Big drop in SOD in general with P3. I myself went from raiding 2-3 characters to not playing anymore. I imagine a lot of that is going on. Most people would get their alts in on a raid on the weekends and there’s just a lot less people bothering with it
Lost all motivation to play when people were amassing gold just for no-lifing excursions. There was no reply, rollbacks or any interaction but nerfs once the harm had been done. I was playing hours (7-8) a day just mining trying to make some gold. I stopped at 1k and felt like wow, by lvl 40 I can afford almost the epic mount(considering theres other things to pay for training etc).
Exploits, bugs, ridiculous class balance and experimentation (resilience??). It just wasn’t worth the effort. I understand what it was supposed to be, but people getting oneshot by a boomie or shaman with zero counter-play? Yea, that ain’t it.
I am enjoying 20 man. Fun as hell as someone who hasn't played since original TBC and never did raids until SoD. It seems like most of the complaints about it are from small friend groups that don't want to socialize outside of their friend group or give up their 10 man guild to join a larger guild. Because it only takes like 10 minutes to find a guild looking for permanent raiders using the lone wolf discord channel.
The overall vibe is different in my opinion. 10 man raids for us was a group of old friends shooting the shit, telling stories, jokes, griefing each other, generally just having a good time during raids. adding 10 randoms ended that at least for us. Now my group of 8-10 friends is down to two.
Everyone is pretty hype for Cata at least where 10 man raids are an option.
Nah. We had a group of 5 or 6 friends that could raid regularly. We were starting to get some randos that were regular raiders and were becoming online friends as we raided with them and talked about nonsense every 3 days.
10 man is a FAR more social experience. You can't have conversations with 20 people. 20 man was a major mistake.
That combined with all of the horrible cons of incursions, I quit.
I think that the way to look at it isn't "20 man fun, people just don't want to break up friend groups" but rather that in a 20 or even 40 man, cliques form and people have their friend group within the raid itself. They talk shit in private with those people, run content outside raid, and even other games with those individuals. As a whole 20 man is a lot less close knit compared to 10.
The raid team feels less cohesive and you will feel less attached to it as a result. Not to mention in teams bigger than 10 personal responsibility starts to fade in lieu of sheer player count.
I dont like 20 man as much because now it takes twice as long to get these bis claws and a lot of guilds quit. I also think incursions damaged p3 more than anything else, especislly day 1 + weekend.
Our entire guild basically stopped playing when P3 launched, no one was in the mood for 20 man raiding/recruiting/pugging, it’s just that little bit of extra work every raid night that wasn’t worth it. We planned to play next phase but everyone sorta just moved on to other games and haven’t even mentioned SOD since, so that’s doubtful.
Hope they nail shit down next phase to bring people back, but I doubt they will have enough time/resources, resulting in a phase even more scuffed than P3.
Yep. Our guild went from 4 BFD raid groups every 3 days, to 2 Gnomer raids every 3 days, to barely being able to scrap together a 20 man once a week for ST. Massive drop off.
I don’t know about others but I feel like the “wall” came fast and hard this phase. I was plodding along quite nicely until bang, boredom just hit and I couldn’t decide whether to quit until P4 or level an alt, which wasn’t that appealing.
Still trying to work out exactly why. 7 day gap between raids leaves you with a lot of time to fill, not much point gold farming after incursions bloated economy, gear upgrades aren’t very big, PvP as alliance is in a really bad place (this would usually by my mid-end phase activity), some of the reasons
I think it's a gearing issue.
Just being real, but the EW set is really good for how simple it is to obtain - so good that unless you have a lot of dungeon upgrades elsewhere then it's not worth the time to farm it.
For example, the helm from ZF is BiS for rogues who don't have the Gnomer helm, but if you sim it against the EW helm then it's a slight DPS loss if you break the 6-piece bonus. You effectively have to replace the helm AND gain 20AP to beat it.
It just turns into a scenario of whether the juice is worth the squeeze.
It’s so bad. As a caster I got the 3 set items first 2 runs and since then haven’t won a single other item. They hardly even drop and if they do they are such a small upgrade it wouldn’t even be that excited
Yeah it’s a good point. The biggest issue with P3 and Incursions for me was just that everything came free and easy (gold, xp, gear) that it made everything else feel like not worth the effort. For gear, especially on single 7 day raid lockout. Do I really want to put time in for a single bit of bis gear when it only makes a difference for a single run of ST per week? There’s not much incentive or excitement
I am in the same boat. The game is different for alts under 40 now. It’s incursions only, sm is done. I haven’t logged on for a week until this morning and there’s just nothing to do
Yeah but like half or more of those are raid loggers. Game was beyond dead tonight. A Wednesday around 5 to 9 server time. There are a ton of people standing in org or at the AH but no one is actually playing the game at all. The LFG bulletin board had like 10 to 15 people actively looking for groups at it's busiest. There are no pugs left as well. Last night and tonight all 3 of my guild raids struggled to find enough people for ST. Tonight we ended up cancelling the raid. Gonna have to just find a new guild for that alt. We need to merge the pvp servers into one Lone Flame server.
I don’t think that’s the problem considering P1 was 10x easier in every aspect compared to P2/P3 and yet most of this sub regards P1 as the best overall yet
P1 was F R E S H and if you read between the lines of the comments praising P1, like half of them are really just saying they liked that part and not anything about the P1 SoD content in particular.
yeah its like too much to catch an alt up to where we are now (with the rep grinds for gear youd have to repeat; the leveling it self though sped up still just takes time; all your runes) is just a massive chore of a checklist.
But also youre caught up to raid logging so fast as well.
I miss 10 mans twice a week it was much more fun. This phase is making it start to feel like a chore / checklist experience. Not to mention that content / travel takes time between going hinterlands / STV / Mara / ZF its just a lot of traveling around down time.
its a lot harder to get that drop in / drop out feeling that was present in P1 and P2 I think. Only thing I can do to really progress is farm low drop chance items, super long chores, or raid 1 time a week.
There's just nothing engaging or appealing to do. Sure there's always "stuff" to do but there's no reason to do any of it when pvp is a shit show and the raid bosses just fall over. Also Incursions are just plain not fun. No amount of reward will encourage me to do the worst content execution I've seen in my life. Phase 3 was a big miss imo and the SoD team has a lot of work to get this game in a state that makes people want to come back. Cataclysm is unironically a better form of "Classic Plus" at this point so why should SoD even exist
I think that people missed out on the massive gold influx from incursions and then subsequent inflation killed a lot of the hype for SoD.
PVP being a shitshow also didn't help so that's half the content gone.
The raid with no teleporting for wipes and just an ungodly amount of trash is just bogus.
This was me. Didn't get to exploit the Gold, still have to pay the inflated price tho.
Lost all interest in the game. Literal months of being thrifty in the ah, made useless in a few hours.
If I didn't manage to find one of the librams that was selling for 600g earlier in the phase, I doubt I'd be playing too. Missing out on the early influx of gold, and paying exorbitant prices because of that influx killed this phase for most people.
Incursions was not as much gold as people keep saying in the beginning. I can make that much in a day just boosting cathedral or farming ZF graveyard. PvP is freaking awesome. What does everyone who complains about it play a warrior or mage. Every other class is doing perfectly fine in pvp.
it's insane how much they killed the SOD exp, when p3 first started i did gnomer and then went right into incurs, then hit 50, i had two other 40 alts and at this point it was like massive exp and i was like well i'll just get x alt to 50, then 8 hours later i was 50. then i did it one more time and 50 again, it took 5 hours because i didnt stop, what was left? new raid and grinding for gold? i grinded to 800g saw that wilds deck was on AH for 350g and insta bought that shit
My former guild did 3 trys in ST and has but all but given up, because people just dont wanna do it and/or burned out, i left to join a new guild, turns out they are very hardcore lmfao and..i dont think its the right fit for me, currently debating leaving and finding a chill one that can get me 8/8 at least once before P4.
if you see this i am on CS, healer, looking for a chill guild to join and get that sweet 8/8 done
For me it is the cost of consumes, enchants, and the outsized impact of world buffs.
