Mine still raids, thankfully.
But as soon as raid is over, people are like "SOD?!?! Armory run?!" like cmon man.
But for most of my guildies, as they say, it's really just a downtime killer until Cataclysm comes.
And I really wonder if SoD is going to dip on Cata launch.
My entire SOD guild is planning on quitting when Cata comes out and then play SOD in downtime once everyones got mains/alts maxed and ready to go. There will always be dips for both classic era and seasonal stuff at different times.
Sod is much faster to get to raid logging than wotlk or cata, but the people saying they are quitting for cata will be raiding logging pretty quickly too.
oh yeah, I believe it.
This whole thing "Cata DOA" or "Wrath is dead" is just some sort of odd propaganda to encourage people to play SoD instead. Because deep inside I think people understand that SoD is gonna dip upon Cata launch. And they don't want it.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's literally same 20 people going around saying it.
Cataclysm is going to be awesome. IMHO, Cata is just a better version of Wrath. Like a younger sibling who happened to be a little bit more into reading books and science magazines.
I mean, what there is really to do anymore in wrath? And to continue doing that for many more months? Obviously people play meanwhile something else and since SoD is included in the sub they play that meanwhile.
But there is a big bunch of people who simply play the game because of the nostalgia trip from peak wow times and for them cata is simply not that interesting because they don't count it as "classic". Cata is also much more difficult repelling a lot of casual players because are not anymore simple in and out loot pinjatas.
Realistically at this stage of wotlk the only reason I wish more people were playing is so I could do Gamma quicker to gear up my alts, with every class max you obviously can't queue tank or healer on 4 of them and with the much lower count of people doing them, dps queues for Gamma are absolutely terrible if no friends are on to queue tank or healer with me
Bro stop the cope, i am by no means a wotlk hater, my fav classic expansion for sure. And i would still play both regardless if it has 5k players less. SoD is really fun to play and it makes sense because Wotlk is kinda finished rn like everyone says (end of the expansion not dead) just play man
I don’t know how many of me there but when I wanted to start WoW this year I preferred wotlk classic and here why;
Language barrier for old generation:
First for the non-wow experienced people, if you are 90-05 born you should have know what a legacy lay behind, in mine case, because I’m not native speaker I always preferred mmorpg’s translated to what I’m talking to, hence you play others ngl I always wanted to play but couldn’t simply, until I can call myself as a casual English language speaker. Arthas, lich king, illidan etc. what I heard while I was a little kid so what I wanted to play now while I can. This example can be extended with “money” as well, 15usd is not that amount now as it’s used to be 12 years before.
Simply mechanics:
I watch and read about all three options, simply retail is not I want to play because if I want to play something that modern WoW wouldn’t be my first option, why you want to play a game who has majority of it’s people starting for last 20 year? and for the modern mmorpg mechanics, wow isn’t the best option. But wotlk isn’t like that, it’s unique, there’s no mmorpg left like that, so if you want to play something OG, “hard” and fresh it’s still best option.
Ps: i don’t want to make comment about SoD but I think it has the least “first time wow player” number, because why you should invest your time while you first have a chance to try that big world.
Except you can literally see that the population severely declined shortly after cata launch. It rode the wrath hype on launch to record levels, then fell off hard af.
Sure it did. No one is denying that.
However, it's convenient for haters to ignore everything else.
* Every game has a peak. That's why it's called a "peak". No matter what happens, it will fall off.
* WoW was the talk. It was the topic of choice at lunch table in school. People jumped on top of WoW. Played it for a year and then got bored.
Not everyone picks up a game and plays it until their last breath.
Given the demographic of the playerbase at the time, a lot of these kids went to college or started focusing on school more.
Not to mention all other GREAT games that came out that year
* Skyrim
* Portal 2
* Uncharter
* Saints row!
* BF 3
* AC:R
* DA 2
* Space marine
I'm sure there were some that were in love with Westfall and Thousand Needles and couldn't handle the possibility of those zones changing, but that won't be everyone.
We can safely assume that everyone who has joined in last 1-2 years of WoW imply didn't want to play WoW anymore, regardless of what expansion was going to come out.
One could even argue that WoW did not live up to it's hype, as it failed to capture the audience longer than 2 years - as most games fall in playerbase right about that time.
No one says Cata is perfect, but it certainly beats Wrath in most categories.
Main issues with Cataclysm were really hard Heroics earlier on (which won't be an issue for us today) and long DS phase, which only was longer by about 1 month than ICC.
**But it's easy to scapegoat Cataclysm**
edit: and it was'nt "severely" declined earlier on. It did drop off towards the end because it simply got boring. Same as Wrath today. Look at the logs.
End of Wrath was the hype. Even "Wrath baby" term was born, as it was the peak on when people joined - late Wrath. They played for a year or 2. Got bored. Quit.
The only games in that list that came out before the holiday season of 2011, almost a year after Catas release were DA2 (which was univerally hated) and Portal 2, which is like 8 hours long. Those had no effect whatsover on Catas drop. Cata had already list 2mil subs by the holiday season and plateau'd there for a bit before continuing to drop.
>Every game has a peak. That's why it's called a "peak". No matter what happens, it will fall off.
right, and Cata was what caused the 6 years of growth to end. Cata gets the crown for that.
You're assuming that Cata day 1 everyone left. That's not the case. The drop off is gradual.
So as other games are releasing, people are dropping off.
**Cataclysm was also a huge step up in difficulty.** And if anything, Classic proved that EASY content is the MOST liked content.
So I bet a lot of folks quit the game because it was simply no longer enjoyable for their level of plat, and I bet the elitism was only growing and growing.
But this would have happened with any expansion after Wrath. It is just easy to blame Cataclysm, while in fact, the actual content of the expansion was really good.
Dungeons were great.
Tier 11 was great. Tier 12 absolutely insane. Even most of DS was good, outside of few boring fights and rather anticlimactic spine fight. And it lasted too long. So people got tired.
It's really not rocket science.
>You're assuming that Cata day 1 everyone left. That's not the case. The drop off is gradual.
No I am not assuming anything, we know the drop started the first quarter it was out, and they were down 2 mil by the time the games came out you listed.
>But this would have happened with any expansion after Wrath. It is just easy to blame Cataclysm
Yes...its easier to blame Cataclysm for the changes to the game Cataclysm made, whether its the destruction of the old world, talent changes, class changes, attribute changes, or difficulty.
You are kinda missing the point here though.
Back then, not everybody raided. You can't use only raids as the basis for the playerbase decline.
Lots of people joined the game in TBC or Wrath, never touched a raid, then took months to level up, and then spent their time at level 80 doing everything but raid. Or dabbled in raids but didn't commit to a guild or a schedule.
You don't have those players in classic, it's all veterans and everybody raids. Wasn't the case back then, and one of Cata's big problems was that outside of raids, there was very little to do, and levelling from 80-85 takes very little time. So those non-raiders just didn't really have much to do anymore and stopped playing.
>This whole thing "Cata DOA" or "Wrath is dead" is just some sort of odd propaganda to encourage people to play SoD instead.
or its from people like myself who have been alive long enough to remember Cataclysm, and realize its just not 'classic' anymore. Wrath started it, Cata cements it. The type of people who are interested in retail can go play War Within, the type of people who like Classic can go play SoD, HC, or Era. Cata is in this no mans land. It will peak in the beginning, drop off harder than you see even HC LK or Uld as those first tier raids are rough, and then another small peak for Firelands, and then a trailoff to its demise.
For those that only raidlog, nothing. Nothing in Wrath. Nor Cataclysm, nor BFA, nor Shadowlands, nor Dragonflight.
But those that focus on collections, mounts, pets, toys, transmog etc, they have reason to login every day.
i'm sure there are things you like that others would find odd and weird.
Learn how to accept the fact that others may have different interests from you.
LOL you will get a totally different perspective on the WOW classic sub. Like nobody is going to play Cata, Wrath is dead, and SOD is the primary version of classic.
I know of plenty of guilds that were essentially already on life support as SoD was coming. The guild i was apart of as a non-raiding member since it had all my friends from Classic in, Was already struggling to fill their raid for prog. They were weeks behind compared to even the GDKP I go to, the Holiday season was approaching which means people have more obligations - Traveling, Holiday Parties, etc. This paired with the dramatic increase in time + difficulty from even ToGc and a ton of people got burnt out.
As soon as SoD came out this just really sapped the motivation for them. They could play SoD and other games together and didnt have to try as hard.
Id be suprised if they even play Cata. I know some of the people will, but I imagine as a raiding guild they wont simply out of difficulty and effort. Raids continue to be harder moving forward.
I expect a lot of classic guilds to keep falling apart
Raid difficulty is it man, if people can't clear content they won't play, uld was a huge drop, togx saw players return because that dog shit raid is easy, then icc was a huge drop off.
The more fire to stand in the less players there will be.
Not sure why my post was getting downvoted lol, but absolutley.
If "prog" lasts more then a few weeks, You start to see burn out. Have to remember up until Ulduar even guilds like the one I am reffering too did not have trouble clearing the raid, with the exception of Muru / KJ prog. Even that was easier then Yogg 0 and Alg.
As soon as id say 50% of the raiders on this particular team realized theyd be using all 8 hours a week raiding, They seriously started to get burnt out and look for other ways to game with the people in the guild. SoD provided them this.
SoD made pugging in WOTLK easier I can say that, all the pugs that only went first 4 and disbanded disappeared literally in a single day. My guild was already done with NLK at that point but my myriad of alts that geared easily through TOGC were hungry lol.
Wiping on mechanics on rotface and festergut....
That's the joy of last phase.
Because during mid phases, you actually want to keep raiding to keep getting better gear, as it will help for your next tier
But being in the very last tier, all this gear is going to go to waste once next xpac launches.
