From 500K to 62K: The Fall of Season of Discovery - Sod Phase 6

[@vankhorne]

SoD seems popping right now. Main Cities are full and lively. Raids' World Buffs drop frequently. You see players across all levels/content. AH is very active. Many people offering their professions' services. Guilds are recruiting. Less people per shard which brought some kind of balance to the Open World population. You can level up without being repeatedly disturbed, but the action of World PvP is just there if you wish for it. SoD is great right now.

[@timelessanimation4435]

copism

[@vankhorne]

​@@timelessanimation4435 If you want to believe it's cope, go ahead. But assure it's way more cope to play a stagnant 20 year old game for the upteenth time. That hype won't last, just like Era, and the "population" numbers will be composed mostly of bots.

[@MikeyJ28]

Now that all of the servers are consolidated, SoD is far from dead. You only need so many players on a server for it to feel alive.

[@xxFairestxx]

Exactly

[@el3ndir97]

Doomers keep dooming. Meanwhile im having best wow adventure for ages

[@MikeyJ28]

@@el3ndir97 It’s just vanilla players not wanting anyone else to have fun.

[@trevorhunka7689]

It's pretty damn dead. Be real brother.

[@xxFairestxx]

@@el3ndir97 agreed

[@MrRums]

Holiday Season bro, retail/anniversary dropped. People always come back to SOD. Also leveling population has been awesome lately. So many dungeon groups even on Christmas day.

[@NOHITJEROME]

good to hear that mr rums. i will say the anniversary server is HELL today. everyone plays on christmas lmao

[@raine2005]

Sod leveling is BIS right now having all runes at level 1. Leveling is so fast and fun

[@ASAPjk01]

Sod is pretty lit right now

[@NOHITJEROME]

p6 is good p7 will be better. but theyve got to make up for p3/p4/p5

[@DH2point3]

P4 and p5 brought people back dude stop crying wolf and just play the game

[@trevorhunka7689]

If by that you mean it should be lit on fire, yes.

[@xMrMayhemx]

​@@DH2point3speak for yourself. with that attitude we never get good games again. to quote a wise man "if you keep eating s**t and tell everyone it's tasty. they will continue to serve you s**t." for me SOD was the final nail in the coffin. i really had a tiny little bit of hope and i got let down again. as always. i finally quit my wow sub in p4. it was so bad! if 'Lizzard entertainment can't handle minor improvements to a 20 year old game. what can they actually do? meanwhile amateurs and hobbyists like ascension and turtle wow have a better experience than the company who actually made the game in the first place. imagine how many things you need to f*** up to get to that point!? what on earth makes you all think they won't f**k it up as they always do? how did this increase in trust come to be for you? because mine only went downhill since SOD p2.. no.. actually since 2016 when they released their last good game. the only 2 upwards trend moments since then were legion and SOD p1. can you name another? because i can't. "one step forward, two steps backwards and make sure to step in the dogs*** twice." that's blizzard's motto i feel like

[@JimSmith-g2d]

@@DH2point3 Can you read lol? They lost a ton of players

[@Macncheesee]

Sunken temple ruined it for me and my whole guild. 60 of us quit the first week into sunken temple

[@cynic256]

i dont feel like sod is dead at all, im leveling alts and the world is full of people. it's doing just fine

[@NOHITJEROME]

it's alive but not p1 level. would like to see them get back to that someday. maybe p7. maybe sod 2

[@cynic256]

@@NOHITJEROME I don't think we will ever see p1 numbers until maybe true classic+. I think player numbers were heavily inflated because of people like me raiding on 6 characters.

[@MikeyJ28]

@@NOHITJEROMEno version of wow will ever sustain the amount of players at the start of something new. retail and era fresh always lose a huge % of players about 6 months in.

[@blackyvertigo]

But then he can’t wail his arms around to a clickbait title.

[@XiusTV]

Ive been raiding weekly and then logging off. back to leveling on the anniversary and waiting for whats next in the next season of wow

[@XiusTV]

Specifically i think it was successful but its definetly on life support from the devs or at least thats the feeling. Its just a testbed for classic+ which means people dont want to play it since its a ptr feeling that you think will just be dead in a couple months

[@AmongRevenants]

I'm currently capping toons in the SoDcore. That way if we get a surprise SoD:TBC. I'll have a full stable of toons to hit the ground running. In the meanwhile I'm having fun. Waiting for new fun to drop. And farming Guru Arena for un listed recipe drops from the chest. Haven't gotten a purple yet. That would be a cool payoff.