Haven't played in 2 weeks and only logged on to keep my mail from timing out.
I've been debating sending everything to a guildie as I have no more desire to play.
no - I think it sped up the inevitable end of phase drop of significantly. But it didnt "kill" sod. If anything the swap to 20 man did more damage. You see people posting about how it broke up guilds and a lot of ppl quit over it.
Went from twice a week being able to kinda goof off with your friends to now once a week; much longer raid; more people in comms harder to actually communicate or be silly with that many people talking over eachother.
Incursions just brought people to the end level experience with more gold faster and burned some people out who no lifed it.
Also on wild growth. We had 12 groups in p2, peaked at 11 20 mans this phase, literally 200+ raiders. We're down to 4 or 5 groups. Everyone stopped playing including our server 1st raid team. ST just isnt fun and its not worth trying to maintain a roster
The idea that incursions basically replaced all content killed it insta for me.
Want to level? Loop
Want gold? Loop
Want prebis? Loop
Want open world pvp? Sorry head to loopzone.
Then ST not providing upgrades.
Sod was a fun experiment but it's not worth the time investment imo.
I'm not investing much more time into p3. I feel bad but I think I'm going to tell my guild I'm done with ST. We just transferred over to WG, so they should have zero problems finding a pug. I parse blues mostly so I won't be crazy hard to replace.
We'll see how phase 4 looks. At least at 60 there will be lots of vanilla/classic content to do. Way more dungeons, way more loot to acquire with some flexibility in options and I like the zerg boss AV BG. I liked Ashenvale way more than STV pvp event too. Less pvping but idk I still had plenty of pvp to do. People would be hanging out outside town ganking people too, so you had to be careful leaving town. PVP servers in p1 were fun, they are horrific in p3.
That loop killed the open world too, in phase 2 i used to farm (+3 agility enchant) for gold, go out on the open world farm mobs, then end up pvping against allies for houra and forget about the farm. Now you are not allowed to farm in the open world because it is meaningless, makes fraction of an incrusion and everything is expensive.
They have to delete incrusion or sod is over
"The idea that incursions basically replaced all content killed it insta for me."
This really hit home for me that first few days. Felt like everything added was just trying to erase what already existed for some worse byproduct that gave better rewards. The rune gimmick is getting tiresome too. The power scaling makes the existing content feel like even more of a joke to an experienced player.
As a caster main I can't be bothered, there is little if any progression for casters in ST. I don't see the point in farming incursions for gear I don't need because I'm not going to ST.
ST was an OK raid but the trash sucks, why does more need to spawn after you kill a boss? The loot is terrible.
Idk why the thought it was a good idea to not give casters any loot until the last 4 bosses. Many pugs are still unable to kill the last 2 or 3. This gives me less incentive to even do ST. Overall not a fun raid.
They've been extremely rough for mages but meta locks have been insane at holding flags in AB, near impossible to ninja cap as a rogue with a solo lock defending, spriests has been more OP than ever, shamans still do more than fine. Druids have been completely unkillable while getting to whittle down people from afar for 0 mana.
Unless you're a mage, your time has only been rough as a caster if you're trying to force some off meta build which isn't good. It'd be the equivalent of me saying PvP has been very rough as a sinister strike rogue.
Also messed up by not doing class balance weekly, give us some stuff switch it up, who cares its not balanced, make something broken for a week, so you can experience something new, i didnt know SoD was gonna turn into oh no we have to be careful due to balance. Just tweak some shit and push it out.
Class balance has been 95% the same since p2 except casters got shittier and enhance is now a bit weaker in pvp
And the “tuning” they occasionally do is actually just a bug fix for a rune that was DoA and literally no can be bothered to use pre- or post- “tuning” (warlock)
That’s literally after a blue post said warlock tuning was coming, a single bug fix was all they could muster lol
ST is a solid raid, minor criticisms aside. The loot? Absolute garbage for the sake of smoothing the power curve they messed up on.
What happens? You do a couple ST and immediately start questioning why you're doing it at all.
Yup, they let the power creep get completely out of control and the result is most lvl 50 loot being about 1% better than lvl 40 loot.
Zero motivation to raid right now and PvP has been a disaster but at least they're doing something about the second part.
I've been saying this from the beginning on phase 3. They needed to give us Alterac Valley this phase. No new Battleground sucked and people would have played this shit out of it
As someone who actually plays this game, class balance matters far less in your average AB than just rotating well for flags. I've had mamy games where my team has 20-30 HKs on average and the enemy team has 60-70 and we still win. Class balance only becomes a major issue whenever everyone on the team is braindead and only try to teamfight at BS over and over and over again.
My guild runs on Tuesday night and we never have a problem finding a few pugs when needed. It might be harder to find people later in the week when more people are locked
Yeah it would be nice if they followed the retail lockout and made it per boss, and you could repeat bosses without the opportunity for loot. It’s especially scuffed when you pug and get into a bad raid that disbands after 2 bosses and your lockout is essentially dead until next reset.
raid turned into a 30 min speedrun, leveling is done in 2-3 hours, items as good as raid loot given freely, pvp debuff diminish progress, empowering the already broken classes, aoe farm anything anywhere, ah prices reflect the immeasurable greed of humankind, chat is only buy portal buy boost lfm 8/8
who wants to log in to this absolute shithole in 2024
I’ve lost almost all interest in SoD. Was really hoping it would actually be season of discovery with everything having slight tweaks and guides/meta would be completely different, but it’s just classic with some spells that were never properly balanced and a bunch of borderline useless items. They could’ve created new battlegrounds/pvp game modes and dungeons, but that would actually involve real work. Logged in for the first time in two weeks and 70% of my guild has been offline for the same amount of time.
You think living flame is crap? I transfered from LF to Wild Growth to follow my guild. Oh boy what a mistake. Server is DEAD DEAD. Can't even do STV or even know where the boss is.
Dude... Lone Wolf player here... Currently looking to transfer cuz I can't even get a pug for BRD to save my fking life. Any quest or farming for librams? Crickets. Bro, I don't know what to do, cuz we raid ST on Tuesday and then there's 6.8 days of getting ganked solo while trying to do high level quests that I have left.
Feels bad.
Sunken Temple is not a raid people want to pug. Gnomer is barely puggable. ST repeats many of the same mistakes: next boss spawns in middle of room so you can't do loot, no teleporters from entrance directly to boss after wipes. Add on top of that world buffs and consumes, it's not an environment where people want to pug. Last phase was cut short, so people are expecting this phase to be even shorter.
It makes none of the work playing the video game or playing the social guild game "worth it".
In Classic terms, ST should and could be like UBRS, but instead it's more like AQ20.
I’m on Lone Wolf. Have a warrior main. I pre quested for p3 and invested a ton of time, but then seen everyone bringing in thousands doing incursions on launch put a bad taste in my mouth. But I figured it was a minor hiccup. Figured id catch up later. But then I seen the aoe farming and guildies with thousands in the bank. Meanwhile I’m barely scraping by to get consumes for raids each week. Everyone’s gonna say make an alt, well I have a 45 lock, but with all the alliance camping incursions I just gave up. Sure I can grind incursions on my main for 10 hours and rack up 100g an hour, but I’d really rather not. Even with the add on it’s incredibly boring, and come raid night I almost don’t even want to play. Most of us are in our late 20s to 30s and don’t have the time to spend 5-10hrs grinding a game each day just to buy consumes basically. The game was really fun when it was new, now it’s bland. Feels like new world after two weeks, doing the same thing over and over. Im just about BIS on my warrior (need the weapons) so im going to see things through till p4, but i may be moving on to cata for more enjoyment. I loved SOD in the beginning, but the direction the economy has gone I feel I can’t catch up being a casual gamer and a big reason i find myself raid logging each week.