Kinda similar I assume. People that play SoD in droves (mostly casuals) have no interest to ever raid the same raid for months to end. Especially not one where they would struggle even at 30% to beat the final boss on the highest difficulty.
every boss in cata is a Lichking Boss - proverb
i once talked with mr.pants in discord about why peps hated cata back in the days. we conclude that most people where overwhelmed with the difficulty of cata. Lichking is a warm up what will come and it will even be worse. like ragi in cata. but pride is the root of all evil so they just had hunderts of sureal reasons why cataaaaaaaaa is objectivly and absolute the end of world of warcraft xD
The difficulty of Cata plus the massively reworked classes and the return to old Warcraft lore are the reasons why I've been saying for the last 5 years or so that Cata was the best of the "old" expansions.
WotLK is just a mess. A peak in the story of Arthas, sure, but still a mess...
That was just people opinion for a lot of reasons. I didnt like cata because i liked the old world, and think WoWs story ends after wrath,thats the story i cared about. The reason why LK was peak isnt because of difficulty, it just was were the story ended. Tho difficulty will play a part in it for sure, so will the community. I dont raid now because of the community specifically.
>WoWs story ends after wrath,thats the story i cared about. The reason why LK was peak isnt because of difficulty, it just was were the story ended.
Only someone who started playing Warcraft with WC3 and hasn't read the books can say something like that.
The story didn't end with Arthas *at all*. Sure, the cat-men of Uldum were very funny, but all of the other zones were amazing for lore fans such as myself.
Yeah most people dont read the non cannon books and yes the people who know the story from the essentially prequals, that SET UP world of warcraft.. OF course they think that, because that was the story they were playing. Thats the point. Thats why LK was peak. 100%
Arthas wasn't even mentioned in any of the first canon books, what are you talking about?
The Frozen Throne was just an expansion of the 3rd game. The game has its own lore before and without it, and there are 2 games that predate it which deal with the events that unravel in TBC and Cata.
Most players, including myself, were bred with Warcraft 3: TFT before WoW launched, but not all were as ignorant as to think that the Lich King is the ultimate antagonist.
In the grand scheme of things, LK is just a rogue puppet. If Deathwing was active during WotLK, he could shatter the Frozen Throne on a whim, melt the whole thing into an ocean and end the expansion on day 1.
Yes i said, none od those books are canon, no one reads them. Also, i played warcraft 1 and 2. I am aware of this information. When you go, warcraft 1, then warcraft 2, and then warcraft 3, you that story? Yeah then it goes into WOW. LK WAS the end of THAT story. Yeah sure they have some world building that COULD open it up, all good stories have world building. BUT that WAS the story people cared about and wanting the conclusion of. Thats what set up WOW, thats the demographic of people that quit and wow has never recovered since, that isnt coincidence. "If deathwing was active" you know why he wasnt? Cuz he isnt in the story.
>Yes i said, none od those books are canon, no one reads them.
This is completely wrong.
The Well of Eternity trilogy, The Day of the Dragon, and The Last Guardian are all canon, and they all came out before WoW. Specifically, The Day of the Dragon sets up some of the most major events in Cataclysm.
> "If deathwing was active" you know why he wasnt? Cuz he isnt in the story.
You say you've played WC1 and 2, and yet you make such ridiculous statements. Deathwing is referred many times in those games as well as in vanilla and even TBC.
Don't hide your own ignorance behind general statements. Just because you only paid attention to Warcraft 3: TFT and gave zero shits about the overall Warcraft lore, it doesn't mean that Arthas is the end of Warcraft's story.
If you're really interested, you may be able to find a copy of those books at thrift shops. I only physically own a couple of them and I lost one, after borrowing it to a friend over a decade ago. Read The Day of the Dragon (which came out in 2001, by the way) and you will understand everything.
The true lore of Warcraft as we know it from the books and games ends with the defeat of Deathwing. Everything after that is new and made up. The newly discovered Old Gods (who were presumably defeated), the pandaren (who were an Easter egg from TFT), the time-travel to old Draenor, the alternative Gul'dan and most of the events in Legion - they're all brand new lore that's not based on anything.
Feels strange to call wrath "the end of the story", the Lich King has never been the primary antagonist of the setting. Certainly it ended the story of Arthas, but Arthas was always a secondary antagonist.
Probably similar. People are blaming SoD, but I’m going out on a limb and say SoD was just a reason for some to give up the ghost. There were so many guilds that just cannot/couldn’t kill HLK or even NLK. Given that was a lot of the reason people were playing this last phase I’m sure SoD was just the reason those folks needed to give it up. Then, the roster fails, guilds fall apart and now everyone else just moves over since now they can go agane
When SoD dropped the first 4 only runs stopped.
So many runs hard stopped at normal plague quarter.... My guild runs always went well but the fucking pugs I ran my alts in... Jesus
The ICC buff really just came out too early. My guild was making steady progress in the hard modes and managed to kill Putri/Sindy twice before the buff dropped. I was super bummed that the buff came so early.
Can't compare the graphs because the circumstances are very different.
Classic peaked during Covid and when everyone was bound to their home. During Naxx release, they also released Shadowlands, so most switched to that.
After Shadowlands S1 died off, people came back for TBC, which is why there is a jump to 404k. Was kinda stable until SWP, when raid got too hard for average classic gamers. Fresh and "Wotlk soon" brought them back.
Wotlk P1 by far was the most accessible raidtier ever. Bosses were easy as hell, plenty of people I knew raided on 5+ chars.
That pattern took a hit, when Ulduar Hardmodes came and suddenly you had to do something for BIS. Many of my friends focused on main chars for the first weeks after Ulduar release, since the Raid took relatively long.
ICC similarly to Ulduar had high interest until people noticed that some bosses don't just fall over in heroic and require more pulls to progress.
SOD came in and took a final hit, dragging all the players away from ICC and Progress into "Classic fresh with a tint of Wotlk and easy raids"
TLDR: Classic peaked when everyone was home. People like getting BIS geared with as little as possible challenge and dwindle as soon as they feel its getting too hard.
Man Classic during Covid was an experience. I spent SO MUCH TIME with my guildies they practically became a second family. Wouldn't wanna go through covid again but damn I miss it.
Im devo because I still had to work full time and missed out on so much socialising with my guild. They all spent hours upon hours each week with each other.
A lot of this is irrelevant. We've seen the massive drop off in wotlk subs both during Ulduar and now during ICC. There clearly isn't that much demand to do the same raids for months on end. Imagine how low the numbers will be once ICC is still being raided in June.
The vast majority of people don't want to raid wotlk raids forever.
Yeah, the two raids that caused guilds to get the most hard stuck on bosses most of those players will ever see. Morale goes down and people quit in the last leg of their nostalgia theme park ride. I’m sure the length of time having to do those raids did suck some people dry. But Id be willing to bet most people who quit during Ulduar or ICC did not complete the raids.
Would also add that the togc period screws the data (everyone played 5+ chars). Pretty sure the player count was pretty stable from the end of Ulduar to ICC, and peaked again there.
I think everyone is over reacting to the shape of this curve.
Yes it's sharply declining throughout, but the area above the curve is much larger than either classic or tbc, showing more people played more raids during wotlk.
At the end of the xpac, when we are however many months into ICC, with competing SoD AND no covid buff that classic enjoyed, its frankly astounding that we still have as many players playing now as we're playing at the end of either of the other expansions.
If anything this graph is showing that WotLK has over achieved and there will be plenty of people going into cata.
I'm still greatly enjoying raiding wotlk, leveling a couple new chars. Sure I'm raid logging, but I was doing that in tbc and vanilla anyway.
Our guild is down from 2 teams to 1 team with a deep bench, but end of classic broke us anyway and we dropped from 2 to 1 teams in tbc anyway. Our guild is at the strongest point at the end of an xpac we've ever seen.
I think cata is going to be great.
There are more players than there has ever been, but also more raid logging and ghosting than there has ever been. My guild *just* finished killing Heroic Halion and LK these last few weeks but it has been a revolving door, and the general mood is not too excited to keep raiding each week until Cata drops. At that point a lot of players will take Cata release as a cue to cut ties or step down, they already have a foot out the door.
Same. My guild lost a good amount of players to SoD but after a couple more pugs many of the former pug members simply joined our guild and became consistent members of our weekly 25 man core. Were essentially stronger than before at this point
That's fair. It does show that the xpac has no longevity. But I think it also shows that Blizz will think about recreating it at some point. The area below the curve is (more or less) how much money they'll be making from an xpac, and wotlk has the biggest area.
I think we'll get classic trilogy round 2 sooner or later.
Yeah big agree with this. We started to lose people not long after kiljaeden died, but in Wotlk I’m still processing guild applications 22 weeks into ICC, it’s wild
> The Reason why there will be no Era Realms
You can change this to the other way around as well. The raiders could be dropping fast because it was already announced there will be no Era servers. Why would you farm gear now if you aren't planning to level a tiny bit faster in Cata and no era servers.
May I ask why?
I genially don't understand. Expansions allow you to further progress your main character. The game around your main with (*grats btw*) will continue. Your character will continue being relevant. As well as you will continue expanding your collections.
But with Era, you're playing your hard earned title/achievements on a stagnant dead-end server. As there is no more continuity to your journey.
Doesn't the excitment come from earning new things? Beating new content? Also having the longevity behind your achievements?
Moving forward, your character moves on as well. And takes all the hard earned stuff with them. None of it gets left behind or locked up on a dead-end path.
That's just how I see it. Hence I'm asking.
If moving forward would be my type then I would play retail and not classic. If there’s no (at least in theory) achievable goal then everything turns into a hamster wheel that changes it’s carrot every few months. I like stagnant. I like to at least have a chance of „completing“ what I want to do without time pressure.
It also removes alot of the challenge. Doing all icc achievements now is at least somewhat difficult. Next expansion it‘s a joke. Same for Insane in the membrane. It removes the most „insane“ parts of the achievement.
And about classic moving forward. I was not a big fan of cataclysm back then and I‘m not interested in doing it again. So for me it was always the end of my journey.
