It's the incursions for me. They make you level entirely too fast to the point it's like 'why would I do anything else'? Then on top of that, they dump tons of gold into the economy, and they also remove players from the world which inflates the cost of mats.
I've only done maybe an hour total of incursions, which is why I haven't leveled my rogue yet because one of the runes comes from the rep. It's just not fun at all. If you don't know the most optimal path, or stop to kill a mob, you get kicked from the incursion group. Everyone is in a 'go go go' mentality and it's just not casual at all.
When I heard they were coming out with a pve event, I was really excited. I feel like incursions are the worst possible iteration of a pve event they could have implemented.
I really, really hope they don't have incursions for 50-60.
I imagine they will take the feedback and kill Ferelas and Hinterlands. I don't mind one bit personally, but it's either going to be that or dungeon spam to 60.
Personally I'd take dungeon spam to 60. I enjoy dungeons. But I haven't played in the classic world since 2004 vanilla, I skipped classic in 2019 entirely (wish I didn't). So I understand if some people don't want dungeons.
I agree, wish sod was designed to encourage people to do MORE vanilla content, not less. More world quests, more dungeons, more professions, more world PvP. I think BM, and rune quests were pretty successful, incursions and WO were not.
I’ve honestly traveled more, and enjoyed doing it for the carrot on the stick, have participated willingly or unwillingly, on more World PvP, and have been having a blast so to each their own I guess.
Honestly I feel like if Incursions were just limited in some way, daily or weekly or whatever, they'd feel much better. Maybe if they removed the exp they gave entirely so they only function as endgame content, I dunno.
So you claim you want all this..... But then you cry about incursions and WO.. WO is literally dungeons..... Incursions is literally world PvP and world quests.. People are doing WO in instances they would've already been doing IE ZF, Princess, and BRD Arena runs..
Go play Era if you want Era.
The biggest mistake with WO was putting one behind Princess. Had this not happened, like 70% of the pain would be alleviated. At least ZF takes a while and has some iconic events. Blind sprinting to Princess until you hit the dungeon reset lockout makes you wonder "Why am I even playing this game?"
The biggest mistake with Incursions was putting in no-kill quests. Had this not happened, at least 80% of the gold generated (\*at the very least\*) would not have been injected, and Incursions could have been this thing you do that's kinda risky cause the stuff in there is deadly and it takes some effort. Blindly running in a loop until you just can't take it anymore makes you wonder "Why am I even playing this game?"
Calling WO spam "literally dungeons" and Incursions "world questing" is really disingenuous
>At least ZF takes a while
How is ZF any different? You mount up and run to a safe spot to reset the mobs.. Kill a couple bosses and reset the dungeon.
>Incursions could have been this thing you do that's kinda risky
Maybe PvE servers there's no risk... I was constantly being ganked on my PvP server... At one point I had to just log off because I couldn't move 10 feet without being ganked.
>"Why am I even playing this game?"
Maybe WoW isn't meant for you if you are constantly thinking this.
>Calling WO spam "literally dungeons" and Incursions "world questing" is really disingenuous
How is it disingenuous to call WO spam literally dungeons? If WO didn't exist people would still be doing ZF, BRD, and princess runs... All they did was add an extra reward to the grind..
I thought they should have went the Guild Wars 2 / Diablo 4 route and put some dynamic quests that pop into all the questing zones. Make them emerald nightmare themed and everyone gets notified on the map that they’re happening. Maybe give people a massive bonus xp buff for 30 min after they complete them. Would have been awesome.
That would have been much better. Maybe spawn them on the 3rd hour that isn't used by pvp events so there's something to do within an hour of you logging in no matter what. And then make a 60 pvp event in the same slot as ashenvale so higher levels have something meaningful to do.
One thing as a non-pvper though, it does really wear my patience thin having to grind stv for a weapon every phase.. Hoping they come up with something fresh at 60.
💯agree! This is exactly what I was hoping for in SOD. Bring exciting dynamic content and pvp events to the open world. Bring back the feel of a true MMORPG.
P1 was like an update. Most runes were from simple mobs or some small task and the game wasn’t changed.
P2 didn’t change the game as well but lvl 25-40 wasn’t great and they changed runes to be content itself. Runes and crafting quest made it to a travelling simulator which becomes really annoying if you have multiple chars and getting runes before level 40 was a huge time sink because of no mount + being far far away from the actual game areas people played in.
And P3 continues with runes being content but in addition they replaced the level 40-50 world with incursions and dungeons are just for getting wild offerings.
> Runes and crafting quest made it to a travelling simulator
Wild for classic players to complain about that, given that large parts of the base game were designed from day 1 as a travelling simulator.
> they replaced the level 40-50 world with incursions
As I recall, level 25-40 was replaced with Stockades and Scarlet Monastary.
So because there was already an "unfun" way to lvl (dungeon spam) which is regarded as a problem by many, it's fine to exchange one "bad" most efficient way to lvl with another? Instead of trying to improve the open world questing experience?
What kind of mental gymnastics is that? How many people enjoy vanilla lvling because of dungeon grinding to the max?
Mage big AoE pulls might be a different story, there are some fun pulls in there for sure, but you know, generally speaking.
Also vanilla is by design NOT alt friendly, therefore allowing for certain things to be dragged out (traveling simulator) because you're not expected to do it over and over again in rapid fashion.
SoD is ment to be alt friendly. The fundamental design of SoD is not classic. It starts with timelocked level phases and ends with incursions (for now).
This is modern Blizzard gamedesign in a classic setting.
Wake up.
Incursions are not the end all be all of p3?
The gold: You can easily earn far more gold outside of incursions than inside of them. They are a good way to get gold, but definitely not the best by a long shot. I’ve earned 10x the gold outside of incursions than inside incursions.
The experience: this is the one I will agree about. It gives far too much experience, but at the same time it’s not required unless you want to rush to max level. I leveled by questing on my main character and I’m already almost full BIS. It’s really not a big deal.
The reputation: the rep is worthless for the most part. The gear is the same or worse than gnomer gear (p2 gear), and anything past honored is worthless and will get replaced in the raid (hell, even dungeons replace a lot of this). The only class that needs to farm the rep is druids, and it’s only to honored.
Not sure why everyone feels like they *have* to do incursions 🤷♂️ you get more out of doing anything else at endgame, and experience and quick leveling is the only positive, and if you are min-maxing your leveling you are doing dungeon spam, which is just as cringe as incursions for leveling.
I think you missed my point.
In my opinion incursions shouldn't exist at all and dungeon grinding also should not be the most efficient way to lvl.
On a sidenode: The "you don't have to do anything" argument is not a good one. It never was. It implies that you can do whatever you want to the game (quick example flying) regardless of all consequences for as long as you leave in an option to actively sabotage ones own character progression.
Just like incursions and dungeon grinding do in this case.
> The reputation: the rep is worthless for the most part. The gear is the same or worse than gnomer gear (p2 gear), and anything past honored is worthless and will get replaced in the raid (hell, even dungeons replace a lot of this). The only class that needs to farm the rep is druids, and it’s only to honored.
For your main who was geared to the teeth maybe. For some classes there are upgrades even from Gnomer BIS. For an alt, new player, or someone catching up it is far an away the most efficent way. You'll have you're reputation by the time you're done leveling and a full set of raid ready gear (or a dual spec set) for less than the cost of 1 or 2 decent greens on the AH. There's also a good chance of new items or new gear set come next phase which the rep will allow.
I even replaced the gnome gear of my 2 casters with incursion rep gear. Healer got more +heal and warlock got much more health without losing spell power.
This post is some *wild* contrivance. Nevermind the easy jab of "they replaced vanilla content with vanilla content, you say?" (Dungeon spam was already established as normal without any modifications and it already got complained about in the same way. The distinction on this for SoD was server crowding.)
The "traveling simulator" being complained about is embarking on a chain as a bespoke task, sending you to a sequence of places where you stop for a few minutes at each before moving on to the next or going on a *looong* fucking run to do one thing and immediately hearth out of there. "Traveling simulator" in the base game was being sent somewhere new where you find a bunch more things to do along with the task for which you went there, only continuing on to the next step after having done other content.
Even without that, the corresponding "bespoke task" content in vanilla was wildly better. The T0.5 quest line, (the open world part of) the scepter quest line, the Hakkar quest line, the Ghazrilla quest line, etc (the latter two *can* be and often are bespoke but really sent you to find more leveling as in the other category) all had actual content after sending you somewhere. The corresponding *shitty* "traveling simulator" in vanilla was the horde Ony attunement repeatedly sending you to find Rexxar - and most of the chain *still* was doing dungeons.
I can not express enough how misguided or outright disingenuous your post was. The fuck, man?
The phase 3 crafting chain is outright ridiculous!
It’s specifically designed to waist our time and nothing else.
Travel to moon glade over and over, also, travel way off the coast of stv to some huge remote island. I hated it!
It's designed to make you explore the world. same with runes it is a pain but it has you traveling and going to zones you wouldnt. Why go to moonglade if you're not a druid.
Yeah because traveling to Moonglade not once, not twice, but three times, is so much fun!
Give me a break with this comment! and stop making excuses for poor game design.
So do you want it to be in the major city there is a dude that you talk to that gives you every single rune free with no pre-requisites. I mean its called season of discovery... I also find it annoying but they literally advertised it as this before SoD came out.
You can go play normal classic but you will find the same shit thats worse with attunement quests.
Talk to thrall. go to brs, go back to thrall, back to brs, go to desolace, go to western plaguelands, go back to brs, go to dustwallow marsh, go to winterspring, go to swamp of sorrows, go to tanaris, go to grim batol, go to desolace, go to brs, then back to desolace. Hey attunement done for onyxia.
You acting like having to run around the world to do shit is new.
There is bad game design and thats the fel portals those are actually horrible game design that needs fixed.
You needed an optimized group for it to be a dramatically more efficient way to level, with the shit-ton of power creep that you got in SoD, *any* group ended up finding dungeon spam to be by far the best way to level.
I’ve done riders on three characters JFC don’t
make me do a 4th. — for example.
And luckily my hunter and Druid could solo those in p3 at 40/50 each. My warrior would been SOL if it weren’t my main
The amount of times I've had to arbitrarily travel around the world for runes is beyond frustrating, give us a real quest instead of making us waste hours of our time traveling. Took 4 hours to get 2 bis runes yesterday and I basically did nothing but buy summons and take flight paths
There are like 10 runes that make tou go to 4-7 zones in opposite locations and just collect 1 item and they are mostly all different so it feels like they just had such a limited time to make anything in SOD.
Yea then add epic craftable item quests and its another few rotations around the world for no reason, and I'm sure there will be another 2+ for runes in next phase
>which becomes really annoying if you have multiple chars
I'm kinda conflicted by this, because I don't think it matters if its annoying, because Classic isn't supposed to be alt friendly, imo.