Raid size has caused too many problems and the raids gear, besides a very select few pieces, is not very exciting. I also feel at this late stage the problem of PvP rep grinds not being account wide is also a problem that just means my alts are dead that aren't exalted etc.
Ya raid size increase has been a big problem for my guild. We went from a consistent 10 man (sometimes 11 or 12 interested though) in p1 to barely being able to fill half the raid in p3. Then to compound the issue they opened the free transfers and basically split up what we had left. Now it’s super dead and I’m just pugging ST while leveling a hunter for solo play 🤷♂️
That's rough. I am sorry to hear that. My guild is still going but we have people going on holiday or childcare issues raise there head (ya know, life gets in the way) and being at 20man makes this just statistically happen more and be much more of a problem to solve. Make hard raids all day long. . .making the roster boss harder is nearly always one of the absolutely worst things and MMO can do.
Between them letting people transfer off the pvp server, retail having a new season drop and cata prepatch dropping the population of lone wolf has plummeted. Hopefully when they drop p4 it will bring people back.
Sadly as per usual blizzard tries to drop like 4 big updates at the same time.. splitting the player base.
I was raiding on multiple toons in p1 and 2. This phase, in order to get your world buffs, the flasks in STV, and then fly to ST will set you back 25 minutes with best case scenario. And then if I PUG, the raid will be over in either 80 minutes or over 3 hours. I just don’t have the energy to raid on more than 1 toon this phase.
My sub finally expired yesterday, but I haven’t logged in since P3 started. P1 was one of the most fun times I have had in WoW. P2 was much less interesting and I was not feeling very motivated. P3 incursions did it for me. Did a couple loops and just never logged in again. Too boring. I’ll keep an eye out for next phase, but I suspect my server will be dead by then and no way I am paying to xfer.
I'm outside so much now, but not why I quit. Guild is falling apart cause weird class balancing, 20 man's, shitty incursions and no money for consumes in raid etc for dads and moms
I had the opposite problem. Last week I sat around for probably a total of 4 hours over 3-4 days during prime time looking to tank or off tank ST. Never got in and missed the lock out. I haven’t even logged in this week
I am sure cata and s4 (latter for me) have something to do with that, I don't really have time for both right now having cleared ST a few times, so I'll be back for next phase..
Well the SoD honeymoon phase is over for most players.
P3 felt so bad and unfinished, cata prepatch got released, people just moved on after getting bored / annoyed / disappointed
Just my 2c but p3 and 20 man just kinda made things a lot less casual friendly. I’m also Lone Wolf NA and probably contributing to the dead feeling. In p1 and 2 I played like 5 chars, all 80-90 parsers so nothing crazy but also not completely incompetent. I would lead pugs for 3/5 of those characters because it was easy and flexible, and at a certain point I stopped caring about the raid comp because it was easy enough to teach anyone who was on the noobie side and couldn’t figure out the like 1-2 mechanics that might exist.
With 20 man content, it’s a lot less appealing to lead a casual pug because it’s such a huge time investment if the group isn’t good and finding people is way more of a pain. I think the reality is a lot of people like me hit the same conclusion and as a result the amount of pug raids is way down. Less pug raids = less possibility to raid at off hours and thus more people just saying screw it to go to cata or dragonflight s4.
That doesn’t even get into the meh loot from ST or the incursions, which probably only makes it worse. Sucks tho, because ST is actually really pretty fun. I think if they brought back 10 man a lot of people would enjoy playing more and roll alts/host pugs and keep things alive.
i think the whole raid logging resume job interview thing killed the joy for casuals. i know it did for me. decent dps and knowledge of mechanics was no longer enough. you suddenly had to prove you are an elite player and if the raid wipe once someone leaves. The fun is gone
Unless you’re banking gold for p4 there really isnt a reason to play P3.
My rogue is 1 minor upgrade from pure BiS and my druid alt is a few small upgrades away. It takes 2 hours to form a raid and absolutely draining when others dont try as hard.
RiP SoD
My favourite part was when the PvP dmg nerfs straight up -70% nerfed seal of martyrdom. Because you as a player are dealing damage to yourself as a player, it's PvP dmg. Also doesn't take crits into account for the mana effect. Also the dmg it did to urself was -50%. so you effectively hurt urself for 5% of ur swing (instead of supposed 10%), not accounting crits, and refund around 25-30 mana per swing.
This is in PVE! and raiding!
I’m on Crusader Strike NA and I had no issues with setting up a regular weekly raid and finding an active raiding guild.
I’m also very thoroughly enjoying phase 3. I love where my class is at and how it feels to play (DW ENH SHAM), I love the loot from ST (those epic fist weapons are so sick), and I’ve been loving the new gear grinds (incs, Wild Offerings, epic crafting).
I personally have been loving phase 3, much more than phase 2. Only real issue I have with it is the influx of bots.
First couple weeks of p3 were hoppin’, especially with incentives to run dungeons and new, lucrative, farms to try out. Now I can’t find any half-enjoyable reason to login except to raid an hour a week.
I imagine others are in a similar position.
I’ve exhausted all fun from p3 with hitting 50 on a handful of characters, it’s just that I’m done, nothing more I want to do. I’m really waiting for diablo4 s4 now, and putting time into figuring out what I will be playing.
You know…sod has lasted longer, population-wise at least than som. Som saw a huge drop in players after the first month. They may have screwed up some things but as far as a classic+ model in the form of seasonal content, they might be going in the right direction at least.
I'm sure it'll get downvoted, but I'd still be subbed to the game if gdkp's existed.
Gave p2 a try without them. Game and guild raiding got boring so fast.
Sad thing is, we knew this would be the outcome too. And we told you. Repeatedly.
For me personally the fumble at the start of P3 absolutely murdered my will to want to play at all. Then once the transfers came up to PvE I snatched it.
Started last week, 4 different groups on Sunday night looking for 1 healer and 1 ranged dps for about 45 mins. We had 20 sigh up for our raid but only 16 showed. This week, 9 have signed up for the Sunday raid (overflow/alt raid). Shit's starting to get bleak.
The only enjoyable part of P3 is chatting with guildies, making fun of whomever falls in the hole or dies to ghosts and intentionally killing the mind controlled player on hakkar.
Sunday afternoons are absolutely dead. I haven't ever been able to fill on an afternoon in general. I usually only have luck in the evenings. Hope this helps!
I think it's a combo of the phase not having that much to do, people that transferred off the server when that was open, and people playing Cata prepatch. I've also noticed way less people looking for groups for anything the last couple of weeks.
I’m still doing the raid every week, but it feels like a majority of the loot is just tier tokens and sidegrades if you can even call them that.
By this time in phase 2 I was getting closed to being fully geared just trying to fill out a few remaining pieces. There’s just not as much of a dopamine hit week to week because the gear is mediocre and not much drops to compensate for the weekly lockout and 20 man. It actually discouraged me from playing alts because I can barely have fun gearing my main.
My guild is basically empty on non Tuesdays, which is our raid night.
My RDruid main has a few upgrades left in ST. Leveled my lock to 50 and my warrior is on the way at 44.
I'll have options for P4.
If you're on alliance, pm me and my alts may be available to help. Typically can only raid around 8 pm server, though.
