Minus the multiplayer aspect, for an actual adventure you go to your menu, exit WoW, and launch Skyrim / Minecraft / Witcher 3 / Subnautica / Tunic / Cyberpunk 2077 / Elden Ring / Baldur’s Gate 1, 2, 3 / maybe even freakin’ Stellaris instead.
It’s a new way for them to say “Journey”.
"It’s not 'bout the destination man, it’s the journey man! man. 
"
So much this 100x. 
Endgame content in the open world has always been a minority except for wpvp. Instances have always been the actual endgame, this isn’t going to change.
Harder is better, to some extent.
I remember being in Perdition Hold, doing the daily, or whatever.
Perdition Hold was flat out dangerous. Elites and patrolling elites everywhere. You definitely had to tip toe through there.
And taking on a room of elites with just me and my VW was definitely interesting, especially when your primary CC is either a tank pet that was getting clobbered, or Fear. It’s called “Fear” because that’s how you feel every time you use it, not knowing where the mob will go, what it’ll ping pong off of, or what friends it will bring back.
And, yea, getting through that, surviving, burning healthstones, healing pots, resummoning your dying VW, Healing it, and draining life to help yourself, it’s exciting.
It’s a narrow edge to be sure. It’s not hard to be ho hum OP or “Well hel-lo Spirit Healer” underpowered. But when you’re on the edge, when the outcome is probable, but not certain, it’s a lot of fun.
You know, I’ve see a lot of streamers doing this as well. I guess I’m in the minority, but I’ve never done this for any quest. I just pull one mob at a time and/or CC as many as I can if there’s a group. It allows me to use my whole toolkit. It’s slower, but that’s how I’ve been questing since EverQuest. And I just figured out where I learned this habit, lol.
Let me put it to you like this.
Running with OP here, if the game is checklisty, it probably has more to do with the core of the gameplay, and not necessarily the difficulty itself. And even if higher difficulty makes it better, the core of the problem (i don’t think it’s a problem, i’m simply going by what OP implies/says) would still be there. And i think it would be better to look at the core for issues, rather then say “alright, lets make it harder” as a blanket answer.
It’s akin to Elden Ring not having map markers like every other open world game. Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean it’s any different functionally. Infact, Open world games allow you to disable elements of your hud, and so on, so you can practically turn Far Cry 6 into Elden Ring on a whim. But i digress.
No offense, but i really don’t want to talk about how it makes a person feel at the moment thanks to the increase of difficulty. Simply due to the fact it’s subjective, and this can be held for any difficulty, anywhere else.
As well as Fun. Fun is also subjective.
I think the problem with this whole “I miss WoW when it was hard, WoW is bad because it’s easy now” is mostly subjective and most of the time, come from people who has played WoW for 10+ years. Well 12+ since many of them wouldn’t necessarily like to lump in Cata.
I just think they should honestly realize WoW isn’t going to be like Classic WoW ever again and attempting to try it, wouldn’t work as well they think it will. Especially since we already have Classic WoW that’s more or less staying the same anyways.
adventure = classic wow
competetive lobby gaming = retail wow
i enjoy dabbling in both! but modern WoW devs (and i’d say blizzard designers in general) don’t know how to create a universe…they’ve never had to build one before
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A good way to find an adventure is by chasing achievements! If you lock in on something and go for it, you are sure to have an adventure.
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Your idea of classic being going out and meeting people is really just describing leveling.
People still sit in main cities waiting for instanced content in classic at end game.
You could outdoor level in retail too.
Well you have Wrath classic for free so you can play anytime
I think WoW should follow the LOTRO model - theyve recently offered leveling difficulty options that each reward cosmetics for reaching max. The last three difficulties are so hard they make leveling a group mandatory activity (the first you are expected to duo it, the hardest you are expected to be in a group of 3-4)
End game open world content - idk how to fix it unless again we can opt into mythic world questing or something but thats going to split the playerbase up a lot and frankly I dont see the appeal of just outgearing the lower levels of difficutly. I think the scaling should reward better rewards but all the mobs get additional abilities and require you to make use of dispels, cc, defensives etc maybe even lining certain casts
Wrath Classic is closer to retail in terms of pace, difficulty etc. I’m only pointing this out so you are aware as I assume you don’t play there. I got my toon to 80 and promptly quit for Classic Era when it was apparent I could easily solo group quests and 2 shot questing mobs. The end game felt very much like Dragonflight as well where I am AFKing in Dal/Valdrakken browsing the premade group tool and being summoned to my preferred instanced content.
First step… Don’t trust those two unicorns
You stop worrying about endgame and M+/raiding.
Make an alt. Turn off exp for a while. Pick a timeline to run around in, explore on foot, take your time and smell the flowers.
90% of my game time in retail is spent everywhere but the Dragon Isles. I honestly try to avoid getting to 60 sometimes, just because I don’t want the pop-up for the Isles, and because I inevitably stop playing a character as much as before once I hit the 61~70 threshold. Most of the time I’m rolling alts and wandering around the world somewhere, having a good time finding adventures and exploring the great big world we call Azeroth.
It really isn’t as hard to find adventure as you think it is, bud. You just gotta let yourself do it.
I do 100% agree with this though. LotRO is my current secondary MMO (until ESO’s next major story patch, anyway), and the world scaling system they implemented is genuinely one of the best things I’ve seen in an MMO. Everyone gets to choose how they want the game to be; people who like the quick and easy, no thought required route can stay on the current world difficulty. People who want things to be harder, things to be more of a challenge for them to get through, or things that force and necessitate a dedicated group to get through, can choose to play that way without impacting people who want things easier.
It’s a system every MMO should endeavor to adopt in some way for their overworld, imo. WoW and ESO could both stand to copy it.
All this said though, OP, I feel like you just won’t really be satisfied with retail WoW if you find anything besides instances and endgame content to be “boring” or the like. Classic is there if you want it, but you have to decide whether it is enough to scratch the itch, or if you need to go elsewhere - or if you need to give world content more of a chance, before writing it off as boring or pointless to do compared to instanced content.
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No actually i played in Wrath , and i did level a rogue from 1-80 in classic with no gold or looms, not sure what you mean by same pace, it took me about 12 days played to lvl from 1-80 and you can from 1-70 in like 24 hours in retail
Try starting an Alt and going through the Legion campaign then the Suramar campaign.
If you’re looking for social interaction then you’re best bet is to either join a Guild or join a RP server.
Essentially, any new game is going to feel big, but no expansion will ever get close to that new game feel. Having said that, most of the previous expansions do offer differing Horde and Alliance perspectives, if you want to check them out.