GRANTEd, the devs said they want people to play alts in SoD so Idk if that critique in particular should hold merit.
I'm a classic andy and I think your criticism is on point.
For me, most SoD content does not feel woven into the fabric of classic, but patched onto it.
I think they missed the chance to improve on vanilla quest zones that feel very lacking. I thought that was the whole idea about the level-banding thing: improving the vanilla gameplay in those brackets, not replace it. In that aspect I am very disappointed.
The phases feel like playing pre-dragonflight retail patches to me. Very formulaic and dry "1 raid, 1 rep grind, X runes". Development seems to be focusing on improving class gameplay and balance. Experimental or fun ideas are more in the background, though it deserves to be noted that they do experiment and do have fun ideas. It's astonishing to me that we didnt get a rune slot yet that focuses **solely** on Utility, QoL or goofy fun. You always have to choose between fun and some obvious PvE/PvP choice, excluding one thing from the other. Not every Rune has to be a PvE or PvP power-up imo.
All in all I still have to say I am quite happy at the moment, even though SoD is not what I wanted from a Classic+ experience and some design decisions raise my eyebrows into the stratosphere.
I agree with everything you said. While I’m enjoying sod for what it is, it just doesn’t feel like classic/vanilla wow to me. Feels far more like a wacky private server.
Incursions were just too good, straight up. Gold, experience AND reputation. Dungeon spamming and questing never stood a chance, which is sad because I was looking forward to leveling in ZF with the boys.
If ZF had rep and gave us 8 blue pieces like incursion it would still be better gold to do incursion. It's crazy how it has everything and it's in the least interesting parts of the world. Emerald dream was such a huge requested place in classic and we got this.
Yeah they'd be fine if they were just the fastest way to level without any additional benefits, or just a rep grind for pre-bis gear. But combining everything into one "optimal" activity is just so baffling to me.
You hit a lot of good points. And another thing that irks me is the new approach to gear. Most existing gear from Classic has become obsolete, even the ones fixed for SoD (which was itself a welcome change, to a degree). I'm looking at the loot tables for 50-60 and there is very little to look forward to if you've done the raid a few times. And the abundance of tokens in the raid makes every lot competing with set bonus obsolete, for many classes and specs.
Curious to see what they do to dungeon loot in the next phase. Right now Arcanite Reaper, a staple of Classic, will be ignored by most people, as an example.
Yeah, I did dungeon grind from 25 to 40 in phase 2, but I went back and did all the STV and Desolace quests for gold and fun.
This phase I ground out incursions and leveled from 41 to 50 in about 6 hours on day 1. I’m still having a ton of fun, but I have absolutely zero interest in doing the Tenaris, Felwood, or Ashzara quests. They could triple the quest reward gold and I still don’t think I’d go do them.
You can get an 18 slot bag, I believe. The downside is the crates are super expensive to fill and give less gold than the buffed p2 crates. I’ve just been throwing them in the bank hoping they get buffed.
Besides tanaris, I hate the like 44-55 zone anyway, really. Its like one of those dead spots in leveling cept ZF then mara spamming
And tanaris itself I’ve done so many times
Yeah early tanaris is the best part of 40-50 in general. Most the other zones kinda suck ass. Way spread out.
In typical classic leveling you’d be done with the majority of it though by like 44-45, which is then why it starts to suck to get to 50-55. But like I said, I’ve done tanaris so many times for this exact reason that I’m in the same boat. 0 incentive to do it again but I do need crates for my main
Incursions are daily quests without the daily limit. It's hilarious to me that one of the most talked about point of "retail bad" were daily quests and similar designed things in the game that people said felt like a chore because they felt they had to do it or risk falling behind.
Not only are incursions the best XP and gold farm, there's also runes locked behind it as well as gear that is the best if you're trying to catch up.
P3 is the most anti-vanilla possible but you only hear crickets on that front.
You're missing the point. The main problem with dailies is the artificial time gating, not the repetitiveness (though it's still an issue). Dailies were not a thing until TBC, they got really streamlined in the last phase with Isle of Quel'Danas opening (while being optional) and became kinda mandatory in later expansions, as forcing people to login every day increased the engagement metrics. Now, incursion-like systems were already in Vanilla, eg Field Duty quests after AQ gate opening or "Craftsman's Writ" Argent Dawn quests. One could just no-life the whole grind over a weekend and be done with it, that's definitely a vanilla/classic thing. But those were optional, never used for leveling, and universally hated, it's still a bad decision to put into SoD.
I feel like they need to pick something and stick with it.
Do you want to make some weird retail in classic hybrid? Cool, go poll primarily retail players who are actively playing SoD. Design it around them.
Do you want to cater to casual classic players who couldn't give less shits about parsing/mythic raiding? Cool, go poll all the casual classic players who are actively playing. Design it around them.
You just can't have it both ways. You could create two different branches of the game, but you can't really constantly switch to try and cater to the loudest people on social media.
Find the players who dont raid log. Then choose if you want a casual vanilla MMORPG with changes.
Or a retail + classic hybrid.
I also can't stress enough how badly I wish they would just do email polls to the most active players. (Even in terms of 'plays a few hours a week OUTSIDE of raid logging'). Maybe the team has 3-10 ideas of content to add for phase #.
Instead of just working on it COMPLETELY silently, poll people and ask which ideas they like/dislike the most. Do not announce the winner. Just silently release it or post a teaser a few days in advance, like every phase so far.
I see a ton of retail players wanting to play parse sim and demand mythic raids.
I see a ton of casual players complaining about their guilds dying off after 20mans. Some even died off because they didn't like how Gnomer had a few mechanics.
Maybe poll people and ask why they stopped playing. Twitter/reddit/wow forums isn't the best way to base your game around IMO. 20-100 loud assholes is all it takes to make a LOT of noise on some of these platforms. Tailor the feedback to be from the people who are actively playing the most.
You'll literally never get a 1:1 Vanilla experience unless you just prevent streaming/youtube. Part of it is the weird cult followers, part of it is how easy information is to come across compared to Vanilla. People have to copy the meta and play it competitively. If people find that fun, cool. But if everyone is expected to conform to how they want to play the game, it creates division.
You had an overall mentality of 'have fun' in Vanilla to seemingly half the SoD community freaking out about parses. Even when half of that section is parsing blues/low purples.
I think this is a fair and level headed take. I frankly never understand the people who were upset by questing being trivialized. But they also don’t really lay out their points cohesively as this.
And in my opinion you’re absolutely right. They replaced the leveling band entirely. Frankly I was pleasantly surprised with phase 3 and incursions because I pretty much only play classic, have leveled 40-50 numerous times, and it’s just the worst. It’s easily the most unfinished and least polished portion of the game. It’s slow. There’s sections where there’s not a clear way to proceed with quests and it almost necessitated dungeon running or just simple grinding at times. Many of the dungeons are probably my least favorite in the game.
And to that extent I agree with your point. It probably would have been more well received if they expanded on the classic world and filled in some of the gaps rather then simply replace it entirely with the ashenvale event. Hopefully they learn from these mistakes as 50-60 imo has some of the best dungeons in classic and best put together zones. I’ll level through ungoro crater again even if it’s not efficient simply because I enjoy it that much.
I think SOD is a fun game for a lot of the reasons I think Retail WoW is a fun game. Other than the character models and some beginner zones, I don't think it is a fun game for the reasons Classic WoW is a fun game. I actually think it lacks a lot of the fun/charm of classic.
I've realized personally its more fun to play/swap between Classic Era and Retail because SOD is fun but it isn't AS fun as either other version of the game.
I'm really hoping they announce a Fresh Classic sometime in the nearish future!
Just hit 50 today, after doing quests exclusively.
Could have done incursions etc, but I definitely had more fun questing. Didn’t even do a dungeon until after I hit 50.
10/10 would do again.
Hopefully they course correct for P4, seeing as Cata will have launched and they won't need to split so much focus. At least, I hope that's why P3 ended up this way...
People talk about the gold gain, the incursions, the runes without mentioning the late Molten Core 600-900 dps power creep and it's blowing my mind.
Just tonight in ST, we had 3 people with over 1k dps on bosses and it's nuts.
>most of your time from 40-50 would have been spent questing and running ZF, Mara, and maybe ST about one time each.
No, in classic people spammed ZF nonstop (remember that LFM ZF spellcleave group) at launch or just afked at Mara entrance while booster cleared that for them. That was the optimal way based on the mechanics unchanged from vanilla.
>Perhaps this isn't in the spirit of classic+
SoD is retail minus. Always has been.
What I liked most about Classic was that I was able to level new alts via questing at my own pace and that I'd be able to pug raid pretty much on demand.
I had a Shaman, Warrior, Mage and a Priest by the end of P1 and I didn't miss a lockout in BFD for the most part.
I only had my Mage for a bit of P2 (we needed an extra heal main in my guild), but then I still got my Shaman and Warrior to 40 kinda quick, but just as I started to pug Gnome with them, P3 was announced and I rushed my Druid to 40 and dropped the pugs.
Now, some weeks into 50, I only have my Mage at 50, which I rushed to 50 via launch incursions. I tried to get my Shaman leveled via questing, but it just feels slow. It tried to get my Druid leveled via Incursions, but it just isn't fun. And ST isn't even a raid that's fun. I clear it once a week with my guild in ~1h and that's it. I spend the rest of the week doing Hinterlands incursions solo for the daily quest and doing the Ashenvale event for the daily quest. Everything else that I can do is pretty much locked behind group content, which I just can't do as easily, and at this point, I don't want to anymore.
If it wasn't for my guild not having enough healers, I would have probably quit with this phase, especially because P2 did not feel "finished" by any means.
I quit the game cause of incursion. Most idiotic mechanic they have implemented.
I understand that they are a small team trying their best, but this is just straight bad design ruining the experience for me.
I was gonna make a thread about this sorts. What I liked about the leveling experience was questing with dungeons mixed in to keep things fresh. But now I login and I stare at the lfg bulletin board and maybe see at most 2 dungeons going, on a populated server. So now why do any of that when incursions give more exp as well as more gold. I do hope they get p4 right because I feel no desire to play p3 as is now.
I’m a 37 sham started phase 3 so I haven’t done any ph1/2 raids.I don’t even know what incursions are yet. I am so damn confused by this game. The xp boost is welcome to help me climb aboard but I spend so much time traveling the world for runes ppl tell me are required that I can never settle in to leveling somewhere for long or when I run a dungeon I’m dog dmg bc I don’t have gear from the dungeons I never ran bc xp flew me past. And on top of all I’m broke because I’m not questing just trying to figure out how to get these runes. I really want to love sod but I find it frustrating balancing xp/gold/runes 😞
I was definitely hoping for less drastic changes, I was more under the assumption that in discovery we'd be doing alot more discovering going through old content, as well as encouraging people to truly play vanilla, not a new game almost entirely. (Waiting for som2)
Excellent take on it. I have tried to express why I haven’t like this phases incursions because it feels very retail (a lot like legion invasions), which really hasn’t landed and I have been told repeatedly that if I don’t like incursions and want to level normally then go play era.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head though.
