An Honest Comparison -- Modern WoW vs. Classic WoW

Community General Discussion
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Call it a bit surprising, but after trying out Classic for a bit and hopping back into Modern WoW out of curiosity… I’m starting to notice that each version has different strengths. In some ways, neither gets it completely “right”… but they also present starkly different strengths.

Just to state the main points being compared, this is largely looking at the questing and leveling processes. I didn’t get into any dungeons during Classic (at the point where I very well could, but haven’t yet), and I tend to avoid dungeons like the plague in Modern WoW because of the unpleasant personalities I frequently run into. Endgame is being left out of the equation for the moment, as I’m nowhere near it in Classic and despise it in Modern WoW.

The characters being compared are as such:

  • Classic WoW – Tauren Warrior, levels 1-20
  • Modern WoW – Kul Tiran Warrior, levels 34-58

Let’s start with Classic WoW, which many were hoping would be the savior of the game in many ways. But after going through the first 20 levels of Classic… I don’t have the best news.

The gameplay isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

That being said, I think the key issue here is that you start with next to nothing in Classic WoW so that they can spread out the ability progression. Warriors were known for not being the best at leveling, so no surprises there… but yeah, the lack of resources (slow rage generation) and useful abilities does hurt it a bit. Probably not aided by the fact “next melee” abilities are probably some of the least interesting abilities on their own. Heroic Strike makes for a great filler ability at higher levels… but early on, it’s almost stifling.

However, as I went on, Warrior did get stronger and more flexible… considerably so, in fact. I was gaining new abilities regularly and each talent point had a small but useful effect that started to add up. This is probably one of Classic’s greatest strengths, it absolutely gets better as you progress through it.

Getting into it, however… is definitely a mountain to climb. Looking back at my earliest days of WoW (which would be Vanilla), I’d have to say the same is true. I didn’t enjoy the game THAT much to begin with, but as you get deeper into it, it definitely became more compelling. Character progression is Classic’s greatest strength, and it only gets better with the more time you put into it.

In terms of quest structure… well, it’s hard to deny. Classic WoW is a grind, plain and simple. It doesn’t try to add many compelling narratives, just gives you a location and objective while you sort out the rest for yourself. This does open the door to a bit more player agency (and to an extent, more creativity from players), largely because the game isn’t really pushing you in any one direction. I also found that I frequently ran out of quests at current level, encouraging me to go to other zones… for better or for worse, and often involving a lot of running.

Is the world more dangerous? Absolutely… but this is also due to the mobs being tune to be a fair bit stronger. They actually feel like they have more mechanics than Modern WoW, or more accurately, more mechanics that matter. Mobs last long enough to do stuff, they’re stronger relative to you, and there’s no easy way to deal with several of them on your own (barring overleveling everything).

Running around everywhere does get a bit dull before too long, even if I’m one who will try to find “creative pathways”. Sadly, it seems like the old wall-jumping glitch didn’t make it through.

The community, I found, wasn’t magically better than Modern WoW… and I suppose this is something that will take time. People did openly invite eachother to groups… but it was groups of convenience, which didn’t help things at all. People rarely talked and would drop group (or dissolve it) instantly once they were done or it appeared that it would be favourable to do so. I had several groups dissolve so that the other member or members could join another group beside us, all without anyone saying that they were doing so.

Hopping back to Modern WoW, the first thing I noticed?

The gameplay flowed better.

Mind you, this is starting at a higher level… but it also opens up a significant problem. It also feels like there’s no character progression after level 40 or so, aside from the VERY slow trickle of talents at higher levels (which is sometimes uneventful, making it feel like no progression at all).

Despite moving up a total of 24 levels… my warrior felt like it he gained NOTHING. Just bigger numbers, which I don’t care about. Gear upgrades? Well, using heirlooms probably didn’t help… but even the other slots didn’t see much. The moment-to-moment gameplay felt more fun, but before long you’re just going through the motions. Heck, it didn’t feel all that different from my max-level warrior either. To be honest, my interest VERY quickly dried up after hitting level 58 and unlocking the TBC and WotLK transmogs; there was no desire to carry on, period.

