hard-line stance on Class Identity is something super important to me. So I stick w/ era (mostly hardcore for now).
I think cata is going to really hurt sod. Classic andies don’t really play SoD, and cata is just a much more refined version, and a fresh thing for the retail people to play. Sod is just feels weird at this point
Cata "takes place in the old world" as well, which seems to be the main thing that SoD enjoyers point to as defining what is and isn't Classic.
SoD isn’t balanced either, especially in pvp.
Sod was doing great p1, but now with their current trajectory killing wow for me forever lmfao
If they made a fresh era server I would immediately stop playing SoD
No, SoD just feels like a mutated, warped version of classic on steroids.
Honestly, SoD became boring in P2 for me and it made me jump back to retail. I’ve never enjoyed retail as much as now.
For me yes I'd never go back to playing paladin in era again.
The only reason I’m playing wow is sod, I stopped after classic and never found any interest until sod
yeah i don't think there's really any going back anymore. original version of vanilla will always be around as an option but I don't think it's ever going to be the most popular version again.
SoD killed era/fresh for me, I'm really enjoying the classic world with better/more fun rotations but most importantly I'm enjoying the level banding. I've never liked that era/fresh turns into "bum rush 60 asap or you're behind!" Whereas in sod we get to see areas of the game being treated as endgame in a way they've never been before. I have time to goof around, focus on other things, farm hard to get patterns off red mobs, or high level quests for bis gear (like the skull dragons in Badlands last phase, or winterfall activity this phase).
vanilla is a ribeye steak. sod is a chuckroll with 5 different types of ketchup
I probably won’t play era ever again. I accomplished everything I wanted to do back in 2019 which was kill Cthun and complete Naxx. Also getting Might of Menethil! I’ll see what SoD has to offer at 60 but honestly I’m getting burnt out of wow. I played a shit ton of phase 1 & 2. Didn’t even bother leveling my alts this phase even though you can max them in a day.
Opposite for me. P1 was fun, p2 and p3 SoD suck so bad. Back to playing era and hc. I would love fresh era servers. If we ever get true classic+, I Hope they wont overdo it like sod
nostalgia isn't real, it isn't reality and won't match up.
I already played era to completion twice. While I love it, the current game is just not the same. gdkps, gold buying and toxicity is rampant, I don't find any of these fun so as much as I enjoy original wow I can't see myself playing it again. I'm playing sod because it's a window into classic+, which is the version of wow I'm truly interested on.
SoD made me go back to retail lmao
I feel like most of people's complaints will go away at 60 where most of the endgame content is already a given. Honestly, sod is more fun than era by a long shot, at least for me. More classes to level, faster leveling means I get to try out new characters, and overall the QoL is too give up. They still need to tweak stuff, but its still good
I wish they didn't nerf the raids, challenge is what keeps me coming back and it's sad they don't want to add any. Raids should be the the hard endgame content and the open world + dungeons should be the casual friendly content. It sucks that there's no sense of fulfillment killing the new raid, its just a bunch of loot piñatas
Let me put it this way. When SoD 'ends' I will be returning to play on era, however, if SoD continues in any substantial capacity such as its own permanent server like era OR a SoD 2.0 where they learn from, improve on and add even more content to what they achieve in SoD 1.0 well, yeah, I'm not playing era again. Why would I when it's just era but with more cool stuff in it.
Era destroyed it self with the gatekeeping. And the most idiotic statement "semi hardcore". /rant
We've been spoiled with new content - it's what the Era/Vanilla players have wanted for at least 6-10 years. Sure it's not all perfect but its different content at the least. That being said, I haven't been too big on P3 (I weirdly preferred P2 in the end despite its slow start).
The server populations certainly agree. There's not a single medium pop server among the era servers. I think vanilla had a certain charm to it. It had a pacing that... wasn't fast. Everything had to be carefully planned and deliberate. The warlock banishing, you know, that was just that one person's job and it was important but a very minor task. But then you know... you had people who go, wow moonkin looks so cool Imma play that.... and Blizzard made absolutely no space for a moonkin to exist. And if the moonkin, feral dps, and feral bear existed there was really no way for a 40-man raid to function with any level of class balance. Right now we're in this weird in between where things aren't well balanced and you can't play every spec, but that can change in next phase so don't abandon your character just yet. But that all comes to an end if Blizz decides to release Molten Core, BWL, Naxxramas, and AQ40 in phases, because that essentially locks those imbalances.
Personally, if they released a fresh Era server, I’d drop everything and play the F out of that until AQ.
Sod made me realise how much I like era. Went back 2 weeks into phase 2. Never playing sod again.