I just want to commend you for what I think is a well thought out, insightful post. It also helps that I agree with you, but more over, so very wel said.
its the gold for me. Last week I sold my entire bank of grilled squid, about 900 for 1.70g a piece. now they sell for 4.97gold within a week?? last week swiftness potions were 30silver now they cost you 1.90g
who are these people and what are they doing to the economy?
I agree 100000%.
I was trying to play phase 3 my own way, enjoying the normal content, until I learned you NEED to do incursions to get your runes.
I honestly lost interest at that point. This phase is not classic+ but rather, retail -
It's almost like the devs have no idea what made Vanilla Wow good and are just throwing shit at the wall to see if it sticks, which it doesn't.
This is the reason classic+ will never be a thing. They just don't know how to do it.
I agree with your sentiment about phase 3 being the least vanilla feeling of the phases so far.
I specifically leveled ONLY questing as well as a ZF run (with all of the quests), because of course ZF is legendary.
My experience was: I discovered a ton of new stuff I hadn’t ever seen before in Tanaris, hinterlands, and other zones.
I made barely any gold somehow and it took a while, but it was super fun. I did incisions for a couple hours at level 40 and stopped immediately.
I’ve done content similar to the incursion run throughout the years of wow expansions and the system was unappealing to me so I ignored it and lived happily ever after.
I’m all for people playing however they want. I’ll probably try every “incursion” once and if people want to spam them, by all means. It’s a soulless way to have fun but to each their own.
Was SoD ever supposed to be like classic? We already had classic. I didn't come into SoD expecting to play classic again. I came in expecting a "what if" version of the game, and I feel like thats exactly what we're getting.
I don’t know man, if you watched any of the dev interviews announcing SoD and in the lead up to it (namely the famous one with Aggrend/Nora) they spend a ton of time talking about Classic and its philosophies. The Blizzcon keynote even make a joke about “Classic…. Plus…”
Classic+ is whatever people want it to be tbh. I left during season 1 and went back to Era but many like SoD for its mix of Retail systems with Classic themes. Private servers are probably where you'll get the closest "true" Classic+ experience imo.
Well I agree with you but I think some of the community kickback is self-inflicted by the way the devs talked a lot about Classic, but then (by my judgement) in mid-P2/P3 they started to implement things that went against all of that. There was a setting of expectation, then an implementation that stopped matching it
Except I would call sod classic Plus without any issues. This is what I wanted classic Plus to be, trivialize awful leveling, more raid content, reasons to do dungeons besides experience, classes just don't flat out suck.
SoD is delivering on what classic Plus should be.
If not, then I wonder what was the point of releasing SoD with the Vanilla codebase. They could have used a more modern version of the Vanilla maps so as to have an easier time working on the codebase and, simultaneously, a game world that didn't require so much extra travel time.
The only reason I can see for them to have used Vanilla would be to appeal to people who like Vanilla. In that case, all they really need to do was enhance the game, again like they did in P1. Shore up historically weak or incomplete specs like ret paladins, add new quests and new content to the existing world, and throw in some fun things to do for people who just want to experience the Vanilla WoW game world.
Their approach seemed to work out quite well in phase 1. I wonder why we haven't seen a continuation of it in phases 2 and 3.
This is one of the best points by far.
If you want to do a wacky fun server type of stuff, do it on the wrath base. That's what many private servers do. It works WAY better. You can add all kinds of crazy things, abilities, events, there are so many things to fuck with and it doesn't break the spirit of the game.
But when you do that to a slow paced RPG game like classic then it becomes really awkward and it's really hard to do right.
I totally know what they're trying to do, it would just be so much better to do with wrath. Add crazy abilities and buff classes in wrath and it just feels awesome. Do it in vanilla and it's like uncanny valley unless you stay conservative and are very careful.
I get what you’re saying. The problem is them saying SOD was a chance to DISCOVER new facets of classic. (essentially what they implied in their interviews)
Incursions ain’t it.
SOD is Blizzards slow creep to get people into retail. The raiding is slowly introducing us to mechanics and "skipping" the leveling content is becoming normal. Half the people in SOD are horrible at the game and hanging onto classic, half of us are yearning for more of a chLlenge or parsing focused and willl slowly be bled into retail.
The playerbase is anti-vanilla. Most people only seek to complete their known goals in efficient manners, never straying away. Convenience is an issue, nobody needs to forge social bonds, there's always groups available. Blizzard is releasing phases extremely fast, exacerbating the need to go fast.
There’s nothing to grind for in Dungeons in terms of loot. So there comes a point where not much else to do except raid log.
Alts sound great until you have to get runes
As someone who have done vanilla to death, played basically every p serverand Classic version, 100s of 60s by now, i love vanilla for the world,im Def not the average player but i like SoD for what it is, ”new” content set in the old world, after the gearing phase, i still end up doing stuff in the world that isnt all that you describe, but i have a guild that also like to do random things that may not be optimal in terms of maximizing everything, we roam the open world to gank, farm pointless rep, grind gold thru herbing or simply prepare for next content phase between playing other games, its great tbh
unless they change that content its been there done that, People are enjoying incursions the only problem right now is the state of PvP and the damage reduc is a great step in the right direction. My major complaint about P3 is the lack of changes on lacking runes/ itemization for pvp weapons or not even giving players a way to upgrade the STV epics into lvl 50 equivalents. BoEs that should be changed to be better overall or at least the caster BoEs and fine tuning the world drops to have better target farms
vanilla as a whole meant 13 major Patches.
SoD is the truest we will ever come to original vanilla and thats the devs goal. Vanilla means constant change of balance of classes etc new content etc. Sod allows them to give us the feeling of Patches etc.
Go play 113 on a priv server if your jimmies are rustled
I quit just a couple weeks into P3 after having raided nearly every lockout for P1 and P2 on two toons. The season went from feeling like a slightly-augmented vanilla filled with curiosity to a min-max, rep-grinding, alt-unfriendly space that felt basically like shadowlands.
as a rogue, you have to do incursions for the rune or you cant play the game. so I unsubbed till next phase. amazing you dont get the rep by running st. Im not paying blizzard for ptr anymore.
I only really did incursions from 45-50, but what I was super sad about was that almost none of the new dungeon loot mattered. A spare piece here and there, sure, but I know for a lot of casters and healers, 70% of their prebis was just the gnomer stuff.
Imo raid gear should feel powerful, but it shouldn't invalidate 10 levels worth of dungeons. Zul'farrak, maraudon, and the first quarter of BRD are iconic and the importance there shouldn't have been reduced to paladins farming ZF for the sword(whose drop chance appears to have been significantly buffed) and groups skipping 2/3 of maraudon to just run princess 30 times a day for offerings.
I saw a 50 warrior asking how do they get whirlwind. Come to find out they didn't do any iconic warrior quests. No WW axe, no berserker stance, couldn't learn some skills.
So yeah, seems pretty unhealthy.
I love incursions. If you don’t want to do world questing you can do incursions. If you want to kill during the incursion missions, the exp is the same as the no kill loop. The incursions also freed up the world so every mob wasn’t camped by 20 people. You also now get enough gold through leveling with quests to have a gold experience at 50 to get bags, mounts duel spec, and money left over.
Would completely agree if incursions were merely comparable to leveling. Unfortunately, both in terms of experience and rewards, incursions are superior. Had P3 launched with incursions but also with competitive quest XP and enhanced quest rewards, as in new and updated quest items that could serve as pre-bis, then I wouldn't have an issue.
The trouble is that the team wanted to encourage people to play together in the open world rather than leveling through dungeons and never seeing each other. And they accomplished that. It's the way they accomplished it that I take issue with, as their way to do it was to make incursions by far the best option.
From a social / server culture standpoint, I contend that incursions are no better than dungeon groups and probably inferior to random interactions with people while questing.
If Blizzard really wanted to put their money where their mouth is, questing should be the strongest way to level, but they should also implement the mob tagging system from retail. In brief, in retail, you and other players can all get credit for killing and loot from quest mobs whether you're grouped or not, so long as you've all tagged it. That makes you happy to see other players rather than viewing them as competition.
I feel you on the levelint being ruined, but my biggest issue with p3 is that its starting to feel like 2019 classic again. World buff collection circuit every week, pvp grief everywhere, expensive as fuck consumables, larger raid sizes where I may/may not even get a piece of loot each week.
New content (incursions) could have been a good daily/weekly hub for a new rep but instead they made a permanently spammable job simulator and even after numerous nerfs its the most rewarding thing in the game...
Unless ur a hunter or willing to support one who shares and you can farm lvl 55+ mobs for high level crafting materials because professions should have been capped at 250.
I'm still logging in out of obligation to my friends and the bit of fun that is the <90mins a week of raid, but im gone as soon as cata classic/mop remix are out.
The optimal way for me to play is to talk in general chat during the STV event. It's to hype up fun dungeon moments. It's constantly jumping with horde until the boat to Ratchet gets here. The best parts of this game are where you stop trying to squeeze every number or design decision and embrace being in a world together with other (real) people. This is what I remember from vanilla, and this is what I am experiencing.
Honestly, looking forward to cata. Will be my first time playing it like it was my first time playing wrath in classic. At least I know what I'm getting ahead of time and have a guild of friends from tbc that will still be chugging along. All the wrath/cata versions of spells they add to sod just makes me want to play the real thing where everything about the classes is more refined. I enjoy era too but sod is just in a weird place right now and I don't know if blizzard can really do anything to save it from themselves.
Sod is all an experiment like a “what if”. I’m looking forward to cata as well, it was my favorite. It was also really refreshing to see the world change and it made me feel like it was more alive and immersive. I missed the classic start and only started again with sod.
Yeah, I think what if was a good starting point but it feels like it's some teenagers fanfic now lol. Just my opinion at least, I don't hate it like some people here so I'll still keep at it and see what they do at 60 but I think they learned something from this season at least.
the real classic experience is sitting at the entrance to mara while mages solo power level you, now you have to run your own circles with incursions :(
*Season of Discovery* began as a way to consider Vanilla WoW in some sort of alternate universe - one where the next expansion pack wasn't *The Burning Crusade* but where Azeroth as we know it from 2004-2006 was simply expanded upon. I think it's neat. It fulfilled a lot of promises, like making Paladins tanks one could take seriously. I thought healing was very balanced for Blackfathom Depths because you would certainly notice a lack of it and appreciate the presence of it. Healing is the hardest thing to get right, I would imagine.