The quest structure was definitely more fluid, blending in a plot to move things along. Not really the best plot, and frequently self-contained within each zone instead of amounting to anything greater, but more than “Go to X location, kill Y mobs and collect Z random drops”. Nevertheless, it is a more entertaining experience… though it does feel like you’re put on rails a bit much and you aren’t really given much chance to explore. Needless to say, this is a major issue I have with the game at higher levels as the issue just seems to get worse with the more recent expansions.

The world… well, let’s say there’s not really any danger in it. Heirlooms are a bit overpowered as well, not helping things. Nevertheless, there was seldom any real danger of being overwhelmed and it just felt like going through the motions. It COULD be so much better… but it’s so undertuned that it feels like it doesn’t matter.

The community… well, can’t say there’s a lot to say here. I ran into people, but rarely did anyone talk. It felt like it wouldn’t have made much difference if they weren’t there at all.

All told, I can’t say which I enjoyed more… or less.
If anything, they have a bad tendency to highlight the flaws of eachother.

Classic WoW has a slow start, but well paced character progression while leveling. Talent points may give the illusion of choice thanks to cookie-cutter builds, but it absolutely gives you a sense of progression you will unlock milestones as you go on. The gameplay hasn’t aged all that well and it’s hard to get into, but rewarding if you do so.

Modern WoW feels like it plays and flows better… but damn, it’s so unrewarding after the initial flurry of unlocks. So while it can impress early on, it definitely struggles with staying power. You get everything right away, but character progression feels effectively dead while leveling after 40 or so. The rate you gain abilities slows to a crawl, and sometimes talents feel less impactful than the points you put into passives in Classic.

Classic will remain Classic, which I’m sure many will enjoy (hard to say how deep I’ll get into it at this point, that mountain is starting to look a bit daunting)… but Modern WoW really should start taking some notes from Classic to fix the many (but not all) of the issues it’s having.

… and I probably rambled on a bit more than I thought I would there.

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In other words, Changing the Talent system of Retail, possibly back to the original one where you could go Hybrid spec, etc. You think would be a great change in next expansion? Just my opinion but I would enjoy the old Talent system back, and I don’t need Glyphs, etc.

edit: I see u replying to me lol taking forever!

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I would say not necessarily the old talent system, but the ability progression during leveling REALLY needs to be adjusted in WoW. The old talent point system worked great, but it may not be the answer. 111 talent points across 3 talent trees does start to sound a bit silly. There have been rumours of a “level squish to 60” being planned, which could bring the talents down to a much more manageable 51 points if true.

The Artifact Traits in Legion were a good emulation of the talent point system; even if it was completely filled in the end, it still gave a sense of progression as you worked your way through the traits.

In any case, some sort of change is needed going forward. Modern WoW may be more fun to pick up and play, but it needs some fundamental changes to make it a more lasting experience.

I don’t go by half-measures, not my style.
Aside from the occasional witty one-liner when the situation presents itself.

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I see, That’s fair - Currently waiting on Kiwi :wink: :kiwi_fruit: :kiwi_fruit: :kissing_heart:

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My 2 cents.
I started in Cata, so Classic was new to me.

Rewards
In classic, you have to work harder for the things you want/need. This made me appreciate those things more. For example, I just turned 40 and I appreciated the riding/mount I bought more than most of the riding/mounts in retail because I had to work very hard to earn them.

Same goes for the gear that I’ve received. It has felt a lot more rewarding because I know exactly what I need to do and know exactly what I am going to get.
In retail, you don’t have to put in much effort to get gear, however, it’s a slot machine, and doesn’t feel rewarding at all.