[@xMrMayhemx]

​@@AmongRevenantsi think you gotta see a doctor man... you're leveling multiple chars to 60 for the offchance they continue with tbc? not trying to offend you here but that's literally insane. don't waste your life like that man...

[@user-fs5fc1vv7y]

Sod died unofficially when phase 3 dropped

[@NOHITJEROME]

i know everyone hated incursions, but my theory beyond that is the 40-50 is just bleak to begin with. everyone usually spends that time in zf lol

[@Withspoons]

​@@NOHITJEROMEwell they replaced it with incursions. Not a good way to substitute that "bleak" gameplay. Everyone was 50 in the first day. Combine that with forcing 20 man raids and sod died quick. The developers are out of touch.

[@Madherk]

My guild died when it went from 10man to 20man content in p3

[@jamesofallthings3684]

@@Madherk Because it was full of morons.

[@venomus9286]

I still enjoy playing SoD and find it much more engaging than fresh realms, which feel sluggish and slowed down to me. However, the player base has definitely declined, especially after fresh realms launched. Doing dailies used to be bustling with activity, but now it's much quieter-though it's still possible to find groups and there are active guilds raiding. It does feel like the game is slowly declining, but I hope it stays active enough for me to experience the upcoming raids.

[@Madherk]

So my main is alliance on crusader strike, I wanted to try a horde and can’t make one on crusader strike so I chose wild growth and it’s pretty dead. Every rare for a quest is just up.

[@NOHITJEROME]

that's the leveling for sure, there's no competition, but i know most people will not hit 60 that way. SM saved me in 2019 and ZF

[@blckkeef]

make a horde toon on a pvp server and use the free transfer go to crusader strike I have both factions on crusader strike

[@Madherk]

@@blckkeef thank you

[@krashenburn]

im pretty Shadowstrike AU is the server you want! it xfers to crusader strike

[@rickardnilsson-f4j]

I still play SoD and enjoy it, but Blizzard killed SoD at phase 3 by making ST 20man raid instead of 10 where i had my friends and our 10man raid setup. But most of them quit when we had to find pugs for our raids

[@NOHITJEROME]

10mans just hit different - bfd was an insanely good experience imo

[@umbralphase]

i just came back from p3. The leveling is hit or miss when finding dungeons but with the fact they give you ALL the runes now makes leveling alts 10000x better. Another side note: I managed to get into a pug full 40 man AQ on xmas eve and we downed c'thun with ease and lots of people were happy and walking out with loot

[@Viktor-uv9fr]

I like the fact that SoD is seasonal, that my characters are dead when SoD is over. Then when I want to play wow again, maybe I play classic or retail or I wait for classic+. Leveling up the character, at least a class you've never played, is a lot of fun. SoD earlier phases was great, hopefully classic+ is that and even better

[@NOHITJEROME]

seasonal is cool IF we are getting it every 4-5 months. seasonal for 1 1/2 years is a harder sell. does path of exile have anything for seasonal servers that carries over? MAYBE if we got cosmetics, or titles, or something that kept going

[@dTheHammerb]

My fear is that they'll wipe/reset the anniversary servers too. TBC will come out and once that's done everyone will be screaming for Wotlk. We'll play through Wotlk than Blizz will pull the rug right out from underneath us again.

[@georgem589]

Anniversary will likely go TBC and Blizzard will keep the classic vanilla server ad the only vanilla server

[@vankhorne]

When people realize how Vanilla: •Doesn't have increased XP. •Has plenty of borderline unviable specs. •Has the old, same Raids & content. •Requires unemployed-levels of grinding, like Rank 14 of PvP. They will come back back to SoD, crying.

[@Bofumforyou]

We ain’t coming back I promise the only reason we classic Andy’s played sod was because it was the closest thing to vanilla out that was on official server at the time

[@vankhorne]

@@Bofumforyou ?? Official Classic Era (Vanilla) servers are up since 2019, so what are you trying to say?

[@Bofumforyou]

@@vankhorne exactly what you are saying. I made it pretty clear

[@vankhorne]

​@@Bofumforyou "we classic Andy’s played sod was because it was the closest thing to vanilla out that was on official server at the time" How SoD was the closest thing to a Vanilla server when you had ACTUAL Vanilla servers? By your logic, you should've never played SoD then. If you enjoy Vanilla so much, you should have stayed in the 2019 Era servers, right?

[@heatherrowland3785]

Blizzard needs to merge Hardcore into SOD so folks who don't want end game content can still enjoy the rune character builds but from a leveling perspective on the same mega server as everyone else, maybe the HC characters have a gold shimmer on them or something to set them apart...