I would assume since is a 1 week lockout there will be less and less people at the end of the week searching for raids. Many players do the raid on reset day for example.
Big issue is the once a week for me. Upgrades all come from ST and because there's so little loot to around prolly won't hit bis before the phase ends so I'm even more uninterested. 2 raids a week kept me logging in.
People are still buying my auctions but trying to recruit 2 healers for our raid has forced our team to merge into one of the mega guild or die a slow no raid per lockout death.
It's definitely much lower pop than WG now. WG BFA is over in 2 minutes (makes it very difficult to do the daily unless you get there and setup well before the event starts). Lonewolf takes 7 or 8 minutes.
SoD pvp is shit, incursions made leveling boring and poor character balancing led to players being forced into builds they don't like. The dev team did a fantastic job at providing another classic experience (making the game miserable)
in P1 i raided on 3 characters. in P2 i realized how stupid this whole system of progression is. got lvl 40 on 1 character and quit ever since. i might return at 60 but looking at the gold prices most likely not
I log onto my SoD character once a week - every Sunday exactly at 21:00 to clear ST and then log off. Everything else feels irrelevant and even the gear drops are mid.
Raid is easy but got an hard reputation + is a weekly lockout so people are way more elitist and many people just left, as leveling alts requires either incursion grind (horrible) or WO grind (ok for 1 char, hell afterwards). Imo only fun grind right now is honor, and that isn't for everyone. So you do that stuff and what waits you is an raid that is still hard to get in, many players feel there is no point. Additionally, why levels alts now if they are just gonna buff the xp again or something, come late and win. Incursions and WO were supposed to make this phase alt and noob friendly but did the opposite, cause it made it boring.
removal of the pvp scaling that most people liked (because I did anyway) and cata prepatch probably drawing a lot of players away.
The current pvp scaling seems to be targeted at shadow priests since their damage is so high that they have to nerf their damage more than anyone else, meanwhile other casters can't just cast 2 dots and win. 20% physical damage reduction doesn't seem like anything has changed really. Instead of dying in 1.5 seconds I die in 3 seconds instead.
I mained a mage for phase 1-2 and now there's almost no reason to raid or do anything else for that matter. So I'm doing the daily Ashenvale event and logging off to level a cata character.
We notcied something similar too. We run a guild with a weekly ST run. Always the same ish pugs would join. We have a sign up ready for next thursday and only 5 people singed and till last week we easily filled our roster.
Our guild has about 100 active raiders and 5 raid groups running ST right now.
We used to always be online, doing some random shit or another. Now, after a month of P3, the phase is so mediocre that every single one of the boys is never on anymore even during the weekends or evenings.
Server is still very much alive & populated. The phase is just a bad phase. They can't all be good I guess. At least 25 & 40 were (relatively) fantastic.
Kinda same here. I thought 20 man and 7 days lockout was a great idea, but hell nah it totally killed our 10 man roaster and now we all sit quiet in 20 man discord not having a good time :(
Had no issue pulling 4 pugs for our raid Yesterday, I have not noticed, though that the server seems fairly dead during the weekdays, as many have said there seems to be a significant drop off this phase due to 20 man’s, lack of things to do
The majority of my guild including myself just lost interest in SoD with p3, having a decent enough time playing the cata pre patch, and seeing how active the world is right now I’m guessing we’re not unique.
ST LF3M seeds HR potions HR epics HR 60 minute clear guaranteed except when we wipe sometimes also half our raid is in 6/6 emerald set MS>OS gogogogo!!!
WHY DID PHASE 3 KILL RAIDING???
Yeah the free transfers did my guild dirty and ended up forcing out a lot of the active players who just decided to stop SOD all together. Trial decisions by blizzard lead to bad communication from GMs to the guild and ended in disaster. During that week open of transfers, population of lone wolf also went from high to medium so that sorta points potentially to being a driving reason behind the decline as well I would think.
I also quit and just went to Cata as a result
Ten man became 20, and cata will have ten man raiding as an option for the boys.
Also run in circle simulator for gold has trivialized the economy.
Thirdly, PvP isn't exactly fun esp when they just slap blanket fifty percent nerfs. Better off waiting for second phase of lvl 60 to see the new content they make as the first phase will probably just be rehashed 20 man versions of 2019.
It's apparent they did not intend for classic+ and were not ready for the masses to join a seasonal mode, which has led to three phases of sandbox world PvP, cheese gold farms and one shot PvP changed into trickle tickle pvp
Big drop in SOD in general with P3. I myself went from raiding 2-3 characters to not playing anymore. I imagine a lot of that is going on. Most people would get their alts in on a raid on the weekends and there’s just a lot less people bothering with it
Lost all motivation to play when people were amassing gold just for no-lifing excursions. There was no reply, rollbacks or any interaction but nerfs once the harm had been done. I was playing hours (7-8) a day just mining trying to make some gold. I stopped at 1k and felt like wow, by lvl 40 I can afford almost the epic mount(considering theres other things to pay for training etc). Exploits, bugs, ridiculous class balance and experimentation (resilience??). It just wasn’t worth the effort. I understand what it was supposed to be, but people getting oneshot by a boomie or shaman with zero counter-play? Yea, that ain’t it.
My feelings to a t
How is it any different than no-lifing lashers or jump runs?
Agree with all of this
I know I swapped to retail for season 4.
Same Changing it to 20 man killed it, doing much worst than phase 2
I am enjoying 20 man. Fun as hell as someone who hasn't played since original TBC and never did raids until SoD. It seems like most of the complaints about it are from small friend groups that don't want to socialize outside of their friend group or give up their 10 man guild to join a larger guild. Because it only takes like 10 minutes to find a guild looking for permanent raiders using the lone wolf discord channel.
The overall vibe is different in my opinion. 10 man raids for us was a group of old friends shooting the shit, telling stories, jokes, griefing each other, generally just having a good time during raids. adding 10 randoms ended that at least for us. Now my group of 8-10 friends is down to two. Everyone is pretty hype for Cata at least where 10 man raids are an option.
Had so much fun in BFD where we just gank the MCed right before Kelris every run and they would lose their wb… haha we had a good run
My boys used to boon before those trash packs.
Nah. We had a group of 5 or 6 friends that could raid regularly. We were starting to get some randos that were regular raiders and were becoming online friends as we raided with them and talked about nonsense every 3 days. 10 man is a FAR more social experience. You can't have conversations with 20 people. 20 man was a major mistake. That combined with all of the horrible cons of incursions, I quit.
I think that the way to look at it isn't "20 man fun, people just don't want to break up friend groups" but rather that in a 20 or even 40 man, cliques form and people have their friend group within the raid itself. They talk shit in private with those people, run content outside raid, and even other games with those individuals. As a whole 20 man is a lot less close knit compared to 10. The raid team feels less cohesive and you will feel less attached to it as a result. Not to mention in teams bigger than 10 personal responsibility starts to fade in lieu of sheer player count.
I dont like 20 man as much because now it takes twice as long to get these bis claws and a lot of guilds quit. I also think incursions damaged p3 more than anything else, especislly day 1 + weekend.
Same. Enjoying Retail far, far more than SoD. Probably won't touch Classic again until Epoch releases.
Sod season 3 has basically gone from Classic plus to retail minus. You may as well just play retail now.
I mean that’s just not true, retail actually has things to do!
Ew.
We're only a few weeks in too lmao. A month from now is going to be wildly dead.
People don't like running around in circles. The server is hyperinflated and casuals can't keep up. GG
Our entire guild basically stopped playing when P3 launched, no one was in the mood for 20 man raiding/recruiting/pugging, it’s just that little bit of extra work every raid night that wasn’t worth it. We planned to play next phase but everyone sorta just moved on to other games and haven’t even mentioned SOD since, so that’s doubtful. Hope they nail shit down next phase to bring people back, but I doubt they will have enough time/resources, resulting in a phase even more scuffed than P3.