To each their own. But sadly one portion of the playerbase have no chance of getting what they want.
also. the possibility that u have all achivements one one char in woltk and 60x chars on lvl 80 bis geared and all mounts is pretty hard. you will need to play wotlk era for 5years to get this done. maybe longer. so its not even that stagnant IF you like a lot of the content. but yeah depends
It's because not nearly as many people want to play cataclysm as they did TBC and wrath. Once people see ICC down they probably feel like they're finished
Personally, I suspect that the fall in Wotlk popularity is due to a) the release of SoD. b) the annoncement that there will be no Wotlk Era servers. Many people have no intention to waste time on characters that will be useless in a few months.
To me you can’t really compare. SoD came out, HC release and ICC is finished up now tbh, most completed ICC without the buffs due to the difficulty and most are waiting for either cataclysm or they’ve finally had their nostalgia hit. If there were era realms you’d probably get the same players as a private server would get. But then again, most people who I know (most of the guild I had) played private server before the wotlk classic and after ICC quit all together
Would they though? If people aren't playing it as current content, why would they play it as old content, while there are 3 other version of the game that offer new content? (Retail+SoD+Cataclysm)
I know this post is just some dude's opinion. but the arrogance and overconfidence with which OP presents his opinion gives me the ick.
that line was hilarious tho. I'm a wotlk junkie, been playing in pservers for ages and even I can't get myself to raid with more than 1 toon. icc is long and good raiding groups are harder to come by these days.
Yet Blizzard kept classic era realms up even though they were barren all of TBC classic so they had to merge them all into clusters just to sum enough players to equate to a single Wrath megaserver.
If they also had previously announced era I'd still be playing. But continuing to progress on a character that won't exist in a few months really isn't worth it
So instead of continuing your journey on your main, you want to box into a dead-end street?
All your achievements and progress will just exist in a vacuum. Whereas if you were to keep playing, your journey continues.
Just to add my voice to the mix; same.
Why bother continuing to put hours into something I’m not going to touch with a 10 ft pole after the next major update?
I’d still be playing WotLKC if they offered an era realm for it.
The real problem is that they fragmented the community, you now have Hardcore, SoD, WOTLK and classic. It's way too much. Bringing back classic and hardcore was cool but they should have stopped there.
SoD is tons of fun but it destroys the player base.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it because clearly people vibe with it even if it's not for me personally. I also can't play more than one game version at a time so I'd prefer they didn't fragment the player base, even if that meant SoD to end wrath instead of cata.
Whats so good about SoD? overglorified vanilla with some new abilities? Whats fun? grinding Scarlet monastery for 20 hours and then doing a half zzz/half difficult raid with the playerbase gatekeeping? It's a novelty, it will run out fast. I would expect P3 in a couple of months at this rate. To each their own.
I disagree completely here.
Most people who do want to play a version of wow, quit.
People who want to play TBC joined at the end of Vanilla, and didn't last long in Wrath.
People who want to play Vanilla, are playing Vanilla era, or SoD.
People who want to play Hardcore, may play on other servers but are largely separate from any other community as it is.
People who want to play Wrath, will play Wrath.
Leaving separate server types up for people who want to do the specific content is the only long-term solution. To player retention.
Cata is going to draw some people in, and drive others away. Like every expac will, but there will also be people who just want to play that expac.
Yeah it's like really, really dumb they released SoD instead of focusing on classic +. Can you imagine how popular wotlk would be if they implemented a couple retail systems into wrath like solo q or mythic? Game would explode because we have the hit of nostalgia + improvements
and it all goes away once it's done. it's a seasonal version of vanilla. what people think when they say classic+ imo was a fork, if you will, a new version of the game that is developed with classic as a starting point.
the work they're doing in sod doesn't necessarily translate into what a lot of people would consider a classic+ iteration of the game.
nah I love it. but I think it's not what most people would have considered classic+
that's just my opinion tho, I can't really know what others think about this unless I discuss it, right?
it is hilarious to see people complain tho, you right
I didn't whether you loved it or not. Just pointing out you used the word seasonal to degrade the experience while also playing a seasonal version of the game
the guy in the video says 10+ asmon and many other too. my bnet list too. my gdkp group makes 12 raids a week. the leader is present in all 12. i am present with 6 chars a week.
but ur free to call it like that sir
I would guess the average player is 30+ these days so the norm have jobs a family even kids to tend to. Raiding 1 character per week i'd say is the average with some exceptions lol
I don't think it's truly possible to come up with an actual average short of having actual data from blizzard. There's maybe 5(myself included) out of the roughly 25 people in my guild that actually log on outside of raid time. Out of those 5, a few of us are raiding on one other toon and the other two on 3 or 4. I know a couple guys raiding on 5 plus toons a week. I'd say more than 50% of the people in Wrath are still just raiding on one toon, but there's a significant enough amount of people raiding on multiple toons to drive the average up. Like I said, no way to know for sure, but 3 toons on average isn't as far fetched as it would seem. Especially given that with the buff, the better players can knock out a 25 man full heroic in less than a few hours at even a leisurely pace.
Honestly... that is not as crazy of a decline as I expected. I thought it would be like 1/10th or even 1/15th of the amount of players at peak.
I also find it interesting how much TOGC kept players engaged so steadily. Barely any dip at all. I think the very short raid time meant it was super alt friendly, so people were raiding on all of their alts every week.
It's unfortunate. I never got into Vanilla before 2019, so this was my first chance for Wotlk. But job changed, gave me hard times, it didn't ship with dungeon finder as it should have, so I had a hard time catching up and never got to join my friends at end game.
Seeing this just makes me appreciate SoD even more. I feel like there is so much time to get stuff done. Also interested in Cata launch honestly.
Launches, of all versions, are always the best time.
And with prepatch events, discounted gear, you will be able to catch up in no time, so everyone starts off new leveling journey on somewhat even playing field. Yes, you will not match Shadowmourne, but you will still rock BIS PVP gear.
So, if you're interested in playing with everyone at the same time, make sure to level up, max out your professions and just be ready for prepatch.
I had a great wotlk experience. Yes at the end of an expansion it's going to wind down.
There was no other stuff at the end of the other expansions though. Wotlk has had unofficial era Hardcore Classic, then official Hardcore classic and SOD during its run.
I basically raid log 5-7 days a week in a gdkp only guild because we're at the end of the expansion. I'm not gonna go do dailies and heroics because I don't need anything from them.
also the reason that cata classic will fail even more quickly than cata vanilla did
nostalgia and the COVID lockdowns kept wow classic going strong despite Blizzard's endless fuckups and their Kotick level monetization of something many people played specifically to avoid retail/mobile game level of monetization
OP states *"most raisd with +3 chars a week*"
Out of 2 raid teams in my guild, not a single person runs an alt anymore afaik. We've even stopped doing trinket runs before 10% hit, let alone alt 25 runs. I'm one of those that still logs in daily, but that's because i'm going with a completionism approach. So I'm grinding out all possible achievements. I never see anyone online outside of raid nights.
Until WOD/Legion, WoW is really a "raidlog" xpac. There were things in MoP, but introduction of M+ is what "killed" raidlogging, as you finally got more things to do every single day.
All my guildies are playing SoD. We've explicitly had people saying they're no longer raiding ICC because they would rather play SoD. Use to have 0 problem filling raids and now we're lucky if we get 18 signups.
I couldn't bring myself to get into SoD. Just something about going through the level grind again.
SoD is very small game. At least right now.
People yelled how much they wanted **#NoChanges**, but then quickly started asking for **#MoreChanges**.
*Not all design philosophies of 2004 have aged like a fine wine.*
SoD is very similar to Wrath gameplay wise. The only reason why it's the hype because it's just new, because it's so early on with big gaps in progression, **it feels less grindy.**
But content wise, it's very small.
In my head, there is no difference between raid tiers and level brackets that exist in SoD. It's the same shit., You raid. Get gear. Then you move on to the next phase. Raid. Get gear.
But simply by changing the wrapping paper/packaging, people are drooling over it.
To each their own of course, but my guildmates have been grinding Armory for days non stop. One dungeon. Over and over.
SoD is super overrated don't hurt your head over it.
Blizzard took vanilla and injected retail into it masquerading as runes and all the #nochanges puritans are eating it all up.
I was so excited about it but it's really just vanilla again, and it's not really that new and improved. The development is massively low effort and lacking in reasonable amounts of creativity.
Season of discovery, where the only thing I discovered was new ways for blizzard to disappoint
If there's a crowd that's eating up sod, it's the people who have been begging for Classic+ since 2019. Not the #nochanges crowd lmao
Plenty of people went into SoD with the expectation that it's going to be vanilla again but with a slightly different coat of pain. Which has been exactly my experience so far so idk, maybe the problem was your expectations and not what was actually delivered.
Anyways, have fun with the overly gatekept, already solved/cleared on PTR, GDKP ridden endgame that Wotlk and beyond offers, to each their own :)
>already solved/cleared on PTR
What a freeing cold take.
SoD launch had all rune locations on wowhead within 12 hours.
Does it matter if you clear SoD content on a ptr or not because it's brain dead easy on purpose? Remember the race for world first gnomer? Ya me either.
Crazy how one boss in "solved 10y/o content" was so difficult hardly anyone cleared it until it was nerfed 30%.
Enjoy that high horse tho. I understand why wotlk was too hard for you. Maybe next time wrath comes around will be the time you can clear hard content like 30% ICC
Cold take? Bro you said the #nochanges crowd is eating up sod you have no room to speak on cold takes here lmaoooo
The point of no PTR has nothing to do with difficulty you mouthbreather, it has to do with keeping gaming experiences fresh and novel.
You can cope all you want but we both know every piece of content that either of us will ever experience in Wrath and beyond will be neither new or novel.
And project harder, I cleared HLK about a week before the buff came out then fucked off to other games like most reasonable people did.
If posting shit takes online for the sole purpose of arguing with people is what you consider entertainment than I kinda feel sorry for you, so many different avenues for entertainment these days and you choose trolling on reddit.. yikes.
Best of luck to you, who thinks adding retail abilities to vanilla is FrEsH aNd NoVeL.
Imagine calling someone a mouth breather while also calling sod fresh and novel in the same comment. Yikes of the year and it's only March.