[@blitzme99]

crusader strike is hopping every single day with a healthy player base of 20K on each faction. Raiding is healthy and alive and well. Blizzard keeps dividing the player base with all these different versions of the game

[@NOHITJEROME]

im on cs too. no doubt having 4-5 versions of wow is a bad thing. dont know how they put the genie back in the lamp though

[@johnd2946]

The fact every major WoW streamer on the planet + many other huge following streamers are doing Hardcore right now doesn't help SOD's popularity.

[@aweisen1]

That's a weird video. I've never had more fun in SoD other than phase 1.

[@saitoh99]

Will classic sod lead into tbc and wotlk ?

[@GilgameshApproves]

good question i'd like to know that as well as im considering to give it a try. Which phase are they at now, Naxx?

[@YOUTUBE_CHRIS]

Imagine if the game looked like the trailer

[@Niko_3D]

PvE server on EU was alive as it gets. Never had issues finding groups from level 18 to 60, pugs fill up fast too.

[@justsomeguy4422]

the problem was making phase one only 25 levels. instead of an actual phase one like in real classic. and then everything after level 25 did not feel good to play.

[@americanvirtues]

They turned SoD into retail, i canceled my entire subscription and started playing on Turtle wow

[@Abrin32]

This was a choice that Blizzard made. I'm sick of being corralled by this company and as soon as SoD is over I will stop giving them money. They knew the effect of launching Classic fresh and hardcore at the same exact time that people should be doing the AQ war effort. They're not stupid and they do not care about players or content creators. They are evil.

[@austinkufirst]

The AQ release was just too much disaster for me, each phase seems to have less blizz-involvment than the next.

[@ryanfacklam3805]

The game is fun as shit. I love that they re-itemize items to be more appropriate but who expects the person to play something that’s almost identical for a whole year.

[@jgalla5549]

I think they should let you copy SoD Characters to Era, and make it so it just deletes your runes and SoD exclusive items, and gives you the era versions of the items instead. If that's too much work for Blizz to do, just let you copy a template pre-raid bis geared version of your character and class w/o any SoD stuff. This would be a good thing for the future of Era, would help undo the damage that $35/$15/$5 character copies did from back at TBC classic launch, and how people ignored Era and lost their vanilla characters forever because they had no reason to expect Era to be as successful as it is now back then.

[@brenneisenchevy981]

im sure there are some people that care what happens with their charakter after SOD but doubt people that played TBC were more hyped cause they belived that they will arrive in Pandaria eventually

[@hubbibar5725]

I think Heroic Dungeons with Badges and drops from former raids would be absolut cool!

[@NOHITJEROME]

i thought we'd get heroics p5, surprised we didn't. would be cool to do all the dungeons but with a new twist

[@xMrMayhemx]

they barely can handle one raid while only using existing assets. do you think they can handle making actual content? because i don't and they give you no reason to.

[@gbaby447]

LVLing is DEAD but raiding current raids is alive and well

[@TheCodSaint]

This hasn’t been my experience at all tbh. This is the most alive the SoD world has felt in ages, since they did the level 1 rune brokers. As a mage that sits afk selling portals, 3/4 my portal sales are now levelers on fresh toons and it’s like rapid fire sometimes. In the last two days alone, I’ve seen groups forming in trade/LFG for everything from RFC to the dragons for Ony attunement. There’s even gnomer buffs going out again. Maybe there’s less max levels raiding cause obviously everyone hates AQ, but there’s definitely been a new life injected into the game recently that’s palpable/noticeable. I know you’ve been playing HC Onlyfangs, so it might not feel that way on the off days you hop into sod

[@filipjesic7794]

I found a Deadmines group within 5 minutes at like 4am

[@varietygamer7859]

I started sod before phase 6 came out and I honesty had no problem leveling

[@TheRealNenharm]

Merry Christmas Jerome!

[@NOHITJEROME]

merry christmas nenharm, you having a great day?

[@TheRealNenharm]

@NOHITJEROME hell yeah, you gave me a great gift with this video

[@trevorgibson9542]

Played sod alot from p1 until p5. As you touched on once it was clear that no actual new content was being released, guild disbanded and I quit shortly after. The P3 lull being too long, into just molten core with some dailies, followed by just bwl/zg and some ranking was the end of it. Nothing to be excited about, not enough reasons to come back. At best they're showing that there MIGHT be a new raid, which at this point I won't hold my breath for. Wouldn't be surprised if the new SM raid is a rehashed SM Cath with 1 boss. EDIT - I have been messing around with alts with the full rune kits however, which is fun to level solo with. But very infrequently.

