Cataclysm vs sod vs era

[aphelie]

hello,

i have hard time to choose which one i will invest my time. I don't want to spread myself so i want to devote myself on one xpac.

I guess cata hype will last one or 2 month then will fall. And with flying mount, the pvp is much instanciated revolving between bg/rbg/arena. Though the pvp mechanics was nice.

SOD for me is unpredictable as i dont know how it will be lvl 60 and how long it will last. I find also the game going too much retail version gameplay.

Era is much solid for me as the time i invest for making a character and gearing will last. Better World pvp. But i saw that population may lower greatly after peak hours. Only AV available and map empty when people are raiding or late night.

What's your point of view on this ? What will you play in the near future ?

[Zardas]

Depends on what you enjoy doing in the game the most. Questing ? Pve ? Pvp ? Collecting ? Gold making ? Rp ?

[Taen]

For me personally, SoD is the only interesting one currently going. I've got no interest in reliving Cataclysm; in my opinion the whole point of Classic was to experience the world that got removed in 2010. And Era, while fitting that bill, is too solved and stagnant to be much fun.

SoD is still full of sweaties who want everything way too optimized, but the game at least tries to keep that to a minimum and adds a lot of fun new features that fit Classic really well. It's a limited-time experience, sure, but it's a fun ride along the way. Plus whenever it finally ends you’re probably going to get to transfer your character off to a standard Era realm, so it's sort of the best of both worlds. You can either move on and pick up whatever new season is going on, or try your hand at Era with your existing level 60.

[allegrian]

SoD was very interesting and fun on phase one and you were encouraged to play lots of alts and both factions to experiment and discover everything. P3 is currently pretty boring and it's starting to become too grindy with dungeon spamming for a currency that gets you bis items or nightmare incursion spamming. The p3 raid is quite long as well as 20 man and weekly lockout, making it not as easily puggable and chill like P1 and P2 raids.

I think I'll beat Ragnaros next phase just for the old times and call it a day with SoD.

[aphelie]

i'm only into pvp but dont like rbg where you focus player after player on a battleground. i like bg and world pvp and i could invest in arena game but i am more excited by unpredictable situations in world pvp.

- - - Updated - - -

i think going sod might be the best bet only if i am sure that my character will be transfered to a classic era server i can choose at the end of SOD.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I would just look at it like this..

You want RBGs and more difficult raid content -- Cata
You want just slay everything easy and just get loot -- SoD
You want to play vanilla then its simple -- Era

[kranur]

Neither, each for different reasons.
SoD seemed interesting but it's simply filled with tryhard andy who think you need to play it like a job ... to kill bosses with 2 mechanics at level 25 ...
Cata .. been there, done that, didn't like it the first time and would certainly not like its return. Imo it's just a worse version of retail, may as well play that
Era is still good, but I think suffers from low activity, also been there, done that.

[RobertMugabe]

SoD is where currently everyone is at and it's what I am playing alongside retail.

I don't think that Cata is every going to be really popular, maybe in the beginning, but after that I don't see a reason why really anyone would play this over SoD or Retail. Like it's basically similar to retail, but worse in many ways, there's not much content, there isn't really to look forward to and it's pretty much solved. Era is just dead basically and it will never have many players as long as SoD is going on. I also have a strong feeling that whenever SoD ends, that all of its features will just move onto Era and stay there.

- - - Updated - - -

Neither, each for different reasons.
SoD seemed interesting but it's simply filled with tryhard andy who think you need to play it like a job ... to kill bosses with 2 mechanics at level 25 ...
Cata .. been there, done that, didn't like it the first time and would certainly not like its return. Imo it's just a worse version of retail, may as well play that
Era is still good, but I think suffers from low activity, also been there, done that.

Yeah SoD and actually just Classic overall is just super tryhard and full of weirdos and I am saying that as a mainly SoD player atm. For example today I sold Nightmare Seeds on the AH and undersold everyone by 1g per piece so that my pieces get sold fast before the prices plummet and because all of the bots just immediately undercut you by 1c. And then a guy just messages me out of nowhere and starts insulting and threatening me for doing that lol. Same shit happened in Classic 2019 when I was selling the devilsaur sets.

However what's good about SoD and Classic in general is that you can easily just filter out most of the shitheads and never deal with them by joining a guild which plays on your level and has the same mindset. If I was just a solo player who was pugging I would've most likely quit at the end of P1 and most definitely with P3, which without the fun a guild gives you just isn't as good as everyone had hoped for, especially how it's just another version of WoW super focused on fast leveling and raiding.

