… compared to Retail?
The RPG aspect is definitely something better in Classic. Retail WoW barely qualifies as an RPG IMO… pretty much an action game at this point.
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Return on investment on ‘grinding’ anything.
In retail the ‘grind’ gets reset every 4 months and you essentially start fresh. All your gear, neck level, anything is meaningless and you need to do it again.
In classic when you do something meanful it will last forever on that character.
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vanilla was better setup to encourage a community setting in the game. you could be somebody and make a name for yourself on your realm.
retail does all the cross realm and sharding stuff that prevents that. and classic will have layers at first which will also.
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Meh let’s be real though, does anyone in Vanilla really give a damn about that guy who likes fishing and is known for doing it a lot?
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This is the main reason I can’t bring myself to progress my 120 Warrior. They’re constantly resetting the game and nothing you did matters. This is the opposite of what I want out of an MMO.
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I suppose if you wanted objectively better, it came out in 2004. i.e. it was available back then to play, if you wanted to play retail you had to wait to whatever year it is now. So it was available to play, if you wanted retail you had to wait a few years.
Both kind of sucked 2003 and earlier.
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The social component. The zones feel dead in retail. No one talks to each other because there is no need to.
I would also say things feel more rewarding to me in classic because leveling and questing is more challenging, having a real sense of danger. I feel like I am just going through the motions in retail, comparatively.
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For me it’s the threat that something bad can happen. In retail, you don’t really have to worry about loss of mana or dying.
I guess what it actually boils down to for me is that there is a challenge. Retail seems to be “phone app game” easy.
If you want Easy, don’t play Classic. On the other hand, if you want a challenge…
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Community. Retail is like that scene in Fight Club where Ed Norton is talking about single serving friends. Retail is a series of single serving friends, classic is a community.
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Community above all else. At least during my start on Argent Dawn, you were limited to the people on your server for dungeon crawls, raids, and PVP.
Reputation, friendships, connections… your server was its own little island among worlds.
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i do. that guy’s way more interesting and affect my play experience more than SilentQueuer69420 who spams randoms all day with the other billion group finder bots
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I dunno. I did a serious crapton of mining during Vanilla and never really built a name out of it. It felt like the only people others cared about were the most hardcore of raiders.
Community. Retail has none just a bunch of solo players that group up. Classic you need a guild to progess pugging wont get you far. Also being a jerk will get around.
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RPG aspect.
Community driven
Simplicity
No gear/state inflation obsoletion
That’s probably about it.
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The layering. Makes it very smooth for the leveling process, providing more chances to enjoy an experience that you might only have just a couple of hours to enjoy. That is, objectively, better in classic.
“objectively better” is an oxymoron, since what is or isn’t better is an opinion.
Hell from my experience what qualifies as a RPG is almost an opinion since people always seem to have a different idea as to just what constitutes a RPG. It’s not as clear cut as “FPS means you’re shooting in first person” where you can use the literal definition of the phrase.
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Professions, talent system, class fantasy.
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How about profession?
You can make money with any of them and they all provide things your character can use themselves (maybe they dont ALL give like BIS items but when you are wearing greens you can make some blues that are upgrades throughout the levelling process.)
They are highly satisfying and rewarding to work on and being able to spam trade chat with your profession level and the unique recipes you have is awesome.
OBJECTIVELY better than retail.
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Its adds a sense of worldlyness rather than just being a single player game that looks like WoW(aka retail)
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Same exact problem. It was already a massive slap in the face getting greens replacing epics on the move from Vanilla to BC, but at least that gear lasted through Vanilla. At some point, despite that massive backlash from Vanilla to BC, they quadrupled down on the concept of making your progress meaningless to the point its done LITERALLY every patch? Dear god, the Devs really do seem clueless. Its like its a joke.
Imo Classic will be objectively better on nearly every level just for understanding the basics of RPG design, not because it did everything amazingly well, but because no game even comes close to understanding the point. I think the current communities ideas of “better” are “we have more things to dodge now” which again, is more inline with action games, not MMORPGs.
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