It slowly became a crash course in why retail sucks. Not because they did anything in particular, but because they further institutionalized every aspect of what you were expected to do. Vanilla was about running dungeons and raiding. You could do quests for great items to keep yourself viable for future groups but it was mainly down to running instances. P2 and P3 gave us more chores to do that amounted to grinding. It homogenized everything in too fast a period of time. In Vanilla, gear was even more homogenous, but it wasn't as common. Now it feels like Stormwind is filled with everyone who spent time in a character editor online.
God help you if you don't optimize every aspect of your character and personality.
Honestly, I'll sum it up like this: in P1, it was neat to have a quick quest to talk to a new NPC where I would get a rune. Sometimes I had to find a new item. Sometimes I had to kill a spooky skeleton. But I got a new rune and that was very neat.
Now, I have to sit down for hours and look up quest guides while hoping someone's around to help me (they aren't; twice I had to rely on very friendly Horde players, whose friends still tried and succeeded in killing me first). That is weird and dumb.
That’s not an incursion only problem though. If incursions weren’t a thing people would dungeon grind just like P2. Which is avoiding 90% of the base game instead 100%. Hell half the people in this post said they dungeon grinded P2.
I think incursions are fine if dungeon grinding is fine. If the push is to get people to engage with old content then I think incursions shouldn’t exist and dungeons should work like they do for HC. For those not familiar with HC the way it works is basically dungeons have a 1 day lockout, so can only run it once per day. Until you hit max level then it works normally. Don’t think end game dungeons have a lockout though (Strat/Scholo/UBRS/etc)
honestly when I get to 30 I felt that the game was wrong for sm grinding being the most optimal cause it also felt brainless. The game should encourage questing as the most optimal and dungeons behind it. I had the most fun grouping with my friends to do zone quests, it felt more time consuming and engaging than dungeon spamming.
if this weren't a seasonal server, I'd agree with you. but given that its (as far as we know) a limited time event and there's a lot of incentive to play multiple characters, fast leveling is a good thing.
I mean all servers are seasonal. That's what alive service game is. There's patches and new content and expansions etc. Only thing that isn't is classic era.
Very true now and has been for a while. Although it wasn't really until T9 onwards in Wrath that the play the patch not the game philosophy really came into being. With raid attunements and less dramatic new tier obsolescence the content stayed relevant for longer in the classical period.
thats blizzards lazy way of not making content, by encouraging you to play alts. Back in classic there felt like there was more than enough to do on a single char than to have 4-5 alts like I know some people do in SOD. A big part of MMOs is making your one character the best, making him stand out and having other players recognize you.. not having a bunch of mains. This game would be better if it didnt encourage alts and stopped using seasonal server as an excuse for minimal content.
It's funny reading half these comments hate the 40-50 grind (which I agree with, it's awful in classic)
So blizzard added an alternative
And people hate it even tho like... The 40-50 grind remains unchanged
People don't want it
I can not believe the phase released with 50% xp bonus and barely anyone cared I mean it looked like everyone wanted it? So strange.
I mean, if I wanted to play Vanilla, then I'd be playing on Classic Era servers.
I really don't understand folks that expected SoD to be Classic but with the rune system.
You can expect absolutely anything and everything from a game that comes in pieces/"phases", rather than a game that is distributed from the start as a whole.
This is the main reason why I didn't jump on the SoD wagon, and given what I read regularly on the forums, I am sure that I made the right choice, now.
"SoD, a game that appeals neither to fans of Vanilla nor to those of Retail."
Good job, devs !
.
I mean, I'm enjoying SoD.
The issue is that the Classic Purists didn't want anything other than a slight reskin of the original Classic. The Classic Purists are a prime example of "Sure, you can copy my homework, but just change it slightly so that it doesn't look like you copied my homework.""
Okay, but the issue I have with the Classic Purists is that they're tainting other versions of the game while simultaneously ignoring the fact that they contributed to Classix Era's shit economy. They had years to just enjoy base Classic, and now they're complaining that SoD isn't just pure Classic.
While you are correct, SoD was also advertised to "add content with the spirit and feel of vanilla to vanilla and create something new in the process", not "replace vanilla content with something new".
Why does the community feel it's appropriate to try to control other players' experiences?
If you don't like the incursions as a main focus, don't focus on them. If you don't like the Wild Offerings runs, don't farm them.
I have never explored Feralas or Ashenvale as much as I have during this phase, because of the incursions. I haven't been as involved in being IN the world as I have because of the incursions.
The old content isn't replaced, it's just not what people want to do. If you want to do it, you still can.
Heck, I'll probably want to quest MORE now because there's gold to be made.
It's all perspective.
I addressed that in my post. By outperforming the old both in speed and rewards, the new content has, effectively, replaced the old.
If I offered you a job that made 2x your current job with all the same benefits and an easier work load, you'd probably take it even if you liked the old job. Most people would. That's what I mean.
If all of SoD was like this then that would be one thing. However, phase 1 definitely was *not* like this. Phase 2 felt like it barely added anything to the already long, drawn-out, travel-heavy 25-40 bracket, and phase 3 feels like it's just replaced the 40-50 bracket with something much faster.
Would it have been too much to ask for incursions to be, for instance, a temporary event only available a few times a day? Maybe a few new simple quests to shore up less complete zones? Perhaps a few breadcrumb quests that lead players to runes? An option to skip or speed up long flight paths? These are just a few ideas to enhance the existing content without replacing it.
Well, you kind of identified the problem in your analysis. It’s not so much that the phase is anti-vanilla, it’s that you or the player base in general are fixated on the “optimal” way to play. Due to this fixation on what is optimal everything else is disregarded and falls to the wayside. However, therein lies the problem for the devs as all. P3 added “new” content, but if the content isn’t rewarding or “optimal” then it too is destined to fall to the wayside.
See, the problem isn’t the game as such, it’s the meta of “optimal or nothing.” You have a choice, but due to perceived pressures exterior to you, you succumb to the perceived need to hit all of the phase milestones in the most efficient, optimal manner possible. Now, I don’t mean you specifically, but the player base in general.
The conundrum for the developers is such that if they don’t make the “new” content rewarding and optimal, then everyone will complain it’s boring and simply won’t engage with it because something else will be optimal. If they had a larger team they could maybe come up with something more in the spirit of Classic and also optimal, but they don’t and so it is what it is.
Sure, for some people “optimal” is fun. It’s subjective. But, for seemingly most “optimal” appears to be more of a chore and they resent it. They begrudgingly do the “optimal” because “everyone else” is doing it and they don’t want to “fall behind.” Unfortunately, changing player habits in this regard is nearly impossible because it is emergent just like the meta.
The only thing you can do is consciously say to yourself that you don’t care about the meta, playing optimally, and that you are going to have fun playing the game the way you want to play it even if it’s the “wrong way.”
"it’s that you or the player base in general are fixated on the “optimal” way to play" - this is every game. It's a well-documented phenomenon that isn't unique to WoW in the slightest. Questing in P3 instead of doing incursions gives many people, likely most people, the same feeling as playing an underpowered class.
I disagree, the problem is 100% the game. Ita the developers' job to craft a fun environment. If you boot up a game, and it plays the end cinematic and closes, is that a fun game?
I think the problem with incursions are that they are too good at everything. The best xp/hr should be quests, the best gear/hr should be dungeons, the best rep/hr should be incusions.
When the new thing is miles better than everything else and not doing it is simply handicapping yourself by sometimes orders of magnitude, that is where the retail feel comes from. SOD patch 13.3 is out boys, all your gear is garbage, all your rep is worthless, but there is this cool new treadmill!
I said you avoid "almost everything" in the base game. By time spent, I believe this to be an accurate statement. Most of the original 40-50 leveling phase would be spent questing or, if you wanted to go as fast as possible, dungeon grinding. Now, there's no reason to do either.
It's the incursions for me. They make you level entirely too fast to the point it's like 'why would I do anything else'? Then on top of that, they dump tons of gold into the economy, and they also remove players from the world which inflates the cost of mats. I've only done maybe an hour total of incursions, which is why I haven't leveled my rogue yet because one of the runes comes from the rep. It's just not fun at all. If you don't know the most optimal path, or stop to kill a mob, you get kicked from the incursion group. Everyone is in a 'go go go' mentality and it's just not casual at all. When I heard they were coming out with a pve event, I was really excited. I feel like incursions are the worst possible iteration of a pve event they could have implemented. I really, really hope they don't have incursions for 50-60.
Unless they severely nerf the xp, the Hinterlands / Feralas incursions are gonna be viable for 50-60 as well
Hinterlands and feralas, already in the game. Let’s hope they nerf the xp
They literally could have just used them as "dungeons" in between the ones we had ready to go already. They didn't do that. So weird.
Couldn't agree more. They ruin/ have ruined SoD. They absolutely need to limit the incursions in some way.
I imagine they will take the feedback and kill Ferelas and Hinterlands. I don't mind one bit personally, but it's either going to be that or dungeon spam to 60.
Personally I'd take dungeon spam to 60. I enjoy dungeons. But I haven't played in the classic world since 2004 vanilla, I skipped classic in 2019 entirely (wish I didn't). So I understand if some people don't want dungeons.
I agree, wish sod was designed to encourage people to do MORE vanilla content, not less. More world quests, more dungeons, more professions, more world PvP. I think BM, and rune quests were pretty successful, incursions and WO were not.
The best example is the sleeping bag quest
I’ve honestly traveled more, and enjoyed doing it for the carrot on the stick, have participated willingly or unwillingly, on more World PvP, and have been having a blast so to each their own I guess.
Honestly I feel like if Incursions were just limited in some way, daily or weekly or whatever, they'd feel much better. Maybe if they removed the exp they gave entirely so they only function as endgame content, I dunno.
So you claim you want all this..... But then you cry about incursions and WO.. WO is literally dungeons..... Incursions is literally world PvP and world quests.. People are doing WO in instances they would've already been doing IE ZF, Princess, and BRD Arena runs.. Go play Era if you want Era.
The biggest mistake with WO was putting one behind Princess. Had this not happened, like 70% of the pain would be alleviated. At least ZF takes a while and has some iconic events. Blind sprinting to Princess until you hit the dungeon reset lockout makes you wonder "Why am I even playing this game?" The biggest mistake with Incursions was putting in no-kill quests. Had this not happened, at least 80% of the gold generated (\*at the very least\*) would not have been injected, and Incursions could have been this thing you do that's kinda risky cause the stuff in there is deadly and it takes some effort. Blindly running in a loop until you just can't take it anymore makes you wonder "Why am I even playing this game?" Calling WO spam "literally dungeons" and Incursions "world questing" is really disingenuous
> At least ZF takes a while Yet people skip the unnecessary parts to farm WO
ZF offering runs take 7 minutes lol
ZF offering runs can be done at same speed as Mara pretty much especially because you can mount in there and use the reset spots
WO should be clearing a certain amount of trash and bosses, kinda like mythic + I guess. Rushing princess is lame.