Questing
In classic, it can be a struggle and quests lead you all over the world. This can be time consuming and frustrating. There are also quests that take forever because the items do not drop off of mobs. I don’t really mind it except when the area is full of people.
I like how zones can have green, yellow, orange, and red quests and mobs.

In retail, the quest chains are very streamlined and contained into the same area. This saves you time. Mobs scale to your level. This can make questing very efficient, and I do like that it opens up a lot more zones for questing.

However, there is a lot to be said for running into high orange/mobs when questing. It makes the world a bit more scary. This doesn’t happen in retail.

Walking/Riding/Flying

In classic, you spend a lot of time walking. I enjoyed this because I hadn’t seen the world pre-cata, so it allowed me to spend time in this new world. However, it does take time to get places when you’re in a hurry.

I also really like how the flight path mounts fly low to the ground. This is very immersive. In retail, you fly high, so you miss out on being immersed in the world.

The faster speeds/flying in retail is nice when you don’t have a lot of time to play. You get to places a lot faster, giving you more time to accomplish whatever you wanted to accomplish during your time playing the game.

Art
I love the art in Retail, The art team does such an awesome job. However, I have enjoyed looking at what the original art team had created. Org is so much better than in retail.

Edit: I forgot to add that I love the old talent tree! It isn’t a simple cookie cutter approach.

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I mean to state the obvious, a summary of your thread is basically that Classic works well because it’s an RPG that has a good curve of progression throughout the games life, it hasn’t had over 10 years of the devs focusing purely on the endgame messing up the progression of power of leveling, with the trade-off being however, that 15 years of development has streamlined every aspect of the game, but especially combat and questing significantly, for better and for worse.

It’s not really a stance that I disagree with. I don’t want retail to be classic, but I think there are many lessons that retail can learn from classic.

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To be honest the only thing I liked about classic was the talent tree plus I don’t have to level a freaking necklace all day after reaching max level–but I love my flying in retail.

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I should take a closer look at that, can’t say I’ve noticed that the flight paths were lower. I’ll keep an eye out for that.

That being said, while I haven’t reached it yet, I do recall that silly flight path which just HAD to loop around that hill/mountain/whatever to reach Kargath in the Badlands… it was a bit annoying, especially considering it was the closest one (for Horde) to Blackrock Mountain (containing a huge chunk of Classic’s endgame content).

Nevertheless, even during Modern WoW, I enjoy flying low rather than up high. It may not be the most efficient… but it is far more interesting. Especially when you have to start dodging and weaving your way through obstacles.

To be quiet honest, cookie-cutter builds were quite common in Vanilla and probably will be in Classic.

The key difference is that you don’t HAVE to the follow them and are allowed to experiment a bit… or at least the game is allowing you to experiment, the community was never that good with allowing you to do so.

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You should! One of my favorite activities is to buff people who are flying over me on FPs. I’ve even had people ask me how people got flying mounts because they fly so low.

I do agree that some of the FP take you out of the way to get where you’re going. I was on one that was supposed to be a straight to destination FP but it went out of the way to fly through Org.

This is what I like. With retail, players really don’t have to put much thought into talents for there are only 3 per level, and they don’t level up. In classic, I can see a difference as I add a point into specific talents, so it make experimenting more fun.

This is kind of like when they let your reforge gear, you could experiment with your stats more.

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Classic is for people who want to escape the real world. Retail is for people who just want to supplement the real world.

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More like both are used for escape and just chill out, relax, lounge, etc.

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Except it is the most cookie cutter ever in WoW history.

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I think this is an accurate assessment for the most part. On the note of quest narratives, I think it’s worth pointing out that aside from maybe Tirisfal/Silverpine, vanilla Horde questing is notorious for leaving something to be desired when it comes to story due to time and resource constraints during development.

If you have the chance, I would encourage you to take a character through the Elwynn-Westfall-Redridge-Duskwood track – they’re likely the strongest among the starting areas narratively by a large margin, each having a prominent local story that serves as a component in a larger overarching story that then later tie into much greater plots at max level.

