SoD seems popping right now. Main Cities are full and lively. Raids' World Buffs drop frequently. You see players across all levels/content. AH is very active. Many people offering their professions' services. Guilds are recruiting. Less people per shard which brought some kind of balance to the Open World population. You can level up without being repeatedly disturbed, but the action of World PvP is just there if you wish for it. SoD is great right now.
@@timelessanimation4435 If you want to believe it's cope, go ahead. But assure it's way more cope to play a stagnant 20 year old game for the upteenth time. That hype won't last, just like Era, and the "population" numbers will be composed mostly of bots.
@@timelessanimation4435 Coping for what ??? He seems to be thoroughly enjoying the game and its actually facts about the population. Crusader Strike is literally alive and well. This is a dumb comment and you are very dumb for saying it. The Anniversary servers will die in 2 months when everyone realizes its the same game they've done for the 4th time now... You guys are the real ones trying to cope. My god. 🤦♂
Feel like all they need to do is announce sod progressing into TBC, or sod characters being able to transfer to TBC anniversary on launch (with some item loss or something)…. And SOD will pop off p7 till the end.
@@DH2point3speak for yourself. with that attitude we never get good games again. to quote a wise man "if you keep eating s**t and tell everyone it's tasty. they will continue to serve you s**t." for me SOD was the final nail in the coffin. i really had a tiny little bit of hope and i got let down again. as always. i finally quit my wow sub in p4. it was so bad! if 'Lizzard entertainment can't handle minor improvements to a 20 year old game. what can they actually do? meanwhile amateurs and hobbyists like ascension and turtle wow have a better experience than the company who actually made the game in the first place. imagine how many things you need to f*** up to get to that point!? what on earth makes you all think they won't f**k it up as they always do? how did this increase in trust come to be for you? because mine only went downhill since SOD p2.. no.. actually since 2016 when they released their last good game. the only 2 upwards trend moments since then were legion and SOD p1. can you name another? because i can't. "one step forward, two steps backwards and make sure to step in the dogs*** twice." that's blizzard's motto i feel like
My server ain’t dead I’m on wild growth my guild raids every Saturday and Sunday 7:30 server time and Monday night’s off-night raids server is very populated with players as well we r all waiting for Nax phase 7 and we r clearing Bwl and AQ we cant wait for Nax phase I’m only 26 years old and love World of Warcraft and have been playing Sod since launch and will never stop go back to retail i like classic era and Sod ⬇️
Holiday Season bro, retail/anniversary dropped. People always come back to SOD. Also leveling population has been awesome lately. So many dungeon groups even on Christmas day.
SoD is dead for specific groups of people. For casual dad guilds, I think SoD is still a smashing success. Cata is too hard and Vanilla fresh takes too long to level. So for us, it’s great. But for “sweaty” players, there is nothing competitive in sod. The 15 levels of difficulty make parsing a meme. Speedrunning has kinda stopped because the raid changes have made that less fun. The flex raid size has further diluted the interest in performance. In general, Classic is mostly people that would call themselves semi-hardcore. Like, I want to play at a high level, but I don’t want to play the game like a job. Unfortunately, difficulty levels and flex raiding have killed that type of players interest in the game. You’re either in a 20-man mythic/heroic raid, or your performance doesn’t matter. No in between, no being a 99-parser in a casual guild, all dead. That for me, is Sid’s biggest failure. Rune discovery in p2 and p3 was also just the classic devs overestimating the interest we actually had in doing additional quests for player power. I think we always like opportunities to do new stuff, but not feeling required to do certain things. SoD killed off so many people’s interest in those phases. Sod world PvP has also been pretty taxing on the casual population. The funneling and overall toxicity of basement dwellers is a real plague for people that only have limited time. As a sweat, I don’t ever really get behind the curve, but I know many people that quit due to being griefed by high level toons. We gotta stop pretending like this is normal/good behavior and instead introduce some penalty for farming low levels. These pathetic losers that want to pvp much weaker enemies…are not good for the game. Lastly, the game is just severely unbalanced in anything that isn’t raiding encounters. So, while 50% of the game feels better for most classes, the other 50% feel terrible.
@NOHITJEROME You're missing a big part of the frustration of SoD. It was set up in the first 2 phases as this casual season with 10 man raids, but then Blizzard completely flipped the script on us and tossed out the 10 man raiding scene to the curb. I do think you completely hit the mark on their being no real direction for SoDs future. Personally, i really enjoy SoD and apart from pvp I prefer it to just regular vanilla, but I find myself and most players i play with on the anniversary realms because we know they will progress to tbc and wrath
10mans were insanely fun, its hard to say if the switch to 20 really killed the game, but i agree a lot of people didnt enjoy 20 nearly as much. it feels like a LOT more work to do from an organizing perspective
This was a choice that Blizzard made. I'm sick of being corralled by this company and as soon as SoD is over I will stop giving them money. They knew the effect of launching Classic fresh and hardcore at the same exact time that people should be doing the AQ war effort. They're not stupid and they do not care about players or content creators. They are evil.
On wild growth, Na. Horde side legit feels so dead. rerolled alliance and even there is a 30 min deal to even find a group for current content, god forbid you need Sm or something.
A couple of ways I could see SoD getting some traction back; 1. New Content with New Assets. This would almost need to be a phase in itself, or an area that already has a place in Classic maps such as Hyjal or a Timbermaw zone/raid. 2. An actual plan for where these toons may be in 1 year, 2 years, and so on. The server is "seasonal" and although they have said they have no plans to delete these toons, plans change. Evening washing these toons for CC TBC might be a good play to get players in there now. 3. Communicated Player Feedback reception for future iterations. If players knew that SoD, what feels like a testing grounds for Classic+, used player feedback to generate the best version of the game with player input they would feel value in playing the game beyond these characters/servers. Runescape has a great system for implementing changes. Unfortunately SoDs not going to bring back any significant amount of players without selling out on itself. It's not attractive to try and start up a game as a new player when it's assumingly towards the final chapters. Removing all barriers to entry will kick the players in the groin who have put in invested time, but if atleast the developers felt like they listened to those playing the game the most they might retain their positive outlooks.
1 2 3 all doable imo, and it starts with 3. make community feedback front and center, not these hidden away surveys they use. let us vote on what we want even. then solve the "what do we do with the characters" problem. maybe classic era becomes the place the characters all end up or maybe they can find a better solution than that. but once you solve 2 and 3 you can start adding new content and having it last through multiple versions ie sod -> classic+
@@NOHITJEROMEwell they replaced it with incursions. Not a good way to substitute that "bleak" gameplay. Everyone was 50 in the first day. Combine that with forcing 20 man raids and sod died quick. The developers are out of touch.
I stopped playing then. Had two 40s and heard the new Raid was way harder and didn’t want to bother. I played it because it was easy, it just took organizing a group. I’m doing stressed to play Retail level mechanics.
Specifically i think it was successful but its definetly on life support from the devs or at least thats the feeling. Its just a testbed for classic+ which means people dont want to play it since its a ptr feeling that you think will just be dead in a couple months
I'm currently capping toons in the SoDcore. That way if we get a surprise SoD:TBC. I'll have a full stable of toons to hit the ground running. In the meanwhile I'm having fun. Waiting for new fun to drop. And farming Guru Arena for un listed recipe drops from the chest. Haven't gotten a purple yet. That would be a cool payoff.
@@AmongRevenantsi think you gotta see a doctor man... you're leveling multiple chars to 60 for the offchance they continue with tbc? not trying to offend you here but that's literally insane. don't waste your life like that man...
Even if season of discovery dies, it is not a "failed experiment". Not every game is meant to be eternal. It was fun while it lasted thats all. I wish they would keep making these experiments.
not every game is meant to be eternal is a great point, but modern games ARE meant to be. same reason squid game s2/3 are happening. business (and the audience generally likes getting things they liked before, at least I do)
My fear is that they'll wipe/reset the anniversary servers too. TBC will come out and once that's done everyone will be screaming for Wotlk. We'll play through Wotlk than Blizz will pull the rug right out from underneath us again.
i don't know how wow fixes it because they went the expansion route. i think the ENDGAME is somehow having servers that contribute to achievements/mounts etc on live retail. (assuming live retail becomes really hot over the next few years)
@@chrisc92346 It's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of how much time one is willing/needed to put into a game. 10 man raiding along with chill PvP was amazing. 20 man raiding involved more coordinated guilds, higher levels of pre requisites buffs etc. Most adults playing a game to relax won't be willing to put in the time, to commit a schedule. Failed the chill accessible promise of SoD.