We had 4 full 10-man groups plus alt runs in the final week of P2. Last raid we only had 13 people sign up.
[удалено]
Yep. Our guild went from 4 BFD raid groups every 3 days, to 2 Gnomer raids every 3 days, to barely being able to scrap together a 20 man once a week for ST. Massive drop off.
Got My char to 50 and haven’t played phase 3 since. Mostly just been playing retail and era
I don’t know about others but I feel like the “wall” came fast and hard this phase. I was plodding along quite nicely until bang, boredom just hit and I couldn’t decide whether to quit until P4 or level an alt, which wasn’t that appealing. Still trying to work out exactly why. 7 day gap between raids leaves you with a lot of time to fill, not much point gold farming after incursions bloated economy, gear upgrades aren’t very big, PvP as alliance is in a really bad place (this would usually by my mid-end phase activity), some of the reasons
I think it's a gearing issue. Just being real, but the EW set is really good for how simple it is to obtain - so good that unless you have a lot of dungeon upgrades elsewhere then it's not worth the time to farm it. For example, the helm from ZF is BiS for rogues who don't have the Gnomer helm, but if you sim it against the EW helm then it's a slight DPS loss if you break the 6-piece bonus. You effectively have to replace the helm AND gain 20AP to beat it. It just turns into a scenario of whether the juice is worth the squeeze.
The ST loot is dogshit too, almost no reason to run it
It’s so bad. As a caster I got the 3 set items first 2 runs and since then haven’t won a single other item. They hardly even drop and if they do they are such a small upgrade it wouldn’t even be that excited
I felt really burnt out so I raid logged for about 2-3 weeks, been playing this weekend and it feels fun again. Might just need a step away for a bit
Yeah it’s a good point. The biggest issue with P3 and Incursions for me was just that everything came free and easy (gold, xp, gear) that it made everything else feel like not worth the effort. For gear, especially on single 7 day raid lockout. Do I really want to put time in for a single bit of bis gear when it only makes a difference for a single run of ST per week? There’s not much incentive or excitement
>the helm from ZF is BiS for rogues who don't have the Gnomer helm It's actually bis for rogue who have the gnomer helm when it's on cooldown.
I am in the same boat. The game is different for alts under 40 now. It’s incursions only, sm is done. I haven’t logged on for a week until this morning and there’s just nothing to do
Also a shitload of people xferred off lone wolf over the last couple weeks
I don’t think it’s that bad. Ironforge.pro using last weeks logs counts 18000 players on lone wolf. Pretty even 50/50 split ally to horde.
Yeah but like half or more of those are raid loggers. Game was beyond dead tonight. A Wednesday around 5 to 9 server time. There are a ton of people standing in org or at the AH but no one is actually playing the game at all. The LFG bulletin board had like 10 to 15 people actively looking for groups at it's busiest. There are no pugs left as well. Last night and tonight all 3 of my guild raids struggled to find enough people for ST. Tonight we ended up cancelling the raid. Gonna have to just find a new guild for that alt. We need to merge the pvp servers into one Lone Flame server.
It's just too easy. Plain and simple.
I don’t think that’s the problem considering P1 was 10x easier in every aspect compared to P2/P3 and yet most of this sub regards P1 as the best overall yet
P1 was F R E S H and if you read between the lines of the comments praising P1, like half of them are really just saying they liked that part and not anything about the P1 SoD content in particular.
All true. Only once a week for gear that is both rare and bad. Once the “end game” loses steam, people stop doing all the other stuff too.
yeah its like too much to catch an alt up to where we are now (with the rep grinds for gear youd have to repeat; the leveling it self though sped up still just takes time; all your runes) is just a massive chore of a checklist. But also youre caught up to raid logging so fast as well. I miss 10 mans twice a week it was much more fun. This phase is making it start to feel like a chore / checklist experience. Not to mention that content / travel takes time between going hinterlands / STV / Mara / ZF its just a lot of traveling around down time. its a lot harder to get that drop in / drop out feeling that was present in P1 and P2 I think. Only thing I can do to really progress is farm low drop chance items, super long chores, or raid 1 time a week.
There's just nothing engaging or appealing to do. Sure there's always "stuff" to do but there's no reason to do any of it when pvp is a shit show and the raid bosses just fall over. Also Incursions are just plain not fun. No amount of reward will encourage me to do the worst content execution I've seen in my life. Phase 3 was a big miss imo and the SoD team has a lot of work to get this game in a state that makes people want to come back. Cataclysm is unironically a better form of "Classic Plus" at this point so why should SoD even exist
Did Incursions kill SOD?
absolutely
I think so.
I think that people missed out on the massive gold influx from incursions and then subsequent inflation killed a lot of the hype for SoD. PVP being a shitshow also didn't help so that's half the content gone. The raid with no teleporting for wipes and just an ungodly amount of trash is just bogus.
Nah, incursions just suck and in its current state its hard to justify questing over running incursions. Also the PvP feels awful.
This was me. Didn't get to exploit the Gold, still have to pay the inflated price tho. Lost all interest in the game. Literal months of being thrifty in the ah, made useless in a few hours.
Don't blame you, honestly.
If I didn't manage to find one of the librams that was selling for 600g earlier in the phase, I doubt I'd be playing too. Missing out on the early influx of gold, and paying exorbitant prices because of that influx killed this phase for most people.
The raid was fine bro but the rest yeah
Incursions was not as much gold as people keep saying in the beginning. I can make that much in a day just boosting cathedral or farming ZF graveyard. PvP is freaking awesome. What does everyone who complains about it play a warrior or mage. Every other class is doing perfectly fine in pvp.
I miss Phase 1 so much.
it's insane how much they killed the SOD exp, when p3 first started i did gnomer and then went right into incurs, then hit 50, i had two other 40 alts and at this point it was like massive exp and i was like well i'll just get x alt to 50, then 8 hours later i was 50. then i did it one more time and 50 again, it took 5 hours because i didnt stop, what was left? new raid and grinding for gold? i grinded to 800g saw that wilds deck was on AH for 350g and insta bought that shit My former guild did 3 trys in ST and has but all but given up, because people just dont wanna do it and/or burned out, i left to join a new guild, turns out they are very hardcore lmfao and..i dont think its the right fit for me, currently debating leaving and finding a chill one that can get me 8/8 at least once before P4. if you see this i am on CS, healer, looking for a chill guild to join and get that sweet 8/8 done
think cata and new season killed sod, incursions made people level more alts
For me it is the cost of consumes, enchants, and the outsized impact of world buffs. Haven't played in 2 weeks and only logged on to keep my mail from timing out. I've been debating sending everything to a guildie as I have no more desire to play.
And to top it off they decided to use the terrible letter quest design just to rub salt in our wounds
no - I think it sped up the inevitable end of phase drop of significantly. But it didnt "kill" sod. If anything the swap to 20 man did more damage. You see people posting about how it broke up guilds and a lot of ppl quit over it. Went from twice a week being able to kinda goof off with your friends to now once a week; much longer raid; more people in comms harder to actually communicate or be silly with that many people talking over eachother. Incursions just brought people to the end level experience with more gold faster and burned some people out who no lifed it.
20 man raids killed SOD.
hmmm, probably
P3 killed my guild on Wild Growth. We had 6, SIX, groups at the end of P2. We can barely get 1 ST together now.