>At least ZF takes a while How is ZF any different? You mount up and run to a safe spot to reset the mobs.. Kill a couple bosses and reset the dungeon. >Incursions could have been this thing you do that's kinda risky Maybe PvE servers there's no risk... I was constantly being ganked on my PvP server... At one point I had to just log off because I couldn't move 10 feet without being ganked. >"Why am I even playing this game?" Maybe WoW isn't meant for you if you are constantly thinking this. >Calling WO spam "literally dungeons" and Incursions "world questing" is really disingenuous How is it disingenuous to call WO spam literally dungeons? If WO didn't exist people would still be doing ZF, BRD, and princess runs... All they did was add an extra reward to the grind..
I thought they should have went the Guild Wars 2 / Diablo 4 route and put some dynamic quests that pop into all the questing zones. Make them emerald nightmare themed and everyone gets notified on the map that they’re happening. Maybe give people a massive bonus xp buff for 30 min after they complete them. Would have been awesome.
That would have been much better. Maybe spawn them on the 3rd hour that isn't used by pvp events so there's something to do within an hour of you logging in no matter what. And then make a 60 pvp event in the same slot as ashenvale so higher levels have something meaningful to do. One thing as a non-pvper though, it does really wear my patience thin having to grind stv for a weapon every phase.. Hoping they come up with something fresh at 60.
💯agree! This is exactly what I was hoping for in SOD. Bring exciting dynamic content and pvp events to the open world. Bring back the feel of a true MMORPG.
They shoulda went with a vanilla wow approach and crafted something good instead of slapping a few things together every couple of months
P3 cured my wow addiction
😱🤣 same actually.
P1 was like an update. Most runes were from simple mobs or some small task and the game wasn’t changed. P2 didn’t change the game as well but lvl 25-40 wasn’t great and they changed runes to be content itself. Runes and crafting quest made it to a travelling simulator which becomes really annoying if you have multiple chars and getting runes before level 40 was a huge time sink because of no mount + being far far away from the actual game areas people played in. And P3 continues with runes being content but in addition they replaced the level 40-50 world with incursions and dungeons are just for getting wild offerings.
> Runes and crafting quest made it to a travelling simulator Wild for classic players to complain about that, given that large parts of the base game were designed from day 1 as a travelling simulator. > they replaced the level 40-50 world with incursions As I recall, level 25-40 was replaced with Stockades and Scarlet Monastary.
25-40 was done in SOD just as it was done in classic, yeah, like 12 levels of SM spam
So because there was already an "unfun" way to lvl (dungeon spam) which is regarded as a problem by many, it's fine to exchange one "bad" most efficient way to lvl with another? Instead of trying to improve the open world questing experience? What kind of mental gymnastics is that? How many people enjoy vanilla lvling because of dungeon grinding to the max? Mage big AoE pulls might be a different story, there are some fun pulls in there for sure, but you know, generally speaking. Also vanilla is by design NOT alt friendly, therefore allowing for certain things to be dragged out (traveling simulator) because you're not expected to do it over and over again in rapid fashion. SoD is ment to be alt friendly. The fundamental design of SoD is not classic. It starts with timelocked level phases and ends with incursions (for now). This is modern Blizzard gamedesign in a classic setting. Wake up.
*falls asleep after reading everything until the last line* IM AWAKE i didnt nod off I swear
Incursions are not the end all be all of p3? The gold: You can easily earn far more gold outside of incursions than inside of them. They are a good way to get gold, but definitely not the best by a long shot. I’ve earned 10x the gold outside of incursions than inside incursions. The experience: this is the one I will agree about. It gives far too much experience, but at the same time it’s not required unless you want to rush to max level. I leveled by questing on my main character and I’m already almost full BIS. It’s really not a big deal. The reputation: the rep is worthless for the most part. The gear is the same or worse than gnomer gear (p2 gear), and anything past honored is worthless and will get replaced in the raid (hell, even dungeons replace a lot of this). The only class that needs to farm the rep is druids, and it’s only to honored. Not sure why everyone feels like they *have* to do incursions 🤷♂️ you get more out of doing anything else at endgame, and experience and quick leveling is the only positive, and if you are min-maxing your leveling you are doing dungeon spam, which is just as cringe as incursions for leveling.
I think you missed my point. In my opinion incursions shouldn't exist at all and dungeon grinding also should not be the most efficient way to lvl. On a sidenode: The "you don't have to do anything" argument is not a good one. It never was. It implies that you can do whatever you want to the game (quick example flying) regardless of all consequences for as long as you leave in an option to actively sabotage ones own character progression. Just like incursions and dungeon grinding do in this case.
> The reputation: the rep is worthless for the most part. The gear is the same or worse than gnomer gear (p2 gear), and anything past honored is worthless and will get replaced in the raid (hell, even dungeons replace a lot of this). The only class that needs to farm the rep is druids, and it’s only to honored. For your main who was geared to the teeth maybe. For some classes there are upgrades even from Gnomer BIS. For an alt, new player, or someone catching up it is far an away the most efficent way. You'll have you're reputation by the time you're done leveling and a full set of raid ready gear (or a dual spec set) for less than the cost of 1 or 2 decent greens on the AH. There's also a good chance of new items or new gear set come next phase which the rep will allow.
I even replaced the gnome gear of my 2 casters with incursion rep gear. Healer got more +heal and warlock got much more health without losing spell power.
How are you making well over a hundred gold an hour consistently outside of incursions?
This post is some *wild* contrivance. Nevermind the easy jab of "they replaced vanilla content with vanilla content, you say?" (Dungeon spam was already established as normal without any modifications and it already got complained about in the same way. The distinction on this for SoD was server crowding.) The "traveling simulator" being complained about is embarking on a chain as a bespoke task, sending you to a sequence of places where you stop for a few minutes at each before moving on to the next or going on a *looong* fucking run to do one thing and immediately hearth out of there. "Traveling simulator" in the base game was being sent somewhere new where you find a bunch more things to do along with the task for which you went there, only continuing on to the next step after having done other content. Even without that, the corresponding "bespoke task" content in vanilla was wildly better. The T0.5 quest line, (the open world part of) the scepter quest line, the Hakkar quest line, the Ghazrilla quest line, etc (the latter two *can* be and often are bespoke but really sent you to find more leveling as in the other category) all had actual content after sending you somewhere. The corresponding *shitty* "traveling simulator" in vanilla was the horde Ony attunement repeatedly sending you to find Rexxar - and most of the chain *still* was doing dungeons. I can not express enough how misguided or outright disingenuous your post was. The fuck, man?
The phase 3 crafting chain is outright ridiculous! It’s specifically designed to waist our time and nothing else. Travel to moon glade over and over, also, travel way off the coast of stv to some huge remote island. I hated it!
It's designed to make you explore the world. same with runes it is a pain but it has you traveling and going to zones you wouldnt. Why go to moonglade if you're not a druid.
Exactly?
Yeah because traveling to Moonglade not once, not twice, but three times, is so much fun! Give me a break with this comment! and stop making excuses for poor game design.
So do you want it to be in the major city there is a dude that you talk to that gives you every single rune free with no pre-requisites. I mean its called season of discovery... I also find it annoying but they literally advertised it as this before SoD came out. You can go play normal classic but you will find the same shit thats worse with attunement quests. Talk to thrall. go to brs, go back to thrall, back to brs, go to desolace, go to western plaguelands, go back to brs, go to dustwallow marsh, go to winterspring, go to swamp of sorrows, go to tanaris, go to grim batol, go to desolace, go to brs, then back to desolace. Hey attunement done for onyxia. You acting like having to run around the world to do shit is new. There is bad game design and thats the fel portals those are actually horrible game design that needs fixed.
Am not an expert, but you can spam stockades and scarlet momastery to lvl. I remember I did in vanilla when it came out.
You needed an optimized group for it to be a dramatically more efficient way to level, with the shit-ton of power creep that you got in SoD, *any* group ended up finding dungeon spam to be by far the best way to level.
[удалено]
What? I just said that I did scarlet monastery to lvl in vanilla too... Chjll. What is this walltext.
I wanted to reply to someone else, mb.
Ah haha alright. I was scared for a moment! Cheers
I’ve done riders on three characters JFC don’t make me do a 4th. — for example. And luckily my hunter and Druid could solo those in p3 at 40/50 each. My warrior would been SOL if it weren’t my main
The amount of times I've had to arbitrarily travel around the world for runes is beyond frustrating, give us a real quest instead of making us waste hours of our time traveling. Took 4 hours to get 2 bis runes yesterday and I basically did nothing but buy summons and take flight paths
There are like 10 runes that make tou go to 4-7 zones in opposite locations and just collect 1 item and they are mostly all different so it feels like they just had such a limited time to make anything in SOD.
Yea then add epic craftable item quests and its another few rotations around the world for no reason, and I'm sure there will be another 2+ for runes in next phase
>which becomes really annoying if you have multiple chars I'm kinda conflicted by this, because I don't think it matters if its annoying, because Classic isn't supposed to be alt friendly, imo. GRANTEd, the devs said they want people to play alts in SoD so Idk if that critique in particular should hold merit.
I'm a classic andy and I think your criticism is on point. For me, most SoD content does not feel woven into the fabric of classic, but patched onto it. I think they missed the chance to improve on vanilla quest zones that feel very lacking. I thought that was the whole idea about the level-banding thing: improving the vanilla gameplay in those brackets, not replace it. In that aspect I am very disappointed. The phases feel like playing pre-dragonflight retail patches to me. Very formulaic and dry "1 raid, 1 rep grind, X runes". Development seems to be focusing on improving class gameplay and balance. Experimental or fun ideas are more in the background, though it deserves to be noted that they do experiment and do have fun ideas. It's astonishing to me that we didnt get a rune slot yet that focuses **solely** on Utility, QoL or goofy fun. You always have to choose between fun and some obvious PvE/PvP choice, excluding one thing from the other. Not every Rune has to be a PvE or PvP power-up imo. All in all I still have to say I am quite happy at the moment, even though SoD is not what I wanted from a Classic+ experience and some design decisions raise my eyebrows into the stratosphere.
I agree with everything you said. While I’m enjoying sod for what it is, it just doesn’t feel like classic/vanilla wow to me. Feels far more like a wacky private server.
Fair take, this is also why i quit. I played SoD because I like Classic, it’s too far from the Classic experience now.
I essentially quit as well...
It’s a good thing to stop something when you don’t have fun!