@@NOHITJEROME Man it's obvious why people don't get it they swapped 10 man to 20 man raid? at lvl 40?? Utter nonsense blizz is so disconnected they killed pvp by banning premades, now they've killed retail by adding 'solo'. They're on a death spiral.
I still enjoy playing SoD and find it much more engaging than fresh realms, which feel sluggish and slowed down to me. However, the player base has definitely declined, especially after fresh realms launched. Doing dailies used to be bustling with activity, but now it's much quieter-though it's still possible to find groups and there are active guilds raiding. It does feel like the game is slowly declining, but I hope it stays active enough for me to experience the upcoming raids.
Just came back after quitting in phase 3. The ONLY reason i even considered it was because of the rune vendor. If you think finding a group for leveling dungeons were tough, how about for the mid level runes that required a group? Impossible unless you got a carry. Game went from extremely alt and new player friendly to nearly impossible for a new player to enjoy. They are back on track i think (which is why im trying it again) but we need to know what the future holds very soon.
the rune vendor is an amazing idea, it could have come 4 months ago honestly. i believe p7 is going to be the closest thing we get to p1. but i also believe they HAD to announce p7 early because without the hope of new content a lot of people would quit for good
@@NOHITJEROME I don't think we will ever see p1 numbers until maybe true classic+. I think player numbers were heavily inflated because of people like me raiding on 6 characters.
@@NOHITJEROMEno version of wow will ever sustain the amount of players at the start of something new. retail and era fresh always lose a huge % of players about 6 months in.
Sod is the best iteration of wow ever imo, I leveled up with the phases so I never had the issue of not being able to find groups. With that being said, there's 100 ways they've increased the leveling experience and most classes can solo elite quests and some even can solo dungeons. With the increases to exp and individual damage solo leveling has never been better. If someone can't make it to end game they would probably quit soon after reaching it anyways. This has always been a marathon game. If someone wants to hit endgame instantly they can buy boosts on the newer versions of wow
Have you even logged on SoD recently? SoD is in a great spot right now especially since you can just buy your runes at level 1. The world is super alive. Not crowded, but very active.
i just came back from p3. The leveling is hit or miss when finding dungeons but with the fact they give you ALL the runes now makes leveling alts 10000x better. Another side note: I managed to get into a pug full 40 man AQ on xmas eve and we downed c'thun with ease and lots of people were happy and walking out with loot
Fresh is popular right now and I did hit a 60 there but farming 30 dungeons for a pair of shoulders that still haven’t dropped is really burning me out. I went back to sod the last couple days and really enjoying starting new character with all the runes and the increased leveling speed. Still feels exciting like there’s so much content I haven’t tried yet. I’ll probably raid once a week on fresh but go back to sod for the fun.
I still play SoD and enjoy it, but Blizzard killed SoD at phase 3 by making ST 20man raid instead of 10 where i had my friends and our 10man raid setup. But most of them quit when we had to find pugs for our raids
Played sod alot from p1 until p5. As you touched on once it was clear that no actual new content was being released, guild disbanded and I quit shortly after. The P3 lull being too long, into just molten core with some dailies, followed by just bwl/zg and some ranking was the end of it. Nothing to be excited about, not enough reasons to come back. At best they're showing that there MIGHT be a new raid, which at this point I won't hold my breath for. Wouldn't be surprised if the new SM raid is a rehashed SM Cath with 1 boss. EDIT - I have been messing around with alts with the full rune kits however, which is fun to level solo with. But very infrequently.
I like the fact that SoD is seasonal, that my characters are dead when SoD is over. Then when I want to play wow again, maybe I play classic or retail or I wait for classic+. Leveling up the character, at least a class you've never played, is a lot of fun. SoD earlier phases was great, hopefully classic+ is that and even better
seasonal is cool IF we are getting it every 4-5 months. seasonal for 1 1/2 years is a harder sell. does path of exile have anything for seasonal servers that carries over? MAYBE if we got cosmetics, or titles, or something that kept going
You can go 1-60 in less than week to a few days. lvl up as fast as possible to get to the first set of incs, quest/dungeons, till gnomer+new incs>high lvl incs+BRE. and your an ez 60.
So my main is alliance on crusader strike, I wanted to try a horde and can’t make one on crusader strike so I chose wild growth and it’s pretty dead. Every rare for a quest is just up.
Phase 1 gdkps, phase 2 meta shift favoring hunters and magic classes (mostly hunters) instead of rogues which is where I dipped, incursions, and sunkin temple apparently was horribly overtuned. Then recently wow classic fresh servers dropping around start of current phase
meta shift to magic/hunter was intentional to make warriors bad. i dont know if balance is the reason the game dropped, but i guess we all have different reason to quit/play
When people realize how Vanilla: •Doesn't have increased XP. •Has plenty of borderline unviable specs. •Has the old, same Raids & content. •Requires unemployed-levels of grinding, like Rank 14 of PvP. They will come back back to SoD, crying.
We ain’t coming back I promise the only reason we classic Andy’s played sod was because it was the closest thing to vanilla out that was on official server at the time
@@Bofumforyou "we classic Andy’s played sod was because it was the closest thing to vanilla out that was on official server at the time" How SoD was the closest thing to a Vanilla server when you had ACTUAL Vanilla servers? By your logic, you should've never played SoD then. If you enjoy Vanilla so much, you should have stayed in the 2019 Era servers, right?
im sure there are some people that care what happens with their charakter after SOD but doubt people that played TBC were more hyped cause they belived that they will arrive in Pandaria eventually
fair point and we were in a honeymoon phase and everything felt like it was pointing to wrath. nobody had to think about what was really going to happen
crusader strike is hopping every single day with a healthy player base of 20K on each faction. Raiding is healthy and alive and well. Blizzard keeps dividing the player base with all these different versions of the game
Blizzard overpromised and under delivered with SoD. It was obvious that there were not enough development resources allocated after phase 2 as that was when it got stale. Incursions were a lazy way of bypassing poor questing paths for 40-50 and the economy suffered for the amount of gold generated from them. Lack of testing is also wildly apparent with how broken some classes were and today remain in PvP. Focused too much on empowering the classes and not enough on the world itself and raids. Moved closer to retail than classic.
Feel bad for the wow classic team for having to deal with such a jaded and divided community. I'm still having fun, just got to ashenvale incursion on my second shaman and there's plenty of people and even 60s helping out and giving out profession mats for quests. Can you really blame them for not adding much to 60 raids when they overhauled the level up raids (especially ST was fucking awesome) and all they got for feedback was "season of retail" and "this is not muh classic" and an insane population drop heralded by content creators doomsaying and being overly negative.
the community is divided because they have like 6 versions of the game and committed to era existing in a blog post when tbc came out. era shouldnt exist at all, it was their easiest solution to keep classic going. it reminds me of guild wars 1, that game should have been shuttered years ago. then they could have done a HUGE remastered relaunch and brought everyone back with 1000x the hype and excitement. there's nothing worse than your favorite game stumbling around like a zombie with no hype or excitement behind it.
SOD is seasonal server your character should be non playable after the season ends everyone knew what they where getting into when creating there characters. They could just give you basic set of gear and put your characters on a era server. As for the population people are raiding on like 4-5 diffrent characters and the leveling zones are just pretty much peoples alts
ya i love seasonal as an idea but idk how to sell just doing the same thing over and over. need to look into how poe keeps people excited. maybe cosmetics each season to unlock?
