I have had so many strong opinions from people about both that played neither in totality.
THIS WILL BE LONG, DISREGARD IF UNINTERESTED
I got pushed hard to play turtle and resisted forever because I enjoyed SOD, and felt I was done. I played both versions in totality and to the most hardcore level and eventually speed ran both. These are my honest takeaways.
TURTLE:
Turtle wow community was amazing, the developers were amazing. Their passion and constant push to develop and always create new content was commendable.
The fact that they actually policed gold buy and botting is bare minimum what a game should do. However im aware it isnt happening. Especially with blizzard games. So the fact it was actually happening was a huge breath of fresh air.
The new dungeons while leveling were amazing. At 60 I deep dived them collecting transmogs. They truly were great.
Raids: They were good. Very classic. I wish there was more difficulty variability for cosmetics like in SOD.
They go from astoundingly easy to a hard spike in k40. Some of the phases were insanely long, monotonous with a serious lack of difficulty pre naxxramas, one could argue pre k40. I know people want classic to stay somewhat easy, but thats where the hard mode scaling can really hold interest of sweaty gamers.
Classes: they fixed a bit, and added a vit of variability, but they could have done more for some classes and added more interesting variety to gameplay.
Sets: the newer sets (k40) were super un-interesting and non creative in regards to set bonuses. Some were outright bad, stat wise they were good but super un-exciting
Loot: way too small amount of loot dropping, and when your in k40 for 10 weeks and see almost no weapons drop. Like are they are just doing this to keep engagement? Hard barring speed clear times behind bad rng with low amounts of drops just sucks, it needed to be buffed.
Pvp: bad, very unbalanced, pretty garbage in general. Obviously most focus was pve on the server.
World pvp: while i can appreciate the cross faction pve.nit was suepr fun. But I basically stopped world pvping. Killing thr opposite faction and getting a super long abusivee diatribe got really old. I even killed an opposing faction guy that had a main in my guild and he had a mental breakdown. Super weird and damaged by cross faction.
The most recent furlbog raid had an insanely difficulty variability. And basically none of the gear was worth anything if you were aq40-naxx geared +
They should have added s few keystone items that actually mattered. It think gearing was a huge miss in there.
The recent patches on bwl and ony were interesting. As I said, I was in a super sweaty guild. We cleared it easily. However it massively crushed some guilds, including pugs. This is the kind of thing I think sod proved variable difficulties are better for.
Only for cosmetics, mounts, titles, and jerk off rights.
I dont think endgame content should hard barred only for the ultra sweats.
But overall I get why some people see this has their version of classic + it feels classic, but classes are fixed with new content. I loved it. It was great.
SOD:
No gms, no actual mediation of the game. No moderation of botting, gold buying or exploiting.
The #1 reason why blizzard sucks ass as a company. The idea you accidentally clicked the wrong thing. Or something was ninjad etc etc they throw back at you
'We want decisions to be meaningful' aka we dont want to pay people to manage anything because we are cheap money grubbing pieces of trash.
No new dungeons, this sucked, they obviously didnt want to put any effort into actual new content.
Level cap raids: the slow roll-out of raids with new level cap raids was actually super, super fun. With some exceptions.
Some phases went too long, sunken temple phase is where there was alot of quitting. I dont even think this phase was as bad, as it was just way too long. But it's the standout for probably the worst phase by a huge margin.
Pvp: not a major focus atleast in regards to bgs. Scaling, especially late game and class balance. It was non existent. So I'll give SOD pvp a very bad, however...
World pvp: quite good in open world, and for anybody that didnt experience the prime of stv world pvp, you missed out. I had so much goddam fun in it with guildes. From the good games to the bad games.
Making a 4 rogue 1 x feral druid team stealth gutter stomping teams, the 5 x mage aoe bomb teams, it was truly insane fun for anybody that liked pvp.
Raids: the baseline slight difficulty increase was good. Not too hard but more in line with modern gamers this should be done as a baseline for early classic raids.
