For those of you avoiding retail, would you play retail content on pristine realms?

You are making no sense to me. Death Knights did not become a thing until Wrath. And having DK on both sides does make sense lore wise since Arthas didn’t CARE which side he chose to raise from the grave…ALL of his foes that were dead were a tool to be used to bolster his army. Both the Horde and the Alliance were intent on taking him down for many reasons…that being one of them.

As to you saying that previously only the Horde had Death Knights…that isn’t true either since none existed pre Wrath. Now unless you mean the Undead race in general then yes that’s true…but DKs are a class not a race.

Or were you talking about the WC3 games? If that is the case then I get what you mean there. But in WC3 Arthas was the only DK, and his faction was neither Horde, (Orcs) nor Alliance (Humans) Once he took up Frostmourne, he ceased all ties with his Alliance bretheren and went and killed his own father after he killed Mal’Ganis…He’s the REASON the Horde had the Undead to begin with…misplaced victims of Lorderon(unsure of spelling here) who no longer had a place to call home after being killed in defense of their kingdom

The hate for retail players stems from the old Wall of No threads in which vanilla private server players and people who wanted legit legacy servers (Which we finally have with Classic) were ridiculed, harassed, disparaged, and labeled as trolls for asking for them for nearly TEN YEARS…THAT is why we are so derisive and condescending toward retail players.

That and the toxicity and elitism that is so prevalent in retail vs players that are new and don’t know all of the nuances of the game either because they are brand new, or they quit several expansions ago and returned to give it a try, and then get lambasted and berated for making the smallest mistake or committing any kind of social faux pas. We have come to Classic to get away from all of that, and the overall lack of socialization in retail in general thanks to the dungeon finder and CRZ and all the other things that killed server identity.

Along with that comes the AoE cleave meta that has arisen recently in Classic due to all of the retail players who have been mentally conditioned to play that way from Wrath onwards. The gogogo mindset to burn it all down and grab loots ASAP just to repeat that same dungeon ad nauseum to hit level cap without ever doing a single quest or having to leave town…it’s just dumb really IMO and encourages players to be complete douchebags because they know they will never see that same player ever again thanks to all of the cross realm things I mentioned earlier.

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If you think that what the majority of classic players want is just hardcore endgame content you’re missing the point entirely.

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No, there are fundamental issues with how the game has been designed now, the philosophy behind how it works, how they entice players to remain engaged.

It started in TBC, but could be ignored, in Wrath, you either bought in, or you fell behind, and it only got worse.

The game is now designed wrong. I would never play today’s Retail.

I wrote a long answer to this at How many of you will actually stop playing retail WoW? - #25 by Narya-kirin-tor .

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Im not avoiding it… i just dont feel like playing it.

Strict reply to the OP’s question:

Retail already removed the content and systems I would require in order to play Retail, so even going ‘Pristine’ would have 0 appeal for me.

No. Retail’s problem, for me, is not all those leveling acceleration features. It’s that the game is simply not that fun to play. I hated the Cata world and quest redesign. Those wouldn’t go away. I hated the elimination of talent trees. Those wouldn’t come back. I hate dungeons shrunk into 15-30 minute races. Those aren’t changing back. I hated the massive spell prune. Those spells aren’t being given back.

Pristine, in the sense of slowing down leveling, would do nothing but make me spend even MORE time in a game that has so few things left that I find enjoyable.

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How can you know what the majority of classic players want ? Plus you are the one who claimed retail caters to the later, i.e. the players who don’t find meaning in difficulty.

There isn’t any big difficulty in dungeons in classic, nor in questing content. Exactly where do you find all this difficulty that the ‘majority’ of players want.

I don’t really care whether you believe me or not. If you insist that people aren’t playing classic for difficulty at lower levels that’s fine.

And if you think that Retail is primarily catering to power gamers wanting to take the top slot of competitive raiding, I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise.

some people confuse timesinks with difficulty.

classic clearly cater to the former.

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Fresh is only appealing when the thing itself is desirable.

Fresh croissants, yes please. Fresh poop, no thanks.

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It’s really weird that anyone playing a modern MMO would point fingers at “time sinks”

That #1 thing that keeps me away from retail is the horrible itemization.

If I wanted to play Diablo 3, I’d play Diablo 3, I don’t need Diablo 3 in my World of Warcraft and thats exactly what the current loot situation is, Diablo 3 RNG-fest of tedium and boredom.

Killing X boss to get x item is fun, those items are almost ALWAYS based on the character you kill to get them, which is immersive. Having personalized loot that has an RNG chance to actually be useful is not immersive or fun, its boring. There is no excitement to item drops in retail, oh cool I got an item, oh it didn’t Titanforge so its vendor trash…AWFUL, whats even worse is when you get 20g as your “personal loot” because giving people a small pittance of gold that doesn’t even cover 1 repair is super rewarding Blizzard, /facepalm.

No amount of “restarts” on a fresh server are gonna change the horrible end game itemization process.

Hahaha no.

Why would I want to play anything related to retail wow, even with bad features removed?

Alot of replies to read them all. But did someone really post that retail is just as challenging as classic?

Retail is dead to me. I can never go back to Retail.

Way forward is to rebuild WoW off of the classic base and not mess it up this go around. WoW Reboot os needed, New Generation of WoW based off of Classic initial design is needed with the added option of better graphics to keep up with the times.

My biggest reason for hating on retail is how quickly gear scales up. DPS shouldn’t go up by 400% from the first raid of an xpac to the last. It makes everything you do feel trivial because you know that the rewards you’re earning will soon be worthless. I also hate the constant repeated content for higher ilevel stuff. It’s a cheap way for blizz to add new “content”, but it’s boring. And then there’s Azerite… having to google new gear to figure out which bonuses were better got old fast. BFA is just a bad expansion.

I don’t know if/when I will return to Retail, but for now Classic is keeping me amused. I imagine the hype will die down after a few months, but for now it’s okay…

Absolutely.

I started this thread a few days ago.

as a difference between them and difficulty?

how is that weird?

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