Blizzard needs to merge Hardcore into SOD so folks who don't want end game content can still enjoy the rune character builds but from a leveling perspective on the same mega server as everyone else, maybe the HC characters have a gold shimmer on them or something to set them apart...
they barely can handle one raid while only using existing assets. do you think they can handle making actual content? because i don't and they give you no reason to.
but doesn't that prove the point? i liked sod, i will play it again. but it was more hype in the past. i played it even when it was not hype, p3, p4 ,p5 every day
I honestly can't believe how bad you've missed the mark here. SOD's biggest achievement was how alt and raid friendly it was in phase 1. Getting 25, picking up the runes, and raiding twice a week was easy and fun. Scaling the raid sizes to 15 and 20 put too much stress on the "Dad guilds". We were forced to try and combine other raid teams that were awkward sizes for the 20 man. Throw in 0.5tier grind, pvp grind, and reputation grind -- it just became less and less fun. Tldr; 10man raids 2x a week, runes, 0.5 gear, and rep should have been account wide. I would love to be playing my main and my 2 alts but they are too far behind to make it worthwhile.
phase 3 kill sod from the begining 40-50 happening incursions loops,then finally getting lv50 and the only thing to do is sunken temple which was broken on launch, not to mention cata came out in the middle of the phase AND 4 MONTHS OF NO CONTENT. BLIZZARD HAS TOO MANY PLATES SPINNING. I just quit sod like last week between my guild not taking sod serious anymore now that fresh is out and my schedule doesn't allow me to start raid at 9pm est.
too many plates spinning is a good way to put it. i think they have to set the sod plate down, then pick it up in 3 months with an INSANE amount of awesome stuff and be like hey this is what we are gonna do from now on. but maybe it's not worth doing and they save it all for classic+
@@GilgameshApprovesAQ right now, Naxx next, and they announced even another phase with a whole new scarlet crusader raid and karazahn dungeon. And maybe there is even more coming. Its a great time to start playing right now. All runes available from level 1 and leveling is at tripple experience
@@aeroblizz1987 thanks for replying; I've got one more question if that's fine... What about world buffs, are those disabled for raiding? That shit was cancer
we got done dirty in p4/5/6 more than anything because it was the same raids as before. and mc was put together in 2 weeks in 2003 it wasn't meant to be something to dedicate years of your life to
Here is what i noticed, a lot of guilds in sod including mine are dad's guilds, i belive a game cant get a lot of players if its not interesting for younger player base. Most ppl in my guild have jobs and families, meeting together twice or three times a week and enjoying time is what is sod about for me. When phase coming out its time to spend few more hours and rush content and after that just go back to raid logging and enjoy both, life and wow.
You can have all runes from lvl 1 for free so lvling got much easier and nothing stays on top forever there's no expansion that is the same size at start to finish
I played Fresh for the last two weeks, now I'm back at SOD. As a Shadow and Ret main SOD is miles a head of Era. (BTW there are a lot of new people leveling in SOD again).
@@NOHITJEROME Leveling my dormant, since phase 3 Shadow Priest. Some of the Runes have changed. It is still the best version of this spec I have played.
Your next video should be on the fall of Anniversary and how there's only 20k raiders! Very low for something so hyped up. That's only 10k more than the vanilla servers that have been going on for over 5 years.
it's just a long road to 60. i believe they might add a level boost at some point (50/50 chance). it takes 150-200 hours to hit 60 or more, and there have only been 34 days since launch. 4hr/day = 170 hours, so even a tryhard at 4hr/day wouldn't be 60 yet
Yeah anniversary is not looking good. Only reason I play is for TBC, cba bothering with that lame no changes classic. Cope is hilarious. Funny how sod is always supposed to be dead while it retains a very stable pop considering the late phase. But how dare someone even try to question anniversary
@@NOHITJEROME Once it comes back as Classic+ fully completed it'll be great. SOD was an extended beta test. I think they'll do a good job when they add what worked + tweaks and remove what the community hated.
reasons? easy! because phases 2, 3 and 4 weren't that great and we wouldn't wait like half a year for the next patch, high hopes, constant disappointment, regular fuck ups, each and every single piece if content was either wonky or at least didn't work properly, overtuned phase 2 nightmare gold fucked up the ecomomy up until phase 3, nightmare ultra speed leveling for only the ones who were fast enough to notice or got told, balancing was off the charts and probably still is. i played enhancer shaman and was one hitting players on my level in pvp and was winning 1v3 situation more often than i lost them. it was so disgusting i felt bad for playing shaman in pvp because it just was too easy. stormstrike + autohit + crit +windfury was enough dmg in 1 single hit to one shot everything but warrior or paladin. it's like no one of the classic dev team ever looked at shamans and how stupidly OP they were... poor alliance... i'm pretty sure when i grinded my warsong and arathi rep i personally made at least a few allys quit SOD for good. I'd like to go sod again but all my friends lost trust in the project, so did i and i won't go play wow solo. that's just not on the table anymore since the magic is gone. now i'm in the situation that i don't have a wow subscription after years and years because i quit retail after legion and i finished all classic content a few times now. meaning i would have to resubscribe and that barrier of entry is big enough to require an actual reason. running AQ and NAX for a third time now isn't a good one and so far no one could give me one in general. partially because if 80% of SOD leaves and the 20% who stay tell you it's still good you don't really believe the last guys on the server with the biggest bulls*** tolerance out of everyone who tried it.
we had a good run, I never got draw into classic because , despite the charm of the old zones, i think the gameplay was outdated for 2024. So the runes were appealing... but lets face it : the dungeons and raids mechanics are old and boring .But I conceed that modern gameplay and strats might be too excessive and an ADHD nightmare . So there is that .
dungeons/raids need reworks more than the gameplay imo. sod gameplay is good, it works, let's see if they can rework the raids/dungeons and give us new content that isnt just retail 2
The game is fun as shit. I love that they re-itemize items to be more appropriate but who expects the person to play something that’s almost identical for a whole year.
I'm still enjoying sod. I tried classic classic and I just couldn't do it. I'll eventually have to play it once sod is done to be ready for tbc. My hope is that we get sod tbc as a waiting room for classic +. That way, I can avoid classic classic all together.
sod tbc would be incredible. are there any raids / dungeons you think they could add in tbc that would be compelling? if we are already getting kara crypts in sod
@@NOHITJEROME everything is insanely strong and fun to play, i got my druid at lvl 1 all slots from AH or Azeroth Commerce Authority. Starfall at lvl 1 is insane, i was lvl 5 in under 10minutes maybe less?
Been playing SoD since phase 1 and never quit. In the long run, it was great to consolidate these realms, I would have liked it done sooner tbh. My wish upon a copium star is for SoD to continue into TBC and Wrath in the same way that anniversary is going to do. However, I’m pretty realistic and my expectation is that we will retire in these servers after phase 7 or 8 and SoD will be for the few that enjoy the hybrid play of classic + retail with runes and QoL changes. I just can’t find the strength to level another anniversary character after all the time put into SoD. I am so happy they FINALLY made runes available at level 1 so I may even make another alt. This should have happened sooner as well.
Dang. I just resubbed for sod after taking a break right before BWL. Anniversary is so much more of a time sink and don't think i can bring myself to go back to that ever.
SoD had a 3 phase honeymoon period. The honeymoon died just prior to the P3.5 drought. And TWW had a great start. It also effected SoD. CC- on the other hand didn't impact SoD, as much as the #nochanges era realms being split. CC- is #smallchanges. SoD is 6 times the numbers for era and 3 times the numbers for CC-. Only big difference is most of the SoD CC's bailed for what they perceived would be better clicks.. Except Kaghoe. He never quit on the SoDcore. And after a short stint on OnlyFangs HC. Ebonhardt has returned as well. And of all current classic versions, SoD is the one receiving development with both old content, and new content still to drop. Nothing else in classic will be a big splash this season. Era got decimated by CC-. And CC- dies with the end of the OnlyFangs HC event. Until a year from now, and the next OnlyFangs HC will reach into CC- TBC as another temporary event. And the start of a new classic progression to replace the current one after MoP. No one is doing WoD... anywhere, any version. That leaves almost an entire year where only SoD can bring anything new to the classic game. Come on back after OF HC. All roads lead to the SoDcore in 2025. Merry Christmas one and all. Love your vids. Would enjoy them more as SoDcore vids :)
Dead? No. Waning? Absolutely. Numbers don't lie, sure, unfortunately Blizzard doesn't release numbers. Meaning any speculation about SoD server pops are pulled entirely from nothing. If i had to render a guess as to what's happening, it's making the same mistake as retail. It's shooting everyone to max and putting the core leveling experience to the wayside, the thing classic is remembered fondly for. I don't hate it and it has some interesting changes, however it just comes across as scuffed retail (especially now).
I was so invested in SOD until phase 3. I haven’t gone back. I played anniversary realm when I launched in November and there’s so many people playing it. Not sure f want to level/ play SOD.