[@adammac7201]

Fresh is popular right now and I did hit a 60 there but farming 30 dungeons for a pair of shoulders that still haven’t dropped is really burning me out. I went back to sod the last couple days and really enjoying starting new character with all the runes and the increased leveling speed. Still feels exciting like there’s so much content I haven’t tried yet. I’ll probably raid once a week on fresh but go back to sod for the fun.

[@elkitesaga999]

They sold us there were suppose to be new raids, dungeons and zones that was undeveloped that will be developed.

[@mattmckern3644]

Merry Christmas Jerome ! Hope all is well

[@raine2005]

So, half a million active raiders in phase 1 does not mean half a million active players. The level cap was level 25. You could literally create a character in the morning and raid with it later that night. Some people like myself had 8 different raiding characters. I’d say on average people had 2-3 raiding characters. So half a million divided by 3 = 135,000 players. Now, most players only have 1, maybe 2 active raiders cause it’s a lot harder to get to max level and get raid ready with prebis. As far as raiding, this phase seems a lot busier. I have no problem finding pug raids for my alts. Although that said my guild mates only seem to raid log. Outside of raiding my guild only has a couple active members on. I think this is inevitable. Sod has been out for 13 months now. We should be headed into TBC but due to extensive long phases we are only a few weeks into AQ. People just get burned out. Of course blizzard releasing fresh classic servers hasn’t help. Lots of players left sod to go there but I get the feeling they will come back after the shine of newness wears off. In fact it’s already happening. Classic anniversary went from 10 layers to 5 and it’ll steadily drop to 1 in the next few months

[@danielmeans737]

@NOHITJEROME You're missing a big part of the frustration of SoD. It was set up in the first 2 phases as this casual season with 10 man raids, but then Blizzard completely flipped the script on us and tossed out the 10 man raiding scene to the curb. I do think you completely hit the mark on their being no real direction for SoDs future. Personally, i really enjoy SoD and apart from pvp I prefer it to just regular vanilla, but I find myself and most players i play with on the anniversary realms because we know they will progress to tbc and wrath

[@SlappyBagofdonuts]

8 min click bait video. 10 man and you could get to 25 in 1 day made 400k raiders easy. When isn't wow classic about the end game wow always has been

[@dimitriosderas7581]

Wild Growth EU is still packed.

[@BobbyGT3]

Just came back after quitting in phase 3. The ONLY reason i even considered it was because of the rune vendor. If you think finding a group for leveling dungeons were tough, how about for the mid level runes that required a group? Impossible unless you got a carry. Game went from extremely alt and new player friendly to nearly impossible for a new player to enjoy. They are back on track i think (which is why im trying it again) but we need to know what the future holds very soon.

[@NOHITJEROME]

the rune vendor is an amazing idea, it could have come 4 months ago honestly. i believe p7 is going to be the closest thing we get to p1. but i also believe they HAD to announce p7 early because without the hope of new content a lot of people would quit for good

[@Mr.Notorious]

I actually just came back to the game after p2 two days ago. Been having a ton of fun and am almost 60. I plan on warrior tanking raids.

[@metalelf2000]

on crusader striker with my lvl 56 shadow priest, been actively playing for the past 2 months consistently.

[@canderz22]

are you horde or alliance and is one more populated than the other? Ive heard if you want to play alliance you play wg and horde you play cs?!

[@karolnie212]

Here is what i noticed, a lot of guilds in sod including mine are dad's guilds, i belive a game cant get a lot of players if its not interesting for younger player base. Most ppl in my guild have jobs and families, meeting together twice or three times a week and enjoying time is what is sod about for me. When phase coming out its time to spend few more hours and rush content and after that just go back to raid logging and enjoy both, life and wow.

[@adamaldo]

Been playing SoD since phase 1 and never quit. In the long run, it was great to consolidate these realms, I would have liked it done sooner tbh. My wish upon a copium star is for SoD to continue into TBC and Wrath in the same way that anniversary is going to do. However, I’m pretty realistic and my expectation is that we will retire in these servers after phase 7 or 8 and SoD will be for the few that enjoy the hybrid play of classic + retail with runes and QoL changes. I just can’t find the strength to level another anniversary character after all the time put into SoD. I am so happy they FINALLY made runes available at level 1 so I may even make another alt. This should have happened sooner as well.

[@1776huckleberry]

I was looking forward to PVP in SOD and it just never happened.

