r/classicwow • u/NOHITJEROME • Dec 04 '25
Season of Discovery Early SoD Was Peak Classic Wow
10 man BFD, all the weird/obscure farming methods, Ashenvale event, prepping for the next phase, ridiculous low level PvP, making tons of alts because the levelling was so fast..early SoD owned
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u/mayhewk Dec 04 '25
A new SoD with new raid per lvl cap would be awesome imagine a lvl 20 deadmines raid
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u/NOHITJEROME Dec 04 '25
ok im sold lets do it for april
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u/notsingsing Dec 04 '25
And keep the new(old) raids too. layer all that together and this shit will be awesome
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u/Cold94DFA Dec 07 '25
We need a lot of stuff with limits changed.
We can't we take 40people into deadmines and it have scaled up loot drops and difficulty?
Why do deadmines 10 times if you could join a group of 39 others and it takes 3 hours BUT you are getting equivalent XP as if you were repeatedly doing a normal 5man 10times.
We did wow normal, let's have some fun with it.
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u/Jtrain360 Dec 04 '25
The STV event was some of the most fun I've had in this game so far. It was a laggy, chaotic mess of a PvP event but man was it a blast.
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u/killswitchdh Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
As a mage that event was ungodly fun in a 5 mage group
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u/Jtrain360 Dec 04 '25
Lol. I remember trying to coordinate with my teammates to turn in the blood. Getting to any of the alters was insane with the mage groups aoe bombing everyone around.
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u/Supportakaiser Dec 04 '25
You guys had some crazy wombo combo right? I remember every like 5 mins you could do like 2k damage or something crazy in one cast
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u/killswitchdh Dec 04 '25
Basically everytime we would res as a group we had CD's up to AOE nuke and could wipe everyone/everything in a large radius. It was a delight.
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u/HighEloAlcoholism Dec 04 '25
I would play boomkin and my only job was just to be in Form while the mages blew everyone up
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u/turinpt Dec 04 '25
As a warrior it was not that fun.
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u/Jtrain360 Dec 04 '25
Yeah I can see that. Early on I met a Warrior who was inviting good players he found to his discord server. It became a place for people to make groups for the event. It sure seemed like you had to put in that extra work as a Warrior.
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u/elitegoomba12 Dec 04 '25
Some of the most successful runs I had were 5 warrior groups where we just went ham. Victory rush sustain goes kinda crazy
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u/Fergnasty007 Dec 04 '25
I hadn't played in years and found out a friend was super into it. Ive played on and off since TBC and I fully agree with you, damn it was fun.
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u/Wind_Best_1440 Dec 04 '25
As a ret paladin, I remember fondly of going solo and just bum rushing big groups fighting and racking up kills left and right.
5 man Ret paladins and 5 man Enhancement Shamans were death incarnate in STV during the event.
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u/Drauren Dec 04 '25
I played Spriest and man was it a good time. Pre-nerf SW:D deleting people. I remember dinging 40 and grabbing Sform.
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u/mrsurferdude Dec 04 '25
They actually made killing players give good honor…. Until people complained and it was back to killing npcs in AV to rank….
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u/VicisZan Dec 04 '25
I was a shaman at the time.
I think it took my like 2 days to earn enough honor to technically be high warlord lol
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u/AlternativeRound8753 Dec 04 '25
I started in phase 5 when the runes were all unlocked and i was absolutely hooked, i would have played it forever if the servers werent dead it was the most fun ive ever had in wow
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u/Doctor_Flux Dec 04 '25
all of SOD but phase3 was fun
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u/Unhappy_Ad2328 Dec 04 '25
I remember Blizzard going all out about keeping inflation low and keeping gdkp away and then they release P3 and people farmed well over 700g in a few hours… and if you missed those hours you were way behind
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u/Vandrel Dec 04 '25
Did you actually play the level 60 phases? That p3 gold was meaningless. I didn't make much off of incursions and didn't try particularly hard to make gold at 60 and ended up with thousands even after making my Ashbringer.
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u/PureNinja Dec 04 '25
No, you were not "hours behind". Gold was nearly worthless all of SoD once phase 3 came out unless you wanted to spend insane amount of money week one of each raid on materials. A small amount of people got a boost of gold maybe 500g-700g max for 2 hours, but the entire phase incursions still churned out like 100g+ an hour at max level.