I just can't get into it. The feel from classic is gone as the runes are too powerful. I would also prefer retail to SoD as the gameplay is better in retail. SoD has in essence, the worst elements of retail and classic.
personally i stopped playing sod because of 1. doing all the aq bug farming was way too much work for something im not even going to get 2. i heard aq isnt even fun and not enjoyable (idk how true that is however) and 3. because classic hardcore came out and the hype is there at the moment and what i like about classic which is leveling is the main point in hardcore and in sod its just raid logging
So, half a million active raiders in phase 1 is a bit disingenuous. It does not mean half a million active players. The level cap was level 25. You could literally create a character in the morning and raid with it later that night. Some people like myself had 8 different raiding characters. I’d say on average people had 2-3 raiding characters. So half a million divided by 3 = 135,000 players. Now, most players only have 1, maybe 2 active raiders cause it’s a lot harder to get to max level and get raid ready with prebis. As far as raiding, this phase seems a lot busier. I have no problem finding pug raids for my alts. Although that said my guild mates only seem to raid log. Outside of raiding my guild only has a couple active members on. I think this is inevitable. Sod has been out for 13 months now. We should be headed into TBC but due to extensive long phases we are only a few weeks into AQ. People just get burned out. Of course blizzard releasing fresh classic servers hasn’t help. Lots of players left sod to go there but I get the feeling they will come back after the shine of newness wears off. In fact it’s already happening. Classic anniversary went from 10 layers to 5 and it’ll steadily drop to 1 in the next few months
If you can't tell by now. I play an ungodly amount of SoD. 6 to 12 hours a day, since day 1. And still there's never enough hours in a day to accomplish my dailies. I'll stay here on the The Lash until we receive our final destination at season's end. Then I'll transfer everything to Wild Growth. Whatever our new server. Many will quit at season's end. If only 5% of WG's pop hung out after SoD. It's be 10, 20 times more people then I am conditioned to deal with currently. I'll just start up The Defiant guild there and everyone who missed out on raid content during the season. Can enjoy it in our afterlife. Or on our brand new SoD/classic plus progression servers. There's no future for Blizz in rehashing old hash. And Blizz has all of 2025 to forge Classic Plus out of the SoDcore. We're the 60k hungering for true fresh wow. The backbone of #bigchanges
I think something else that could help at this point in SoD with Phase 7 being naxx which should be a good bit of people back id like to see them add at least MC gear and maybe some BWL gear to catch people up I still enjoy sod im hopeful they do some cool things with naxx and the Scarlet Crusade and Kara Crypts stuff
I think they should let you copy SoD Characters to Era, and make it so it just deletes your runes and SoD exclusive items, and gives you the era versions of the items instead. If that's too much work for Blizz to do, just let you copy a template pre-raid bis geared version of your character and class w/o any SoD stuff. This would be a good thing for the future of Era, would help undo the damage that $35/$15/$5 character copies did from back at TBC classic launch, and how people ignored Era and lost their vanilla characters forever because they had no reason to expect Era to be as successful as it is now back then.
Yeah, no that's the worst idea ever for them to do. Not only is it a very hard feat technically on their end... Delete all that gear and runes I worked so hard for and what made the game fun for me??? Do you want to piss off the entire SoD community?? That would literally make me quit WoW for good. So yeah, no. No one wants that. You are in your own small minority on that one.
@@DaFreezeey not sure why you're so rabid and emotional about this, but they've said that they're making permanent, Era like servers for sod, I'd just like the option of normal Era instead, since I think SoD sucks.
@@jgalla5549 How would you feel if you put a ton of time into something, only to have it destroyed in front of you ? Not very good. Don't pretend like I'm unique to being emotional if that happened. That's hypocrisy. And yes, I know they have said they will make permanent era like servers for SoD. I was simply explaining why I don't like your idea. Sorry YOU didn't like SoD... but that does not mean everyone else has to suffer for it because 1 person doesn't like it...
this is why there is no fix for the sod problem. you cant go to era and sod tbc would be almost impossible to balance. i think it causes players to have concern for the future
U trolling bro. Sod is thriving and with kharazan raid on the horizon and scarlet crusade raid coming. Thousands of people will come back for those 2 raids alone.
ps: i was there for the hudge event PVP that was amazing the fun we had at the begunning xD my guild had 2 guild full with no reroll ... we participate to everything . i miss the even with everybody , when you walked you can die anytime attack by other ect WOW spirit im not good but i love that felling!! i never farm a low lev ect but i Enjoye the moment you dont know what it will happen! i played with a lot of players and they had the same sentiment.
it's great to hear that you are still enjoying the game, i will get back into raiding in the next few weeks myself. but i wonder what they can do after p7, i don't know if they have a plan yet
the problem was making phase one only 25 levels. instead of an actual phase one like in real classic. and then everything after level 25 did not feel good to play.
SoD seems popping right now.
Main Cities are full and lively. Raids' World Buffs drop frequently.
You see players across all levels/content.
AH is very active.
Many people offering their professions' services.
Guilds are recruiting.
Less people per shard which brought some kind of balance to the Open World population. You can level up without being repeatedly disturbed, but the action of World PvP is just there if you wish for it.
SoD is great right now.
copism
@@timelessanimation4435 If you want to believe it's cope, go ahead.
But assure it's way more cope to play a stagnant 20 year old game for the upteenth time.
That hype won't last, just like Era, and the "population" numbers will be composed mostly of bots.
@@timelessanimation4435 Coping for what ??? He seems to be thoroughly enjoying the game and its actually facts about the population. Crusader Strike is literally alive and well. This is a dumb comment and you are very dumb for saying it. The Anniversary servers will die in 2 months when everyone realizes its the same game they've done for the 4th time now... You guys are the real ones trying to cope. My god. 🤦♂
@@vankhorne”Population numbers” come from active raiders. It’s a way to gauge pop. Doubt there are many bots in that number.
Its not cope, experienced it myself.
Feel like all they need to do is announce sod progressing into TBC, or sod characters being able to transfer to TBC anniversary on launch (with some item loss or something)…. And SOD will pop off p7 till the end.
Now that all of the servers are consolidated, SoD is far from dead. You only need so many players on a server for it to feel alive.
Exactly
Doomers keep dooming.
Meanwhile im having best wow adventure for ages
@@el3ndir97 It’s just vanilla players not wanting anyone else to have fun.
It's pretty damn dead. Be real brother.
@@el3ndir97 agreed
If fresh wasn't out sod would still be lit.
SOD is actually pretty good to level right now imo?
We need good PvP content in sod
Sod is pretty lit right now
p6 is good p7 will be better. but theyve got to make up for p3/p4/p5
P4 and p5 brought people back dude stop crying wolf and just play the game
If by that you mean it should be lit on fire, yes.
@@DH2point3speak for yourself.
with that attitude we never get good games again. to quote a wise man "if you keep eating s**t and tell everyone it's tasty. they will continue to serve you s**t."
for me SOD was the final nail in the coffin. i really had a tiny little bit of hope and i got let down again. as always. i finally quit my wow sub in p4. it was so bad! if 'Lizzard entertainment can't handle minor improvements to a 20 year old game. what can they actually do? meanwhile amateurs and hobbyists like ascension and turtle wow have a better experience than the company who actually made the game in the first place. imagine how many things you need to f*** up to get to that point!?
what on earth makes you all think they won't f**k it up as they always do? how did this increase in trust come to be for you? because mine only went downhill since SOD p2.. no.. actually since 2016 when they released their last good game. the only 2 upwards trend moments since then were legion and SOD p1. can you name another? because i can't.
"one step forward, two steps backwards and make sure to step in the dogs*** twice." that's blizzard's motto i feel like
@@DH2point3 Can you read lol? They lost a ton of players
My server ain’t dead I’m on wild growth my guild raids every Saturday and Sunday 7:30 server time and Monday night’s off-night raids server is very populated with players as well we r all waiting for Nax phase 7 and we r clearing Bwl and AQ we cant wait for Nax phase I’m only 26 years old and love World of Warcraft and have been playing Sod since launch and will never stop go back to retail i like classic era and Sod
⬇️
They sold us there were suppose to be new raids, dungeons and zones that was undeveloped that will be developed.
i think we hoped for more than could ever be delivered. maybe there was no way to have what we wanted fully
Holiday Season bro, retail/anniversary dropped. People always come back to SOD. Also leveling population has been awesome lately. So many dungeon groups even on Christmas day.
good to hear that mr rums. i will say the anniversary server is HELL today. everyone plays on christmas lmao
Sod leveling is BIS right now having all runes at level 1. Leveling is so fast and fun
SoD is dead for specific groups of people. For casual dad guilds, I think SoD is still a smashing success. Cata is too hard and Vanilla fresh takes too long to level. So for us, it’s great.
But for “sweaty” players, there is nothing competitive in sod. The 15 levels of difficulty make parsing a meme. Speedrunning has kinda stopped because the raid changes have made that less fun. The flex raid size has further diluted the interest in performance.
In general, Classic is mostly people that would call themselves semi-hardcore. Like, I want to play at a high level, but I don’t want to play the game like a job. Unfortunately, difficulty levels and flex raiding have killed that type of players interest in the game. You’re either in a 20-man mythic/heroic raid, or your performance doesn’t matter. No in between, no being a 99-parser in a casual guild, all dead. That for me, is Sid’s biggest failure.
Rune discovery in p2 and p3 was also just the classic devs overestimating the interest we actually had in doing additional quests for player power. I think we always like opportunities to do new stuff, but not feeling required to do certain things. SoD killed off so many people’s interest in those phases.