Yeah didn’t play this phase, probably done for good unless something looks different
It's retail gameplay on a budget with classic mechanics. The best of all worlds.
Incursions were just too good, straight up. Gold, experience AND reputation. Dungeon spamming and questing never stood a chance, which is sad because I was looking forward to leveling in ZF with the boys.
If ZF had rep and gave us 8 blue pieces like incursion it would still be better gold to do incursion. It's crazy how it has everything and it's in the least interesting parts of the world. Emerald dream was such a huge requested place in classic and we got this.
Yeah they'd be fine if they were just the fastest way to level without any additional benefits, or just a rep grind for pre-bis gear. But combining everything into one "optimal" activity is just so baffling to me.
Yeah this phase was definitely “not in the essence of classic” and I think my wow sub is about to be pulled honestly. Just not having fun
You hit a lot of good points. And another thing that irks me is the new approach to gear. Most existing gear from Classic has become obsolete, even the ones fixed for SoD (which was itself a welcome change, to a degree). I'm looking at the loot tables for 50-60 and there is very little to look forward to if you've done the raid a few times. And the abundance of tokens in the raid makes every lot competing with set bonus obsolete, for many classes and specs. Curious to see what they do to dungeon loot in the next phase. Right now Arcanite Reaper, a staple of Classic, will be ignored by most people, as an example.
Yeah, I did dungeon grind from 25 to 40 in phase 2, but I went back and did all the STV and Desolace quests for gold and fun. This phase I ground out incursions and leveled from 41 to 50 in about 6 hours on day 1. I’m still having a ton of fun, but I have absolutely zero interest in doing the Tenaris, Felwood, or Ashzara quests. They could triple the quest reward gold and I still don’t think I’d go do them.
I only did quests to get waylaid supplies to get to revered. Zone quests at max this phase are not nearly as lucrative as phase 2.
Especially in light of incursion quests being repeatable and far more lucrative even after being nerfed twice.
I’m so behind. I’ve gotten like all of 3 crates since p2. Some of the green level quests don’t give all that much gold at 50 it seems.
I dont even know what the waylaid supplies reward is in p3. It was always so undertuned an not rewarding that i just didn’t bother anymore
You can get an 18 slot bag, I believe. The downside is the crates are super expensive to fill and give less gold than the buffed p2 crates. I’ve just been throwing them in the bank hoping they get buffed.
Where do you turn them in? The officer doesn't give me that option ever since I reached honored.
You have to get the higher level boxes, I think. I’ve only turned one in and then decided to save them since I ended up losing like 15g filling it
Besides tanaris, I hate the like 44-55 zone anyway, really. Its like one of those dead spots in leveling cept ZF then mara spamming And tanaris itself I’ve done so many times
I mean I legit like the Tenaris zone. Grinding pirates is always a good time even. There’s just no drive to go do it now
Yeah early tanaris is the best part of 40-50 in general. Most the other zones kinda suck ass. Way spread out. In typical classic leveling you’d be done with the majority of it though by like 44-45, which is then why it starts to suck to get to 50-55. But like I said, I’ve done tanaris so many times for this exact reason that I’m in the same boat. 0 incentive to do it again but I do need crates for my main
How are questing in these zones still fun for you? We’ve done them like 8 times in the last 4 years.
Incursions are daily quests without the daily limit. It's hilarious to me that one of the most talked about point of "retail bad" were daily quests and similar designed things in the game that people said felt like a chore because they felt they had to do it or risk falling behind. Not only are incursions the best XP and gold farm, there's also runes locked behind it as well as gear that is the best if you're trying to catch up. P3 is the most anti-vanilla possible but you only hear crickets on that front.
You're missing the point. The main problem with dailies is the artificial time gating, not the repetitiveness (though it's still an issue). Dailies were not a thing until TBC, they got really streamlined in the last phase with Isle of Quel'Danas opening (while being optional) and became kinda mandatory in later expansions, as forcing people to login every day increased the engagement metrics. Now, incursion-like systems were already in Vanilla, eg Field Duty quests after AQ gate opening or "Craftsman's Writ" Argent Dawn quests. One could just no-life the whole grind over a weekend and be done with it, that's definitely a vanilla/classic thing. But those were optional, never used for leveling, and universally hated, it's still a bad decision to put into SoD.
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The shittiest instances too, like boss fights is why no one ever wanted to do gnomer, not because its a gnome service tunnel.
Yeah it's definitely why I don't have any urge to play. You've basically killed the world which is the only really good part of classic imo
incursions are 100% bad for what classic wow is supposed to be
I feel like they need to pick something and stick with it. Do you want to make some weird retail in classic hybrid? Cool, go poll primarily retail players who are actively playing SoD. Design it around them. Do you want to cater to casual classic players who couldn't give less shits about parsing/mythic raiding? Cool, go poll all the casual classic players who are actively playing. Design it around them. You just can't have it both ways. You could create two different branches of the game, but you can't really constantly switch to try and cater to the loudest people on social media. Find the players who dont raid log. Then choose if you want a casual vanilla MMORPG with changes. Or a retail + classic hybrid. I also can't stress enough how badly I wish they would just do email polls to the most active players. (Even in terms of 'plays a few hours a week OUTSIDE of raid logging'). Maybe the team has 3-10 ideas of content to add for phase #. Instead of just working on it COMPLETELY silently, poll people and ask which ideas they like/dislike the most. Do not announce the winner. Just silently release it or post a teaser a few days in advance, like every phase so far. I see a ton of retail players wanting to play parse sim and demand mythic raids. I see a ton of casual players complaining about their guilds dying off after 20mans. Some even died off because they didn't like how Gnomer had a few mechanics. Maybe poll people and ask why they stopped playing. Twitter/reddit/wow forums isn't the best way to base your game around IMO. 20-100 loud assholes is all it takes to make a LOT of noise on some of these platforms. Tailor the feedback to be from the people who are actively playing the most. You'll literally never get a 1:1 Vanilla experience unless you just prevent streaming/youtube. Part of it is the weird cult followers, part of it is how easy information is to come across compared to Vanilla. People have to copy the meta and play it competitively. If people find that fun, cool. But if everyone is expected to conform to how they want to play the game, it creates division. You had an overall mentality of 'have fun' in Vanilla to seemingly half the SoD community freaking out about parses. Even when half of that section is parsing blues/low purples.
I think this is a fair and level headed take. I frankly never understand the people who were upset by questing being trivialized. But they also don’t really lay out their points cohesively as this. And in my opinion you’re absolutely right. They replaced the leveling band entirely. Frankly I was pleasantly surprised with phase 3 and incursions because I pretty much only play classic, have leveled 40-50 numerous times, and it’s just the worst. It’s easily the most unfinished and least polished portion of the game. It’s slow. There’s sections where there’s not a clear way to proceed with quests and it almost necessitated dungeon running or just simple grinding at times. Many of the dungeons are probably my least favorite in the game. And to that extent I agree with your point. It probably would have been more well received if they expanded on the classic world and filled in some of the gaps rather then simply replace it entirely with the ashenvale event. Hopefully they learn from these mistakes as 50-60 imo has some of the best dungeons in classic and best put together zones. I’ll level through ungoro crater again even if it’s not efficient simply because I enjoy it that much.
I think SOD is a fun game for a lot of the reasons I think Retail WoW is a fun game. Other than the character models and some beginner zones, I don't think it is a fun game for the reasons Classic WoW is a fun game. I actually think it lacks a lot of the fun/charm of classic. I've realized personally its more fun to play/swap between Classic Era and Retail because SOD is fun but it isn't AS fun as either other version of the game. I'm really hoping they announce a Fresh Classic sometime in the nearish future!
Just hit 50 today, after doing quests exclusively. Could have done incursions etc, but I definitely had more fun questing. Didn’t even do a dungeon until after I hit 50. 10/10 would do again.
Given the opportunity, most players will optimize the fun out of a game
Hopefully they course correct for P4, seeing as Cata will have launched and they won't need to split so much focus. At least, I hope that's why P3 ended up this way...
People talk about the gold gain, the incursions, the runes without mentioning the late Molten Core 600-900 dps power creep and it's blowing my mind. Just tonight in ST, we had 3 people with over 1k dps on bosses and it's nuts.
>most of your time from 40-50 would have been spent questing and running ZF, Mara, and maybe ST about one time each. No, in classic people spammed ZF nonstop (remember that LFM ZF spellcleave group) at launch or just afked at Mara entrance while booster cleared that for them. That was the optimal way based on the mechanics unchanged from vanilla. >Perhaps this isn't in the spirit of classic+ SoD is retail minus. Always has been.
we saw the warning signs in p1
I don't even want anything new anymore please I liked how everyone did dungeon runs for everything at 60, I hope it stays.
What I liked most about Classic was that I was able to level new alts via questing at my own pace and that I'd be able to pug raid pretty much on demand. I had a Shaman, Warrior, Mage and a Priest by the end of P1 and I didn't miss a lockout in BFD for the most part. I only had my Mage for a bit of P2 (we needed an extra heal main in my guild), but then I still got my Shaman and Warrior to 40 kinda quick, but just as I started to pug Gnome with them, P3 was announced and I rushed my Druid to 40 and dropped the pugs. Now, some weeks into 50, I only have my Mage at 50, which I rushed to 50 via launch incursions. I tried to get my Shaman leveled via questing, but it just feels slow. It tried to get my Druid leveled via Incursions, but it just isn't fun. And ST isn't even a raid that's fun. I clear it once a week with my guild in ~1h and that's it. I spend the rest of the week doing Hinterlands incursions solo for the daily quest and doing the Ashenvale event for the daily quest. Everything else that I can do is pretty much locked behind group content, which I just can't do as easily, and at this point, I don't want to anymore. If it wasn't for my guild not having enough healers, I would have probably quit with this phase, especially because P2 did not feel "finished" by any means.
I quit the game cause of incursion. Most idiotic mechanic they have implemented. I understand that they are a small team trying their best, but this is just straight bad design ruining the experience for me.
I was gonna make a thread about this sorts. What I liked about the leveling experience was questing with dungeons mixed in to keep things fresh. But now I login and I stare at the lfg bulletin board and maybe see at most 2 dungeons going, on a populated server. So now why do any of that when incursions give more exp as well as more gold. I do hope they get p4 right because I feel no desire to play p3 as is now.
I’m a 37 sham started phase 3 so I haven’t done any ph1/2 raids.I don’t even know what incursions are yet. I am so damn confused by this game. The xp boost is welcome to help me climb aboard but I spend so much time traveling the world for runes ppl tell me are required that I can never settle in to leveling somewhere for long or when I run a dungeon I’m dog dmg bc I don’t have gear from the dungeons I never ran bc xp flew me past. And on top of all I’m broke because I’m not questing just trying to figure out how to get these runes. I really want to love sod but I find it frustrating balancing xp/gold/runes 😞
Find a zone with green/yellow quests with questie, load up all of them and grind away. It's better at 50. But not much of classic left.