Raid caps: they truly had no idea what they were doing with raid team size caps. They changed it multiple times, it was annoying. Just figure out flex raids for god sakes. Turtle did a way better job
Variable raid difficulties: they nailed it on a few, and did a shocker of a job on a few:
Molten core: variable difficulty was terrible, hard fr breakpoints or instant death. Insanely lazy insanely uninspired lack of effort and bad.
Bwl: amazing job new fight mechanics tonnes of variability to how deep you go and being able to roll it back anywhere and take partial end raid rewards eith either cosmetics or extra loot to hand out to the raid.
Aq40: did a pretty good job, they went more down the cosmetics route and less bonus gear than bwl. The in raid effects to add difficulty was good, but bwl having actual new boss mechanics was superior. A mix of the two like bwl is far more creative and more fun.
The addition of cosmetic mounts started here, they were super cool, they weren't a .00001% chance like in turtle, you were actually rewarded for doing hard mode with guaranteed mounts, it was cool.
Cosmetic and mounts in Turtle, while good basically account to be hr for officers or hr in pugs, if you ever saw them drop. Which i never did.
Naxx: they fucked raid difficulty variability here. Level 1-3 was a joke. Way too easy. On these levels once again there was just increased drops, which was okay. But nothing interesting from loot. These were hard gated by empowering gear with a cap
Difficulty 4 was a decent jump, but nothing inspired. Just hard scaling from bosses damage and health. Pretty boring. Level 4 mounts were cool, but pretty uninspired outside of this.
Scarlet crusade: completely screwed the difficulty scaling early. Basically impossible past the 4th boss until nerfs. The raid encounters once nerfed were actually insanely cool, unique, interesting. As far as mechanics better than k40.
However they promised alot of unique content, this is all they delivered on. A huge let down in totality for the game.
Classes: they bounced back and forth on what classes were good and bad. However they changing of gameplay for classes from phase to phase based on armor set bonuses was great. It really kept things fresh. I know some classes got better treatment at times.
But in totality they went further to improve class experiences and they did a better job than Turtle. There was way more balance in general
As someone who played a cat druid main. Naxx phase cat druid was the most fun of any version of cat druid that I have played. Retail wow, Turtle wow etc. Sod shit on most other versions.
Class stand outs
Rogue tank: went from hot garbage to absolutely busted, as expected trying to balance a tank that mitigates almost completely on avoidance is stupid, as expected, late game it was cracked beyond belief, the archetype is dumb never want to see it again.
Mage healer: astoundingly unique and fun. Until last phase in which they nerfed it. Once of the most unique and amazing versions of a healer I have ever played. It ruled.
Shockadin: in the last phase they decided to add shockadin. It was so unbelievably good. Best version of paladin I have ever played. Sword and board full plate dps that was exactly 50/50 melee and ranged shocks. There was a hybrid spec that allowed you to beacon the mt and heal woth shock dmg to supplement tank healing. It was also amazing. I hope to see this again. It should have been in every phase.
Sets: Every phase set bonuses was completely transformitive to gameplay, they were unique, off the wall, fun, interesting and there were purpose built sets for every class and playstyle. Blizzard did an amazing job on them. There were some that was worse than others some phases, but they always tried to make them unique.
Final phase sets were ugly as fuck and they reskinned old sets, super lazy, ugly and everything was the same colour schemes. Garbage.
In addition to this the new and unique changes to legendaries were great. More inclusive of other classes, hand of rag for feral skin was amazing.
Not writing this to try and trigger people, I talked to so many guys in Turtle that said sod sucked, and I asked, oh when did you quit? Oh, p3. Okay. You didn't really play it all.
And conversely people that said Turtle sucked but didnt try the new content.
The heart and soul of Turtle was better, having actual game devs that care was better.
Sod difficulty variability, class changes and set bonuses were great.
Ill also say I think Scarlet crusade endgame boss mechanics were better than k40 one balance changes fixed how overturned it was.
Gear drop rate in k40 was also garbage.
That's my final review, will miss Turtle. I finally after two years got my second binding lol. Sad.
I typed this on my phone and couldn't be fucked for spell checking and formatting, but was interested on other peoples take. Feel free to tell me im wrong, written purely for conversation sake.