[Ereb]

I mean it sounds like you clearly want to play classic era from your OP so just do that

[Ettan]

Well for me,

Cata has always been just a huge nope. With some exceptions, a few specs did play rather nicely in cata.
But do I want to play them in cata? O hell no.


Sod, I did not find appealing. Even before the invasion travesty. Simply not content I want to consume.
Class changes, spell additions, ilvl inflation & ranking changes; those are not alterations I can live with.
I can live with adding content, be it raids, dungeons, bgs or quests; but for me those have to mesh seamlessly into the existing vanilla.


Vanilla and later Era, I did play. All until they began altering it in 2023.
Moved its client, made it the foundation for new developments; A live ptr of sorts. Forcing core sweeping changes & implementing updates for their new projects leading to a seemingly endless number of bugs. Then only providing band aids to the entirely game breaking of these bugs.

All while completely disregarding both the integrity of the game and safety of player data.

In addition (for all classic projects) made seemingly 0 real attempts at improving moderation when it was clear that the player driven automated system, did not cut it.

(Then in the same bucket with SoD I throw SoM. But I had less aversion for it.
Primarily it was because it entailed; a shorter lifespan, lack of a world pvp phase and a shortened ranking process. Those where all deal breakers for me.
The raid changes/ world buff cutting and adding a few cosmetics within Som, I did not really mind; did not see the need but at the same time, could not care less).



So yeah I choose not to play.

Further given my experiences playing era in 23, I choose not to play any blizzard games again. In that year I saw and experienced things -and received treatment, that I did not believe possible.
Stuff I have not seen or heard of in all my 20 years of playing blizzard games.
It was as if we on era had somehow ceased being paying customers. And where in the process of being sacrificed for the greater good. The few times we got through (to humans) the sentiment seemed to be that we should just shut up and sit still while our hearts where ripped out and presented to Quetzalcoatl. Only the modern day translation of the sacrificial warcry appeared to be "sorry".
Then should we dare to protest, we where read our rights; so effectively none.

That process has eroded my trust in them so much, I would need a contract in writing at this point.
Well more than that actually I would need them to completely outsource any fresh going forward for me to even look at it.
I just do not want anything those current "blizzard" employees put their chubby fingers on.

Still best of luck to you in era if you walk that path.
But should note those AV's you mention, they are filled primarily with bots now, scripted to kill npcs and end the game in sub 10mins. The few human players there are generally afkers. Finding pvp in there could take you a few days.
Its just what you end up with if you take competition out of ranking and effectively have 0 moderation in place.

[reemi]

I will play Cata for those reasons (I already have my 70s ready and geared);

- Old models, old UI, old gameplay.
- Gameplay more better than classic era or sod
- Classes are tuned already.
- LFD
- LFR
- Can queue BG from anywhere.
- More spells and skills than Classic Era
- Honor Points, no ranks.
- More BG, Arenas.

But , I prefer the old world, but it is not that important I think...

Playing Cata is like playing Retail and WoW Classic at same time.

[God Save The King]

SoD will likely get moved to era realms, but almost no one will play them as that community has died down a lot since the release of SoD. It might make a resurgence once the season is gone. It's very much a temporary thing, which will likely be over within the next year or so.

Cata/Classic Progressive is likely here to stay at least for the next 4-5 years. The cadence so far has been about 18 months in each expansion, while real expansions take longer than that. In late 2025 or early 2026 we'll likely get MoP classic, and in 2027 probably WoD Classic. Then Legion classic if they bother to keep it going. Most of the community is pretty confident MoP will happen as it was quite beloved, but WoD isn't popular so unless they rework a lot of it, or skip it, they might restart the progression from Classic again. Long winded way of saying, if you go for classic you'll have some longevity.

Era is a mixed bag. There's hardcore, SSF hardcore, which both have OK community sizes (I raid in HC currently) but it's slowly declining as people die and don't want to reroll yet again.

[Kathandira]

hello,

i have hard time to choose which one i will invest my time. I don't want to spread myself so i want to devote myself on one xpac.

I guess cata hype will last one or 2 month then will fall. And with flying mount, the pvp is much instanciated revolving between bg/rbg/arena. Though the pvp mechanics was nice.

SOD for me is unpredictable as i dont know how it will be lvl 60 and how long it will last. I find also the game going too much retail version gameplay.

Era is much solid for me as the time i invest for making a character and gearing will last. Better World pvp. But i saw that population may lower greatly after peak hours. Only AV available and map empty when people are raiding or late night.

What's your point of view on this ? What will you play in the near future ?

I stopped playing MMOs for a long time due to the constant patching and rebalancing. Era is exactly what I love. No changes every quarter.

SOD seems fun and I enjoyed Cataclysm for what it was, but I'm not into constant change.