I don't understand why people are so fixated on the experience aspect when most protesters aren't even willing to play with the slightest change from the "balance" they're so tired of. A normal player would only need 10-15 games to get used to the new balance of castles, magic, and heroes. They should have learned that a long time ago. What's so bad about that?
P.S. When people say that Warlords is a completely different game, it's just ridiculous. A different game is Heroes 4.

It's just that the experience, tax, and bank system evokes associations with Warlords, which quickly became boring for me personally, despite the many options. We tried everything, and it seemed cool when it first came out, and you could go and destroy everything (the tent resurrects), or you could level up troops in reinforcements (ceramic battles), destroying 7 stacks of 500 Supreme Archons with a commander and a squire, etc. But the "imbalance" of SODA (in terms of castles and heroes) looks more acceptable than the "balance" of Warlords.