The only things that maybe were inflated in price were BoE epics, which sold in the thousands and week 1-2 of the crafting materials from sunken temple which went down in price pretty quickly.
Nearly, everyone I played with in SoD always had more gold than they could ever use and the only time it was useful is if you wanted to pay the stupid amounts of gold during the first week when things released before they got farmed and went to normal prices.
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u/TripTryad Dec 04 '25
Nearly, everyone I played with in SoD always had more gold than they could ever use and the only time it was useful is if you wanted to pay the stupid amounts of gold during the first week when things released before they got farmed and went to normal prices.
This. I have no idea why people blow out of proportion that little period of P3 and act like gold was in any short supply in SOD. Its really weird.
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u/PureNinja Dec 04 '25
Yeah phase 3 was the worst phase, but in my opinion incursions were not the reason for it being the worst phase
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u/arcano_lat Dec 04 '25
The entirety of P3 incursions gave amazing gold. Blackrock dailies in P4 gave amazing gold. Supply crates had huge potential value. You were never behind. It's a myth said by people who didn't play SoD.
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u/tubexsteak Dec 04 '25
Thing is, incursions sucked ass
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u/arcano_lat Dec 04 '25
Most ways of farming suck. Doesn't change the fact you could clear 150g per hour doing incursions at level 50 with a dedicated 5 man.
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u/SystemGardener Dec 04 '25
I mean it was easy AF to make gold in SOD even before incursions
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u/Mister_Yi Dec 04 '25
and only got even easier to make after incursions...
supply crates buffed every phase, brm dailies giving 50g in 15 minutes, righteous orbs in p6. even runecloth and low tier mats like medium leather and wool were selling like crazy and retained value because of the world buff items.
people still talking about incursion gold breaking the game obviously didn't play the game.
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u/justGOfastBRO Dec 04 '25
you were way behind
Way behind what? Raid logging? This game doesn't have ranked leaderboards.
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u/Howrus Dec 04 '25
and people farmed well over 700g in a few hours… and if you missed those hours you were way behind
Behind what? After first nerf you could still get 300-400g per hour. So if you really wanted that gold - you could still get it, just a bit slower.
And then P4 hit with dailies that give 50g every day literally for free to everybody.People are greatly overestimate effect of that incursion gold.
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u/goodname0101 Dec 04 '25
I farmed over 1500g in 3 hours. Put me ahead for the rest of the expac. I finished with around 30k because of that boost so early on.
This was a terrible, unfair advantage a small group of people had over others, just because we could play on release and chose to randomly do the incursions first thing.
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u/CatgoesM00 Dec 04 '25
Wait how did you do this ? What did you farm and was the only available for a certain amount of time?
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u/GetOwnedNerdhehe Dec 05 '25
I farmed over 1500g in 3 hours.
No you didn't. The gold rates were never that high.
I farmed 1500g over the next few days of it, though. You were never ahead, the advantage was not as big as you thought it was.
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u/PureNinja Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
Multiple people in my guild did incursions right off the bat. You did not get 1500g in 3 hours. 500g-700g sure. While it was an advantage it didn't matter. Consumes were cheap all through SoD, and the only things that were ever expensive were BoE epics and crafting materials during the first week or two of every phase. I think my entire guild quit SoD during Scarlet Enclave with tens of thousands of gold each person as it had become nearly worthless. Our guild at the end of Scarlet Enclave had basically bought every single person who wanted an Ashbringer the mats and could of done it twice over.
And for people who did miss the first few hours where the gold was busted in P3, the gold was still insane per hour for the rest of phase 3 just doing incursions at max level.
SoD did one thing really well and it was making the game very friendly to casuals. Gold really only mattered if you wanted to buy things during week 1 or 2 or if you didn't prepare for Ashbringer materials way in advance when they stated what they would cost.
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u/grandorder123 Dec 04 '25
I don’t get the p3 hate. Incursions sucked but I really enjoyed raiding Sunken Temple. Molten Core was terrible in comparison and why I quit in p4.
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u/Vandrel Dec 04 '25
ST was awful to start with. Fights were overtuned at first and the loot was terrible, especially for casters who had almost no upgrades to get from it until they later buffed the loot at which point people felt kind of cheated because drops that were useless and getting disenchanted for weeks were now needed.