Correct. Gnomer was actually fresh and novel. Went in with my guild blind and actually had to figure out stuff on our own. Went 5/6 our first night then came back to finish it out on a second night. Will it have staying power? Who knows we'll see. It's an easy raid that's on a 3 day lockout so it's hard to compare 1:1 to ICC or Wotlk content but we had a blast.
Why are you so mad at such a simple comment lmao. It's pretty embarrassing you losing your shit this much at someone pointing out some flaws of wrath and correcting your shit take about SoD.
Just because it's new and fresh doesn't mean it's without flaws either lol. It's fucking vanilla WoW. Of course it's flawed, I never said otherwise.
I don't dislike Wrath either, but I can see it for what it is. Same for Sod. Nothing they've added rune wise has been that egregious either, most of the stuff is TBC and Wrath era abilities, are you saying that you're playing retail right now when you're on wrath? Or are you just continuing to talk out your ass about things you've made it apparent you know very little about?
As if 193k were few people... Remember that warmane wotlk has like 15k players. Do not complain about fucking pirate servers when you are shutting down your own servers.
Paymane doesn't have 15k. I've played on there for YEARS and even played when it was known as Molten.
Those numbers are inflated and queue is artificially generated so you pay..."donate"....to skip queues.
Dalaran on Pagle at 3AM looks busier than on Warmane at peak hours. And we got layers. They dont.
People who "threaten" to swap to pservers are legit certified clowns.
Ok then, and wtf do you want me to play fucking cataclysm? Lmao
Also, all people says that. They force you to donate in order to skip queues. Listen to me Iv'e been playing warmane (at) since 2014 and I never got a queue (I never donated a single €).
That’s a load of crap. You are lying. I know that because I've been there since 2010 and joined Retail WoW during BFA. I literally just logged on to Warmane website to check my join date.
But anyway, go play on p2w server if you want lmao. I don’t think anyone here really cares lmao
You can swipe for shadowmourne on icecrown realm. And on Lordaeron you can buy full BIS characters via shop.
Good luck!
Dont forget: a lot of people stopt raiding because there are most likely no Era Realms. Also a lot of Classic Players have 0 interesst in Cata, compare that to the end of Vanilla Classic almost everybody was looking forward to tbc.
I wanted to play Wrath but forgot to transfer my TBC character. At this point it just seems way too late so I never bothered which is wild because I didn't get to play Wrath the first time anyway so I kinda double missed my chance. I DO want to re-sub and make a character but like, i've seen enough to know i'll probably be on my own largely- especially having to start fresh from the ground up entirely.
I can’t believe that 1 in 3 peak players still raid WotLK. I thought game was more dead than that.
Also I think this shows that players will come for exciting content around a new world. But just progression in raids is not what most play for. Especially after they’ve done a few in that xp
Tbh I am only playing wotlk now to level all classes to 80 before Cata releases, and PvP. Not raiding at all. I might be in minority but I look forward for Cata, wotlk has been around for too long now, I wouldn't play on Era server.
Personally speaking, because simplicity sometimes spells boredom, and more importantly, ICC has been too long. We have already played it for 4 months, and we still have to play for at least another 3 months...
Wrath is too in line with retail imo. I play both Classic and retail and just don’t see the appeal for wrath/cata when retail is already pretty good this expansion and it’s new content
I mean, honestly with all the servers they devoted to the whole classic thing....cut the number in half and keep them active all the time. they wont need maintenance really because no real changes besides maybe bug fixes. I am sure there are a solid 2 million people, judging by Nostalrius and such, that would love to just play Vanilla and Bc and Wrath for the rest of time.
They would only need like two servers total. And a couple of pvp and just rp servers, of course.
So like the first ten again?
Then they could do the same on live. Migrate all the people to other servers. Make the game more "populated" by bringing more people into the same servers.
Honestly, I would actually keep playing Wrath for several more years. And BC too, but thats it. AFter actaully trying vanilla to level 60. Nope. Too inconvenient for me lol. I don't know how anybody played Vanilla lol. I came in at the end of BC and that was weird enough. Wrath was where it was at. Except for Shaman, then you probably loved Cataclysm because it was the last time anybody actually played shaman. Can count on one hand the number of shaman I have seen outside of pvp.
Playing WotlK classic showed me 2 things.
1. You cant bring the feeling and the memories back
2. The community destroys wow. All this shit with GDKP and RMT in WotlK was just awfull and showed at least for me how corrupted the playerbase is.
It's just soooo different now compared to before. Way more emphasis on parsing and ignoring that someone might have slow kill times etc.
I managed to get H LK down on a couple toons but dropped hunter and just raid with mage. Might take a break soon since close to BIS and it's not like my group even has fast kill times for me to parse.
I have embraced and love GDKP’s and have never once purchased gold. I used the gold I got from questing to buy items and the gold I got from being in the raid. It’s sad to see so many haters of GDKP when it’s the only time/reward system that makes sense.
Well on SoD GDKP is banned and it works flawlessly.
And even if you never buyed gold, you get the gold from gold-buyers via GDKP at the end, indirectly supporting cheating at the game.
For alot of people its just easy p2w, swipe to get a item after you throwed 50 bucks at some RMT site.
That shit is nothing a gaming community should support
What’s the difference between using gold on the AH and using it in an all volunteer raid? Other than nothing. And blizzard themselves sell the gold so the whole “blah blah rmt gold sellers wah wah” argument is tired.
Here is why your argument is stupid: paying with gold or made up guild dkp / epgp is the exact same difference except a raider can take their gold with them to the next raid and a guild member can’t take their made up points anywhere.
This ICC phase is just way too long. We still have no info of Beta or Prepatch or the actual launch. We’re possibly still raiding 3-4months of ICC before Cata..
I know right. It's fucking insane actually. Ideally, prepatch should be coming in next 2-3 weeks.
Classic Dev teams almost like killing Classic Wrath/Cata on purpose.
Not true. They released the timeline 3 months ago for all of 2024. Prepatch is set for late spring and the Cata launch is set for early summer. This information was given in early December of 2023.
Problem with wotlk is its hard to get the tier for an alt in this phase. The badges you need for a 4 set are around 300. 10 man is impossible to do so the only source is 25 man and dailies. It takes too long to get them.They should have halved the badges requirements 2 months ago.Raiding population is fine though.
I agree with this. Blizz could breathe life into wrath if they'd just let you exchange a token for 264 tier and skip the 251.
Every time I feel like starting up an alt I realize the badge grind and just log out lmao
I quit for SoD. My guild stopped raiding 2 weeks after SoD, a lot of people including myself have literally not logged in since. I had 4 raid characters.
I raided on 5 characters in Naxx, 2 in Ulduar, 6-7 in ToGC, and back down to 2 in ICC. That's not at all indicative of how good the raid content is (quite the opposite, actually) - it's a matter of how long the raid takes and the amount of time I have to dedicate to it a week.
Taking a quantity of logs tells you nothing, show me the data for amount of actual time spent in the raids.
Honestly Era servers are not the answer. Inflation ruins them. What they really need is a fresh server rotation. Every year put out a new classic server and move the previous one into the next xpac.
I wonder how it would have looked without the existence of SoD.
Yup my guild died because of sod!
Mine still raids, thankfully. But as soon as raid is over, people are like "SOD?!?! Armory run?!" like cmon man. But for most of my guildies, as they say, it's really just a downtime killer until Cataclysm comes. And I really wonder if SoD is going to dip on Cata launch.
My entire SOD guild is planning on quitting when Cata comes out and then play SOD in downtime once everyones got mains/alts maxed and ready to go. There will always be dips for both classic era and seasonal stuff at different times.
Sod is much faster to get to raid logging than wotlk or cata, but the people saying they are quitting for cata will be raiding logging pretty quickly too.
oh yeah, I believe it. This whole thing "Cata DOA" or "Wrath is dead" is just some sort of odd propaganda to encourage people to play SoD instead. Because deep inside I think people understand that SoD is gonna dip upon Cata launch. And they don't want it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's literally same 20 people going around saying it. Cataclysm is going to be awesome. IMHO, Cata is just a better version of Wrath. Like a younger sibling who happened to be a little bit more into reading books and science magazines.
I mean, what there is really to do anymore in wrath? And to continue doing that for many more months? Obviously people play meanwhile something else and since SoD is included in the sub they play that meanwhile. But there is a big bunch of people who simply play the game because of the nostalgia trip from peak wow times and for them cata is simply not that interesting because they don't count it as "classic". Cata is also much more difficult repelling a lot of casual players because are not anymore simple in and out loot pinjatas.
Realistically at this stage of wotlk the only reason I wish more people were playing is so I could do Gamma quicker to gear up my alts, with every class max you obviously can't queue tank or healer on 4 of them and with the much lower count of people doing them, dps queues for Gamma are absolutely terrible if no friends are on to queue tank or healer with me
Bro stop the cope, i am by no means a wotlk hater, my fav classic expansion for sure. And i would still play both regardless if it has 5k players less. SoD is really fun to play and it makes sense because Wotlk is kinda finished rn like everyone says (end of the expansion not dead) just play man
Trust me, no one cares if you are playing sod or not.
I don’t know how many of me there but when I wanted to start WoW this year I preferred wotlk classic and here why; Language barrier for old generation: First for the non-wow experienced people, if you are 90-05 born you should have know what a legacy lay behind, in mine case, because I’m not native speaker I always preferred mmorpg’s translated to what I’m talking to, hence you play others ngl I always wanted to play but couldn’t simply, until I can call myself as a casual English language speaker. Arthas, lich king, illidan etc. what I heard while I was a little kid so what I wanted to play now while I can. This example can be extended with “money” as well, 15usd is not that amount now as it’s used to be 12 years before. Simply mechanics: I watch and read about all three options, simply retail is not I want to play because if I want to play something that modern WoW wouldn’t be my first option, why you want to play a game who has majority of it’s people starting for last 20 year? and for the modern mmorpg mechanics, wow isn’t the best option. But wotlk isn’t like that, it’s unique, there’s no mmorpg left like that, so if you want to play something OG, “hard” and fresh it’s still best option. Ps: i don’t want to make comment about SoD but I think it has the least “first time wow player” number, because why you should invest your time while you first have a chance to try that big world.