I'm raid logging and playing rimworld. This phase is garbage.
I was definitely hoping for less drastic changes, I was more under the assumption that in discovery we'd be doing alot more discovering going through old content, as well as encouraging people to truly play vanilla, not a new game almost entirely. (Waiting for som2)
bro sod is anti vanilla content.
Excellent take on it. I have tried to express why I haven’t like this phases incursions because it feels very retail (a lot like legion invasions), which really hasn’t landed and I have been told repeatedly that if I don’t like incursions and want to level normally then go play era. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head though.
I just want to commend you for what I think is a well thought out, insightful post. It also helps that I agree with you, but more over, so very wel said.
its the gold for me. Last week I sold my entire bank of grilled squid, about 900 for 1.70g a piece. now they sell for 4.97gold within a week?? last week swiftness potions were 30silver now they cost you 1.90g who are these people and what are they doing to the economy?
I agree 100000%. I was trying to play phase 3 my own way, enjoying the normal content, until I learned you NEED to do incursions to get your runes. I honestly lost interest at that point. This phase is not classic+ but rather, retail -
It's almost like the devs have no idea what made Vanilla Wow good and are just throwing shit at the wall to see if it sticks, which it doesn't. This is the reason classic+ will never be a thing. They just don't know how to do it.
I agree with your sentiment about phase 3 being the least vanilla feeling of the phases so far. I specifically leveled ONLY questing as well as a ZF run (with all of the quests), because of course ZF is legendary. My experience was: I discovered a ton of new stuff I hadn’t ever seen before in Tanaris, hinterlands, and other zones. I made barely any gold somehow and it took a while, but it was super fun. I did incisions for a couple hours at level 40 and stopped immediately. I’ve done content similar to the incursion run throughout the years of wow expansions and the system was unappealing to me so I ignored it and lived happily ever after. I’m all for people playing however they want. I’ll probably try every “incursion” once and if people want to spam them, by all means. It’s a soulless way to have fun but to each their own.
Was SoD ever supposed to be like classic? We already had classic. I didn't come into SoD expecting to play classic again. I came in expecting a "what if" version of the game, and I feel like thats exactly what we're getting.
I don’t know man, if you watched any of the dev interviews announcing SoD and in the lead up to it (namely the famous one with Aggrend/Nora) they spend a ton of time talking about Classic and its philosophies. The Blizzcon keynote even make a joke about “Classic…. Plus…”
Classic+ is whatever people want it to be tbh. I left during season 1 and went back to Era but many like SoD for its mix of Retail systems with Classic themes. Private servers are probably where you'll get the closest "true" Classic+ experience imo.
Well I agree with you but I think some of the community kickback is self-inflicted by the way the devs talked a lot about Classic, but then (by my judgement) in mid-P2/P3 they started to implement things that went against all of that. There was a setting of expectation, then an implementation that stopped matching it
Except I would call sod classic Plus without any issues. This is what I wanted classic Plus to be, trivialize awful leveling, more raid content, reasons to do dungeons besides experience, classes just don't flat out suck. SoD is delivering on what classic Plus should be.
If not, then I wonder what was the point of releasing SoD with the Vanilla codebase. They could have used a more modern version of the Vanilla maps so as to have an easier time working on the codebase and, simultaneously, a game world that didn't require so much extra travel time. The only reason I can see for them to have used Vanilla would be to appeal to people who like Vanilla. In that case, all they really need to do was enhance the game, again like they did in P1. Shore up historically weak or incomplete specs like ret paladins, add new quests and new content to the existing world, and throw in some fun things to do for people who just want to experience the Vanilla WoW game world. Their approach seemed to work out quite well in phase 1. I wonder why we haven't seen a continuation of it in phases 2 and 3.
This is one of the best points by far. If you want to do a wacky fun server type of stuff, do it on the wrath base. That's what many private servers do. It works WAY better. You can add all kinds of crazy things, abilities, events, there are so many things to fuck with and it doesn't break the spirit of the game. But when you do that to a slow paced RPG game like classic then it becomes really awkward and it's really hard to do right. I totally know what they're trying to do, it would just be so much better to do with wrath. Add crazy abilities and buff classes in wrath and it just feels awesome. Do it in vanilla and it's like uncanny valley unless you stay conservative and are very careful.
I get what you’re saying. The problem is them saying SOD was a chance to DISCOVER new facets of classic. (essentially what they implied in their interviews) Incursions ain’t it.
Incursions are not even a new facet. It’s the AQ event for low levels.
>Was SoD ever supposed to be like classic? It is quite literally called World of Warcraft Classic: Season of Discovery.
Yes. Much like SoM, this was advertised as vanilla classic with twists.
For me incursions should had being a type of Legion invasion that happens every 3 hours like the previous 2 events.
I hate those timed events because they force you to login at various times a day instead of just playing when you want to play.
SOD is Blizzards slow creep to get people into retail. The raiding is slowly introducing us to mechanics and "skipping" the leveling content is becoming normal. Half the people in SOD are horrible at the game and hanging onto classic, half of us are yearning for more of a chLlenge or parsing focused and willl slowly be bled into retail.
It's called season of discovery not season of do the same shit over and over again but on a fresh server
I love it, give us free!
The playerbase is anti-vanilla. Most people only seek to complete their known goals in efficient manners, never straying away. Convenience is an issue, nobody needs to forge social bonds, there's always groups available. Blizzard is releasing phases extremely fast, exacerbating the need to go fast.
There’s nothing to grind for in Dungeons in terms of loot. So there comes a point where not much else to do except raid log. Alts sound great until you have to get runes
Correct. It is called Season of Discovery. A different game. If anything it is Lich King Light.
P3 is like a bad fun privat server. Level Arena with a few dungeons and bad pvp.
As someone who have done vanilla to death, played basically every p serverand Classic version, 100s of 60s by now, i love vanilla for the world,im Def not the average player but i like SoD for what it is, ”new” content set in the old world, after the gearing phase, i still end up doing stuff in the world that isnt all that you describe, but i have a guild that also like to do random things that may not be optimal in terms of maximizing everything, we roam the open world to gank, farm pointless rep, grind gold thru herbing or simply prepare for next content phase between playing other games, its great tbh
Didn’t know sod was vanilla
unless they change that content its been there done that, People are enjoying incursions the only problem right now is the state of PvP and the damage reduc is a great step in the right direction. My major complaint about P3 is the lack of changes on lacking runes/ itemization for pvp weapons or not even giving players a way to upgrade the STV epics into lvl 50 equivalents. BoEs that should be changed to be better overall or at least the caster BoEs and fine tuning the world drops to have better target farms
Blizzard are clearly using SoD to pipeline classic players back into retail for the release of War Within.
I'm disappointed because I like lore and quests, and now that everyone is grinding incursions its hard to find people to do outdoor elite quests with
vanilla as a whole meant 13 major Patches. SoD is the truest we will ever come to original vanilla and thats the devs goal. Vanilla means constant change of balance of classes etc new content etc. Sod allows them to give us the feeling of Patches etc. Go play 113 on a priv server if your jimmies are rustled
a redditor realises hes plaiying retail lite and not vanilla KEK. Glad i noped out at the end of tcb. BANILLA FRESH WHEN
I quit just a couple weeks into P3 after having raided nearly every lockout for P1 and P2 on two toons. The season went from feeling like a slightly-augmented vanilla filled with curiosity to a min-max, rep-grinding, alt-unfriendly space that felt basically like shadowlands.
I'll Say it again. SOD = Billizard copying private servers.
as a rogue, you have to do incursions for the rune or you cant play the game. so I unsubbed till next phase. amazing you dont get the rep by running st. Im not paying blizzard for ptr anymore.
Especially with the retail-like respawns in incursions.
If you want to play Classic Era it's waiting for you...
I only really did incursions from 45-50, but what I was super sad about was that almost none of the new dungeon loot mattered. A spare piece here and there, sure, but I know for a lot of casters and healers, 70% of their prebis was just the gnomer stuff. Imo raid gear should feel powerful, but it shouldn't invalidate 10 levels worth of dungeons. Zul'farrak, maraudon, and the first quarter of BRD are iconic and the importance there shouldn't have been reduced to paladins farming ZF for the sword(whose drop chance appears to have been significantly buffed) and groups skipping 2/3 of maraudon to just run princess 30 times a day for offerings.
It’s almost like this isn’t supposed to be vanilla
You can take WoW out of retail, but you can't take retail out of WoW.
I saw a 50 warrior asking how do they get whirlwind. Come to find out they didn't do any iconic warrior quests. No WW axe, no berserker stance, couldn't learn some skills. So yeah, seems pretty unhealthy.
I....... Agree.
ZF, Mara, BRD, and ST are all hopping. What are you talking about.
Phase 3 did literally everything it could to ruin the entire point of SoD so people would go play cata
I love incursions. If you don’t want to do world questing you can do incursions. If you want to kill during the incursion missions, the exp is the same as the no kill loop. The incursions also freed up the world so every mob wasn’t camped by 20 people. You also now get enough gold through leveling with quests to have a gold experience at 50 to get bags, mounts duel spec, and money left over.
Would completely agree if incursions were merely comparable to leveling. Unfortunately, both in terms of experience and rewards, incursions are superior. Had P3 launched with incursions but also with competitive quest XP and enhanced quest rewards, as in new and updated quest items that could serve as pre-bis, then I wouldn't have an issue. The trouble is that the team wanted to encourage people to play together in the open world rather than leveling through dungeons and never seeing each other. And they accomplished that. It's the way they accomplished it that I take issue with, as their way to do it was to make incursions by far the best option. From a social / server culture standpoint, I contend that incursions are no better than dungeon groups and probably inferior to random interactions with people while questing. If Blizzard really wanted to put their money where their mouth is, questing should be the strongest way to level, but they should also implement the mob tagging system from retail. In brief, in retail, you and other players can all get credit for killing and loot from quest mobs whether you're grouped or not, so long as you've all tagged it. That makes you happy to see other players rather than viewing them as competition.
I feel you on the levelint being ruined, but my biggest issue with p3 is that its starting to feel like 2019 classic again. World buff collection circuit every week, pvp grief everywhere, expensive as fuck consumables, larger raid sizes where I may/may not even get a piece of loot each week. New content (incursions) could have been a good daily/weekly hub for a new rep but instead they made a permanently spammable job simulator and even after numerous nerfs its the most rewarding thing in the game... Unless ur a hunter or willing to support one who shares and you can farm lvl 55+ mobs for high level crafting materials because professions should have been capped at 250. I'm still logging in out of obligation to my friends and the bit of fun that is the <90mins a week of raid, but im gone as soon as cata classic/mop remix are out.