Sod world PvP has also been pretty taxing on the casual population. The funneling and overall toxicity of basement dwellers is a real plague for people that only have limited time. As a sweat, I don’t ever really get behind the curve, but I know many people that quit due to being griefed by high level toons. We gotta stop pretending like this is normal/good behavior and instead introduce some penalty for farming low levels. These pathetic losers that want to pvp much weaker enemies…are not good for the game.
Lastly, the game is just severely unbalanced in anything that isn’t raiding encounters. So, while 50% of the game feels better for most classes, the other 50% feel terrible.
The fact every major WoW streamer on the planet + many other huge following streamers are doing Hardcore right now doesn't help SOD's popularity.
SoD's population numbers are literally higher than anniversary or hardcores... That straight facts
@NOHITJEROME You're missing a big part of the frustration of SoD. It was set up in the first 2 phases as this casual season with 10 man raids, but then Blizzard completely flipped the script on us and tossed out the 10 man raiding scene to the curb. I do think you completely hit the mark on their being no real direction for SoDs future. Personally, i really enjoy SoD and apart from pvp I prefer it to just regular vanilla, but I find myself and most players i play with on the anniversary realms because we know they will progress to tbc and wrath
8 min click bait video. 10 man and you could get to 25 in 1 day made 400k raiders easy. When isn't wow classic about the end game wow always has been
10mans were insanely fun, its hard to say if the switch to 20 really killed the game, but i agree a lot of people didnt enjoy 20 nearly as much. it feels like a LOT more work to do from an organizing perspective
SoD is in a really good spot right now. Runes from level one has changed the game.
have you found any strong builds using all the runes at level 1? im curious if there is anything broken
@@NOHITJEROME rogue tank build is absolutely bonkers. literally unkillable and do insane dps
Sod is dope right now, don’t listen to this goofball
This was a choice that Blizzard made. I'm sick of being corralled by this company and as soon as SoD is over I will stop giving them money. They knew the effect of launching Classic fresh and hardcore at the same exact time that people should be doing the AQ war effort. They're not stupid and they do not care about players or content creators. They are evil.
I started sod before phase 6 came out and I honesty had no problem leveling
On wild growth, Na. Horde side legit feels so dead. rerolled alliance and even there is a 30 min deal to even find a group for current content, god forbid you need Sm or something.
i think everyone is 60, that's the issue. there aren't as many levelers
I was looking forward to PVP in SOD and it just never happened.
It did lol? Ashenvale was more Pve than pvp I agree, but STV event was some of the most fun pvp i've ever had (if the servers didnt lag lol).
A couple of ways I could see SoD getting some traction back;
1. New Content with New Assets. This would almost need to be a phase in itself, or an area that already has a place in Classic maps such as Hyjal or a Timbermaw zone/raid.
2. An actual plan for where these toons may be in 1 year, 2 years, and so on. The server is "seasonal" and although they have said they have no plans to delete these toons, plans change. Evening washing these toons for CC TBC might be a good play to get players in there now.
3. Communicated Player Feedback reception for future iterations. If players knew that SoD, what feels like a testing grounds for Classic+, used player feedback to generate the best version of the game with player input they would feel value in playing the game beyond these characters/servers. Runescape has a great system for implementing changes.
Unfortunately SoDs not going to bring back any significant amount of players without selling out on itself. It's not attractive to try and start up a game as a new player when it's assumingly towards the final chapters. Removing all barriers to entry will kick the players in the groin who have put in invested time, but if atleast the developers felt like they listened to those playing the game the most they might retain their positive outlooks.
1 2 3 all doable imo, and it starts with 3. make community feedback front and center, not these hidden away surveys they use. let us vote on what we want even. then solve the "what do we do with the characters" problem. maybe classic era becomes the place the characters all end up or maybe they can find a better solution than that. but once you solve 2 and 3 you can start adding new content and having it last through multiple versions ie sod -> classic+
Sod died unofficially when phase 3 dropped
i know everyone hated incursions, but my theory beyond that is the 40-50 is just bleak to begin with. everyone usually spends that time in zf lol
@@NOHITJEROMEwell they replaced it with incursions. Not a good way to substitute that "bleak" gameplay. Everyone was 50 in the first day.
Combine that with forcing 20 man raids and sod died quick. The developers are out of touch.
My guild died when it went from 10man to 20man content in p3
@@Madherk Because it was full of morons.
I stopped playing then. Had two 40s and heard the new Raid was way harder and didn’t want to bother. I played it because it was easy, it just took organizing a group.
I’m doing stressed to play Retail level mechanics.
Ive been raiding weekly and then logging off. back to leveling on the anniversary and waiting for whats next in the next season of wow
Specifically i think it was successful but its definetly on life support from the devs or at least thats the feeling. Its just a testbed for classic+ which means people dont want to play it since its a ptr feeling that you think will just be dead in a couple months
I'm currently capping toons in the SoDcore. That way if we get a surprise SoD:TBC.
I'll have a full stable of toons to hit the ground running.
In the meanwhile I'm having fun. Waiting for new fun to drop. And farming Guru Arena for un listed recipe drops from the chest. Haven't gotten a purple yet. That would be a cool payoff.
@@AmongRevenantsi think you gotta see a doctor man...
you're leveling multiple chars to 60 for the offchance they continue with tbc? not trying to offend you here but that's literally insane. don't waste your life like that man...
we are all waiting for whats next. hope your leveling is going well
Even if season of discovery dies, it is not a "failed experiment". Not every game is meant to be eternal. It was fun while it lasted thats all. I wish they would keep making these experiments.
not every game is meant to be eternal is a great point, but modern games ARE meant to be. same reason squid game s2/3 are happening. business (and the audience generally likes getting things they liked before, at least I do)
My fear is that they'll wipe/reset the anniversary servers too. TBC will come out and once that's done everyone will be screaming for Wotlk. We'll play through Wotlk than Blizz will pull the rug right out from underneath us again.
Anniversary will likely go TBC and Blizzard will keep the classic vanilla server ad the only vanilla server
i don't know how wow fixes it because they went the expansion route. i think the ENDGAME is somehow having servers that contribute to achievements/mounts etc on live retail. (assuming live retail becomes really hot over the next few years)
Sunken temple ruined it for me and my whole guild. 60 of us quit the first week into sunken temple
Why, It was a new raid that was a lot of fun. Was it to hard for you guys? Not being a dick just curious
@@chrisc92346 It's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of how much time one is willing/needed to put into a game.
10 man raiding along with chill PvP was amazing.
20 man raiding involved more coordinated guilds, higher levels of pre requisites buffs etc.
Most adults playing a game to relax won't be willing to put in the time, to commit a schedule. Failed the chill accessible promise of SoD.
@@chrisc92346wasn't fun. Zero upgs
what was it specifically with ST? i liked that phase, mc was when it became less fun for me
@@NOHITJEROME Man it's obvious why people don't get it they swapped 10 man to 20 man raid? at lvl 40?? Utter nonsense blizz is so disconnected they killed pvp by banning premades, now they've killed retail by adding 'solo'. They're on a death spiral.
That's a weird video. I've never had more fun in SoD other than phase 1.
I still enjoy playing SoD and find it much more engaging than fresh realms, which feel sluggish and slowed down to me. However, the player base has definitely declined, especially after fresh realms launched. Doing dailies used to be bustling with activity, but now it's much quieter-though it's still possible to find groups and there are active guilds raiding. It does feel like the game is slowly declining, but I hope it stays active enough for me to experience the upcoming raids.
i hope its active enough that the new raids get hype around them. because i believe the new raids will be very good. they have to be
Just came back after quitting in phase 3.
The ONLY reason i even considered it was because of the rune vendor. If you think finding a group for leveling dungeons were tough, how about for the mid level runes that required a group? Impossible unless you got a carry.
Game went from extremely alt and new player friendly to nearly impossible for a new player to enjoy.
They are back on track i think (which is why im trying it again) but we need to know what the future holds very soon.
the rune vendor is an amazing idea, it could have come 4 months ago honestly. i believe p7 is going to be the closest thing we get to p1. but i also believe they HAD to announce p7 early because without the hope of new content a lot of people would quit for good
i dont feel like sod is dead at all, im leveling alts and the world is full of people. it's doing just fine
it's alive but not p1 level. would like to see them get back to that someday. maybe p7. maybe sod 2
@@NOHITJEROME I don't think we will ever see p1 numbers until maybe true classic+. I think player numbers were heavily inflated because of people like me raiding on 6 characters.
