Those of you who wanted Classic+, has SOD been good enough for you?

First off I want to say that I am enjoying SOD. I've played since the start and have gotten full BIS at every phase and raid tier for my main. But there are a number of things I feel are more in the spirit of retail, rather the spirit of classic. And so, I view as a entirely different game altogether. Its not classic, its certainly not classic+. Its some sort of stripped down retail. And had certain changes been made differently I think it would be a game I would continue to play for several years(like classic). But if they were to re-release SOD two years from now I would not play it like I might classic.

I have a few gripes with SOD and curious if anyone else has anything to add or agree on(or disagree on!). Some context for my opinions here is my main is a warrior and although I have one other 60 I only casually pug with them.

The Tier/Gear Upgrade Systems at End Game:

The tier set bonus at first were really cool and interesting. Completely changing the gameplay and rotation of certain classes and specs. This felt like a very powerful upgrade right at Tier 1. It wasn't really until tier 2.5 that this system kind of actually turned into a burden. After that certain "upgrades" really just turned into side-grades and it discouraged changing out gear at some points to avoid losing tier bonuses. I would have preferred these tier bonuses to be in the form of a Rune or something similar. It would have given most classes more gear to chose and upgrade to.

Then we have gear that's only purpose is for specific raids or difficulty levels. I'll touch on raid difficulty later but I have not been a big fan of having gear pieces like Timeworn or Sanctified that's full potential is only utilized in specific raids. I also want to mention fire resistance gear for MC H3 but I'm sure I dont have to explain why that was annoying. All I'll say about that is it would have been way better if FR was only needed for maybe Barron and Rag, rather than the entire dang instance. Maybe this is a boomer MMO take but I would rather have incremental upgrades with raw stats rather than "X" multiplier on gear that only gets that multiplier in specific raids. I like the idea of having the best gear from the top raid tier and being competitive in every other aspect of the game, even outside of that raid.

Raid Difficulty:

I personally would rather have one increased difficulty across the board. Different difficulties is definitely more in the spirit of retail rather than classic but it was still in BC and WoTC so I get why they went with it. But the second a raid comes out its immediately fully cleared. And the fact that the gear is largely the same in each difficulty just the amount is changed doesnt give much of an incentive to prioritize the highest level. Now my guild will always do the highest difficulty and even then its not that hard. But it does take a little pizazz out of the raid if you can immediately see every boss and every piece of gear that comes out of it, even on the lowest level. Probably wishful thinking but wouldn't it be nice if there was a raid out there that guilds spent more than just two lockouts on progression before clearing it?

I briefly touched on why MC H3 was dumb already but it clearly felt like a copout to make it arbitrarily more difficult with just a gear and gold sink. I now have a full set of gear in my bank taking up space that I honestly should just vendor at this point.

BWL was a little better but I would have rather preferred different mechanics for the bosses at higher difficulties than the way they actually did the affixes. It felt kind of silly. It also really wasn't that much harder at all. Just annoying at times.

AQ has been the best so far in terms of difficulty. Even compared to NAXX. A big part of that though is the fact that AQ was also pretty difficult in classic. I did also like the mount drop at the highest level. More unique gear drops at the mythic level would have given much better incentives though.

Normal NAXX is actually very disappointing. I'm not sure why they made the hardest raid in classic the biggest push over so far(or second biggest compared to MC H1). Ran it on my alt in a pug and cleared the whole thing in three hours. Looking forward to trying it on my main at a higher difficulty.

Anyway, I could elaborate more on Rune changes or other SOD inclusions but I leave it at this for now. Let me know what you think!