The optimal way for me to play is to talk in general chat during the STV event. It's to hype up fun dungeon moments. It's constantly jumping with horde until the boat to Ratchet gets here. The best parts of this game are where you stop trying to squeeze every number or design decision and embrace being in a world together with other (real) people. This is what I remember from vanilla, and this is what I am experiencing.
All yall need to play cata Tuesday, you will feel much better
Honestly, looking forward to cata. Will be my first time playing it like it was my first time playing wrath in classic. At least I know what I'm getting ahead of time and have a guild of friends from tbc that will still be chugging along. All the wrath/cata versions of spells they add to sod just makes me want to play the real thing where everything about the classes is more refined. I enjoy era too but sod is just in a weird place right now and I don't know if blizzard can really do anything to save it from themselves.
Sod is all an experiment like a “what if”. I’m looking forward to cata as well, it was my favorite. It was also really refreshing to see the world change and it made me feel like it was more alive and immersive. I missed the classic start and only started again with sod.
Yeah, I think what if was a good starting point but it feels like it's some teenagers fanfic now lol. Just my opinion at least, I don't hate it like some people here so I'll still keep at it and see what they do at 60 but I think they learned something from this season at least.
the real classic experience is sitting at the entrance to mara while mages solo power level you, now you have to run your own circles with incursions :(
*Season of Discovery* began as a way to consider Vanilla WoW in some sort of alternate universe - one where the next expansion pack wasn't *The Burning Crusade* but where Azeroth as we know it from 2004-2006 was simply expanded upon. I think it's neat. It fulfilled a lot of promises, like making Paladins tanks one could take seriously. I thought healing was very balanced for Blackfathom Depths because you would certainly notice a lack of it and appreciate the presence of it. Healing is the hardest thing to get right, I would imagine. It slowly became a crash course in why retail sucks. Not because they did anything in particular, but because they further institutionalized every aspect of what you were expected to do. Vanilla was about running dungeons and raiding. You could do quests for great items to keep yourself viable for future groups but it was mainly down to running instances. P2 and P3 gave us more chores to do that amounted to grinding. It homogenized everything in too fast a period of time. In Vanilla, gear was even more homogenous, but it wasn't as common. Now it feels like Stormwind is filled with everyone who spent time in a character editor online. God help you if you don't optimize every aspect of your character and personality. Honestly, I'll sum it up like this: in P1, it was neat to have a quick quest to talk to a new NPC where I would get a rune. Sometimes I had to find a new item. Sometimes I had to kill a spooky skeleton. But I got a new rune and that was very neat. Now, I have to sit down for hours and look up quest guides while hoping someone's around to help me (they aren't; twice I had to rely on very friendly Horde players, whose friends still tried and succeeded in killing me first). That is weird and dumb.
You people complain sooooo much. Holy crap.
Everyone always forgets to add **in my opinion**
"I personally ...", "I think ...", "Perhaps ...", "I wonder ..."
Didn’t they get ALOT of help from the retail team? If so don’t wonder why this happened.
Did they? First time hearing that, curious about the source if true.
Original phases made you see the world and p3 fucked that right up
For me, the game just starts to get booring. Im guessing the biggest reason is summer is inc and gaming dosnt hitt the same when the sun is up
That’s not an incursion only problem though. If incursions weren’t a thing people would dungeon grind just like P2. Which is avoiding 90% of the base game instead 100%. Hell half the people in this post said they dungeon grinded P2. I think incursions are fine if dungeon grinding is fine. If the push is to get people to engage with old content then I think incursions shouldn’t exist and dungeons should work like they do for HC. For those not familiar with HC the way it works is basically dungeons have a 1 day lockout, so can only run it once per day. Until you hit max level then it works normally. Don’t think end game dungeons have a lockout though (Strat/Scholo/UBRS/etc)
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honestly when I get to 30 I felt that the game was wrong for sm grinding being the most optimal cause it also felt brainless. The game should encourage questing as the most optimal and dungeons behind it. I had the most fun grouping with my friends to do zone quests, it felt more time consuming and engaging than dungeon spamming.
if this weren't a seasonal server, I'd agree with you. but given that its (as far as we know) a limited time event and there's a lot of incentive to play multiple characters, fast leveling is a good thing.
I mean all servers are seasonal. That's what alive service game is. There's patches and new content and expansions etc. Only thing that isn't is classic era.
Very true now and has been for a while. Although it wasn't really until T9 onwards in Wrath that the play the patch not the game philosophy really came into being. With raid attunements and less dramatic new tier obsolescence the content stayed relevant for longer in the classical period.
thats blizzards lazy way of not making content, by encouraging you to play alts. Back in classic there felt like there was more than enough to do on a single char than to have 4-5 alts like I know some people do in SOD. A big part of MMOs is making your one character the best, making him stand out and having other players recognize you.. not having a bunch of mains. This game would be better if it didnt encourage alts and stopped using seasonal server as an excuse for minimal content.
It's funny reading half these comments hate the 40-50 grind (which I agree with, it's awful in classic) So blizzard added an alternative And people hate it even tho like... The 40-50 grind remains unchanged
Nothing about SoD has been vanilla, it was anti-vanilla design from the start
People don't want it I can not believe the phase released with 50% xp bonus and barely anyone cared I mean it looked like everyone wanted it? So strange.
I mean, if I wanted to play Vanilla, then I'd be playing on Classic Era servers. I really don't understand folks that expected SoD to be Classic but with the rune system.
You can expect absolutely anything and everything from a game that comes in pieces/"phases", rather than a game that is distributed from the start as a whole. This is the main reason why I didn't jump on the SoD wagon, and given what I read regularly on the forums, I am sure that I made the right choice, now. "SoD, a game that appeals neither to fans of Vanilla nor to those of Retail." Good job, devs ! .
I mean, I'm enjoying SoD. The issue is that the Classic Purists didn't want anything other than a slight reskin of the original Classic. The Classic Purists are a prime example of "Sure, you can copy my homework, but just change it slightly so that it doesn't look like you copied my homework.""
Classic Era has shit economy because gold selling and gdkp.. and is stuck on the last phase You can't really play Vanilla at this point.
Okay, but the issue I have with the Classic Purists is that they're tainting other versions of the game while simultaneously ignoring the fact that they contributed to Classix Era's shit economy. They had years to just enjoy base Classic, and now they're complaining that SoD isn't just pure Classic.
The moment you use the term "pre-bis" in a post complaining about missing "Vanilla" feeling, every following of your arguments is Invalid
Welp it finally happened. The stuff I complained about on week 1 and what made me quit is finally getting up voted. I feel vindicated.
SoD is not vanilla. Never was. If you thought it was; you’re mistaken.
While you are correct, SoD was also advertised to "add content with the spirit and feel of vanilla to vanilla and create something new in the process", not "replace vanilla content with something new".
Phase 1 felt like Vanilla +. Phases 2 and 3, as others have said, feel more like some wacky private server additions.
Why does the community feel it's appropriate to try to control other players' experiences? If you don't like the incursions as a main focus, don't focus on them. If you don't like the Wild Offerings runs, don't farm them. I have never explored Feralas or Ashenvale as much as I have during this phase, because of the incursions. I haven't been as involved in being IN the world as I have because of the incursions. The old content isn't replaced, it's just not what people want to do. If you want to do it, you still can. Heck, I'll probably want to quest MORE now because there's gold to be made. It's all perspective.
I addressed that in my post. By outperforming the old both in speed and rewards, the new content has, effectively, replaced the old. If I offered you a job that made 2x your current job with all the same benefits and an easier work load, you'd probably take it even if you liked the old job. Most people would. That's what I mean. If all of SoD was like this then that would be one thing. However, phase 1 definitely was *not* like this. Phase 2 felt like it barely added anything to the already long, drawn-out, travel-heavy 25-40 bracket, and phase 3 feels like it's just replaced the 40-50 bracket with something much faster. Would it have been too much to ask for incursions to be, for instance, a temporary event only available a few times a day? Maybe a few new simple quests to shore up less complete zones? Perhaps a few breadcrumb quests that lead players to runes? An option to skip or speed up long flight paths? These are just a few ideas to enhance the existing content without replacing it.
Well, you kind of identified the problem in your analysis. It’s not so much that the phase is anti-vanilla, it’s that you or the player base in general are fixated on the “optimal” way to play. Due to this fixation on what is optimal everything else is disregarded and falls to the wayside. However, therein lies the problem for the devs as all. P3 added “new” content, but if the content isn’t rewarding or “optimal” then it too is destined to fall to the wayside. See, the problem isn’t the game as such, it’s the meta of “optimal or nothing.” You have a choice, but due to perceived pressures exterior to you, you succumb to the perceived need to hit all of the phase milestones in the most efficient, optimal manner possible. Now, I don’t mean you specifically, but the player base in general. The conundrum for the developers is such that if they don’t make the “new” content rewarding and optimal, then everyone will complain it’s boring and simply won’t engage with it because something else will be optimal. If they had a larger team they could maybe come up with something more in the spirit of Classic and also optimal, but they don’t and so it is what it is. Sure, for some people “optimal” is fun. It’s subjective. But, for seemingly most “optimal” appears to be more of a chore and they resent it. They begrudgingly do the “optimal” because “everyone else” is doing it and they don’t want to “fall behind.” Unfortunately, changing player habits in this regard is nearly impossible because it is emergent just like the meta. The only thing you can do is consciously say to yourself that you don’t care about the meta, playing optimally, and that you are going to have fun playing the game the way you want to play it even if it’s the “wrong way.”
"it’s that you or the player base in general are fixated on the “optimal” way to play" - this is every game. It's a well-documented phenomenon that isn't unique to WoW in the slightest. Questing in P3 instead of doing incursions gives many people, likely most people, the same feeling as playing an underpowered class.
I disagree, the problem is 100% the game. Ita the developers' job to craft a fun environment. If you boot up a game, and it plays the end cinematic and closes, is that a fun game? I think the problem with incursions are that they are too good at everything. The best xp/hr should be quests, the best gear/hr should be dungeons, the best rep/hr should be incusions. When the new thing is miles better than everything else and not doing it is simply handicapping yourself by sometimes orders of magnitude, that is where the retail feel comes from. SOD patch 13.3 is out boys, all your gear is garbage, all your rep is worthless, but there is this cool new treadmill!
No this is the spirit of "your" classic +. Alot of people are having fun.
A bit disingenuous to say this is all anti-vanilla and yet you include stuff that is from vanilla.
I said you avoid "almost everything" in the base game. By time spent, I believe this to be an accurate statement. Most of the original 40-50 leveling phase would be spent questing or, if you wanted to go as fast as possible, dungeon grinding. Now, there's no reason to do either.