My only worry is not being able to find flexible enough raiding guild.
Due to my work, I can be ON 7 days out 7 and then disappear for 3-4 days next week.
Ideal I would like to raid 2 evening /week : Friday and Sunday
I think she managed to put into words what others could not. It’s not that most people are arguing the fact that vanilla gameplay is a major time sink; it’s that the gameplay is MUCH preferable in the ways described.
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I have never heard the argument of Classic being less of a time sink and therefore somehow better than Retail.
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Ignored my question but thank you for the response.
Because there’s no right answer to the question you asked and its a fools question.
Let’s break it down:
why do people think classic isn’t as big of a time sink as retail and how are you going to manage playing it?
why do people think
I don’t know nor does anyone else, why do people commit murder and sexuality assault? For the answer you’d have to look inside peoples minds, not ask a question on an internet forum.
classic isn’t as big of a time sink as retail
I’ve never heard this before, so you lost me on that one…maybe not generalize and think there’s “a ton” of people that think this way…
“how are you going to manage playing it?”
I told you in my response, I’m going to take my time and enjoy it and make new friends. There’s no race, its all in your head that you think you’re going to have to rush to enjoy it and that if you don’t race it will take time that you may or may not have.
How are you going to handle your problems?
You’re going to have to pay me to give you that advice… 
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This probably will be tough, but not impossible worse case you can pug and casual raiding guilds will be a thing depending on how much you want to push and how early on, tons of leveling guilds end up being something like that. Could also just try to be a dps whos fills a lot.
I haven’t played BfA, but can’t possibly see how it is a bigger time sync.
Maybe if you are pushing for rankings in Mythic raiding.
Mostly what I hear about BfA is that people are bored with how easy the game is outside of hardmode raiding.
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You arent the target audience, that’s how we can manage it. Classic WoW is a game that can be played as casually or as hardcore as you want to play it. For some that means minimal progression over 1-2 hour sessions over months and years, for others it means a semi-hardcore 3-5 hours a night playing, which is fairly realistic to most lifestyles that don’t revolve around a family. I was raiding cutting edge on retail working part time and taking full time classes in college, so you can’t really tell me time is too big of a factor. If you want the time for something, you will make the time.
The draw for me and a large number of players IS the time commitment. We dont want instant gratification and we’re fine falling behind if we don’t put in the work. Everything in Classic is so much sweeter because of the work you put in and the adventure you go on to get it. In retail, power gains are only obtained via gear, and those gains are minimal. In Classic, the entire 1-60 process is a well designed and fantastically executed MMORPG. There is a massive world, a set of rules, and 2499 other players. Some of the power gains you get are gamechanging. Like when I can spec out of holy/ret into 5/5 Reckoning, or when Warrior gets Whirlwind and Mortal Strike.
Time commitment isn’t an issue because the game is fun enough that it’s worth the commitment. Sure, the grinds are longer, everything takes longer, but the rewards in the context of the game are far, far greater. Retail WoW by comparison looks like a casino loot simulator in comparison, none of the gear has any value at all, even mythic level gear, because even if you clear the hardest raid, you still dont get the best gear, that’s reserved for the RNG titanforge gods to decide.
Rewards are more decisive and have a larger impact, and any given powerspike in classic WoW is dramatically more noticable than any powerspike in retail, because retail’s power gains have been so normalized and trivial that even a todler could play the game to 400 ilvl if they played it regularly.
Everything you’re seeing as issues are Classic WoW’s biggest strengths, and it really shows how far retail WoW’s development has gone off the rocker for its players to be critical of its original design.
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Well, I’m counting to take a week vacation on lunch to be somewhere near level 50 (Yes no rush, just calm leveling). From 50 to 60 : up my professions and doing donjons, finding similar minded people and may be joining a guild, if I didn’t find one already.
I’ll be holy paladin probably
It took me 6 th months to get to 60 when I played vanilla… and I still enjoyed it.
I don’t know why you can’t enjoy the game at your own pace O_o
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Some people think players need to be tethered together so everyone can only go at the same pace. Of course this philosophy has no place in Classic.