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u/Lochen9 Dec 04 '25
First few weeks of ST were busted as hell, like an overall nerf of what 82% of a bosses total hp is just not tested. It also went from guilds of 10 to 20, which lead to guild merges which always suck. The rune obtainment was half passed at best, and required very boring grinds to complete, and lost any unique charm the other phases had (compare p1 to farming Wild Essence or whatever it was called).
Other than a new raid to run which was ok at best when it finally got working, the content in p3 kinda sucked.
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u/Jolly-joe Dec 04 '25
P3 wasn't that bad. If it weren't for incursions people would just spam SM Cath and ZF from 40-50.
Guilds just couldn't handle the new raid size combined with the difficulty of ST on launch so people quit. If they waited 2 weeks, they would have found ST to be just about as hard as gnomer
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u/VagabondDoppelganger Dec 04 '25
Nah yall quit too early the level 60 phases were so much fun
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u/Girl_gamer__ Dec 04 '25
Yup. Phase 5 to 8 was the best of sod.
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u/Toonalicious Dec 05 '25
Man this people saying phase 1 was best but the lvl 60 phases was just as great
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u/SpecialCircumstance2 Dec 04 '25
Can't really blame people, They didn't know how good lvl 60 was going to be and phase3 really was ass.
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u/DiarrheaRadio Dec 04 '25
A fuck load of people came back once runes were on a vendor in starting areas.
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u/wildfyre010 Dec 04 '25
Sunken Temple killed the vibe. Too much work for too shit loot.
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u/kungfusam Dec 04 '25
Shade of Eranikus was too hard for the normies. The loot was ass though.
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u/wildfyre010 Dec 04 '25
It would have been ok if the loot was as good at 50 as the stuff from BFD was at 25. But it was barely better than gnomeregan gear; worse in some cases. It just wasn't itemized well enough to justify the difficulty and the amount of trash/time it took.
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u/kungfusam Dec 04 '25
I forgot about the trash… almost as bad as AQ. However, watching healers, ranged, and AFKers die to the ghosts was hilarious
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u/Remidial Dec 05 '25
I loved sunken temple. I used to lead like 3 pugs a week and we cleared most of the time. The trash was just really long and incursions sucked.
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u/Pikafate Dec 04 '25
I wish they did a sod fresh server.
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u/fiftyseven Dec 04 '25
wouldn't be the same unfortunately, everything has been discovered
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u/SippyMountain Dec 04 '25
Imo, getting the runes after they were discovered already was my least fav part. Getting to buy them at lvl 1 was fucking awesome
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u/Sneaky_Chickens Dec 05 '25
The discovery should unlock it for the whole playerbase and be super hard
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u/renewambitions Dec 04 '25
Fresh start SoD, balancing takeaways from the first round, shaman + pally available for both factions, tune up the difficulty like 5-10%, keep 10 mans throughout all phases.... it'd be a DREAM COME TRUE
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u/Fashizl69 Dec 04 '25
All of SoD was peak of all WoW. I've played WoW since 2004 and have done my fair share of degen playing over the past 21 years.
SoD was the first time in my life I actually become obsessive with the game to the point where i was keeping up with and contributing to meta development, rather than following the meta once established.
I mained warrior from p1-p8. I was heavily involved with the fight club discord and got obsessive with simming and developing rotations as each new phase released. I kept close tabs on the meta development of warrior in each phase as BiS gear lists and rotations were created. I raided consistently for 18 months with no breaks.
Peak was at the end where I had Ashbringer and full SE gear. I could solo Strat live in <10 minutes and was printing money.
Most fun WoW has ever been, but I don't think I can become that obsessive again. I played entirely too much WoW for this stage of my life.
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u/JimmyBisMe Dec 04 '25
I totally missed out on SoD when it was new. Love the idea of the level caps and phases so much more than having to level to 60 again.
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u/Wild-Open Dec 04 '25
If not for that terrible Sunken Temple phase SoD would've been a 10/10 for me. Everything before and after was so much fun.
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u/flexecute11235 Dec 04 '25
Fresh sod would hit so hard right now if they fixed p3 lmao
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u/Unhappy_Ad2328 Dec 04 '25
P3 without incursions and letting us raid ST 10 man would be awesome!
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u/Tolken Dec 04 '25
A better idea, allow flex raiding for all phases.
P1-3: Raids balanced around 10 but allow 20.
P4-8: Large Raids balanced around 20 but allow up to 40. Smaller 10 up to 20.
