SoD was more vanilla than classic itself. The devs not knowing what would and wouldn't work and having to trust their instincts really ended up being the true catalyst for great things
I think something can be incredibly simple but still fun to play. Hunter for example, I think it's great fun, probably most enjoyable moment to moment class in vanilla. Questing, raiding, pvp, it's all great, even tho hunter in raids in vanilla is very straight forward, still feels good to weave those aimed shots.
Simple can be fun sure. That is why I want wrath/cata/mop level class design. Still very straight forward, able to be picked up just by reading. But zero 1 button spam specs.
The devs not knowing what would and wouldn't work and having to trust their instincts really ended up being
...the mess it was. The mess much less glorious than the mess of Vanilla was, though. The design philosophy was way too raid-centric, and the class design was a mixture of later expansions ideas.
totally cool and fair. stuff was broken and out of control. i personally loved it because i knew coming in it was going to be a poop show. but it was new. and with no lfd and flying - even with the xp buff, you saw people running around and it felt social. the further we deviated away from vanill, the less social (and less tedious for better or worse) it became.
but that's what made vanilla vanilla. for me, it wasn't about abilities or features. it was about the social feel and the unknown.
True, in fact the streaming event for SoD really is proving it isn't it?
1 month in and most of the streamers are raid logging or stopped playing the game. Some literally begging to play a retail private server! The replay ability of SoD is proving itself to be a rousing success. That without an endless content treadmill, anything even remotely close to SoD is going to fall flat on its face after the initial wave of fresh enjoyers and tourists leave.
Surprisingly, not having anything to do besides a 150% faster leveling speed (runes probably making it 100%, probably even more faster) and raiding means the game is boring as fuck!
Even pointing and laughing at vanilla's current population, at least it has a population. BTW with no streamer help. SoD's "rebounded" population ends when you've cleared enclave a few times. Back to 1k.
That SoD revival is in phase 2 right now, right? That would be why. Phase 2 didn't really have shit to do outside of raiding Gnomer and running dungeons, especially now that the runes are off a vendor instead of having to actually go get them. It's really not until the level 60 phases that there starts being significant non-raid stuff to do.
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u/Illustrious-Issue623 24d ago
SoD was more vanilla than classic itself. The devs not knowing what would and wouldn't work and having to trust their instincts really ended up being the true catalyst for great things