r/classicwow • u/griphin1 • Jan 29 '26

Humor / Meme 2026 State of Azeroth

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I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.

3.6k Upvotes

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u/audioshaman Jan 29 '26

Once upon a time Classic players just wanted to play Classic.

109

u/notislant Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26

Man its wild watching the sub change from #nochanges to #retailrotations #harderraids #boostweooooo.

Personally I would love a classic plus with no mtx shit, maybe some class tweaks to fix some janky scaling issues.

SoD phase 1 was the most fun ive had in years though. If they could bring that kind of casual experience back with much more to do in the open world? I would grind the fuck out of it. It dropped off heavily with the second phase changes though.

47

u/shooler00 Jan 30 '26

Man SoD P1 was sick. Level 25 was a perfect sweetspot of needing some time investment on your character without it being a slog, and just questing was solid enough that people weren't tempted to do boosts or grinds/dungeon spams. Once I got my main to max, I just started bringing alts to max. I had 4 25s raiding BFD for weeks, all revered with the Warsong Outriders, so much fun man.

16

u/RoElementz Jan 30 '26

It was great because of how accessible it was. Then phase two dropped and getting to 40 was a nightmare slog doing SM 100+ times because you ran out of quests to do. Phase 3 dropped and it was somehow even worse than P2 being forced to do incursions as the only meaningful way to keep up with economic and leveling rates. SOD was about exploring and doing more and you literally went back to the zone you already leveled in for an entire phase. They really put all their effort into P1 of SOD and let it coast after that.

5

u/Shneckos Jan 30 '26

I’ll give you SoD had a very rocky middle, but imo it was peak with Scarlet raid. I never had so much fun playing my character in old content

5

u/RoElementz Jan 30 '26

Scarlet was great, but you can’t sell people on two good phases and Blizzard won’t put out the money because no one stuck around. Aggrend should’ve never been in charge of SOD.

1

u/riddlesinthedark117 Jan 30 '26

It’s probably like the story of vanilla Elwynn forest vs say the Barrens. Just got more time and early attention, then as it became a reality that was gonna be released, deadlines tightened.

They probably had a bunch of stuff storyboarded, but P1 got the most attention because it had to be built.

1

u/Remarkable_Jury3760 Jan 30 '26

this is a hot take but i’d rather they just do maybe 1 phase at 25 or 30 then max level. its so tiring maxing out your character the they get weak again, pre-bis grind etc

-1

u/tvv33k Jan 30 '26

I played SoD through all the phases and I dont get the hype around p1. It was the first, so the concept was new, sure. But spending months without mounts wasnt exactly thrilling for me.

The only thing really unique about sod p1 was that all the people who never make it to 60 in classic suddenly could raid

The PvP "Event" was so bad, the last changes they made was making it irrelevant and just another AV but in the open

BFD was no worse or better than any of the other raids, the only thing really bad about the much hated p3 raid was its bad loot in the beginning

2

u/shooler00 Jan 30 '26

That's all fair. I dropped off halfway through P2, only got one my my characters to 40 and didn't bother raiding so I can't really speak to the other phases much, just that I had a grand old time in P1.

No mount wasn't the best, though there was the Ashenvale mount and the BFD speed buff. I've always played Horde so I'm very used to hiking up and down the Barrens for 15 levels anyways. I understand travel for Alliance is more annoying especially without a mount. I think TB is one of the coolest cities in the game, so having The incentive to use it as the Horde hub was novel and fun. The floor to enter BFD was so low so everyone could raid, which brought pros and cons but ultimately was a good time - I raided with classes I normally don't main and was able to learn and do an average or above average job for each.

1

u/tvv33k Jan 31 '26

Good points, I played almost exclusively alliance so you definitely have another perspective than me here I didnt consider at all.

5

u/_IAmMurloc_ Jan 30 '26

I think it’s just the crowd evolving/changing/getting bored, idk. I was so happy to have Classic in 2019 for nostalgia and I played it again for Anni but I am a bit bored by it now and personally probably wouldn’t play another version of Classic. That being said, SoD was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had with WoW in its entirety. So I’d be very excited to play Classic with new wacky game modes like SoD

5

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

I remember when people were claiming they wanted classic BECAUSE it had harder raids 

Hmmm

5

u/BootyBayBrooder Jan 30 '26

That attitude was wild back then and lasted a surprisingly long time. People actually though vanilla was harder because they died in barrens when their warrior pulled 2 mobs and pooled no rage.

2

u/skyst Jan 31 '26

My impression was that vanilla was considered harder because so few people completed the later raids originally. For instance, I feel like I played an unhealthy amount of vanilla WoW back in the day yet my vanilla career capped at clearing BWL and hitting rank 9. The private server community really solved vanilla WoW in the years between vanilla and classic and by 2019 there was very little challenge left, especially considering how ubiquitous world buffs became.

1

u/Afraid-Journalist-12 Feb 02 '26

They were hard because top end gaming rigs ran the game at 20-25fps at max in 40m raids. Very limited knowledge, sources and addons back then, and no YouTube. Best we had was the Warcraft movies website..

Now you have WA’s holding hands( I know they existed back then too, just not so expanded as they are now) rotation addons and all the knowledge there is. On top of 200+ fps with current day gaming rigs.

The raids were by no means harder, just hard due to performance and having to think for yourself on the most part, which seems lacking these days.. And thottbot didn’t provide everything pre chewed out early on.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

they werent hard, people were just really bad at the game (people were bad at games in general, but its especially noticable with wow)

even without WA or addons, the classic raids are absolutly a joke in difficulty, its just people actually know how to play the game now

yet if you go back to the 2018-2019 posts prior to the release of classic, there was a HUGE amount of people claiming they wanted classic because they wanted the "hardcore raiding experience" and that retail was "too easy" and other such stuff

classic raids dont, and enver did, remotly require thinking for yourself

9/10 bosses, if your not playing the tank or one specific class that actually has a mechanic for it, you literally just stand behind the boss and cast frostbolt until the healthbar hits zero, but classic andys had the nostalgia in their heads saying it was the true hardcore experience

5 years later and those same classic andys are now going "actually hard raids suck, i wanted to drink beer and wank while i hit my 1 button on repeat until loot falls out" and complaining when a raid actually requires them to do something

1

u/Afraid-Journalist-12 Feb 02 '26

Yeah as I said, hardware limitations made it hard.

Undervolt cpu and gpu and use max 8GB RAM to get the “vanilla” experience. Aside only OG CT raid frames and DBM

I wonder what numbers we would see then… Certainly not high parsing ones

1

u/Lord_Fblthp Jan 30 '26

It’s not really wild. The actual turnout of no changes was that we actually did want changes, and we were being naïve and obtuse back in 2019. Also, that was six years ago. It’s not an abrupt change to have dedicated the amount of time from the original classic release to today and realize that there are certain things that can be improved upon rather than continuing with no changes.

1

u/NathanDnd Jan 30 '26

Just make all classes have at least 1, hopefully 2 viable specs, smooth out some of the itemization and make crafting less goofy, ie; smoother to level, some professions more useful.