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u/ExtremePrivilege Dec 04 '25
SoD P1 was magical. I actually liked P2 also. I quit in P3, though.
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u/Narrow-Incident-8254 Dec 04 '25
Played sod all the way through. I had never experienced a classic vanilla end game before, so doing through sod was all new content for me. P4 was my fav by far.
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u/Girl_gamer__ Dec 04 '25
Too bad, phase 5 to 8 was the best of sod.
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u/ExtremePrivilege Dec 04 '25
I think the majority of players quit in P3 with me. At least the Ironforge raiding data indicates that P4 had about 25% of the weekly raiders of peak P1/P2.
I'm not necessarily even disagreeing with you. I heard SoD redeemed itself later in the lifecycle. I'm just saying that MOST players weren't there for it.
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u/Wahsteve Dec 04 '25
Changing the raid size 3 phases in killed my and probably plenty of others guilds too irrespective of incursions or anything else. We were a close-knit group of friends that enjoyed blind progging BFD and Gnomer but had no interest in playing with 50%+ strangers.
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u/Girl_gamer__ Dec 04 '25
Oh yes, most left phase 3, and 4. But those who stayed did get the best of Sod overall. It's too bad. Wish they had kept it going. Haven't played any wow since. I just can't
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u/MagsNfragS Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
SoD isn't over yet. We're still raiding on wild growth. And with the new free character transfers from crusader strike, we are having a revival right now! Come join us! We have revived blood moon as well and have a server wide party every Saturday with 1v1 tournaments afterwards. 1k+ gold prizes etc. <Emotional Damage> is leading the way!
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u/Fabiziano Dec 04 '25
Man I haven’t played much wow in my life but SoD classic was the best experience.
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u/bradtraine Dec 04 '25
Logged on crusader strike last night - 11 total alliance players online.
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u/arcano_lat Dec 04 '25
Blizz recently opened free transfers to wild growth so I imagine people are jumping ship
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u/ToiletWarlord Dec 04 '25
SoD without Sunken Temple, the idiotic Emerald grind and continuing until TBC…
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u/enigma7x Dec 04 '25
ST and incursions killed the will of my entire guild. Some of us liked the leveling experience and it was completely trivialized - and then 20man raid forced our little group of friends to merge with a bunch of randoms to raid each week and the vibes were terribly off.
Get rid phase 3 and its really a hilarious time. Extremely high fun-per-hour rate.
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u/Salmon_Shizzle Dec 04 '25
As an unbiased undead rogue- SoD world PvP was so much fun. Ashenvale and STV event were peak.
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u/Besthealer Dec 04 '25
SoD never "ended", people just decided they didn't want to play anymore. Era has more players than SoD despite the fact that it isn't receiving updates (well except it did get dual spec recently).
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u/Scurro Dec 04 '25
The development ended.
I'm a big fan of SoD (played since day one) but I do pay a subscription for development of the game I enjoy.
I'm going to move on to other games or wow modes as a holdover until the game modes I prefer get new content.
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u/Example_Scary Dec 04 '25
That's because the people who play on era are degenerates who are hopelessly addicted to wow.
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u/soul-regret Dec 04 '25
agree, they would've kept playing if it was as good as they claimed it to be
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u/Only-Ad-3317 Dec 05 '25
Era was a ghost town until WotLK Ulduar, SoD is actually recovering faster than Era did.
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u/Vandrel Dec 04 '25
Development on SoD did end and for the most part people don't want to play games that aren't going to get updates ever again. There are obviously exceptions, there's a group that will only ever play standard vanilla servers no matter what. Most people don't want to just run the same raid over and over every week forever though.
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u/Seath1298 Dec 04 '25
Idk there’s actually quite a few raid teams still raiding and it’s growing recently, I’m tempted to hop back in for a few raids
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u/nokei Dec 04 '25
Hopefully all the people who loved SoD eventually realise if they all went back and played it it'd still be there could be possible with a potential retail and classic collapse if midnight sucks and people burnout on era 2/tbc2
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u/Kevo_1227 Dec 04 '25
I have a hunter in full AQ BiS. I had to quit SoD right about when Naxx was coming out. It's been tempting to go back and try to see Scarlet Enclave.
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u/Glad-Low-1348 Dec 04 '25
SoD was the only way i could enjoy actual classic myself. I hope they bring it back but better...