[@matercheff]

My server seems huge

[@NOHITJEROME]

CRUSADER STRIKE? yayaya

[@Tsunamiieh]

It died when they decided to lock you for 3 months at level 25. If they re-did it less lock time and tbc within a year that would make it interesting.

[@1776huckleberry]

PVP was AWFUL at 25 if you weren't a druid, hunter, paladin, or priest.

[@TheMakki]

I honestly can't believe how bad you've missed the mark here. SOD's biggest achievement was how alt and raid friendly it was in phase 1. Getting 25, picking up the runes, and raiding twice a week was easy and fun. Scaling the raid sizes to 15 and 20 put too much stress on the "Dad guilds". We were forced to try and combine other raid teams that were awkward sizes for the 20 man. Throw in 0.5tier grind, pvp grind, and reputation grind -- it just became less and less fun. Tldr; 10man raids 2x a week, runes, 0.5 gear, and rep should have been account wide. I would love to be playing my main and my 2 alts but they are too far behind to make it worthwhile.

[@Blackmage169]

On wild growth, Na. Horde side legit feels so dead. rerolled alliance and even there is a 30 min deal to even find a group for current content, god forbid you need Sm or something.

[@brenneisenchevy981]

Having a great Time playing SOD for sure there was more hype at launch but this is just how new releases work.

[@Ghandii]

personally i stopped playing sod because of 1. doing all the aq bug farming was way too much work for something im not even going to get 2. i heard aq isnt even fun and not enjoyable (idk how true that is however) and 3. because classic hardcore came out and the hype is there at the moment and what i like about classic which is leveling is the main point in hardcore and in sod its just raid logging

[@Williaem00]

I was so invested in SOD until phase 3. I haven’t gone back. I played anniversary realm when I launched in November and there’s so many people playing it. Not sure f want to level/ play SOD.

[@Darkcelestrian]

Phase 1 gdkps, phase 2 meta shift favoring hunters and magic classes (mostly hunters) instead of rogues which is where I dipped, incursions, and sunkin temple apparently was horribly overtuned. Then recently wow classic fresh servers dropping around start of current phase

[@UP_ALL_KNIGHT247]

Sod is the best iteration of wow ever imo, I leveled up with the phases so I never had the issue of not being able to find groups. With that being said, there's 100 ways they've increased the leveling experience and most classes can solo elite quests and some even can solo dungeons. With the increases to exp and individual damage solo leveling has never been better. If someone can't make it to end game they would probably quit soon after reaching it anyways. This has always been a marathon game. If someone wants to hit endgame instantly they can buy boosts on the newer versions of wow

[@Blackmage169]

It really is the best wow ever, agreed.

[@Tidus99tv]

SOD is seasonal server your character should be non playable after the season ends everyone knew what they where getting into when creating there characters. They could just give you basic set of gear and put your characters on a era server. As for the population people are raiding on like 4-5 diffrent characters and the leveling zones are just pretty much peoples alts

[@lilzenzay]

merry christmas bro

[@lifeisatrip8993]

I played Fresh for the last two weeks, now I'm back at SOD. As a Shadow and Ret main SOD is miles a head of Era. (BTW there are a lot of new people leveling in SOD again).

[@mark102uk]

Announcing sod tbc would bring a ton of people back

[@jnero8141]

TBC is the only thing I am waiting for with the new fresh release, a TBC sod, in any form, would keep me around for sure. Even if they took away current runes and changed things somehow.

[@mark102uk]

@@jnero8141 I know a lot of people in the same position, I've been trying to level on the new realms, but after playing sod, it feels really dull. Hopefully we can copy char's into the new realms when they progress to tbc, however my char's are on opposite factions atm and on pvp realms, so not sure how that would work.

[@milesfargo5714]

If fresh wasn't out sod would still be lit.

[@xxFairestxx]

I’m having a blast on SOD

[@jdg_9]

They just did too much honestly. Classic needed some minor twinks at best.

[@mantequillas1278]

I'm still enjoying sod. I tried classic classic and I just couldn't do it. I'll eventually have to play it once sod is done to be ready for tbc. My hope is that we get sod tbc as a waiting room for classic +. That way, I can avoid classic classic all together.

[@NOHITJEROME]

sod tbc would be incredible. are there any raids / dungeons you think they could add in tbc that would be compelling? if we are already getting kara crypts in sod

[@Holyshirtpro]

I mean p4 and 5 had big resurgence as well after p3 . I think p7 will be huge

[@CLOWEN2010]

I’ve been enjoying sod still, been playing wow since 2005…hope sod makes it thru the entire cycle because sod is the end for me with wow

[@DarkKniteZ]

Sod is actually amazing. Idk why it is dying

[@NOHITJEROME]

sod is great i think it's not decisions made now that hurt it. it was the first 4 phases

[@johnd2946]

@@NOHITJEROME Once it comes back as Classic+ fully completed it'll be great. SOD was an extended beta test. I think they'll do a good job when they add what worked + tweaks and remove what the community hated.