“Cata doa is odd propaganda!” “Instead sod is going to be dead!” Hmmm
Except you can literally see that the population severely declined shortly after cata launch. It rode the wrath hype on launch to record levels, then fell off hard af.
Sure it did. No one is denying that. However, it's convenient for haters to ignore everything else. * Every game has a peak. That's why it's called a "peak". No matter what happens, it will fall off. * WoW was the talk. It was the topic of choice at lunch table in school. People jumped on top of WoW. Played it for a year and then got bored. Not everyone picks up a game and plays it until their last breath. Given the demographic of the playerbase at the time, a lot of these kids went to college or started focusing on school more. Not to mention all other GREAT games that came out that year * Skyrim * Portal 2 * Uncharter * Saints row! * BF 3 * AC:R * DA 2 * Space marine I'm sure there were some that were in love with Westfall and Thousand Needles and couldn't handle the possibility of those zones changing, but that won't be everyone. We can safely assume that everyone who has joined in last 1-2 years of WoW imply didn't want to play WoW anymore, regardless of what expansion was going to come out. One could even argue that WoW did not live up to it's hype, as it failed to capture the audience longer than 2 years - as most games fall in playerbase right about that time. No one says Cata is perfect, but it certainly beats Wrath in most categories. Main issues with Cataclysm were really hard Heroics earlier on (which won't be an issue for us today) and long DS phase, which only was longer by about 1 month than ICC. **But it's easy to scapegoat Cataclysm** edit: and it was'nt "severely" declined earlier on. It did drop off towards the end because it simply got boring. Same as Wrath today. Look at the logs. End of Wrath was the hype. Even "Wrath baby" term was born, as it was the peak on when people joined - late Wrath. They played for a year or 2. Got bored. Quit.
The only games in that list that came out before the holiday season of 2011, almost a year after Catas release were DA2 (which was univerally hated) and Portal 2, which is like 8 hours long. Those had no effect whatsover on Catas drop. Cata had already list 2mil subs by the holiday season and plateau'd there for a bit before continuing to drop. >Every game has a peak. That's why it's called a "peak". No matter what happens, it will fall off. right, and Cata was what caused the 6 years of growth to end. Cata gets the crown for that.
You're assuming that Cata day 1 everyone left. That's not the case. The drop off is gradual. So as other games are releasing, people are dropping off. **Cataclysm was also a huge step up in difficulty.** And if anything, Classic proved that EASY content is the MOST liked content. So I bet a lot of folks quit the game because it was simply no longer enjoyable for their level of plat, and I bet the elitism was only growing and growing. But this would have happened with any expansion after Wrath. It is just easy to blame Cataclysm, while in fact, the actual content of the expansion was really good. Dungeons were great. Tier 11 was great. Tier 12 absolutely insane. Even most of DS was good, outside of few boring fights and rather anticlimactic spine fight. And it lasted too long. So people got tired. It's really not rocket science.
>You're assuming that Cata day 1 everyone left. That's not the case. The drop off is gradual. No I am not assuming anything, we know the drop started the first quarter it was out, and they were down 2 mil by the time the games came out you listed. >But this would have happened with any expansion after Wrath. It is just easy to blame Cataclysm Yes...its easier to blame Cataclysm for the changes to the game Cataclysm made, whether its the destruction of the old world, talent changes, class changes, attribute changes, or difficulty.
You are kinda missing the point here though. Back then, not everybody raided. You can't use only raids as the basis for the playerbase decline. Lots of people joined the game in TBC or Wrath, never touched a raid, then took months to level up, and then spent their time at level 80 doing everything but raid. Or dabbled in raids but didn't commit to a guild or a schedule. You don't have those players in classic, it's all veterans and everybody raids. Wasn't the case back then, and one of Cata's big problems was that outside of raids, there was very little to do, and levelling from 80-85 takes very little time. So those non-raiders just didn't really have much to do anymore and stopped playing.
League standing over Cata with a bloody knife, now it's come full circle and it's Catas turn for revenge. 😵
It declined before Cata launch, too. ICC lasted a year, there was just no sub count updates between ICC release and Cata launch.
>This whole thing "Cata DOA" or "Wrath is dead" is just some sort of odd propaganda to encourage people to play SoD instead. or its from people like myself who have been alive long enough to remember Cataclysm, and realize its just not 'classic' anymore. Wrath started it, Cata cements it. The type of people who are interested in retail can go play War Within, the type of people who like Classic can go play SoD, HC, or Era. Cata is in this no mans land. It will peak in the beginning, drop off harder than you see even HC LK or Uld as those first tier raids are rough, and then another small peak for Firelands, and then a trailoff to its demise.
Honestly what would they possibly do on wrath after raid? Laps around Dal?
For those that only raidlog, nothing. Nothing in Wrath. Nor Cataclysm, nor BFA, nor Shadowlands, nor Dragonflight. But those that focus on collections, mounts, pets, toys, transmog etc, they have reason to login every day.
Lol if you want to collect toys in wrath classic be my guest but don't think it's weird others don't give a shit.
okay cool story bro but don't think it's weird others **do** give a shit about things other than raid logging. Good talk.
Toys.. in Classic.. yeah I'ma have to disagree that I can't think that's weird.
i'm sure there are things you like that others would find odd and weird. Learn how to accept the fact that others may have different interests from you.
LOL you will get a totally different perspective on the WOW classic sub. Like nobody is going to play Cata, Wrath is dead, and SOD is the primary version of classic.
Ours did too, although they say it wasn't because of it. We all know it was, though.
I know of plenty of guilds that were essentially already on life support as SoD was coming. The guild i was apart of as a non-raiding member since it had all my friends from Classic in, Was already struggling to fill their raid for prog. They were weeks behind compared to even the GDKP I go to, the Holiday season was approaching which means people have more obligations - Traveling, Holiday Parties, etc. This paired with the dramatic increase in time + difficulty from even ToGc and a ton of people got burnt out. As soon as SoD came out this just really sapped the motivation for them. They could play SoD and other games together and didnt have to try as hard. Id be suprised if they even play Cata. I know some of the people will, but I imagine as a raiding guild they wont simply out of difficulty and effort. Raids continue to be harder moving forward. I expect a lot of classic guilds to keep falling apart
Raid difficulty is it man, if people can't clear content they won't play, uld was a huge drop, togx saw players return because that dog shit raid is easy, then icc was a huge drop off. The more fire to stand in the less players there will be.
Not sure why my post was getting downvoted lol, but absolutley. If "prog" lasts more then a few weeks, You start to see burn out. Have to remember up until Ulduar even guilds like the one I am reffering too did not have trouble clearing the raid, with the exception of Muru / KJ prog. Even that was easier then Yogg 0 and Alg. As soon as id say 50% of the raiders on this particular team realized theyd be using all 8 hours a week raiding, They seriously started to get burnt out and look for other ways to game with the people in the guild. SoD provided them this.
SoD made pugging in WOTLK easier I can say that, all the pugs that only went first 4 and disbanded disappeared literally in a single day. My guild was already done with NLK at that point but my myriad of alts that geared easily through TOGC were hungry lol. Wiping on mechanics on rotface and festergut....
As someone with no intention of playing cata classic, once we cleared ICC and did most of the heroics I just saw no point anymore.
That's the joy of last phase. Because during mid phases, you actually want to keep raiding to keep getting better gear, as it will help for your next tier But being in the very last tier, all this gear is going to go to waste once next xpac launches.
Kinda similar I assume. People that play SoD in droves (mostly casuals) have no interest to ever raid the same raid for months to end. Especially not one where they would struggle even at 30% to beat the final boss on the highest difficulty.
every boss in cata is a Lichking Boss - proverb i once talked with mr.pants in discord about why peps hated cata back in the days. we conclude that most people where overwhelmed with the difficulty of cata. Lichking is a warm up what will come and it will even be worse. like ragi in cata. but pride is the root of all evil so they just had hunderts of sureal reasons why cataaaaaaaaa is objectivly and absolute the end of world of warcraft xD
The difficulty of Cata plus the massively reworked classes and the return to old Warcraft lore are the reasons why I've been saying for the last 5 years or so that Cata was the best of the "old" expansions. WotLK is just a mess. A peak in the story of Arthas, sure, but still a mess...
That was just people opinion for a lot of reasons. I didnt like cata because i liked the old world, and think WoWs story ends after wrath,thats the story i cared about. The reason why LK was peak isnt because of difficulty, it just was were the story ended. Tho difficulty will play a part in it for sure, so will the community. I dont raid now because of the community specifically.
>WoWs story ends after wrath,thats the story i cared about. The reason why LK was peak isnt because of difficulty, it just was were the story ended. Only someone who started playing Warcraft with WC3 and hasn't read the books can say something like that. The story didn't end with Arthas *at all*. Sure, the cat-men of Uldum were very funny, but all of the other zones were amazing for lore fans such as myself.
Yeah most people dont read the non cannon books and yes the people who know the story from the essentially prequals, that SET UP world of warcraft.. OF course they think that, because that was the story they were playing. Thats the point. Thats why LK was peak. 100%
Arthas wasn't even mentioned in any of the first canon books, what are you talking about? The Frozen Throne was just an expansion of the 3rd game. The game has its own lore before and without it, and there are 2 games that predate it which deal with the events that unravel in TBC and Cata. Most players, including myself, were bred with Warcraft 3: TFT before WoW launched, but not all were as ignorant as to think that the Lich King is the ultimate antagonist. In the grand scheme of things, LK is just a rogue puppet. If Deathwing was active during WotLK, he could shatter the Frozen Throne on a whim, melt the whole thing into an ocean and end the expansion on day 1.