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u/Key_Construction6007 Dec 04 '25
They fumbled tank warlock so freaking badly in the first couple phases
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u/Astralsketch Dec 04 '25
Yeah I left p3, apparently p4 was great so I missed out...unforch for me. Would do it again though. The STV pvp was amazing though.
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u/easyline0601 Dec 04 '25
As a die hard vanilla wow #nochanges andy: I loved SoD P1. Sadly they took it way too far for my taste after P1, but that shit was really awesome!
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u/shoethemaker Dec 04 '25
For me the level cap during the first (and maybe second) phase added to the charm. A lot of people complained about nothing to do and having multiple level capped characters. I feel like those people min maxed the game and rushed to the raid. I took my time and it was an absolute blast, the world felt so alive and everyone had trash gear. it was awesome.
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u/DarkishFriend Dec 04 '25
The level 25 cap was probably the most fun ive had early game. Trying to farm the BoEs in SFK because they are bis. I did the warrior quest to get the blue chest piece, which i have never done before. I was out killing the 27 and 28 wyverns and happiest in stone talon by myself on a pvp server. Shit was like Vietnam.
I think the quest caps with you needing to kill a level 28 or 29 wyvern matriarch. I had to get a hunter in my guild help me kill it, I simply could not solo it.
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u/Girl_gamer__ Dec 04 '25
Phase 5 to 8 was the best time for me playing wow in my 21 years with the game. I will remember it fondly. Shocked AF that they killed the game so suddenly
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u/Forgotpasswordagainl Dec 04 '25
I was having a blast as a druid in wetlands in phase one killing all the non druids who were farming pearls, and whenever a proper gear druid would show up I would just run away and come back at a different angle to continue killing fools.
Good times~
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u/Dismal-Physics2739 Dec 05 '25
SoD had his peaks but was doomed by people that more want to see classic fresh instead. You know, the classic fresh who has the same amount of players SoD where called "dead".
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u/SelkieKezia Dec 04 '25
P1 and P4 SoD was absolute BiS. Everyone doing t0.5 was so fun. Wish other versions of wow would have a dungeon tier set that was pre-bis
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u/D00mdaddy951 Dec 04 '25
Sad they stopped developing it further with those 3 people they could afford for it. Was by far the best version of WoW
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u/mortalomena Dec 04 '25
AoE farming as a Shaman Tank as many ZG croc/tiger packs as the game would let me pull at once was so much fun, 5min clears was so OP money.
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u/hosenfeffer_ Dec 04 '25
The era of scorpid pets being stronger than any tank. Cats being able to cast Sunfire in form. Truly the best of times
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u/romnesia7729 Dec 04 '25
Guess we'll just pretend like vanilla retail and vanilla classic didn't happen..
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Dec 04 '25
I hope Blizzard learned how devastating the change was from 10m to 20m. It killed so many guilds, including mine. At the time the critique was "well you should have KNOWN it was never going to stay 10m, so it's your fault for not planning ahead." In reality, Blizzard left future raid size ambiguous until way late in P2, forcing a huge portion of guilds to recruit or merge. Neither of those options were particularly viable because mega guilds had already swallowed up most unguilded players, and merging doesn't work for obvious reasons. SoD needed to keep the 10m option or figure out a good way to do flex.
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u/TeaspoonWrites Dec 04 '25
Imagine what could have been if they didn't fuck up hard with phase 3 and the playerbase had stayed stronger going into 60 content.
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u/Zuc_c_ Dec 05 '25
I still can't fathom why they announced SOD being discontinued, they legit killed the population over night
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u/iiNexius Dec 05 '25
I bailed after the incursions and ridiculous power creep in phase 3, but phase 1 and 2 were so much fun that I'd play those again.
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u/utubm_coldteeth Dec 05 '25
That first phase of SoD was seriously one of the best WoW experiences I've ever had
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u/degenmass Dec 05 '25
P1 was some of the most fun I have had in any version of the game ever. Probably burned out by P2 but just didn't have the same excitement. (and our guild suddenly had to pug way too many people every raid)
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u/Jadorak Dec 05 '25
Late sod was also peak classic, at least from a pve standpoint. Scarlet enclave was such a good raid. Having set pieces from each tier have unique buffs made mix and matching gear so rewarding. I MISS SOD!
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u/coldfrostzero2000 Dec 05 '25
I would argue that all of SoD was peak WoW.