No kidding. Yes, it’s low poly but where original Org was warm, lived-in, and welcoming, Cata Org is downright depressing. My horde characters in modern WoW hang out in TB all the time.

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uc/if master race

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IF is cool, UC I dunno. Probably just haven’t spent enough time there but every time I’m passing through it I end up going in circles… especially with the flight master. I swear it takes 3-5 runs around the central trade area before he finally shows up. Also, the ruins and elevator are not particularly tauren friendly.

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id like to see the old talent tree then at max level the current talent tree as paragon levels type thing.

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Not sure what your history with the game is… but modern (retail) wow is the result of a MAJORITY of the playerbase complaining about certain things. We didn’t get to where we are with retail by letting the developers run amok… those changes to the game as time went on were DIRECTLY the result of player feedback… if there are 10 people playing a game, and 6 of them want something change, that’s a majority… and thats what happened to wow. Over time the playerbase asked for certain things and those things were implemented and to suggest that Classic wow can offer Retail wow direction is laughable. THEY ARE THE SAME GAME with one glaring caveat… Classic wow is Retail wow’s slower, less intelligent, special needs, masochistic little brother.

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I don’t agree with this at all. Over the years, there has been a consistent divide between what the vocal minority (the forums) think and what players in-game think, with the former skewing upset and the latter skewing happy. Even in the midst of massive forum drama barely anybody in-game had the faintest idea that anything was “wrong”.

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I’d have to disagree with the idea that Modern WoW is “supplementing” the real world. It doesn’t add to it in any way, or at least not in any way that I’ve seen.

Though I can see there’s a grain of truth when it comes to Classic WoW being used as an escape. That being said, Modern WoW tries to do this… but fails.

I think we can actually look at which version of the game caters more to which “Bartle Gamer Type”. To quickly summarize:

  • Classic WoW is more oriented towards Explorers and Socializers
  • Modern WoW is more oriented towards Achievers and Killers

All four types have probably existed for the entirety of WoW… but the former pair lay the foundation for the world to exist, while the latter pair are FAR more visible and tend to attract more attention. The latter pair is easier to cater to in general, or at least easier to figure out. What they want is quite definite: Achievers want objectives to complete (PvE), Killers want to dominate other players (PvP).

Explorers and Socializers aren’t quite so straightforward… or more accurately, it sounds a lot simpler than it actually is. Give them places to explore (they also like following plots and experimenting with gameplay) and people to socialize with, that’s it… but getting those right is much easier said than done.

I’d count myself as an explorer, and it’s easy to come to the conclusion that WoW has increasingly abandoned the style of play I prefer over the years. Namely, that leveling up and exploring the world feels like a meaningless and mindless task because it’s be too streamlined and presents no real challenge.

Classic WoW, even if it doesn’t have the smoothest gameplay, makes simply running around the world feel meaningful while you try to avoid foes and get to different places. Even if running around on foot everywhere can feel a bit tedious, it feels like it has purpose.

I’d like to see WoW move back a bit to the more exploration-focused world design it used to have, and make the leveling process more meaningful to help that out.

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I hardly ever see anyone using general chats, trade chats, and other chats in Modern WoW. Community aspect is pretty terrible in Modern WoW. I’m two weeks in, and trying to get help when 5+ people are spawn camping me from the fishing quest giver, back to rustbolt was like asking for someone to move a mountain. It’s world PVP with zero people that care, and only give you the “Turn it off, or you’re bad, or why don’t you fly away?”

Where in other expansions I wasn’t time gated into flying, or was dealing with 90% of the other players with it. Or lets add, other players actually care to help.

My classic toon is past 30, and I never have one issue with getting help or ganking someone back if need be. In BFA, you’re either insulted by some elitist, or people simply don’t care. They should of left world PVP alone, not kept server structure the same. Not the POS WM system.

In general, classic has a much better community, and you’re forced to be a decent player or help people. Because server reputation between players is an actual concept in classic.

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