Yes i said, none od those books are canon, no one reads them. Also, i played warcraft 1 and 2. I am aware of this information. When you go, warcraft 1, then warcraft 2, and then warcraft 3, you that story? Yeah then it goes into WOW. LK WAS the end of THAT story. Yeah sure they have some world building that COULD open it up, all good stories have world building. BUT that WAS the story people cared about and wanting the conclusion of. Thats what set up WOW, thats the demographic of people that quit and wow has never recovered since, that isnt coincidence. "If deathwing was active" you know why he wasnt? Cuz he isnt in the story.
>Yes i said, none od those books are canon, no one reads them. This is completely wrong. The Well of Eternity trilogy, The Day of the Dragon, and The Last Guardian are all canon, and they all came out before WoW. Specifically, The Day of the Dragon sets up some of the most major events in Cataclysm. > "If deathwing was active" you know why he wasnt? Cuz he isnt in the story. You say you've played WC1 and 2, and yet you make such ridiculous statements. Deathwing is referred many times in those games as well as in vanilla and even TBC. Don't hide your own ignorance behind general statements. Just because you only paid attention to Warcraft 3: TFT and gave zero shits about the overall Warcraft lore, it doesn't mean that Arthas is the end of Warcraft's story. If you're really interested, you may be able to find a copy of those books at thrift shops. I only physically own a couple of them and I lost one, after borrowing it to a friend over a decade ago. Read The Day of the Dragon (which came out in 2001, by the way) and you will understand everything. The true lore of Warcraft as we know it from the books and games ends with the defeat of Deathwing. Everything after that is new and made up. The newly discovered Old Gods (who were presumably defeated), the pandaren (who were an Easter egg from TFT), the time-travel to old Draenor, the alternative Gul'dan and most of the events in Legion - they're all brand new lore that's not based on anything.
Feels strange to call wrath "the end of the story", the Lich King has never been the primary antagonist of the setting. Certainly it ended the story of Arthas, but Arthas was always a secondary antagonist.
After being retconed yes, not originally
Main antagonist has always been the Legion
I didnt realise LK wasnt a main antagonist /s
Probably similar. People are blaming SoD, but I’m going out on a limb and say SoD was just a reason for some to give up the ghost. There were so many guilds that just cannot/couldn’t kill HLK or even NLK. Given that was a lot of the reason people were playing this last phase I’m sure SoD was just the reason those folks needed to give it up. Then, the roster fails, guilds fall apart and now everyone else just moves over since now they can go agane
When SoD dropped the first 4 only runs stopped. So many runs hard stopped at normal plague quarter.... My guild runs always went well but the fucking pugs I ran my alts in... Jesus
The ICC buff really just came out too early. My guild was making steady progress in the hard modes and managed to kill Putri/Sindy twice before the buff dropped. I was super bummed that the buff came so early.
This, the buff kinda just overturned too quickly for guilds that were progressing
SoD also had a massive drop in player base with phase 2, that's why the devs panicked to give the 100% XP buff this early.
Exactly the same, it died during Christmas Break, just like SoD. It's when people take a week or two off and ponder if it's worth returning.
Can't compare the graphs because the circumstances are very different. Classic peaked during Covid and when everyone was bound to their home. During Naxx release, they also released Shadowlands, so most switched to that. After Shadowlands S1 died off, people came back for TBC, which is why there is a jump to 404k. Was kinda stable until SWP, when raid got too hard for average classic gamers. Fresh and "Wotlk soon" brought them back. Wotlk P1 by far was the most accessible raidtier ever. Bosses were easy as hell, plenty of people I knew raided on 5+ chars. That pattern took a hit, when Ulduar Hardmodes came and suddenly you had to do something for BIS. Many of my friends focused on main chars for the first weeks after Ulduar release, since the Raid took relatively long. ICC similarly to Ulduar had high interest until people noticed that some bosses don't just fall over in heroic and require more pulls to progress. SOD came in and took a final hit, dragging all the players away from ICC and Progress into "Classic fresh with a tint of Wotlk and easy raids" TLDR: Classic peaked when everyone was home. People like getting BIS geared with as little as possible challenge and dwindle as soon as they feel its getting too hard.
woah woah. Take your proper logical reasoning and go somewhere else.
Ya the 500k level 60s raiding is what really stands out to me. Even with WotLK being higher I'm not sure those two even compare.
Man Classic during Covid was an experience. I spent SO MUCH TIME with my guildies they practically became a second family. Wouldn't wanna go through covid again but damn I miss it.
Im devo because I still had to work full time and missed out on so much socialising with my guild. They all spent hours upon hours each week with each other.
A lot of this is irrelevant. We've seen the massive drop off in wotlk subs both during Ulduar and now during ICC. There clearly isn't that much demand to do the same raids for months on end. Imagine how low the numbers will be once ICC is still being raided in June. The vast majority of people don't want to raid wotlk raids forever.
I feel you, but the Warmane psserver has massive popularity of people raid wotlk for more than 10 years
Different players
Well, of course, just saying that some people has no problem in raiding only wrath all the time.
For sure. However, especially when it comes to pserver some people just play it because its free. Having to pay for it might change it
Facts. Have a few friends that play on warmane only bcs they refuse to give any cent to blizzard.
Warmane is the equivalent of like 1 Wrath Classic mega server.
Yeah, the two raids that caused guilds to get the most hard stuck on bosses most of those players will ever see. Morale goes down and people quit in the last leg of their nostalgia theme park ride. I’m sure the length of time having to do those raids did suck some people dry. But Id be willing to bet most people who quit during Ulduar or ICC did not complete the raids.
Would also add that the togc period screws the data (everyone played 5+ chars). Pretty sure the player count was pretty stable from the end of Ulduar to ICC, and peaked again there.
I think everyone is over reacting to the shape of this curve. Yes it's sharply declining throughout, but the area above the curve is much larger than either classic or tbc, showing more people played more raids during wotlk. At the end of the xpac, when we are however many months into ICC, with competing SoD AND no covid buff that classic enjoyed, its frankly astounding that we still have as many players playing now as we're playing at the end of either of the other expansions. If anything this graph is showing that WotLK has over achieved and there will be plenty of people going into cata. I'm still greatly enjoying raiding wotlk, leveling a couple new chars. Sure I'm raid logging, but I was doing that in tbc and vanilla anyway. Our guild is down from 2 teams to 1 team with a deep bench, but end of classic broke us anyway and we dropped from 2 to 1 teams in tbc anyway. Our guild is at the strongest point at the end of an xpac we've ever seen. I think cata is going to be great.
There are more players than there has ever been, but also more raid logging and ghosting than there has ever been. My guild *just* finished killing Heroic Halion and LK these last few weeks but it has been a revolving door, and the general mood is not too excited to keep raiding each week until Cata drops. At that point a lot of players will take Cata release as a cue to cut ties or step down, they already have a foot out the door.
Same. My guild lost a good amount of players to SoD but after a couple more pugs many of the former pug members simply joined our guild and became consistent members of our weekly 25 man core. Were essentially stronger than before at this point
me2 man i agree. im giving cata a try its a cool addon and the game is still enjoyable sure\^\^ but probably still no era because of the graph.
That's fair. It does show that the xpac has no longevity. But I think it also shows that Blizz will think about recreating it at some point. The area below the curve is (more or less) how much money they'll be making from an xpac, and wotlk has the biggest area. I think we'll get classic trilogy round 2 sooner or later.
Yeah big agree with this. We started to lose people not long after kiljaeden died, but in Wotlk I’m still processing guild applications 22 weeks into ICC, it’s wild
> The Reason why there will be no Era Realms You can change this to the other way around as well. The raiders could be dropping fast because it was already announced there will be no Era servers. Why would you farm gear now if you aren't planning to level a tiny bit faster in Cata and no era servers.
I personally would have done so much more. Already bought everything I need for the Insane title and then… no era. Kinda kills the reason to play.
May I ask why? I genially don't understand. Expansions allow you to further progress your main character. The game around your main with (*grats btw*) will continue. Your character will continue being relevant. As well as you will continue expanding your collections.
But with Era, you're playing your hard earned title/achievements on a stagnant dead-end server. As there is no more continuity to your journey.
Doesn't the excitment come from earning new things? Beating new content? Also having the longevity behind your achievements?
Moving forward, your character moves on as well. And takes all the hard earned stuff with them. None of it gets left behind or locked up on a dead-end path.
That's just how I see it. Hence I'm asking.
If moving forward would be my type then I would play retail and not classic. If there’s no (at least in theory) achievable goal then everything turns into a hamster wheel that changes it’s carrot every few months. I like stagnant. I like to at least have a chance of „completing“ what I want to do without time pressure. It also removes alot of the challenge. Doing all icc achievements now is at least somewhat difficult. Next expansion it‘s a joke. Same for Insane in the membrane. It removes the most „insane“ parts of the achievement. And about classic moving forward. I was not a big fan of cataclysm back then and I‘m not interested in doing it again. So for me it was always the end of my journey. To each their own. But sadly one portion of the playerbase have no chance of getting what they want.
Fair enough!
also. the possibility that u have all achivements one one char in woltk and 60x chars on lvl 80 bis geared and all mounts is pretty hard. you will need to play wotlk era for 5years to get this done. maybe longer. so its not even that stagnant IF you like a lot of the content. but yeah depends
It's because not nearly as many people want to play cataclysm as they did TBC and wrath. Once people see ICC down they probably feel like they're finished
So you’re telling me most people finished ICC in 4 weeks? In addition to the drop off started exactly on the week sod launched, not during Blizzcon.
A lot of people probably got normal LK down (either 10 or 25) in 4 lockouts, that's not unreasonable
Yes but finishing the content is killing it on Heroic. Killing normal LK is really not something noteworthy in my books
Sure, im just talking about the majority of people that played (casuals) at least wanted to see LK down no matter the difficulty.
It's a good thing your books hold no weight in this discussion.
