For returning player to Classic, Retail seems so odd

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It’s clear that after 20 years a lot of changes have taken place. I did some fiddling around with the various Classic permutations in the past couple of years and I thought I knew what was happening with Retail but now it is unrecognizable. I don’t know what Warbands are nor why I can’t just login like I used to, I see character and item levels and gold have been squished again, items of value to a collector are now worth even less. The new UI is busy, the client gives me about 10fps. The final straw was my soul leaving my body as the free gear upgrade mentioned to teleport me to my home city, which is normally Thunder Bluff and a dream of pleasant music and familiarity, and it instead dumped me in a back alley of Orgrimmar. Ugh.

And yet I feel like Blizz missed an opportunity. This game should not be continuously evolving over time like George Lucas Star Wars edits. It’s a snapshot in time. What instead could have happened is a new MMO with a different and modern style could have made innovations with a different IP. I might have been able to learn anew with this different universe. But no, the cash cow (Tauren?) needed to be milked so everything I know is changed again and again and again. Blizzard just didn’t know how to sunset a game.

I haven’t trolled forums in a good long while so I imagine this sentiment is nothing new, so for that I ask for your forgiveness. I’m glad Classic Era is available now permanently, where I can relax and fish in TB to my heart’s content, but I really wanted WotLK to be permanent also. Wrath is my jam, where I felt I could explore and level and skill up and collect and pvp and run dungeons and have multiple characters doing what I want with a bit of peace. But you and I couldn’t have that.

So for those of you that play Retail now, you have my respect. It’s got luster but my eyes just can’t unsee so many years of what used to be, so many memories. I do know my demographic is probably not the target anymore and I accept that. But like my grandmother’s cherry pie, it’s ok to miss what we used to have.

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That’s all fine. There’s plenty of us with the opposite experience. I’ve played retail and while there have been changes, they have seemed mostly gradual. Probably because the longest break I took was about 6 months during BfA.

I tried classic. It’s slow, cumbersome, and there have been so many quality of life changes since then. I don’t missing having to waste a bag to ammo/reagents. I don’t miss the quests to go from Tanaris to Winterspring and back with no teleports (and possibly no flight paths before you do the run once).

WotLK was when I had the most fun. I had a good raid team, I spent a lot of time in Wintergrasp, I met my husband while raiding Naxx. Now that we’ve retired from raiding, retail offers a good way to still gear up some without having to spend a lot of time looking for groups or dedicating to a raid team.

Both have something to offer. It’s good that there’s a place to look back and remember the nostalgia. For me, the rose colored glasses came off trying to level.