@@NOHITJEROMEno version of wow will ever sustain the amount of players at the start of something new. retail and era fresh always lose a huge % of players about 6 months in.
But then he can’t wail his arms around to a clickbait title.
If you made it onto the locked RP/RPPVP servers you’re probably having a blast but all the other servers dungeon groups are dead from 1-58
which servers are locked atm JFD?
Sod is the best iteration of wow ever imo, I leveled up with the phases so I never had the issue of not being able to find groups.
With that being said, there's 100 ways they've increased the leveling experience and most classes can solo elite quests and some even can solo dungeons. With the increases to exp and individual damage solo leveling has never been better. If someone can't make it to end game they would probably quit soon after reaching it anyways. This has always been a marathon game. If someone wants to hit endgame instantly they can buy boosts on the newer versions of wow
It really is the best wow ever, agreed.
Agreed, If only Blizzard saw this and put more resources on it instead of releasing the same old content
Have you even logged on SoD recently? SoD is in a great spot right now especially since you can just buy your runes at level 1. The world is super alive. Not crowded, but very active.
i just came back from p3. The leveling is hit or miss when finding dungeons but with the fact they give you ALL the runes now makes leveling alts 10000x better.
Another side note: I managed to get into a pug full 40 man AQ on xmas eve and we downed c'thun with ease and lots of people were happy and walking out with loot
great story honestly, christmas eve pug is pretty wholesome lol
Fresh is popular right now and I did hit a 60 there but farming 30 dungeons for a pair of shoulders that still haven’t dropped is really burning me out. I went back to sod the last couple days and really enjoying starting new character with all the runes and the increased leveling speed. Still feels exciting like there’s so much content I haven’t tried yet. I’ll probably raid once a week on fresh but go back to sod for the fun.
I still play SoD and enjoy it, but Blizzard killed SoD at phase 3 by making ST 20man raid instead of 10 where i had my friends and our 10man raid setup. But most of them quit when we had to find pugs for our raids
10mans just hit different - bfd was an insanely good experience imo
Played sod alot from p1 until p5. As you touched on once it was clear that no actual new content was being released, guild disbanded and I quit shortly after. The P3 lull being too long, into just molten core with some dailies, followed by just bwl/zg and some ranking was the end of it. Nothing to be excited about, not enough reasons to come back. At best they're showing that there MIGHT be a new raid, which at this point I won't hold my breath for. Wouldn't be surprised if the new SM raid is a rehashed SM Cath with 1 boss. EDIT - I have been messing around with alts with the full rune kits however, which is fun to level solo with. But very infrequently.
rune kits are awesome at the very least. have you found any good combinations to take advantage of?
I like the fact that SoD is seasonal, that my characters are dead when SoD is over. Then when I want to play wow again, maybe I play classic or retail or I wait for classic+. Leveling up the character, at least a class you've never played, is a lot of fun. SoD earlier phases was great, hopefully classic+ is that and even better
seasonal is cool IF we are getting it every 4-5 months. seasonal for 1 1/2 years is a harder sell. does path of exile have anything for seasonal servers that carries over? MAYBE if we got cosmetics, or titles, or something that kept going
PvE server on EU was alive as it gets. Never had issues finding groups from level 18 to 60, pugs fill up fast too.
that's great to hear i assume the rune vendor is helping
Merry Christmas Jerome ! Hope all is well
merry christmas matt, hope you had an excellent holiday and your family
@ it was pretty good, I’m about to resub to wow an start playing sod again. I haven’t touched it since week 3BWL
Or hear me out phase 1 had a ton of salts since it only took 3 hours to level to max. So your raid numbers are not showing how many were playing
maybe thats what people actually wanted. maybe endgame is not designed for lots of people to play it
SOD is so much fun it’s a shame it’s overshadowed. Really enjoying this phase and the last 2 were fun af too.
You can go 1-60 in less than week to a few days. lvl up as fast as possible to get to the first set of incs, quest/dungeons, till gnomer+new incs>high lvl incs+BRE. and your an ez 60.
So my main is alliance on crusader strike, I wanted to try a horde and can’t make one on crusader strike so I chose wild growth and it’s pretty dead. Every rare for a quest is just up.
that's the leveling for sure, there's no competition, but i know most people will not hit 60 that way. SM saved me in 2019 and ZF
make a horde toon on a pvp server and use the free transfer go to crusader strike I have both factions on crusader strike
@@blckkeef thank you
im pretty Shadowstrike AU is the server you want! it xfers to crusader strike
Phase 1 gdkps, phase 2 meta shift favoring hunters and magic classes (mostly hunters) instead of rogues which is where I dipped, incursions, and sunkin temple apparently was horribly overtuned. Then recently wow classic fresh servers dropping around start of current phase
meta shift to magic/hunter was intentional to make warriors bad. i dont know if balance is the reason the game dropped, but i guess we all have different reason to quit/play
When people realize how Vanilla:
•Doesn't have increased XP.
•Has plenty of borderline unviable specs.
•Has the old, same Raids & content.
•Requires unemployed-levels of grinding, like Rank 14 of PvP.
They will come back back to SoD, crying.
We ain’t coming back I promise the only reason we classic Andy’s played sod was because it was the closest thing to vanilla out that was on official server at the time
@@Bofumforyou ??
Official Classic Era (Vanilla) servers are up since 2019, so what are you trying to say?
@@vankhorne exactly what you are saying. I made it pretty clear
@@Bofumforyou "we classic Andy’s played sod was because it was the closest thing to vanilla out that was on official server at the time"
How SoD was the closest thing to a Vanilla server when you had ACTUAL Vanilla servers?
By your logic, you should've never played SoD then. If you enjoy Vanilla so much, you should have stayed in the 2019 Era servers, right?
Tbf rank 14 is not what it used to be
Just leveled 1-60 , people everywhere, did incursions no problem, many dungeons etc, what are you taking about lol?
I’m back to SOD it’s fun doing the honor grind. I will say p3 really dropped the ball either way leveling
ya honor grind is cool i will hit r14 myself soon, also merry christmas (sorry day late lmao)
im sure there are some people that care what happens with their charakter after SOD but doubt people that played TBC were more hyped cause they belived that they will arrive in Pandaria eventually
fair point and we were in a honeymoon phase and everything felt like it was pointing to wrath. nobody had to think about what was really going to happen
merry christmas bro
merry christmas (day after) lilzenzay :D
The AQ release was just too much disaster for me, each phase seems to have less blizz-involvment than the next.
i think they went all in on p7 while p6 was being released. they want this to end with a big bang
crusader strike is hopping every single day with a healthy player base of 20K on each faction. Raiding is healthy and alive and well. Blizzard keeps dividing the player base with all these different versions of the game
im on cs too. no doubt having 4-5 versions of wow is a bad thing. dont know how they put the genie back in the lamp though
Blizzard overpromised and under delivered with SoD. It was obvious that there were not enough development resources allocated after phase 2 as that was when it got stale. Incursions were a lazy way of bypassing poor questing paths for 40-50 and the economy suffered for the amount of gold generated from them. Lack of testing is also wildly apparent with how broken some classes were and today remain in PvP.
Focused too much on empowering the classes and not enough on the world itself and raids. Moved closer to retail than classic.
SoD doesn't need to bring me back because I never left!
LVLing is DEAD but raiding current raids is alive and well
Merry Christmas Jerome!
merry christmas nenharm, you having a great day?
@NOHITJEROME hell yeah, you gave me a great gift with this video
They have to take Sod in to TBC. People like leveling, then raiding. I am raid logging sod right now. Leveling in classic.
id like to see sod going into tbc. or some reason to breathe new life into tbc. tbc has great foundations
Feel bad for the wow classic team for having to deal with such a jaded and divided community. I'm still having fun, just got to ashenvale incursion on my second shaman and there's plenty of people and even 60s helping out and giving out profession mats for quests.
Can you really blame them for not adding much to 60 raids when they overhauled the level up raids (especially ST was fucking awesome) and all they got for feedback was "season of retail" and "this is not muh classic" and an insane population drop heralded by content creators doomsaying and being overly negative.
the community is divided because they have like 6 versions of the game and committed to era existing in a blog post when tbc came out. era shouldnt exist at all, it was their easiest solution to keep classic going. it reminds me of guild wars 1, that game should have been shuttered years ago. then they could have done a HUGE remastered relaunch and brought everyone back with 1000x the hype and excitement. there's nothing worse than your favorite game stumbling around like a zombie with no hype or excitement behind it.
