Retail has a scaling outdoor world and is complete trash compared to TBC/Vanilla/Wrath world.
CRZ in retail.
I mean, i didnt get it. You didnt understand i guess.
What did your hyjal/toc character in TBC/wotlk needed from drops in heroic dungeons aside marks? Literally nothing, in fact even marks would be irrelevant at some point.
They would eventually get beaten.
You just wont beat mythic plus nor can in fact ignore it if you want to progress your char. Hell you are literally obligated to do them else you will fall behind considerably.
Also wotlk heroics were just chill and quick, sure joe the tryhard would link the dps charts but the dungeons themselves would get done regardless and you would have your rewards. Now, People in a simple 10+ are insanely toxic lol and sometimes they eventually get annoying.
The fact heroics were soo ez were also a great way to catch up.
This is pretty simple, honestly.
Classic has the truly unique world and community. The entire game is designed to make you go out there, explore, and interact with each other.
TBC is seen as an evolution of classic. It’s much more time consuming, but also harder. Alts were heavily discouraged as well due to all the attunements and time required to get alts even remotely viable. It also introduces arenas, which added a (frankly horrible) field to compete with each other. (God the RNG resists in TBC arena wanted me to blown my brains out.) I don’t think many would rate this anywhere except the bottom of the three.
WoTLK is the pinnacle of class design in classic. Every class is strong. Every spec is fun. There’s not a single spec out of all that feels bad to play like the prior two expansions. The arena field has also matured allowing for much more competitive and fun gameplay. The PvE content is also highly accessible and enjoyable for alts, which helps replay value.
I could go further into detail, but essential you have Classic, the true world of warcraft that fosters an incredible community. You have TBC, the red-headed middle child that’s just ok. Finally you have WoTLK which ups the ante in the raw class design and gameplay compartment that leads to incredible replay value.
Retail is just different and has more complex system after system after system where as classic, tbc, and wrath have very little systems to offer. Classic, tbc, and wrath are just gear dependent. Retail isn’t just gear dependent; it also has a stat stick, which was introduced in Legion, continued in both BfA and Shadowlands.
In all honesty, you can’t say retail is retail because of QoL changes, like RDF, LFR, LFG, Scaling, cross realm sharding, etc. These are just functions to play the game. What makes retail, retail is what arbitrary grind do I have to do? In shadowlands case, it’s the Conduits and the Covenants. Legion was the Artifact weapons and Class Halls, BfA was The Heart of Azeroth and convincing certain factions to join the Horde/Alliance.
You can’t really say Retail is retail because of RDF, it’s existed since wraths last content patch. Does that make Wrath retail by that logic? No, it doesn’t, far from it.
So obv it’s a rather large discussion.
I’ll say two objectively correct and verifiable things, two major differences between Vanilla and everything else.
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Hub based world design. Classic has looonng distances for quests, between hubs, etc. A big world with lots of “unnecessary” area. All other expansions are tight; convenient, and efficient.
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Lower APM and higher TTK. Vanilla has longer interrupt windows, higher recovery times, lower APM requirements, and bigger NPC roam areas.
Now subjectively, these are preferable to me, as it feels more like the RPG of Olde and less like say, I dunno, some modern ARPG.
Also meant to mention that the actions per minute difference is somewhat mitigated by how late in the game you consider. End game raiding and higher levels are roughly similar in both, in terms of such requirements.
So if retail gets rid of the complex systems. The lastest stat stick/borrowered power. No more mission table. Does that make it the same as classic?
Classic > TBC:
Class Improvements
Heroic Dungeons
More Raid Mechanics
Shedding of World Buffs
TBC > WoTLK:
Class Improvements, but also the loss of uniquely cool things (heals now having standardized mana costs regardless of rank, so there is no tailoring your heal to what you need, only spamming max rank)
More mechanics in raids
Some specs losing difficulty of mastery (Seal Twisting Ret Paladin, RIP) in favor of braindead gameplay
No but the game will improve a whole lot.
People are around to enjoy the experience of classic?
Where do you find that because it isn’t there. It is nothing but the same as retail neckbeards but worse.
I think the introduction of the Dungeon finder really changed the game and I think this plays a part in how the community/social structure changed.
I didn’t raid/dungeon much prior to Wrath, but knowing people from your realm when you did groups made it better. After the DF came out there was a high level of jerks from other realms and knowing you can be automatically replaced in a group made it very toxic. (and you also can’t forget how it utilized the Enchanting profession without the consent of the enchanter to DE shards for everyone in the group)
There are a few QoL perks that retail has, but overall, WoW doesn’t seem like it was very good after Wrath.
“What are the MAJOR differences between Classic Vanilla vs TBC vs WOTLK vs Retail?”
Vanilla takes the Gold medal.
TBC wins the silver.
Wrath gets lucky and scores the bronze medal.
Retail: doesnt win, place or show and ends up in last place.