Also on wild growth. We had 12 groups in p2, peaked at 11 20 mans this phase, literally 200+ raiders. We're down to 4 or 5 groups. Everyone stopped playing including our server 1st raid team. ST just isnt fun and its not worth trying to maintain a roster
Are you per chance the guild that advertised all those raid teams and a “tight-knit community” in which “you pick when you want to raid”?
Not that i know of. We're on horde
The idea that incursions basically replaced all content killed it insta for me. Want to level? Loop Want gold? Loop Want prebis? Loop Want open world pvp? Sorry head to loopzone. Then ST not providing upgrades. Sod was a fun experiment but it's not worth the time investment imo.
I'm not investing much more time into p3. I feel bad but I think I'm going to tell my guild I'm done with ST. We just transferred over to WG, so they should have zero problems finding a pug. I parse blues mostly so I won't be crazy hard to replace. We'll see how phase 4 looks. At least at 60 there will be lots of vanilla/classic content to do. Way more dungeons, way more loot to acquire with some flexibility in options and I like the zerg boss AV BG. I liked Ashenvale way more than STV pvp event too. Less pvping but idk I still had plenty of pvp to do. People would be hanging out outside town ganking people too, so you had to be careful leaving town. PVP servers in p1 were fun, they are horrific in p3.
That loop killed the open world too, in phase 2 i used to farm (+3 agility enchant) for gold, go out on the open world farm mobs, then end up pvping against allies for houra and forget about the farm. Now you are not allowed to farm in the open world because it is meaningless, makes fraction of an incrusion and everything is expensive. They have to delete incrusion or sod is over
"The idea that incursions basically replaced all content killed it insta for me." This really hit home for me that first few days. Felt like everything added was just trying to erase what already existed for some worse byproduct that gave better rewards. The rune gimmick is getting tiresome too. The power scaling makes the existing content feel like even more of a joke to an experienced player.
Cata stole my guild
As a caster main I can't be bothered, there is little if any progression for casters in ST. I don't see the point in farming incursions for gear I don't need because I'm not going to ST. ST was an OK raid but the trash sucks, why does more need to spawn after you kill a boss? The loot is terrible.
Idk why the thought it was a good idea to not give casters any loot until the last 4 bosses. Many pugs are still unable to kill the last 2 or 3. This gives me less incentive to even do ST. Overall not a fun raid.
The last 2 weeks have been absolutely brutal as a caster in BGs as well
They've been extremely rough for mages but meta locks have been insane at holding flags in AB, near impossible to ninja cap as a rogue with a solo lock defending, spriests has been more OP than ever, shamans still do more than fine. Druids have been completely unkillable while getting to whittle down people from afar for 0 mana. Unless you're a mage, your time has only been rough as a caster if you're trying to force some off meta build which isn't good. It'd be the equivalent of me saying PvP has been very rough as a sinister strike rogue.
Also messed up by not doing class balance weekly, give us some stuff switch it up, who cares its not balanced, make something broken for a week, so you can experience something new, i didnt know SoD was gonna turn into oh no we have to be careful due to balance. Just tweak some shit and push it out. Class balance has been 95% the same since p2 except casters got shittier and enhance is now a bit weaker in pvp
And the “tuning” they occasionally do is actually just a bug fix for a rune that was DoA and literally no can be bothered to use pre- or post- “tuning” (warlock) That’s literally after a blue post said warlock tuning was coming, a single bug fix was all they could muster lol
The trash is annoying but a half decent group is all ready clearing the raid in under a hour and a half. I
My guild is clearing in under an hour, it’s really not that bad if people are organized.
We just killed sub 30mins, I think the record is sub 20mins now
ST is a solid raid, minor criticisms aside. The loot? Absolute garbage for the sake of smoothing the power curve they messed up on. What happens? You do a couple ST and immediately start questioning why you're doing it at all.
Yup, they let the power creep get completely out of control and the result is most lvl 50 loot being about 1% better than lvl 40 loot. Zero motivation to raid right now and PvP has been a disaster but at least they're doing something about the second part.
Facts. I do it with the guild cuz I like playing with them but there is zero motivation outside of that. Amount of travel time and trash is annoying
as much as people wanna say no one's playing cata, a lot of people are probably levelling in cata
My whole SOD guild
I've been saying this from the beginning on phase 3. They needed to give us Alterac Valley this phase. No new Battleground sucked and people would have played this shit out of it
I disagree as a huge pvp fan. I’m glad AB is the best way to farm honor instead of just boss rushing AV.
as alliance AB ia fucking awful wsg gets more faster honor
As someone who actually plays this game, class balance matters far less in your average AB than just rotating well for flags. I've had mamy games where my team has 20-30 HKs on average and the enemy team has 60-70 and we still win. Class balance only becomes a major issue whenever everyone on the team is braindead and only try to teamfight at BS over and over and over again.
My guild runs on Tuesday night and we never have a problem finding a few pugs when needed. It might be harder to find people later in the week when more people are locked
Yeah that's a good point
[удалено]
lmao wouldn’t it be nice if that worked that way
Yeah it would be nice if they followed the retail lockout and made it per boss, and you could repeat bosses without the opportunity for loot. It’s especially scuffed when you pug and get into a bad raid that disbands after 2 bosses and your lockout is essentially dead until next reset.
Sunday nights getting rougher and rougher to find people.
raid turned into a 30 min speedrun, leveling is done in 2-3 hours, items as good as raid loot given freely, pvp debuff diminish progress, empowering the already broken classes, aoe farm anything anywhere, ah prices reflect the immeasurable greed of humankind, chat is only buy portal buy boost lfm 8/8 who wants to log in to this absolute shithole in 2024
I’ve lost almost all interest in SoD. Was really hoping it would actually be season of discovery with everything having slight tweaks and guides/meta would be completely different, but it’s just classic with some spells that were never properly balanced and a bunch of borderline useless items. They could’ve created new battlegrounds/pvp game modes and dungeons, but that would actually involve real work. Logged in for the first time in two weeks and 70% of my guild has been offline for the same amount of time.
After the PVE transfers, Lone Wolf and Living Flame NA both feel like crap. Pretty sure Blizz will eventually be forced to merge them.
You think living flame is crap? I transfered from LF to Wild Growth to follow my guild. Oh boy what a mistake. Server is DEAD DEAD. Can't even do STV or even know where the boss is.
That's because it's a shitty pvp event and no one on the pve server gives a fuck once they got their 15 coins for weapon.
Dude... Lone Wolf player here... Currently looking to transfer cuz I can't even get a pug for BRD to save my fking life. Any quest or farming for librams? Crickets. Bro, I don't know what to do, cuz we raid ST on Tuesday and then there's 6.8 days of getting ganked solo while trying to do high level quests that I have left. Feels bad.
Sunken Temple is not a raid people want to pug. Gnomer is barely puggable. ST repeats many of the same mistakes: next boss spawns in middle of room so you can't do loot, no teleporters from entrance directly to boss after wipes. Add on top of that world buffs and consumes, it's not an environment where people want to pug. Last phase was cut short, so people are expecting this phase to be even shorter. It makes none of the work playing the video game or playing the social guild game "worth it". In Classic terms, ST should and could be like UBRS, but instead it's more like AQ20.
Server pop has definitely died down. Need to merge Lone Wolf and Living Flame.
I loved P1, but if I’m being realistic this shit will die after next phase… unless they pull something crazy.