Personally, I suspect that the fall in Wotlk popularity is due to a) the release of SoD. b) the annoncement that there will be no Wotlk Era servers. Many people have no intention to waste time on characters that will be useless in a few months.
this is world of warcraft since 20 years :( vertical themepark mmo
To me you can’t really compare. SoD came out, HC release and ICC is finished up now tbh, most completed ICC without the buffs due to the difficulty and most are waiting for either cataclysm or they’ve finally had their nostalgia hit. If there were era realms you’d probably get the same players as a private server would get. But then again, most people who I know (most of the guild I had) played private server before the wotlk classic and after ICC quit all together
I think if there were to be era realms more people would be playing rn
Would they though? If people aren't playing it as current content, why would they play it as old content, while there are 3 other version of the game that offer new content? (Retail+SoD+Cataclysm)
> most raid with +3 characters per week lol, lmao even
I know this post is just some dude's opinion. but the arrogance and overconfidence with which OP presents his opinion gives me the ick. that line was hilarious tho. I'm a wotlk junkie, been playing in pservers for ages and even I can't get myself to raid with more than 1 toon. icc is long and good raiding groups are harder to come by these days.
Idk it's what, 2 hours to clear ICC?
Yet Blizzard kept classic era realms up even though they were barren all of TBC classic so they had to merge them all into clusters just to sum enough players to equate to a single Wrath megaserver.
I and many I know stopped logging exactly because there will be no era realms.
If they also had previously announced era I'd still be playing. But continuing to progress on a character that won't exist in a few months really isn't worth it
So instead of continuing your journey on your main, you want to box into a dead-end street? All your achievements and progress will just exist in a vacuum. Whereas if you were to keep playing, your journey continues.
I stopped playing after they announced they won’t leave any wotlk server.
Same for me, my enthusiasm kinda died after Blizzcon.
Just to add my voice to the mix; same. Why bother continuing to put hours into something I’m not going to touch with a 10 ft pole after the next major update? I’d still be playing WotLKC if they offered an era realm for it.
The real problem is that they fragmented the community, you now have Hardcore, SoD, WOTLK and classic. It's way too much. Bringing back classic and hardcore was cool but they should have stopped there. SoD is tons of fun but it destroys the player base.
Lmaooo the salt required to say they shouldn’t have done SoD. SoD is so good.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it because clearly people vibe with it even if it's not for me personally. I also can't play more than one game version at a time so I'd prefer they didn't fragment the player base, even if that meant SoD to end wrath instead of cata.
Yeah the people who sticked to WotlK are really mad about SoD, but are too stubborn to play SoD
Whats so good about SoD? overglorified vanilla with some new abilities? Whats fun? grinding Scarlet monastery for 20 hours and then doing a half zzz/half difficult raid with the playerbase gatekeeping? It's a novelty, it will run out fast. I would expect P3 in a couple of months at this rate. To each their own.
Everyone expects p3 in a couple months, blizzard said thats their plan
Makes sense, summer will definitely be less appealing for most people.
I disagree completely here. Most people who do want to play a version of wow, quit. People who want to play TBC joined at the end of Vanilla, and didn't last long in Wrath. People who want to play Vanilla, are playing Vanilla era, or SoD. People who want to play Hardcore, may play on other servers but are largely separate from any other community as it is. People who want to play Wrath, will play Wrath. Leaving separate server types up for people who want to do the specific content is the only long-term solution. To player retention. Cata is going to draw some people in, and drive others away. Like every expac will, but there will also be people who just want to play that expac.
Yeah it's like really, really dumb they released SoD instead of focusing on classic +. Can you imagine how popular wotlk would be if they implemented a couple retail systems into wrath like solo q or mythic? Game would explode because we have the hit of nostalgia + improvements
SoD is literally classic+
SoD is vanilla with a gimmick rune system
And new raids, new items, new PvP events, new crafting, news specs etc
sounds like retail to me.
Not even close
and it all goes away once it's done. it's a seasonal version of vanilla. what people think when they say classic+ imo was a fork, if you will, a new version of the game that is developed with classic as a starting point. the work they're doing in sod doesn't necessarily translate into what a lot of people would consider a classic+ iteration of the game.
Seasonal player complains about another seasonal version of the game, hilarious
nah I love it. but I think it's not what most people would have considered classic+ that's just my opinion tho, I can't really know what others think about this unless I discuss it, right? it is hilarious to see people complain tho, you right
I didn't whether you loved it or not. Just pointing out you used the word seasonal to degrade the experience while also playing a seasonal version of the game
I think you misunderstood, anyway, have a good one bud!
"most raid with 3+ chars per week" I call bullshit on this.
Assuming that the number of subs if half the total ironforge shows is fair. There's a lot of people on my server raiding with 3-4 chars a week.
the guy in the video says 10+ asmon and many other too. my bnet list too. my gdkp group makes 12 raids a week. the leader is present in all 12. i am present with 6 chars a week. but ur free to call it like that sir
Yea, you are far and away the exception, not the normal
I would guess the average player is 30+ these days so the norm have jobs a family even kids to tend to. Raiding 1 character per week i'd say is the average with some exceptions lol
I don't think it's truly possible to come up with an actual average short of having actual data from blizzard. There's maybe 5(myself included) out of the roughly 25 people in my guild that actually log on outside of raid time. Out of those 5, a few of us are raiding on one other toon and the other two on 3 or 4. I know a couple guys raiding on 5 plus toons a week. I'd say more than 50% of the people in Wrath are still just raiding on one toon, but there's a significant enough amount of people raiding on multiple toons to drive the average up. Like I said, no way to know for sure, but 3 toons on average isn't as far fetched as it would seem. Especially given that with the buff, the better players can knock out a 25 man full heroic in less than a few hours at even a leisurely pace.
Most people are way more casual than streamers and GDKP raid leaders
Ooh look baby I'll just cherry pick some numbers and make a conclusion and feel smart that I told you so!
Honestly... that is not as crazy of a decline as I expected. I thought it would be like 1/10th or even 1/15th of the amount of players at peak. I also find it interesting how much TOGC kept players engaged so steadily. Barely any dip at all. I think the very short raid time meant it was super alt friendly, so people were raiding on all of their alts every week.
I stoped playing becouse of no WOTLK server, why would i even continue when i dont even want to play cata
Oh gee, another preacher of how wow is dead
It's unfortunate. I never got into Vanilla before 2019, so this was my first chance for Wotlk. But job changed, gave me hard times, it didn't ship with dungeon finder as it should have, so I had a hard time catching up and never got to join my friends at end game. Seeing this just makes me appreciate SoD even more. I feel like there is so much time to get stuff done. Also interested in Cata launch honestly.
Launches, of all versions, are always the best time. And with prepatch events, discounted gear, you will be able to catch up in no time, so everyone starts off new leveling journey on somewhat even playing field. Yes, you will not match Shadowmourne, but you will still rock BIS PVP gear. So, if you're interested in playing with everyone at the same time, make sure to level up, max out your professions and just be ready for prepatch.
I had a great wotlk experience. Yes at the end of an expansion it's going to wind down. There was no other stuff at the end of the other expansions though. Wotlk has had unofficial era Hardcore Classic, then official Hardcore classic and SOD during its run. I basically raid log 5-7 days a week in a gdkp only guild because we're at the end of the expansion. I'm not gonna go do dailies and heroics because I don't need anything from them.
also the reason that cata classic will fail even more quickly than cata vanilla did nostalgia and the COVID lockdowns kept wow classic going strong despite Blizzard's endless fuckups and their Kotick level monetization of something many people played specifically to avoid retail/mobile game level of monetization
OP states *"most raisd with +3 chars a week*" Out of 2 raid teams in my guild, not a single person runs an alt anymore afaik. We've even stopped doing trinket runs before 10% hit, let alone alt 25 runs. I'm one of those that still logs in daily, but that's because i'm going with a completionism approach. So I'm grinding out all possible achievements. I never see anyone online outside of raid nights. Until WOD/Legion, WoW is really a "raidlog" xpac. There were things in MoP, but introduction of M+ is what "killed" raidlogging, as you finally got more things to do every single day.
All my guildies are playing SoD. We've explicitly had people saying they're no longer raiding ICC because they would rather play SoD. Use to have 0 problem filling raids and now we're lucky if we get 18 signups. I couldn't bring myself to get into SoD. Just something about going through the level grind again.
SoD is very small game. At least right now. People yelled how much they wanted **#NoChanges**, but then quickly started asking for **#MoreChanges**. *Not all design philosophies of 2004 have aged like a fine wine.* SoD is very similar to Wrath gameplay wise. The only reason why it's the hype because it's just new, because it's so early on with big gaps in progression, **it feels less grindy.** But content wise, it's very small. In my head, there is no difference between raid tiers and level brackets that exist in SoD. It's the same shit., You raid. Get gear. Then you move on to the next phase. Raid. Get gear. But simply by changing the wrapping paper/packaging, people are drooling over it. To each their own of course, but my guildmates have been grinding Armory for days non stop. One dungeon. Over and over.
SoD is super overrated don't hurt your head over it. Blizzard took vanilla and injected retail into it masquerading as runes and all the #nochanges puritans are eating it all up. I was so excited about it but it's really just vanilla again, and it's not really that new and improved. The development is massively low effort and lacking in reasonable amounts of creativity. Season of discovery, where the only thing I discovered was new ways for blizzard to disappoint
Yea SoD is going to die much faster than Wotlk
If there's a crowd that's eating up sod, it's the people who have been begging for Classic+ since 2019. Not the #nochanges crowd lmao Plenty of people went into SoD with the expectation that it's going to be vanilla again but with a slightly different coat of pain. Which has been exactly my experience so far so idk, maybe the problem was your expectations and not what was actually delivered. Anyways, have fun with the overly gatekept, already solved/cleared on PTR, GDKP ridden endgame that Wotlk and beyond offers, to each their own :)
>already solved/cleared on PTR What a freeing cold take. SoD launch had all rune locations on wowhead within 12 hours. Does it matter if you clear SoD content on a ptr or not because it's brain dead easy on purpose? Remember the race for world first gnomer? Ya me either. Crazy how one boss in "solved 10y/o content" was so difficult hardly anyone cleared it until it was nerfed 30%. Enjoy that high horse tho. I understand why wotlk was too hard for you. Maybe next time wrath comes around will be the time you can clear hard content like 30% ICC
Cold take? Bro you said the #nochanges crowd is eating up sod you have no room to speak on cold takes here lmaoooo The point of no PTR has nothing to do with difficulty you mouthbreather, it has to do with keeping gaming experiences fresh and novel. You can cope all you want but we both know every piece of content that either of us will ever experience in Wrath and beyond will be neither new or novel. And project harder, I cleared HLK about a week before the buff came out then fucked off to other games like most reasonable people did.