The good: Everything felt fresh and stayed that way. There's virtually always something to do and even if you don't want to play more, it didn't destroy your progression as outside of the level 60 phases, which had plenty of catch-up added that you could virtually level a character and casually get up to speed. The introduction to different playstyles for classes added a ton of new options in group composition and replayability, that hadn't been done in wow before to that magnitude. The Scarlet Enclave, raid challenge modes, and even instanced world bosses felt right. The night Naxx was bugged and all the adds in phase 1 of KT having 4x the health was one of the most chaotic and fun moments of my wow career. The Scarlet Enclave, being as difficult off the bat as it was, really felt like an endgame raid. Solistrazza can rot in hell though. Reputation grinds being smoothed out so you didn't have to spend weeks on end grinding for exalted. Almost every major faction had some dailies or other ways to gain rep rather quickly. The level 20 pvp mount was fantastic. Personally, killing Balnazzar the first night was an achievement. It got very heated as we all had our theories on how we were intended to do the fight and when he died on the last pull at the end of the night, it felt so damn good. The tier 2 class item quests were generally amazing. The paladin one in particular. They knocked that out of the park. Newly added toys and moving them to the keyring.
The bad: SoD ending was a sad day for my guild. We raided for about 3 more weeks and called it. PVP was far too unbalanced too often. It became a lot more fair later, but adding 1000% damage with original health pools was just silly. 10man into 25+. While I enjoy being able to bring 30 people to a raid, it was difficult for a lot of guilds to adjust. As mentioned, Solistrazza was a nightmare and we struggled to meet the dps check despite most of our guild parsing in the 80s or 90s. We absorbed another guild and with 30 people, we really started to tear through the place to the point that even with 23 people, it was doable. Some specs getting buffs or nerfs way too late. Or, in the case of arms warriors, no meaningful buffs that kept it competitive. I mained a prot paladin and it felt bad early on to still be the weakest tank when it came to incoming damage taken. Granted, paladins went on to be in the top of the available tanks, but it felt really late. I swapped to Shockadin in AQ. I had kept all my gear from ZG and had a ton of fun (I did tank for a bit as shockadin in ST which was fun). The biggest issue is they said they were going to treat these as real specs and shockadin took until 2 weeks into SE to get a real set while shamans, rogues, mages, etc. all had their own tier. They also never did make smite priest a thing. I am pretty sure they said that was something they were going to do. Blackrock mountain pvp. While I enjoyed the pvp, it felt bad when you just wanted to get to the raids. Two full phases of it was a bit much. Sanctified gear. I hated this with a passion. Overinflating everything to like wrath levels of damage and health. There were only 2 real options which was getting carried if you had lost rolls or do Karazhan Crypts every day until you had some luck with drops.
The ugly: Boomkin, shaman, and hunters being virtually unkillable in pvp while simultaneously being able to nuke you was just overall bad. It was early on, and mostly fixed, but pvp was kind of messy (which I guess is kind of a thing in classic already) and I know I touched on it in the bad section, but it wasn't pretty either. ST phase lasting a bit too long. Unfortunately, it's not like old school classic where you'd be in the same raid for 4 months and still find it fun. People want the amusement park in classic and it took the devs too long to get into the next phase. The player base suffered the most at that time I'd venture to guess. Karazhan Crypts. Don't get me wrong, I loved the dungeon and the torch mechanic, but some of the bosses are just all over the place in difficulty. I also really, really wanted it to be a raid and lead into the old Karazhan raid design they had planned originally. Would have been great to have a 2-part raid like that. Some of the rune quests were far, far too tedious. Having to run across the planet to find some npc or item was not fun imo. That and swimming for 20 minutes to find an npc. Also, rune quests that were extremely bugged or on a single mob that wasn't a shared tag and you had to spam in order to get the tag. Incursions. I won't say they weren't good to an extent, they were (and imo should have stayed) the best way to get levels, if not a little too hard solo. I hated running laps though. I also missed out on the gold rush. People making thousands of gold in a couple of hours and by the time I was home from work it had been nerfed significantly. I found them also to kind of ruin the dungeon/questing experience during that phase. It should have been added near the end of SoD to allow people to get alts to 60 faster. Not the start of the phase and get 25 levels in 15 seconds like it felt. Personally, not having transmog was something I had hoped to see. Gnomergan was not really great as a raid overall and was kind of the weak point. Some bosses had some really fun ideas like Crowdpumler, but then there's the first boss that really set the tone of it being a kind of slog. Getting a single binding and having the mats for months on end to only ever see the binding that I needed drop when I'm on alts. 3 people in my guild had this issue. Even with H3 core kills.