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Classic wow is an mmo experience from lvl 1-60. At all stages of the game.
The economy is thriving at all stages, the dungeons, the quests, the player interactions, the pvp… I do all those things throughout the entire game and it’s a different experience every time you level up.
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While I personally have more time on my hands now than I did in 2004-2006, it’s worth noting that WoW was always the “casual’s MMO”.
Sure you weren’t going to hit rank 14 or be sitting in cutting edge raid gear but to log in and level a bit or run a BG? That was something you could do without much time commitment.
Vanilla WoW was a game that gave you back as much as you put into it. You could put only small bits into it and still enjoy the game just fine, or you could be hardcore about it and there was stuff for you to do.
I think people get too caught up on Naxxramas or rank 14 like they’re the only things to strive for in Vanilla.
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The expectations.
We were discovering game. Everything was new. For a lot of people, it was their first MMO. Each zone felt alive, dynamic. We WANTED to explore each cave. Seeing a rare elite was a highlight of the day.
Now we KNOW that the most efficient way is to chain main quests until 60, then go directly in donjons and level professions at 60 as low-level crafts are not “efficient”.
An example : I don’t think any of new undeads will now wonder to the north in the level 50 zone and then wonder “why there is so much skulls instead of level on mobs”
And that was my little fun back in a day : go mining in the high level zone, way over 10 lvls from me and not dying.
Technically both have infinite time sinks.
Leveling each class, to level cap, acquiring all gear wearable by that class. That alone will take you a whole lot of time.
Retail is a bigger time sink if you choose it to be. Same can be said for classic but classic’s “cap” is lower.
What I mean is if you compare the top%1 of raiders in classic and BFA you can see a massive difference. What do classic raiders have to do to min max? Farm gold, consumables, get some extra buffs before a raid, world bosses.
What do BFA raiders have to do? Gold, consumables, pvp, M+, Warfronts, Island expeditions, rep, raids (that are different difficulty), world quests, world bosses. Somehow I am sure I am forgetting something. There’s plenty to do in BFA it’s just it’s all mindless boring BS that you can do forever without it ever stopping.
Classic has an end, BFA does not.
But I want that god damn Ashbringer on a Paladin and I’ll be damned if I dont get it.
I mean if you’re method level, sure, their optimization is literally limited by the number of hours in a day. For most cutting edge guilds the commitment is a lot less. When I was pushing Nighthold CE, a notoriously grindy raid, I put less time into the game than I’ll need to to clear naxx.
Yes but it applies to a casual raider too. Just on a smaller scale. A casual raider in classic has to show up for raid do it for a couple of hours and then quit for a week if your guild is not garbage and can complete a raid. A casual raider in BFA can do exactly the same sure, but they have other carrots dangling in front of them such as higher difficulty raid, M+, pretty mounts, warfronts, higher neck level, or even lower difficulty raids with the a m a z i n titanforge gear.
Treat classic as a journey not a race. The type of “content” in classic is very different than retail. In retail the only real content is at end game, vast majority of things to do can only be done at max level.
In classic leveling and the zones are a major part of the content. End game was more like the bonus you unlock for " completing" the game. You can only raid at max level true, however the pacing of the experience was meant to be 100% different back then.
If you race to 60 your either in a guild whose goals align with that for some reason or your cheating yourself of a good experience.
Take the time and build your character.
However if you only have 2 hours or so to game, mmorpgs in general might not be the best gaming option.
A casual doing no out of raid farming will be stuck on resistance bosses. So if you consider getting stonewalled in MC and BWL successful raiding, sure, I guess you’re right, but that ignores that bosses only drop 2 epics between 40 people, and if you want to gear as a casual, dungeons and pvp, along with waiting on 20 mans is just a better option. Classic raiding isn’t really designed for casual play.
A normal or heroic raider in retail has to put 0 effort into raid prep, and mythic raiders have a manageable load over time. Farming resist gear alone, let alone offensive/defensive consumables, is more effort than anything you need to do in retail to get into the raid.
I hesitate to say you need less time for raid prep in classic when more than half of the raids require more prep than anything retail has to offer.