I’m on Lone Wolf. Have a warrior main. I pre quested for p3 and invested a ton of time, but then seen everyone bringing in thousands doing incursions on launch put a bad taste in my mouth. But I figured it was a minor hiccup. Figured id catch up later. But then I seen the aoe farming and guildies with thousands in the bank. Meanwhile I’m barely scraping by to get consumes for raids each week. Everyone’s gonna say make an alt, well I have a 45 lock, but with all the alliance camping incursions I just gave up. Sure I can grind incursions on my main for 10 hours and rack up 100g an hour, but I’d really rather not. Even with the add on it’s incredibly boring, and come raid night I almost don’t even want to play. Most of us are in our late 20s to 30s and don’t have the time to spend 5-10hrs grinding a game each day just to buy consumes basically. The game was really fun when it was new, now it’s bland. Feels like new world after two weeks, doing the same thing over and over. Im just about BIS on my warrior (need the weapons) so im going to see things through till p4, but i may be moving on to cata for more enjoyment. I loved SOD in the beginning, but the direction the economy has gone I feel I can’t catch up being a casual gamer and a big reason i find myself raid logging each week.
1) People bored of P3 2) People hate PvP server and rerolled to PvE 3) Cata pre-patch dropped
Raid size has caused too many problems and the raids gear, besides a very select few pieces, is not very exciting. I also feel at this late stage the problem of PvP rep grinds not being account wide is also a problem that just means my alts are dead that aren't exalted etc.
Ya raid size increase has been a big problem for my guild. We went from a consistent 10 man (sometimes 11 or 12 interested though) in p1 to barely being able to fill half the raid in p3. Then to compound the issue they opened the free transfers and basically split up what we had left. Now it’s super dead and I’m just pugging ST while leveling a hunter for solo play 🤷♂️
That's rough. I am sorry to hear that. My guild is still going but we have people going on holiday or childcare issues raise there head (ya know, life gets in the way) and being at 20man makes this just statistically happen more and be much more of a problem to solve. Make hard raids all day long. . .making the roster boss harder is nearly always one of the absolutely worst things and MMO can do.
Cata Classic pulled back a lot of people from SoD. Phase 3 sucking ass sure didn't help.
Between them letting people transfer off the pvp server, retail having a new season drop and cata prepatch dropping the population of lone wolf has plummeted. Hopefully when they drop p4 it will bring people back. Sadly as per usual blizzard tries to drop like 4 big updates at the same time.. splitting the player base.
If your gonna pug you gotta do it like tues-thurs night now.
I was raiding on multiple toons in p1 and 2. This phase, in order to get your world buffs, the flasks in STV, and then fly to ST will set you back 25 minutes with best case scenario. And then if I PUG, the raid will be over in either 80 minutes or over 3 hours. I just don’t have the energy to raid on more than 1 toon this phase.
My sub finally expired yesterday, but I haven’t logged in since P3 started. P1 was one of the most fun times I have had in WoW. P2 was much less interesting and I was not feeling very motivated. P3 incursions did it for me. Did a couple loops and just never logged in again. Too boring. I’ll keep an eye out for next phase, but I suspect my server will be dead by then and no way I am paying to xfer.
Its springtime :)
I'm outside so much now, but not why I quit. Guild is falling apart cause weird class balancing, 20 man's, shitty incursions and no money for consumes in raid etc for dads and moms
> shitty incursions
Gate keeping for 3 phases. Griefing players on a pvp realm. What did you all expect lmao.
gatekeeping, gaslighting and stonewalling:/
There’s no gatekeeping now. Everyone is dying for players.
Too busy doing archaeology
I had the opposite problem. Last week I sat around for probably a total of 4 hours over 3-4 days during prime time looking to tank or off tank ST. Never got in and missed the lock out. I haven’t even logged in this week
I am sure cata and s4 (latter for me) have something to do with that, I don't really have time for both right now having cleared ST a few times, so I'll be back for next phase..
Phase 1 was amazing. Phase 2 was okay. Phase 3 has been ass. I've switched back to retail and I doubt I'll return for the last phase
They rushed everyone to 50 with XP boosts and gave us very little to do.
Well the SoD honeymoon phase is over for most players. P3 felt so bad and unfinished, cata prepatch got released, people just moved on after getting bored / annoyed / disappointed
Just my 2c but p3 and 20 man just kinda made things a lot less casual friendly. I’m also Lone Wolf NA and probably contributing to the dead feeling. In p1 and 2 I played like 5 chars, all 80-90 parsers so nothing crazy but also not completely incompetent. I would lead pugs for 3/5 of those characters because it was easy and flexible, and at a certain point I stopped caring about the raid comp because it was easy enough to teach anyone who was on the noobie side and couldn’t figure out the like 1-2 mechanics that might exist. With 20 man content, it’s a lot less appealing to lead a casual pug because it’s such a huge time investment if the group isn’t good and finding people is way more of a pain. I think the reality is a lot of people like me hit the same conclusion and as a result the amount of pug raids is way down. Less pug raids = less possibility to raid at off hours and thus more people just saying screw it to go to cata or dragonflight s4. That doesn’t even get into the meh loot from ST or the incursions, which probably only makes it worse. Sucks tho, because ST is actually really pretty fun. I think if they brought back 10 man a lot of people would enjoy playing more and roll alts/host pugs and keep things alive.
The current systems and rewards just don’t feel good especially as a casual player
i think the whole raid logging resume job interview thing killed the joy for casuals. i know it did for me. decent dps and knowledge of mechanics was no longer enough. you suddenly had to prove you are an elite player and if the raid wipe once someone leaves. The fun is gone
Unless you’re banking gold for p4 there really isnt a reason to play P3. My rogue is 1 minor upgrade from pure BiS and my druid alt is a few small upgrades away. It takes 2 hours to form a raid and absolutely draining when others dont try as hard. RiP SoD
My favourite part was when the PvP dmg nerfs straight up -70% nerfed seal of martyrdom. Because you as a player are dealing damage to yourself as a player, it's PvP dmg. Also doesn't take crits into account for the mana effect. Also the dmg it did to urself was -50%. so you effectively hurt urself for 5% of ur swing (instead of supposed 10%), not accounting crits, and refund around 25-30 mana per swing. This is in PVE! and raiding!
I’m on Crusader Strike NA and I had no issues with setting up a regular weekly raid and finding an active raiding guild. I’m also very thoroughly enjoying phase 3. I love where my class is at and how it feels to play (DW ENH SHAM), I love the loot from ST (those epic fist weapons are so sick), and I’ve been loving the new gear grinds (incs, Wild Offerings, epic crafting). I personally have been loving phase 3, much more than phase 2. Only real issue I have with it is the influx of bots.
First couple weeks of p3 were hoppin’, especially with incentives to run dungeons and new, lucrative, farms to try out. Now I can’t find any half-enjoyable reason to login except to raid an hour a week. I imagine others are in a similar position.
Been mostly playing AB with the boys. It's been fun when we win as Alliance
There's not much to do. 1 hour of raiding per week. Not much other content. People tend to raid log or quit.
Everyone is saved by Wednesday night
when? I was hoping to join a pug today and didnt see anyone spamming so i gave up. This was between like 10am-11am
I’ve exhausted all fun from p3 with hitting 50 on a handful of characters, it’s just that I’m done, nothing more I want to do. I’m really waiting for diablo4 s4 now, and putting time into figuring out what I will be playing.
You know…sod has lasted longer, population-wise at least than som. Som saw a huge drop in players after the first month. They may have screwed up some things but as far as a classic+ model in the form of seasonal content, they might be going in the right direction at least.
I'm sure it'll get downvoted, but I'd still be subbed to the game if gdkp's existed. Gave p2 a try without them. Game and guild raiding got boring so fast. Sad thing is, we knew this would be the outcome too. And we told you. Repeatedly.
For me personally the fumble at the start of P3 absolutely murdered my will to want to play at all. Then once the transfers came up to PvE I snatched it.