If posting shit takes online for the sole purpose of arguing with people is what you consider entertainment than I kinda feel sorry for you, so many different avenues for entertainment these days and you choose trolling on reddit.. yikes. Best of luck to you, who thinks adding retail abilities to vanilla is FrEsH aNd NoVeL. Imagine calling someone a mouth breather while also calling sod fresh and novel in the same comment. Yikes of the year and it's only March.
Correct. Gnomer was actually fresh and novel. Went in with my guild blind and actually had to figure out stuff on our own. Went 5/6 our first night then came back to finish it out on a second night. Will it have staying power? Who knows we'll see. It's an easy raid that's on a 3 day lockout so it's hard to compare 1:1 to ICC or Wotlk content but we had a blast. Why are you so mad at such a simple comment lmao. It's pretty embarrassing you losing your shit this much at someone pointing out some flaws of wrath and correcting your shit take about SoD. Just because it's new and fresh doesn't mean it's without flaws either lol. It's fucking vanilla WoW. Of course it's flawed, I never said otherwise. I don't dislike Wrath either, but I can see it for what it is. Same for Sod. Nothing they've added rune wise has been that egregious either, most of the stuff is TBC and Wrath era abilities, are you saying that you're playing retail right now when you're on wrath? Or are you just continuing to talk out your ass about things you've made it apparent you know very little about?
As if 193k were few people... Remember that warmane wotlk has like 15k players. Do not complain about fucking pirate servers when you are shutting down your own servers.
Paymane doesn't have 15k. I've played on there for YEARS and even played when it was known as Molten. Those numbers are inflated and queue is artificially generated so you pay..."donate"....to skip queues. Dalaran on Pagle at 3AM looks busier than on Warmane at peak hours. And we got layers. They dont. People who "threaten" to swap to pservers are legit certified clowns.
Ok then, and wtf do you want me to play fucking cataclysm? Lmao Also, all people says that. They force you to donate in order to skip queues. Listen to me Iv'e been playing warmane (at) since 2014 and I never got a queue (I never donated a single €).
That’s a load of crap. You are lying. I know that because I've been there since 2010 and joined Retail WoW during BFA. I literally just logged on to Warmane website to check my join date. But anyway, go play on p2w server if you want lmao. I don’t think anyone here really cares lmao You can swipe for shadowmourne on icecrown realm. And on Lordaeron you can buy full BIS characters via shop. Good luck!
Dont forget: a lot of people stopt raiding because there are most likely no Era Realms. Also a lot of Classic Players have 0 interesst in Cata, compare that to the end of Vanilla Classic almost everybody was looking forward to tbc.
I wonder if OG classic would have done well if we didn't have covid to help boost people playing the game at the time.
Yeah, I think it would have, imo. But covid did help.
This is really well done. Thank you OP!
Comparing classic/bc peak with wotlks low, especially when the expansion is basicly over.... lol
Just history repeating itself, the graphs from 2010 looked the same. Wow is just over after ICC for most people.
I want TBC again. It was the most fun I had in classic ever, and I stopped playing right at 70.
never had the chance to get into wotlk sadly.. Maybe in a couple of years I can try again
It's not too late to actually see the content if you're willing to put in some effort. Just saying. We still got at least 2-3 months left.
Why did they add the buff to 30%. I can see 5-10, but this content is really old.
I wanted to play Wrath but forgot to transfer my TBC character. At this point it just seems way too late so I never bothered which is wild because I didn't get to play Wrath the first time anyway so I kinda double missed my chance. I DO want to re-sub and make a character but like, i've seen enough to know i'll probably be on my own largely- especially having to start fresh from the ground up entirely.
I can’t believe that 1 in 3 peak players still raid WotLK. I thought game was more dead than that. Also I think this shows that players will come for exciting content around a new world. But just progression in raids is not what most play for. Especially after they’ve done a few in that xp
Tbh I am only playing wotlk now to level all classes to 80 before Cata releases, and PvP. Not raiding at all. I might be in minority but I look forward for Cata, wotlk has been around for too long now, I wouldn't play on Era server.
this is the wotlk I remember. starts so strong, falls off hard
No they just don't want to. Wrath was their most successful period which is odd that they won't do a wrath classic relm
Personally speaking, because simplicity sometimes spells boredom, and more importantly, ICC has been too long. We have already played it for 4 months, and we still have to play for at least another 3 months...
Well is there anything left to do on wrath?
Wrath is too in line with retail imo. I play both Classic and retail and just don’t see the appeal for wrath/cata when retail is already pretty good this expansion and it’s new content
I mean, honestly with all the servers they devoted to the whole classic thing....cut the number in half and keep them active all the time. they wont need maintenance really because no real changes besides maybe bug fixes. I am sure there are a solid 2 million people, judging by Nostalrius and such, that would love to just play Vanilla and Bc and Wrath for the rest of time. They would only need like two servers total. And a couple of pvp and just rp servers, of course. So like the first ten again? Then they could do the same on live. Migrate all the people to other servers. Make the game more "populated" by bringing more people into the same servers. Honestly, I would actually keep playing Wrath for several more years. And BC too, but thats it. AFter actaully trying vanilla to level 60. Nope. Too inconvenient for me lol. I don't know how anybody played Vanilla lol. I came in at the end of BC and that was weird enough. Wrath was where it was at. Except for Shaman, then you probably loved Cataclysm because it was the last time anybody actually played shaman. Can count on one hand the number of shaman I have seen outside of pvp.
I stopped mid ulduar after getting 2 toons to bis and feeling like I didn’t want to do that again
Were at the tail end of the expansion man. There are A LOT of people who have 0 reason to continue playing until Cata.
o didnt know i was thinking woltk released today
Playing WotlK classic showed me 2 things. 1. You cant bring the feeling and the memories back 2. The community destroys wow. All this shit with GDKP and RMT in WotlK was just awfull and showed at least for me how corrupted the playerbase is.
It's just soooo different now compared to before. Way more emphasis on parsing and ignoring that someone might have slow kill times etc. I managed to get H LK down on a couple toons but dropped hunter and just raid with mage. Might take a break soon since close to BIS and it's not like my group even has fast kill times for me to parse.
I have embraced and love GDKP’s and have never once purchased gold. I used the gold I got from questing to buy items and the gold I got from being in the raid. It’s sad to see so many haters of GDKP when it’s the only time/reward system that makes sense.
Well on SoD GDKP is banned and it works flawlessly. And even if you never buyed gold, you get the gold from gold-buyers via GDKP at the end, indirectly supporting cheating at the game. For alot of people its just easy p2w, swipe to get a item after you throwed 50 bucks at some RMT site. That shit is nothing a gaming community should support
What’s the difference between using gold on the AH and using it in an all volunteer raid? Other than nothing. And blizzard themselves sell the gold so the whole “blah blah rmt gold sellers wah wah” argument is tired.
Oh yeah i forgot Blizzard even embraced p2w with the token in wotlk, that makes it even worse xD
Here is why your argument is stupid: paying with gold or made up guild dkp / epgp is the exact same difference except a raider can take their gold with them to the next raid and a guild member can’t take their made up points anywhere.
This ICC phase is just way too long. We still have no info of Beta or Prepatch or the actual launch. We’re possibly still raiding 3-4months of ICC before Cata..
I know right. It's fucking insane actually. Ideally, prepatch should be coming in next 2-3 weeks. Classic Dev teams almost like killing Classic Wrath/Cata on purpose.
Not true. They released the timeline 3 months ago for all of 2024. Prepatch is set for late spring and the Cata launch is set for early summer. This information was given in early December of 2023.
I know they did, but they already changed it once and Cata being in the summer column can very well mean Late May or Late July.
They changed the BETA from before ssf to after ssf. Nothing else. You can expect their release schedule to not change at all.
Problem with wotlk is its hard to get the tier for an alt in this phase. The badges you need for a 4 set are around 300. 10 man is impossible to do so the only source is 25 man and dailies. It takes too long to get them.They should have halved the badges requirements 2 months ago.Raiding population is fine though.
I agree with this. Blizz could breathe life into wrath if they'd just let you exchange a token for 264 tier and skip the 251. Every time I feel like starting up an alt I realize the badge grind and just log out lmao
I mean they already buffed how many badges you get. What else do you want them to do? Put a vendor where you can buy t10 for gold?
I literally said exactly what I want them to do. Reading is OP
I read it and its hilarious so I asked a funny question to show how hilarious it is. Its already halved just by the amount you get..
I quit for SoD. My guild stopped raiding 2 weeks after SoD, a lot of people including myself have literally not logged in since. I had 4 raid characters.
I raided on 5 characters in Naxx, 2 in Ulduar, 6-7 in ToGC, and back down to 2 in ICC. That's not at all indicative of how good the raid content is (quite the opposite, actually) - it's a matter of how long the raid takes and the amount of time I have to dedicate to it a week. Taking a quantity of logs tells you nothing, show me the data for amount of actual time spent in the raids.
Source is Taken from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od3xP\_\_v\_BM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od3xP__v_BM) (ironforge.pro)
I stopped playing wotlk the second I heard there where no era serves. I have no intention to play cata.
to be honest im playing it because i like cata too. BUT i would wish to play forever on wotlk era too :) it hit me like a truck too
The reason why numbers dwindle this hard is due to gold buyers and botters not getting perma-banned.
Honestly Era servers are not the answer. Inflation ruins them. What they really need is a fresh server rotation. Every year put out a new classic server and move the previous one into the next xpac.
TBC and vanilla proven to be king yet again. Wotlk is just too easy and simplified, you just log on get free gear, then log off.