I’ve seen people say things like “remove 95% of solo content, bring back hit and expertise, bring back leveling weapons” and a lot of old mechanical things, but I don’t think that is what makes Classic feel good.
I don’t think the overly tedious stuff is what makes Classic the best thing ever, like do you guys even remember once upon a time when you wanted to herb, mine, or even pick up a freaking quest you had to manually dismount? It didn’t just dismount you, you had to physically remove yourself from the mount, THEN interact with whatever object.
That doesn’t make the game “better”.
Honestly I believe the thing people love about Classic is the challenge and REPLAYABILITY. In Classic everything is open ended, there’s about 5 to 6 different ways to get from 1-20 just on your OWN side, not to mention Alliance. There’s several zones for several level brackets and it’s not just one linear story, so you can level in Undercity zones once, then redo another character in Orc zones, then do another in Tauren zones, etc… Sometimes you can do all of Eastern Kingdoms, sometimes you can level in Kalimdor, and a mix and match of your favorite zones, etc… but there’s a BUNCH of combos.
Second leveling TAKES a long time, so it’s not being level cap in a few days, or at most weeks. It takes MONTHS to get somewhere, and that means the entire game is relevant. Level 10 is relevant because it takes 2 hour to get from 1 to 10 and it only gets more time consuming from there. Leveling is an integrated and meaningful part of the game: the entire game matters.
In addition, there were clever things to get players to replay old content, such as attunements, materials, crafting recipes and more that made you revisit the same dungeons over and over despite having cleared them, everything mattered and was intrinsically tied together.
Reputation grinds took a long time, but were not time gated to “make it feel longer”, you just got like 5 rep a kill and it took 15,000 kills so obviously that’s going to take forever. You CAN be a madlad and do it in one sitting but it’ll take like 7 days of NONSTOP getting after it. There was no need to timegate.
I believe Legion did SOME great things to bring a bit of this back: Legendary drop chances had people running every single raid from the very first to the very last the entire expansion and it was great. Things once again tied all back together, Mythic+ is another great way of keeping 5 man content relevant and still going long after level cap. These clever ideas help keep content in the cycle instead of being instantly dead.
I don’t think level scaling was the right choice. I think slowing the entire game down, back to Vanilla or BC levels and tying in all tiers of raids and other content, as well as making new expansion places multiple choice would go a long way toward replayability and player retention.
Make every part of the game meaningful, yes leveling too. Have incentives to keep running old raids, and otherwise make all parts of the game replayable and engaging.
Since, maybe MoP Expansions have had a linear leveling process of Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4, Zone 5 like on a railroad, that limits replayability. It is amazing for telling story, but perhaps an emergent story that is pieced together by each zone contained is better than hand holding you in exactly a straight line. I believe Vanilla was like that, each questing hub, each zone had a story to tell that filled out the greater story, but it didn’t hand hold you. It let you go and find out for yourself. This made visiting new zones upon leveling next exciting. Expansions can only be so big, but perhaps a more hodgepodge leveling style would go a long way to being more “alt friendly”.
I think there’s a careful balance though, Legion Artifacts tied behind RNG made alts unfriendly because you simply couldn’t compete on damage if you never got your best ones.
Overall, though, I think slowing the game down, taking it from a linear zone to zone handholding storyline style and otherwise incorporating incentive to return to old raids during the current expac would go a long way toward making the game loved again. Make everything meaningful, and it doesn’t even have to be by just making things obtusely tedious.
I don’t think having Tauren hitboxes being able to be melee’d from 15 yards away makes Vanilla amazing. I do think perhaps having more to invest in your character does. Perhaps weapon skills aren’t a bad thing, perhaps Lockpicking and other types of voluntary, but rewarding, systems you can put time into are worth it. Slow rep grinds that aren’t gated, you can go at your own pace, but it will take awhile. Dangerous leveling that has consequences, and pulling too many mobs means certain death.
Slow the game down, tie in all aspects of end game to being relevant, and non-linear expansions are the answers we are supposed to get from Vanilla. The entire game is meaningful, and completely replayable because you can’t beat it in a day. It takes months, and that isn’t a problem, I don’t believe. People also sink countless hours into Skyrim and other such games because things aren’t instant. I don’t think mindless tedium is what people find rewarding in Vanilla. I think it’s that it takes a long time and there’s multiple paths and way to play and the endgame cycle is tied together. You NEED fire resistance from XYZ before you can progress to the next one, etc…