I am new to WoW and i really enjoy the story and world building the game has to offer. I was wondering if it would be better for me to play classic than it would be Retail. I would love to play from the first expansion until the latest but i think 10+ years of catch up is a long time. What are your thoughts as a community?
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do you want a real MMORPG? play classic era / hardcore
do you want a sims dress up game? play retail 
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With the exception of “classic/vanilla,” retail contains everything that is currently in classic. If you use Chromie time, everything will even scale to your level. You can even freeze your level and complete entire x-packs without worrying about leveling out of them.
So if you really want to play through ALL of the expansions, play classic (vanilla) first and then come to retail for the rest of the content.
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Play Classic and then Retail…
Reason… you will actually know the story. Utter nonsense you dont have to go through the WoW storyline anymore IMHO
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This right here
No where near the same feeling tho, retail feels very mobile gamy to me compared to classic. Of course, don’t use our opinions, okay it yourself op.
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My advice? Avoid classic like the plague unless youre a masochist who wants to suffer through poor design choices such as having to drink mana potions non stop and having nothing at all marked on your map so youre blind on where to go.
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Classic players will say Retail sucks
Retail players will say Classic sucks
As a retail player, I fit this stereotype.
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I currently am mostly playing Wrath Classic, recently bought the Dragonflight expansion, and play a little HC Classic.
Retail is very fast leveling, and I’m not sure if there’s a continuous story or if anything really makes sense. I started with a level 50 character that I had played a few expansions ago (Battle for Azeroth), queued Dungeons to level 60, then tried to figure out how to get to Dragonflight content. I was a little confused, but eventually found a quest that lead me to the flying ship outside of Orgrimmar.
I then did some of the campaign quests while queuing random dungeons, and random BGs, got to max-level and geared up in blue pvp gear with honor, then started queuing arenas. My primary motivation for playing Retail is to try out rated solo-queue arenas, and see if it’s easier to find regular arena partners.
WoW Classic (Classic Era/HC) is a much slower game. In contrast to Retail where you can level up in a couple of days of casually spamming dungeons, or questing, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to spend a month or so leveling in Classic Era. The leveling experience is quite a large part of the game, but there’s also stuff to do at max-level. While personally, some of my favorite WoW content is Arenas (at the moment), I think WoW Classic (Classic Era) has the best leveling experience. Hardcore brings an interesting challenge, but you cannot run the same instance more than once a day, while leveling, so that’s a drawback for me.
At the moment, I don’t think that solo-queues or even the interface and automation of Retail, which seem to make grouping easier are better. The game feels very hollow to me as opposed to Wrath Classic, where I’m currently doing 5s in Discord with 4 other people, coordinating our gameplay and having fun.
I think that WoW Classic, either Classic Era or HC would be a great starting point for a new player, personally. It’s a great place to learn the origins of classes, they have simpler trees, and the world seems massive, yet digestible and the game starts the moment you start playing it!
If you’re really interested in Arenas, then Wrath Classic or Retail, whichever seems appealing to you, imo.
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If you’re truly a new player, you’d be well advised to take any input from these forums with a truck-load of salt.
That sums up the advice you’re likely going to get (there will always be a few rational exceptions). For the most part, people will tell you what they like and that you should play that.
It’s a lot of expansions, but it won’t take you 10 years to get the story from each of those expansions. Nikolo’s suggestion I think was the most applicable for you based on your desire to start from Vanilla and play through all subsequent expansion content. Start with Classic (vanilla) first, then start playing older content in Retail via Chromie Time.
Characters made in Classic do not carry over to Retail and vice-versa, so you’d be starting over if/when you switch, but if you really want to form your own opinion, you should play some Classic and some Retail then pick which one best suits your personal preference/enjoyment for the remainder of your time with WoW.
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Want people to help you? Retail
Want to get bullied in leveling dungeons all day? Classic
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Classic Leveling from 1-30 is one of the best traditional RPG experiences you can have. At 40 it starts to drag and become really cumbersome. End game is herding cats.
Retail… more things to do, end game and gear is more dynamic and accessible. A lot of things will be extremely convoluted and hard to figure out without any previous knowledge.
But, if you have any friends that play, whichever one they’re playing.
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I like playing aspects of both.
Classic is def more laid back than retail but retail for transmogs collecting etc is really good along with if you like the M+ and raiding scene.
Idk about pvp though.
achievement from 2017
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New to modern retail and classic? How about that.
2017 is before the way retail is now / classic. idk
It’s your money so play both and the one you find yourself going back to the most is where you’ll probably have the most fun.
As a completely new player I’d say probably classic WoW if you’re more into a casual style of playing games.
If you’re competitive and looking for challenging content, retail for sure.
If you like RPGs play Classic.
If you like Call of Duty play Retail.
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Try both out OP. Retail Players will claim that classic is the worst thing mankind has created and Classic players will say that Retail is the worst thing mankind has created.
To emphasize my point I’ll point out the current people who fit this stereotype:
If you just want the story, stick to retail. Classic is nothing but a tedious version filled with nobody but glorified has beens trying to relive their glory days. From a lore/gameplay perspective, you can see/do something like 99.9% of all the old “content” and with all the modern day conveniences and massive amounts of power that comes from out leveling it.
Even if you want to pretend you are doing it “relevant” in classic…know you actually aren’t and can’t. The classic eras come with patch levels that are beyond what players had at the time and there is, of course, no way to rewind the accumulated knowledge of the playerbase either. You’re dealing with content that has been utterly mastered for almost 2 decades now and with tools and knowledge we didn’t have back then. It’s like trying to watch old VHS tapes that have been converted to DVD and have modern day touch ups. Like it just isn’t the same experience as when you first watched it in the 80’s or what have you.
That all said, if you are a left of bell curve player, retail has 0 space for you past the queue content level. That doesn’t mean you can’t be carried in content, but you aren’t welcome in it. It’s much easier to be a baddie in classic content because the content is glorified tank and spank encounters. Modern day encounters on their most basic versions are just straight up mechanically more challenging than anything classic wow threw at players…that isn’t even taking into account how brain dead stupid easy specs are to play in classic eras too. Easier fights and WAY easier specs and a constantly dwindling playerbase desperate for warm bodies just to even get their farm content runs in leads to an easier time eventually getting in than modern WoW.
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