[@xMrMayhemx]

reasons? easy! because phases 2, 3 and 4 weren't that great and we wouldn't wait like half a year for the next patch, high hopes, constant disappointment, regular fuck ups, each and every single piece if content was either wonky or at least didn't work properly, overtuned phase 2 nightmare gold fucked up the ecomomy up until phase 3, nightmare ultra speed leveling for only the ones who were fast enough to notice or got told, balancing was off the charts and probably still is. i played enhancer shaman and was one hitting players on my level in pvp and was winning 1v3 situation more often than i lost them. it was so disgusting i felt bad for playing shaman in pvp because it just was too easy. stormstrike + autohit + crit +windfury was enough dmg in 1 single hit to one shot everything but warrior or paladin. it's like no one of the classic dev team ever looked at shamans and how stupidly OP they were... poor alliance... i'm pretty sure when i grinded my warsong and arathi rep i personally made at least a few allys quit SOD for good. I'd like to go sod again but all my friends lost trust in the project, so did i and i won't go play wow solo. that's just not on the table anymore since the magic is gone. now i'm in the situation that i don't have a wow subscription after years and years because i quit retail after legion and i finished all classic content a few times now. meaning i would have to resubscribe and that barrier of entry is big enough to require an actual reason. running AQ and NAX for a third time now isn't a good one and so far no one could give me one in general. partially because if 80% of SOD leaves and the 20% who stay tell you it's still good you don't really believe the last guys on the server with the biggest bulls*** tolerance out of everyone who tried it.

[@wiegraffolles9822]

Your next video should be on the fall of Anniversary and how there's only 20k raiders! Very low for something so hyped up. That's only 10k more than the vanilla servers that have been going on for over 5 years.

[@bowserplaylist899]

It's been up just over a month and most aren't even 60 yet. Raids been open 2 weeks. LMAO

[@NOHITJEROME]

it's just a long road to 60. i believe they might add a level boost at some point (50/50 chance). it takes 150-200 hours to hit 60 or more, and there have only been 34 days since launch. 4hr/day = 170 hours, so even a tryhard at 4hr/day wouldn't be 60 yet

[@NOHITJEROME]

@@bowserplaylist899 yeah even if you played 4hr/day it'd be unrealistic to be 60 yet. 60 took me 185 hours with 0 timewaste

[@fritzschnitzmueller3768]

Yeah anniversary is not looking good. Only reason I play is for TBC, cba bothering with that lame no changes classic. Cope is hilarious. Funny how sod is always supposed to be dead while it retains a very stable pop considering the late phase. But how dare someone even try to question anniversary

[@matercheff]

I’m back to SOD it’s fun doing the honor grind. I will say p3 really dropped the ball either way leveling

[@Tsuketsu]

You can go 1-60 in less than week to a few days. lvl up as fast as possible to get to the first set of incs, quest/dungeons, till gnomer+new incs>high lvl incs+BRE. and your an ez 60.

[@cuzzourt35]

Dang. I just resubbed for sod after taking a break right before BWL. Anniversary is so much more of a time sink and don't think i can bring myself to go back to that ever.

[@jimgonewild909]

U trolling bro. Sod is thriving and with kharazan raid on the horizon and scarlet crusade raid coming. Thousands of people will come back for those 2 raids alone.

[@Beheruth]

The biggest problem of sod is content creators..there is none big one playing it or making any video of it..I return to SoD like a month ago and still cant figure out the catch up systems cause there is no content. It aint about innovation..hardcore and anniversary aint innovative shit still leading cause there is content there is drama to watch

[@Chorge]

Feel bad for the wow classic team for having to deal with such a jaded and divided community. I'm still having fun, just got to ashenvale incursion on my second shaman and there's plenty of people and even 60s helping out and giving out profession mats for quests. Can you really blame them for not adding much to 60 raids when they overhauled the level up raids (especially ST was fucking awesome) and all they got for feedback was "season of retail" and "this is not muh classic" and an insane population drop heralded by content creators doomsaying and being overly negative.

[@OpPenguin24]

I logged back in on my 35 pally to check out sod again and not 10 minutes into questing, a Chinese/Taiwanese botter came by with his hunter bots and ganked me. So ya until Blizzard makes an anti cheat I'm done with classic.