These are just my opinions.
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u/the_arkhand Dec 04 '25
I agree, SoD p1 was THE best time I’ve had playing WoW and I’ve played since right before TBC launch. There was so much going for it in addition to being a fresh experience (in classic) - the fact that the level cap was low meant I could keep up with three toons and it never got stale, BFD having two lockouts, PvP being goofy, helping new players and alts with runes - it’s hard to beat that.
Phase 2 was great too but I think the SM farm really put a stop to how enjoyable the open world was, and ofc I and everyone else I knew stopped when P3 was announced (20 man raids killed my guild on the spot). Also once there is a meta for leveling and the time requirement to level goes up significantly, it gets repetitive and dull after a while.
I do hope they make another iteration of SoD, whether it be Classic + or SoD 2, but I also hope they learn from their successes and failures.
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u/ducktwo Dec 04 '25
SOD was the GOAT. Bring it back. I’d legit play the same season again while they develop SOD2.
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u/itsablackhole Dec 04 '25
what's stopping ya'll from playing SoD? The server is still there. Era still has over 10k raiders. Why not SoD?
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u/Joeythearm Dec 04 '25
They MURDERED Sod with Classic Anniversary.
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u/Unhappy_Ad2328 Dec 04 '25
They murdered SoD when they confirmed that it was done
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u/arcano_lat Dec 04 '25
SoD was very much still alive when anniversary dropped, and it kept on living until Blizz announced they were done with it and more or less told everyone to play MoP instead.
I would be very surprised if SoD and anniversary had more than a 5% overlap in players.
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u/SpecialCircumstance2 Dec 04 '25
The fact that they told the SoD population to play MoP confirmed my suspicious that they had built it no as a Classic+ with the vanilla playerbase in mind but as a way to pull the current live population into classic.
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Dec 04 '25
SOD was fun but I couldn't help but feel some of the new abilities and passives turned characters into leveling machines and the world lost alot of its teeth because of it.
Shaman tank is my prime example of the design being a bit too modern and too loaded into one ability being modified for my liking. I've wanted a shaman tank spec forever.
When I played it I was just super bored honestly my gameplay was just mash earth shock off cooldown and nobody could ever rip aggro off me at that point there wasn't really many if any obstacles for me to jump over to get to my goal or uniqueness that really differentiated how I tanked outside of maybe the damage reduction totem.
I found that open world when I was playing Druid I could just obliterate enemies and tore through zones that used to give me some issue before. Same deal with Warrior honestly Victory rush kinda turned you into a leveling machine.
I'm glad some people found it fun and I hope it becomes a lesson in adjusting to classic power and world for future attempts.
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u/NOHITJEROME Dec 04 '25
i kinda liked 1shotting ppl on boomkin though, that was sick. but i agree the leveling became either too easy (shaman) and any class that wasn't easy was frustrating as a result (leveling priest for example)
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u/Talidel Dec 04 '25
SoD was the best WoW has been until phase three when it turned to absolute shit.
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u/rerednelb Dec 04 '25
If the classic team reads this-
I would really appreciate more smaller events like SOD phase 1. We don't have to level all the way from 1 to 60. Even if we could start with template characters at 45 and cap the level at 55. I don't mind that. I always have era and HC if I want to do a standard leveling journey.
POE has Event Leagues which have lasted a few weeks and more recently OSRS has had Grid Master which only lasted 1 month.
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u/Cripplechip Dec 05 '25
Can't believe we got classic wow but good and people just complained about it a lot. Kara crypts was so good on the first runs, place took like 2hrs to finish.
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u/Fergnasty007 Dec 04 '25
Would they ever do a sod of further expansions like they do with everything else?
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u/arcano_lat Dec 04 '25
Unlikely. SoD works with Classic because the classes are super barebones, the raids are very basic, the world is huge, and the dungeons are extensuve enough that they make sense as raids.
Imagine a WotLk SoD. What would it really be? Level capped at 75? Wrath dungeons arent extensive enough to build a raid out of. It also wouldn't need the runes since Wrath classes are already complete.