SOD is seasonal server your character should be non playable after the season ends everyone knew what they where getting into when creating there characters. They could just give you basic set of gear and put your characters on a era server. As for the population people are raiding on like 4-5 diffrent characters and the leveling zones are just pretty much peoples alts
ya i love seasonal as an idea but idk how to sell just doing the same thing over and over. need to look into how poe keeps people excited. maybe cosmetics each season to unlock?
Blizzard needs to merge Hardcore into SOD so folks who don't want end game content can still enjoy the rune character builds but from a leveling perspective on the same mega server as everyone else, maybe the HC characters have a gold shimmer on them or something to set them apart...
They just did too much honestly. Classic needed some minor twinks at best.
its a fine line. not enough = som. most people didnt love that
I think Heroic Dungeons with Badges and drops from former raids would be absolut cool!
i thought we'd get heroics p5, surprised we didn't. would be cool to do all the dungeons but with a new twist
they barely can handle one raid while only using existing assets. do you think they can handle making actual content? because i don't and they give you no reason to.
Took me two nights from 24-43... my server is insanely active. You are talking out of your ass for views
Bingo
You can tell when youtubers are ranting about sod being dead when they dont play it themselves unfortunately
but doesn't that prove the point? i liked sod, i will play it again. but it was more hype in the past. i played it even when it was not hype, p3, p4 ,p5 every day
I honestly can't believe how bad you've missed the mark here.
SOD's biggest achievement was how alt and raid friendly it was in phase 1. Getting 25, picking up the runes, and raiding twice a week was easy and fun. Scaling the raid sizes to 15 and 20 put too much stress on the "Dad guilds". We were forced to try and combine other raid teams that were awkward sizes for the 20 man.
Throw in 0.5tier grind, pvp grind, and reputation grind -- it just became less and less fun.
Tldr; 10man raids 2x a week, runes, 0.5 gear, and rep should have been account wide. I would love to be playing my main and my 2 alts but they are too far behind to make it worthwhile.
phase 3 kill sod from the begining 40-50 happening incursions loops,then finally getting lv50 and the only thing to do is sunken temple which was broken on launch, not to mention cata came out in the middle of the phase AND 4 MONTHS OF NO CONTENT. BLIZZARD HAS TOO MANY PLATES SPINNING.
I just quit sod like last week between my guild not taking sod serious anymore now that fresh is out and my schedule doesn't allow me to start raid at 9pm est.
too many plates spinning is a good way to put it. i think they have to set the sod plate down, then pick it up in 3 months with an INSANE amount of awesome stuff and be like hey this is what we are gonna do from now on. but maybe it's not worth doing and they save it all for classic+
Will classic sod lead into tbc and wotlk ?
good question i'd like to know that as well as im considering to give it a try. Which phase are they at now, Naxx?
@@GilgameshApprovesAQ right now, Naxx next, and they announced even another phase with a whole new scarlet crusader raid and karazahn dungeon. And maybe there is even more coming. Its a great time to start playing right now. All runes available from level 1 and leveling is at tripple experience
@@aeroblizz1987 thanks for replying; I've got one more question if that's fine... What about world buffs, are those disabled for raiding? That shit was cancer
@@GilgameshApproves wbuffs is still a thing. And I do agree, I don't like wbuffs either.
You might need PS guys like sanmedina just to balance out your hopium for these videos lol. Blizzard did you CCs dirty in p3, it’s time to admit it.
we got done dirty in p4/5/6 more than anything because it was the same raids as before. and mc was put together in 2 weeks in 2003 it wasn't meant to be something to dedicate years of your life to
Here is what i noticed, a lot of guilds in sod including mine are dad's guilds, i belive a game cant get a lot of players if its not interesting for younger player base. Most ppl in my guild have jobs and families, meeting together twice or three times a week and enjoying time is what is sod about for me. When phase coming out its time to spend few more hours and rush content and after that just go back to raid logging and enjoy both, life and wow.
Pretty poor timing. Tons of people came back to SOD.
because of the rune vendor? i do want to make a video on the rune vendor
You can have all runes from lvl 1 for free so lvling got much easier and nothing stays on top forever there's no expansion that is the same size at start to finish
I played Fresh for the last two weeks, now I'm back at SOD. As a Shadow and Ret main SOD is miles a head of Era. (BTW there are a lot of new people leveling in SOD again).
sod leveling seems hot again, the rune vendor. have you found any cool rune combinations?
@@NOHITJEROME Leveling my dormant, since phase 3 Shadow Priest. Some of the Runes have changed. It is still the best version of this spec I have played.
Your next video should be on the fall of Anniversary and how there's only 20k raiders! Very low for something so hyped up. That's only 10k more than the vanilla servers that have been going on for over 5 years.
It's been up just over a month and most aren't even 60 yet. Raids been open 2 weeks. LMAO
it's just a long road to 60. i believe they might add a level boost at some point (50/50 chance). it takes 150-200 hours to hit 60 or more, and there have only been 34 days since launch. 4hr/day = 170 hours, so even a tryhard at 4hr/day wouldn't be 60 yet
@@bowserplaylist899 yeah even if you played 4hr/day it'd be unrealistic to be 60 yet. 60 took me 185 hours with 0 timewaste
Yeah anniversary is not looking good. Only reason I play is for TBC, cba bothering with that lame no changes classic. Cope is hilarious. Funny how sod is always supposed to be dead while it retains a very stable pop considering the late phase. But how dare someone even try to question anniversary
@@fritzschnitzmueller3768 Yeah man, I'm starting to get sick of these anniversary hypocrites. Bunch of crybaby idiots.
Sod is actually amazing. Idk why it is dying
sod is great i think it's not decisions made now that hurt it. it was the first 4 phases
@@NOHITJEROME Once it comes back as Classic+ fully completed it'll be great. SOD was an extended beta test. I think they'll do a good job when they add what worked + tweaks and remove what the community hated.
reasons? easy!
because phases 2, 3 and 4 weren't that great and we wouldn't wait like half a year for the next patch, high hopes, constant disappointment, regular fuck ups, each and every single piece if content was either wonky or at least didn't work properly, overtuned phase 2 nightmare gold fucked up the ecomomy up until phase 3, nightmare ultra speed leveling for only the ones who were fast enough to notice or got told, balancing was off the charts and probably still is. i played enhancer shaman and was one hitting players on my level in pvp and was winning 1v3 situation more often than i lost them. it was so disgusting i felt bad for playing shaman in pvp because it just was too easy. stormstrike + autohit + crit +windfury was enough dmg in 1 single hit to one shot everything but warrior or paladin. it's like no one of the classic dev team ever looked at shamans and how stupidly OP they were... poor alliance... i'm pretty sure when i grinded my warsong and arathi rep i personally made at least a few allys quit SOD for good.
I'd like to go sod again but all my friends lost trust in the project, so did i and i won't go play wow solo. that's just not on the table anymore since the magic is gone. now i'm in the situation that i don't have a wow subscription after years and years because i quit retail after legion and i finished all classic content a few times now. meaning i would have to resubscribe and that barrier of entry is big enough to require an actual reason. running AQ and NAX for a third time now isn't a good one and so far no one could give me one in general. partially because if 80% of SOD leaves and the 20% who stay tell you it's still good you don't really believe the last guys on the server with the biggest bulls*** tolerance out of everyone who tried it.
we had a good run, I never got draw into classic because , despite the charm of the old zones, i think the gameplay was outdated for 2024. So the runes were appealing... but lets face it : the dungeons and raids mechanics are old and boring .But I conceed that modern gameplay and strats might be too excessive and an ADHD nightmare . So there is that .
dungeons/raids need reworks more than the gameplay imo. sod gameplay is good, it works, let's see if they can rework the raids/dungeons and give us new content that isnt just retail 2
The game is fun as shit. I love that they re-itemize items to be more appropriate but who expects the person to play something that’s almost identical for a whole year.
Nobody likes to play a game where they will stop developing after p7
maybe they will do sod 2 at least. or classic+. it might be the foundation at least idea wise
I'm still enjoying sod. I tried classic classic and I just couldn't do it. I'll eventually have to play it once sod is done to be ready for tbc. My hope is that we get sod tbc as a waiting room for classic +. That way, I can avoid classic classic all together.
sod tbc would be incredible. are there any raids / dungeons you think they could add in tbc that would be compelling? if we are already getting kara crypts in sod
I found a Deadmines group within 5 minutes at like 4am
i am lvling since the rune vendor dropped and dungeons are poppin off and ppl are everywhere.
have you found any sick builds with the rune vendor stuff? anything seem insanely strong?
@@NOHITJEROME everything is insanely strong and fun to play, i got my druid at lvl 1 all slots from AH or Azeroth Commerce Authority.