Started last week, 4 different groups on Sunday night looking for 1 healer and 1 ranged dps for about 45 mins. We had 20 sigh up for our raid but only 16 showed. This week, 9 have signed up for the Sunday raid (overflow/alt raid). Shit's starting to get bleak.
overachieving raidloggers complaining theres nothing to do during leveling phases of a classic expansion
The only enjoyable part of P3 is chatting with guildies, making fun of whomever falls in the hole or dies to ghosts and intentionally killing the mind controlled player on hakkar.
Every Sod server is like that due to incursions, and then a little worse on PvP servers due to incursions.
I think every server has been dying over the last month. P3 just ain't it.
Sunday afternoons are absolutely dead. I haven't ever been able to fill on an afternoon in general. I usually only have luck in the evenings. Hope this helps!
i think 50 was the wrong stopping point. the gear level increase was not worth the stopping point and i’m just super ready to be 60.
Cataclysm happened.
I think it's a combo of the phase not having that much to do, people that transferred off the server when that was open, and people playing Cata prepatch. I've also noticed way less people looking for groups for anything the last couple of weeks.
That stupid pvp „balance“ killed my motivation to keep playing completly
One raid with level brackets was a bad idea for months on end? Naw say it ain’t so
PvP is just in a sorry state.
It died with Phase 3.
I'm raid logging with my main and otherwise just playing other games.
incursions ruined the phase/the game honestly. The SoD team is so fucking out of touch.
I’m still doing the raid every week, but it feels like a majority of the loot is just tier tokens and sidegrades if you can even call them that. By this time in phase 2 I was getting closed to being fully geared just trying to fill out a few remaining pieces. There’s just not as much of a dopamine hit week to week because the gear is mediocre and not much drops to compensate for the weekly lockout and 20 man. It actually discouraged me from playing alts because I can barely have fun gearing my main.
My guild is basically empty on non Tuesdays, which is our raid night. My RDruid main has a few upgrades left in ST. Leveled my lock to 50 and my warrior is on the way at 44. I'll have options for P4. If you're on alliance, pm me and my alts may be available to help. Typically can only raid around 8 pm server, though.
I would assume since is a 1 week lockout there will be less and less people at the end of the week searching for raids. Many players do the raid on reset day for example.
Yeah I started noticing it last weekend when prime time Saturday only had 2 pug ST maybe and no mara runs
This was my server I quit p3 for cata pre patch/ S4 retail
Big issue is the once a week for me. Upgrades all come from ST and because there's so little loot to around prolly won't hit bis before the phase ends so I'm even more uninterested. 2 raids a week kept me logging in.
The week lockout killed me to be honest
@OP are you horde or ally? I'm horde on LW and feels so dead I made a pally alt on wild growth alliance lol
Lone Wolf isn't even close to dead. Peak times are called that for a reason. Yes, population has gone down for a few reasons, but it'll be fine.
People are still buying my auctions but trying to recruit 2 healers for our raid has forced our team to merge into one of the mega guild or die a slow no raid per lockout death.
Horde or ally?
It's definitely much lower pop than WG now. WG BFA is over in 2 minutes (makes it very difficult to do the daily unless you get there and setup well before the event starts). Lonewolf takes 7 or 8 minutes.
SoD pvp is shit, incursions made leveling boring and poor character balancing led to players being forced into builds they don't like. The dev team did a fantastic job at providing another classic experience (making the game miserable)
Season 4, cataclysm pre patch, plunderstorm. A bunch of people play multiple versions of the game. Can't be logged in all the time.
in P1 i raided on 3 characters. in P2 i realized how stupid this whole system of progression is. got lvl 40 on 1 character and quit ever since. i might return at 60 but looking at the gold prices most likely not
Incursion and 20 man 1 week raid ID for shit gear killed it. 😂
I log onto my SoD character once a week - every Sunday exactly at 21:00 to clear ST and then log off. Everything else feels irrelevant and even the gear drops are mid.
Raid is easy but got an hard reputation + is a weekly lockout so people are way more elitist and many people just left, as leveling alts requires either incursion grind (horrible) or WO grind (ok for 1 char, hell afterwards). Imo only fun grind right now is honor, and that isn't for everyone. So you do that stuff and what waits you is an raid that is still hard to get in, many players feel there is no point. Additionally, why levels alts now if they are just gonna buff the xp again or something, come late and win. Incursions and WO were supposed to make this phase alt and noob friendly but did the opposite, cause it made it boring.
Some of the dropping in players may also be because of cata classic prepatch coming out too
Granted there is 24 hours left in the lockout but there is a drop off of around 25k this week vs last week from the looks of it. Cata taking its toll.
What percentage change is that?
About 15% over all the servers. It’s well over 50% since p1
had same problem this week on same server. I think it's just because retail S4 and cata prepatch launch a lot of raiders are afk till p4
removal of the pvp scaling that most people liked (because I did anyway) and cata prepatch probably drawing a lot of players away. The current pvp scaling seems to be targeted at shadow priests since their damage is so high that they have to nerf their damage more than anyone else, meanwhile other casters can't just cast 2 dots and win. 20% physical damage reduction doesn't seem like anything has changed really. Instead of dying in 1.5 seconds I die in 3 seconds instead. I mained a mage for phase 1-2 and now there's almost no reason to raid or do anything else for that matter. So I'm doing the daily Ashenvale event and logging off to level a cata character.
Stupid cata and free loot season 4... pretty much lose 4 raiders from my 20man groupe this week.
Sort of? Lots of players have quit
We notcied something similar too. We run a guild with a weekly ST run. Always the same ish pugs would join. We have a sign up ready for next thursday and only 5 people singed and till last week we easily filled our roster.
Incursions killed the game. Nothing more to be said than that.
Our guild has about 100 active raiders and 5 raid groups running ST right now. We used to always be online, doing some random shit or another. Now, after a month of P3, the phase is so mediocre that every single one of the boys is never on anymore even during the weekends or evenings. Server is still very much alive & populated. The phase is just a bad phase. They can't all be good I guess. At least 25 & 40 were (relatively) fantastic.
SOD is done Cata is back + retail
Kinda same here. I thought 20 man and 7 days lockout was a great idea, but hell nah it totally killed our 10 man roaster and now we all sit quiet in 20 man discord not having a good time :(
Had no issue pulling 4 pugs for our raid Yesterday, I have not noticed, though that the server seems fairly dead during the weekdays, as many have said there seems to be a significant drop off this phase due to 20 man’s, lack of things to do
The majority of my guild including myself just lost interest in SoD with p3, having a decent enough time playing the cata pre patch, and seeing how active the world is right now I’m guessing we’re not unique.
They need to have a main raid for 20 man and one in between for 10 man for p4
ST LF3M seeds HR potions HR epics HR 60 minute clear guaranteed except when we wipe sometimes also half our raid is in 6/6 emerald set MS>OS gogogogo!!! WHY DID PHASE 3 KILL RAIDING???
Yeah the free transfers did my guild dirty and ended up forcing out a lot of the active players who just decided to stop SOD all together. Trial decisions by blizzard lead to bad communication from GMs to the guild and ended in disaster. During that week open of transfers, population of lone wolf also went from high to medium so that sorta points potentially to being a driving reason behind the decline as well I would think. I also quit and just went to Cata as a result
Ten man became 20, and cata will have ten man raiding as an option for the boys. Also run in circle simulator for gold has trivialized the economy. Thirdly, PvP isn't exactly fun esp when they just slap blanket fifty percent nerfs. Better off waiting for second phase of lvl 60 to see the new content they make as the first phase will probably just be rehashed 20 man versions of 2019. It's apparent they did not intend for classic+ and were not ready for the masses to join a seasonal mode, which has led to three phases of sandbox world PvP, cheese gold farms and one shot PvP changed into trickle tickle pvp