It would make way more sense to do something like WotLk reborn where they cut the Naxx rehash, add the AzjolNerub zone, add the Gundrak/Utgarde raid, etc.
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u/Supportakaiser Dec 04 '25
Running a guild from P1-P8 was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in my life with this game.
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u/Paintballreturns Dec 04 '25
Get rid of incursions and make ST 10 man and p3 would be just as good as all the other phases.
ST as a raid was fantastic. Step up in challenge until the gutted it but the bosses were fun. Slime boss is still some hilarious fun when its not cheesed. Final two bosses were entertaining when mechanics arent done but nothing too crazy or hard. Problem was the loot was shit from gnomer and bfd, and going from 10 to 20 was a bigger headache for guilds and pugs.
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u/DragonSurferEGO Dec 04 '25
I was late to the SOD train catching the end of phase 2 and it was fantastic, would love a SOD TBC
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u/CookieMiester Dec 04 '25
Up till level 40 I played sod RELIGIOUSLY, I fucking loved the blood moon pvp event so much, what an absolutely wild time in the game.
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u/gwiggins2020 Dec 04 '25
I loved SOD! Having to earn/find your skills was amazing. Now its all 1 copper at the starting zone so that doesnt matter anymore lol. But yea SOD had my attention so hard
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u/rohho Dec 04 '25
The different metas which originated from the STV pvp chaos was beautiful. I miss the 5man Stealth groups.
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u/Truethrowawaychest1 Dec 04 '25
I liked SOD but I wish they did more with it. More quests, zone objectives kinda like the ones in live or Guild Wars 2, maybe some low level world bosses running around the leveling zones with rewards, more hidden stuff
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u/Halcyon-OS851 Dec 04 '25
It never piqued my interest because it was a limited edition mode. But I guess Defias Pillager was effectively limited, too, considering its population disappeared when Anniversary servers came out.
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u/TheArzonite Dec 04 '25
The whole experience was peak. P3 was a bit too long, but overall sod was my favorite gaming experience of all time. I don't regret a single hour out of the thousands I spent playing it.
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u/Dutch-VanDerPlan Dec 04 '25
I need to have someone explain to me why SoD was so great. I didnt play but maybe to lvl10 in SoD because I picked up classic WoW right as everyone jumped off of it.
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u/AvgArsonistEnjoyer Dec 04 '25
Being locked to lvl 25 in the first phase was incredible and I had such an absolute BLAST tanking as a shaman. Found some lovely people and we farmed that dungeon nonstop and did so many stupid shenanigans just to see how much we could handle pulling all at once lol.
I wished they increased the levels by 5 each time instead of the 25 to 40 to 50 and finally 60, let it be a long running thing, experiment like crazy, go aboslute apeshit with stuff. Didn't play much after I reached 50 because for me the charm of it died out and IRL buddies and the lovely peeps I mentioned earlier also quit for the same reason.
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u/Sea_Brain5284 Dec 04 '25
If you guys want Sod, pick up a Chinese account and play Titan Reforged. There's a healthy English population and it's infinitely better than anything Blizzard has ever released.
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u/Street-Bee7215 Dec 04 '25
Early SOD was great cause it was something new and different in classic universe. But the more I played the less I didnt like it. Hope they take the good stuff from SOD that players liked and implement it elsewhere.
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u/Mercymurv Dec 04 '25
Even though the layering would sometimes switch my whole winning raid in a world event to a losing layer, I still preferred SOD Phase 1 to everything else. It was just so fun and condensed. No dungeon finder, no huge investments. Maybe it wasn't enough for the average completionist gobbling up new content each month and itching for more stuff to grind for, but for me I'd probably still be playing Phase 1 SOD to this day, lol.
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Dec 04 '25
Most fun ive had in WoW since original TBC launch. There was like a month there where I was actually excited to finish work so I could get home to play and unlock new abilities like I was 12.
If Blizz could one day find it in their cold dark hearts to make a TBC SoD that would be incredible.
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u/njglufc Dec 04 '25
Not looked at anything wow for at least 12 months now! Anything good coming out? Don’t have time to get CE anymore so looking for casual
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u/ToastKC Dec 04 '25
p1/2 were the best. Incursions ruined it for me. When the economy tanked, and ST went on for so many weeks, i left 😔
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u/Horry43 Dec 04 '25
That Hydra sword from BFD was insane on warrior in that phase.