[@jamesofallthings3684]

Pretty poor timing. Tons of people came back to SOD.

[@TarnishedVagabond]

Still more players than fresh

[@blckkeef]

phase 3 kill sod from the begining 40-50 happening incursions loops,then finally getting lv50 and the only thing to do is sunken temple which was broken on launch, not to mention cata came out in the middle of the phase AND 4 MONTHS OF NO CONTENT. BLIZZARD HAS TOO MANY PLATES SPINNING. I just quit sod like last week between my guild not taking sod serious anymore now that fresh is out and my schedule doesn't allow me to start raid at 9pm est.

[@kalejarmar3187]

we had a good run, I never got draw into classic because , despite the charm of the old zones, i think the gameplay was outdated for 2024. So the runes were appealing... but lets face it : the dungeons and raids mechanics are old and boring .But I conceed that modern gameplay and strats might be too excessive and an ADHD nightmare . So there is that .

[@NOHITJEROME]

dungeons/raids need reworks more than the gameplay imo. sod gameplay is good, it works, let's see if they can rework the raids/dungeons and give us new content that isnt just retail 2

[@bootnscoot5265]

Dead? No. Waning? Absolutely. Numbers don't lie, sure, unfortunately Blizzard doesn't release numbers. Meaning any speculation about SoD server pops are pulled entirely from nothing. If i had to render a guess as to what's happening, it's making the same mistake as retail. It's shooting everyone to max and putting the core leveling experience to the wayside, the thing classic is remembered fondly for. I don't hate it and it has some interesting changes, however it just comes across as scuffed retail (especially now).

[@tiltnmafks]

Sod died cause it's been a year and there has been zero new raids lol

[@notafortnitegamer]

If its not as good or hype as phase 1 sod then why bother

[@bspus]

I enjoyed it a lot and even stuck through phase 3. But the power creep has consistently grown to the point where the open world is a joke now and so are dungeons. We were never supposed to take on 2-3 elites our level (well, at least not every class). And pvp balance got worse instead of better. That is what soured me to the game, not the lack of new content. I still raid log and will check out naxx and the new content, but the enthusiasm is gone. Casual anniversary levelling is more fun right now. Looking forward to TBC and wrath which I actually never did

[@Chickentendersaregood91]

Sod is the only good classic game out at the moment

[@NOHITJEROME]

anniversary is fun if you like warriors (you dont like warriors do you lol)

[@AmongRevenants]

I am the last GM on my deadworld aka The Lash. Shuttered since May but was an ultra low pop realm up until TWW. Most of folks remaining on deadworlds are mostly old school wow, altoholics, boxers and just lone wolves doing a game minus social clutches and impediments to their leveling. And zero of us are counted as the SoDcore because raiding is no longer a paradigm, from our chosen circumstances, gaming on a sparse frontier of SoD. Raid logs are the only way we can track classic/retail. And should always be seen as the minimum of players currently enjoying content on any realm. And in the first couple phases. Everyone was running multiple toons through 10mans. Or half-raids. Until P3 put 20 man raids into play. A half million players based on raid numbers, and multiple level 25 toons. Maybe between 100K-150K people actually showed up for the Sodcore, P1, and 60K plus, gamers, made SoD their goto niche game. Like a hot, hot chocolate, on a cold winter day.

[@AmongRevenants]

60K instant SoDcore fans, in P1. Would of likely accounted for at least 5 toons raiding if not closer to 10 alts raiding. The Sodcore alone would of accounted for 300K-600K in P1 were the numbers only hit 500K raiding toons total, or abouts there. Average it out to 7 alts per SoDcore account in P1. 420K toons from the 60K currently playing SoD. The numbers tell the tale. Trust them.

[@AmongRevenants]

And only the sweaty track their numbers. That never occurred on the Lash in any phase to any degree. Most of the day 1 mega guilds. Many didn't even know the support addons gave a player. Let alone tracking their raid numbers. To most in P1 it was about having fun and leveling.