Starfall at lvl 1 is insane, i was lvl 5 in under 10minutes maybe less?
Been playing SoD since phase 1 and never quit. In the long run, it was great to consolidate these realms, I would have liked it done sooner tbh.
My wish upon a copium star is for SoD to continue into TBC and Wrath in the same way that anniversary is going to do. However, I’m pretty realistic and my expectation is that we will retire in these servers after phase 7 or 8 and SoD will be for the few that enjoy the hybrid play of classic + retail with runes and QoL changes.
I just can’t find the strength to level another anniversary character after all the time put into SoD. I am so happy they FINALLY made runes available at level 1 so I may even make another alt. This should have happened sooner as well.
Dang. I just resubbed for sod after taking a break right before BWL. Anniversary is so much more of a time sink and don't think i can bring myself to go back to that ever.
if you can find some chill ways to level anniversary is fun, just need to spam dungeons, boost if you can convicne someone to boost you free, etc
SoD had a 3 phase honeymoon period. The honeymoon died just prior to the P3.5 drought. And TWW had a great start. It also effected SoD.
CC- on the other hand didn't impact SoD, as much as the #nochanges era realms being split. CC- is #smallchanges.
SoD is 6 times the numbers for era and 3 times the numbers for CC-. Only big difference is most of the SoD CC's bailed for what they perceived would be better clicks.. Except Kaghoe. He never quit on the SoDcore. And after a short stint on OnlyFangs HC. Ebonhardt has returned as well.
And of all current classic versions, SoD is the one receiving development with both old content, and new content still to drop.
Nothing else in classic will be a big splash this season. Era got decimated by CC-. And CC- dies with the end of the OnlyFangs HC event. Until a year from now, and the next OnlyFangs HC will reach into CC- TBC as another temporary event. And the start of a new classic progression to replace the current one after MoP. No one is doing WoD... anywhere, any version.
That leaves almost an entire year where only SoD can bring anything new to the classic game.
Come on back after OF HC. All roads lead to the SoDcore in 2025.
Merry Christmas one and all. Love your vids. Would enjoy them more as SoDcore vids :)
sodcore will continue my friend, but i wonder what happens after p7. without a bigger picture on what will be happening
@@NOHITJEROME Yep. We need some kind of endgame update of what happens after this season.
Dead? No. Waning? Absolutely. Numbers don't lie, sure, unfortunately Blizzard doesn't release numbers. Meaning any speculation about SoD server pops are pulled entirely from nothing. If i had to render a guess as to what's happening, it's making the same mistake as retail. It's shooting everyone to max and putting the core leveling experience to the wayside, the thing classic is remembered fondly for. I don't hate it and it has some interesting changes, however it just comes across as scuffed retail (especially now).
I mean p4 and 5 had big resurgence as well after p3 . I think p7 will be huge
p7 will be huge, it must end on a high note. how high remains to be seen
Having a great Time playing SOD for sure there was more hype at launch but this is just how new releases work.
I was so invested in SOD until phase 3. I haven’t gone back. I played anniversary realm when I launched in November and there’s so many people playing it. Not sure f want to level/ play SOD.
anniversay is fun now. p7 i think i try sod again
I just can't get into it. The feel from classic is gone as the runes are too powerful. I would also prefer retail to SoD as the gameplay is better in retail. SoD has in essence, the worst elements of retail and classic.
I like PvP
And there is no party for the blood moon event on living flame EU , alliance
So it is pretty much dead , at least for me
blood moon was a success ya? in p2. was awesome heaven to me
personally i stopped playing sod because of 1. doing all the aq bug farming was way too much work for something im not even going to get 2. i heard aq isnt even fun and not enjoyable (idk how true that is however) and 3. because classic hardcore came out and the hype is there at the moment and what i like about classic which is leveling is the main point in hardcore and in sod its just raid logging
So, half a million active raiders in phase 1 is a bit disingenuous. It does not mean half a million active players. The level cap was level 25. You could literally create a character in the morning and raid with it later that night.
Some people like myself had 8 different raiding characters. I’d say on average people had 2-3 raiding characters. So half a million divided by 3 = 135,000 players.
Now, most players only have 1, maybe 2 active raiders cause it’s a lot harder to get to max level and get raid ready with prebis.
As far as raiding, this phase seems a lot busier. I have no problem finding pug raids for my alts. Although that said my guild mates only seem to raid log. Outside of raiding my guild only has a couple active members on. I think this is inevitable. Sod has been out for 13 months now. We should be headed into TBC but due to extensive long phases we are only a few weeks into AQ. People just get burned out. Of course blizzard releasing fresh classic servers hasn’t help. Lots of players left sod to go there but I get the feeling they will come back after the shine of newness wears off. In fact it’s already happening. Classic anniversary went from 10 layers to 5 and it’ll steadily drop to 1 in the next few months
If you can't tell by now. I play an ungodly amount of SoD. 6 to 12 hours a day, since day 1. And still there's never enough hours in a day to accomplish my dailies.
I'll stay here on the The Lash until we receive our final destination at season's end. Then I'll transfer everything to Wild Growth. Whatever our new server. Many will quit at season's end. If only 5% of WG's pop hung out after SoD. It's be 10, 20 times more people then I am conditioned to deal with currently.
I'll just start up The Defiant guild there and everyone who missed out on raid content during the season. Can enjoy it in our afterlife. Or on our brand new SoD/classic plus progression servers.
There's no future for Blizz in rehashing old hash. And Blizz has all of 2025 to forge Classic Plus out of the SoDcore. We're the 60k hungering for true fresh wow. The backbone of #bigchanges
I think something else that could help at this point in SoD with Phase 7 being naxx which should be a good bit of people back id like to see them add at least MC gear and maybe some BWL gear to catch people up I still enjoy sod im hopeful they do some cool things with naxx and the Scarlet Crusade and Kara Crypts stuff
naxx is exciting no question, i think if they do everything right p7 WILL bring a lot of players back
I think they should let you copy SoD Characters to Era, and make it so it just deletes your runes and SoD exclusive items, and gives you the era versions of the items instead.
If that's too much work for Blizz to do, just let you copy a template pre-raid bis geared version of your character and class w/o any SoD stuff. This would be a good thing for the future of Era, would help undo the damage that $35/$15/$5 character copies did from back at TBC classic launch, and how people ignored Era and lost their vanilla characters forever because they had no reason to expect Era to be as successful as it is now back then.
Yeah, no that's the worst idea ever for them to do. Not only is it a very hard feat technically on their end... Delete all that gear and runes I worked so hard for and what made the game fun for me??? Do you want to piss off the entire SoD community?? That would literally make me quit WoW for good. So yeah, no. No one wants that. You are in your own small minority on that one.
@@DaFreezeey not sure why you're so rabid and emotional about this, but they've said that they're making permanent, Era like servers for sod, I'd just like the option of normal Era instead, since I think SoD sucks.
@@jgalla5549 How would you feel if you put a ton of time into something, only to have it destroyed in front of you ? Not very good. Don't pretend like I'm unique to being emotional if that happened. That's hypocrisy. And yes, I know they have said they will make permanent era like servers for SoD. I was simply explaining why I don't like your idea. Sorry YOU didn't like SoD... but that does not mean everyone else has to suffer for it because 1 person doesn't like it...
this is why there is no fix for the sod problem. you cant go to era and sod tbc would be almost impossible to balance. i think it causes players to have concern for the future
U trolling bro. Sod is thriving and with kharazan raid on the horizon and scarlet crusade raid coming. Thousands of people will come back for those 2 raids alone.
Wild Growth EU is still packed.
Would love a sod hardcore version
ps: i was there for the hudge event PVP that was amazing the fun we had at the begunning xD my guild had 2 guild full with no reroll ... we participate to everything . i miss the even with everybody , when you walked you can die anytime attack by other ect WOW spirit im not good but i love that felling!! i never farm a low lev ect but i Enjoye the moment you dont know what it will happen! i played with a lot of players and they had the same sentiment.
it's great to hear that you are still enjoying the game, i will get back into raiding in the next few weeks myself. but i wonder what they can do after p7, i don't know if they have a plan yet
I’ve been enjoying sod still, been playing wow since 2005…hope sod makes it thru the entire cycle because sod is the end for me with wow
I actually just came back to the game after p2 two days ago. Been having a ton of fun and am almost 60. I plan on warrior tanking raids.
the problem was making phase one only 25 levels. instead of an actual phase one like in real classic. and then everything after level 25 did not feel good to play.
Disagree, the level cap is what a lot of dadgamers like me kept playing the game. Because we didnt feel so far behind all the time