[@BOGman221]

I think something else that could help at this point in SoD with Phase 7 being naxx which should be a good bit of people back id like to see them add at least MC gear and maybe some BWL gear to catch people up I still enjoy sod im hopeful they do some cool things with naxx and the Scarlet Crusade and Kara Crypts stuff

[@aaronrodgers9202]

I have actually seen a surge of low level players and tons of people leveling up forming dungeon groups because of the new level 1 all rune system. It's undoubtedly much lower population ever since p3 dead zone happened.. But there is still plenty enough players to get things done and form groups.. My guild alone has 6 full 20+ player raid teams that raid 3 times a week and I know of a bunch of other guilds with lots of raid groups as well.. The people who love it are sticking with it

[@aaronrodgers9202]

Also blizzard said they aren't just abandoning sod and there will be a permanent place for our sod characters

[@Tomaz_810]

I'm still enjoying sod. I think it was always just an experiment for classic plus and now that it's getting to the end of the classic timeline blizz are probably trying to conserve ideas and content for classic plus and aren't too sure on how to end SoD. I think it's looking like we will still see a few new things but ultimately the population will steadily decline to a point when there isn't much pressure on devs for SoD to continue. Personally I think it's a better version of classic and think any1 going back to suffer classic fresh are psychos 😄 but as you say population doesn't lie.

[@AmongRevenants]

If you can't tell by now. I play an ungodly amount of SoD. 6 to 12 hours a day, since day 1. And still there's never enough hours in a day to accomplish my dailies. I'll stay here on the The Lash until we receive our final destination at season's end. Then I'll transfer everything to Wild Growth. Whatever our new server. Many will quit at season's end. If only 5% of WG's pop hung out after SoD. It's be 10, 20 times more people then I am conditioned to deal with currently. I'll just start up The Defiant guild there and everyone who missed out on raid content during the season. Can enjoy it in our afterlife. Or on our brand new SoD/classic plus progression servers. There's no future for Blizz in rehashing old hash. And Blizz has all of 2025 to forge Classic Plus out of the SoDcore. We're the 60k hungering for true fresh wow. The backbone of #bigchanges

[@Kivrus]

I like PvP And there is no party for the blood moon event on living flame EU , alliance So it is pretty much dead , at least for me

[@hansbystrom9983]

The problem with the WoW community making videos about how the game is broken, is that the community itself is the problem 99,99% of the time. No matter how much content they put out, y'all will IMMEDIATELY do your best to take all the fun out of it. The soulsucking min-maxing, along with a toxic attitude, is ruining the game no matter what the developers do. We should have known after Classic launched in 2019; the devs held up their side of the bargain. The community, however, did everything in their power to ruin the game. Everybody is doing everything so perfect and minmax to the point where no sense of wonder and fun could ever exist. Everyone has full epic, all the correct enchants, all the world buffs, etc. It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO boring. Do you even enjoy it yourselves? Holy shit. Until the community learn to do play the game IN THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME, this problem will never ever go away. It is a shitty community. So instead of whining about realm population or content, go make some friends in Azeroth, act kind to others, play weird specs, do world PvP, help your friend tame a ZG tiger, or just hang out outside of Orgrimmar and have a good time. But the seccond you demand full enchants, world buffs, "gs" or whatever f-ing bullshit you're always up to, you have already lost. SOD is only "dead" because the minmaxers have figured out the perfect way to play the game, which was never the point of the game. Let that sink in.

[@matercheff]

JEROME

[@NOHITJEROME]

MATER MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND

[@DruidSage-j6h]

Not dead at all , i made a video few days ago and i was shocked at the numbers i saw in Org , it is very much alive , 20k+ raiders is insane for 1 server considering vanilla world is made for 3/4 k players or smth like that . Leveing in wow is a meme btw, just a time consumer and pointless , if someone wants meaningful leveling experience i recommend Hardcore servers , fresh is just boring unless you want to pvp in open world . Anyway SOD is far from perfect but the pop is good and closest thing we have to classic + rn .

[@leemack5341]

its definitely far from dead haha, especially now that all runes are purchasable for 1c each

[@California.951]

My server ain’t dead I’m on wild growth my guild raids every Saturday and Sunday 7:30 server time and Monday night’s off-night raids server is very populated with players as well we r all waiting for Nax phase 7 and we r clearing Bwl and AQ we cant wait for Nax phase I’m only 26 years old and love World of Warcraft and have been playing Sod since launch and will never stop go back to retail i like classic era and Sod ⬇️

[@AkuOkeSipJozsh]

Im out when p3 come

[@joshbelton2689]

cookin up some bangers for 2024? you mean 2025? haha good shit brother cant wait

[@pwndering_my_orb]

I would love to play SoD but less people + no summon stones (yes there are warlocks) I mean typical thing for Deadmines or even Stockades... no joke... it's 15min at least until people GATHER till the last person joined... someone keep questing here... deliver that.. I don't wanna wait 20 Mins for everyone on every single dungeon...

[@derricklynch4700]

sod is fine but i guess u get to make a video out of it. lvl is good with all runes droping. a lot of new alts being made. bag prices going up.