Personally I like the class designs for almost every class in vanilla/tbc (minus a few bad specs), talent trees…yes I’ve missed them, lore and story thats actually good and professions that are worth doing.
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It’s kinda just everything really. I know and fully admit Classic has some really crusty things mechanically that could use to be fixed, mostly just incomplete class mechanics like paladin / shaman and a few minor details per class and the combat racials.
Other than those things, it’s a really fun game and IMO the leveling experience is really enjoyable even when playing solo. I have a new wave of alts leveling up in the mid teens and some mid 40’s, I try to stay with the groups on the server who love the experience.
I like that skills cost money, skills need to be trained, that just generally speaking for non hyper AE builds the leveling experience it’s just so fun because mobs are at least somewhat dangerous and there is the possibility to die.
I like that it takes time to go from one place to another and that in many cases there is no easy path to and fro.
I like that gear at low level is very early Vanilla feeling and as a result kinda crappy and that is actually fun in a sick way.
I like that time to kill NPC is longer, and that resources like mana are valuable and don’t just regenerate super fast.
I like how buffs feel powerful and are also interesting and unique.
It’s just, such a darn good game
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I just started playing Classic and to me theres a few things that really stand out why its better. For one, it actually feels like im in a huge world again. I didnt realize how much group finder and the teleports destroyed that part of the game. The social part is def stronger as well. Leveling feels way better overall in my opinion. On retail i would just rush to level cap asap. On classic im taking it super slow, enjoying the scenery and being social. Im sure there will be more as I level but damn getting on here has really been eye opening for me.
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Mobile game
I only just started playing, and I haven’t gotten very far, but it seems more like a game than retail, witch almost feels like a chore most of the time
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I can’t stress this enough.
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Yeah right … you need BIS covenant … BiS stats , Bis items , Pvp or Pve … Bis condult … Than legendaries… Torghast … The maw … The world Quests, Rep… Anima … did I forget something ?
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Yeah, you forgot to mention that all that stuff doesn’t matter if you’re not a sweatlord.
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its easy and there aren’t chores
I like the huge complicated skill trees.
My favorite time period in all of WoW was the tail end of Wrath of the Lich King. It had the best skill tree, the best lore, the best dungeons, the best loot, and first introduced the dungeon finder, which let you click a button and warp into a random group in a dungeon.
IMO it combined the best features of every expansion and everything before it, and after it, was worse.
The difference is TRUTH. Classic is honest, and that feels good.
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Retail’s a routine, there’s a set of dailies you do, there’s a long list of daily/weekly activities, and every step to max gear is like being on a smooth treadmill carefully tailored to be as mundane as possible.
Classic’s uneven, flawed- there is so much inefficiency in quest hubs, gearing, dungeon layouts. It’s less predictable, harder to know exactly what you’ll end up doing. And once you hit max level, you set your own goals- aside from weekly raid lock outs, there’s nothing in game that decides your pace or routine.
I’ve played a decent amount of both- in retail, I do my covenant, my scattered weeklies/dailies, my daily dungeon, the M+ needed to get my vault reward, WQs, extra covenant activities and unlocks- it’s just an ever growing list of things, you end up having more and more repeatable stuff the more you play- that doesn’t even touch on torghast/maw boredom, and then, finally, the raid.
Classic- there’s the raid. Along the way there’s one time things like attunes, preBIS- then there’s prepping potions/flasks but you can farm, do dungeons, do profs, etc… to make the money needed it’s completely up to you how to prep for raiding, and you can do it all at the beginning of the month, one day each week, or a bit every day there’s no routine or set way to prep.
You’re on your own schedule in Classic aside from raiding.
Now, I don’t think that makes Classic ‘better’- I actually enjoyed Legion more and it had plenty of routines- but ShL has too much, and it’s all too boring.
Aside from that, dungeons aren’t optimized which makes them more interesting in Classic to me, in retail they feel like they’re just skins of each other. But, at this point you’ve missed any chance of getting good dungeon groups.
Classic also has a pretty awful community, makes 4chan look pleasant in comparison- but that beats retail which basically doesn’t have a community at all.
I think it’s only a small element of the Classic pop that are the toxic neckbeards - they just happen to be the most vocal. Most folks I’ve met and game with are nice people and it feels good that people are excited to be part of a community again. I played the start of Legion and generally enjoyed it for the theme and content. But like you said, dailies, M+'s, artefact power, legendary fishing, all sucks the fun out of a game. You put anything on a timer (in WoW dailies, weekly chests, keys) and it starts to feel like a job rather than a leisure activity. Apart from holding WBs on my main one day a week I’m free to explore and do what I want in Classic.
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I wouldn’t say better, just very different. In Classic there was a sense of community that is completely void in Retail. That is one aspect that modern WoW has been missing. Instant queues/teleportation to dungeons was imo a bad addition to the game. You no longer have to talk to anyone, you just queue up and instantly leave after the dungeon is done. It feels very shallow now and I miss making random friends on my server.
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They’re just really different. I find leveling in Classic tedious, but I enjoy the more strategic end game.
Retail end game is all about speed and task loading. Blizzard designs encounters for the tiny eSport and world first crowd. I feel like I have to practically take a class to learn all the M+ pathing, mechanics, and affixes.
Classic and even more so TBC end game is a bit slower and more strategic. Raids require more coordination and less running around and fast-twitch dodging of mechanics. I find them a lot more fun. Gear is more interesting too.
Scaling has also ruined retail. It’s absolutely unfun to have every single outdoor mob you fight scale to your level and take a predetermined amount of time to kill. It makes gathering suck which I suppose doesn’t really matter THAT much since they ruined professions too.
And SL zone sizing is off somehow. Oribos is too big, and the outdoor zones feel small. In Classic we’re all gathered up in the SW Trade District and it feels like a thriving city, while Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are massive.
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leveling as a healer , there have been dozens of situations where I’ve saved people from certain death … as its all too common to accidently overpull , or be unfortunate to have mobs respawn mid-fight
it contributes to good morale and support among the community 
I dont ever recall healing anyone in this way during any of the recent expansions. Everyone can take care of themselves with much more ease… so it makes the likes of healers less useful
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a ton of reasons, but sharding was the straw the broke the camel’s back for me. Even changes that I originally was glad to see slowly became apparent that the soul was being sucked out of the game, a lot of such changes came with cataclysm.
In classic when you see someone with cool looking gear, you know they’ve earned it. There’s no “every player gets a legendary weapon day”, and players can earn a reputation on their servers be it positive or negative.
There’s really no one “better thing”, it’s an accumulation of the little things that blizzard took from the game over the years that we all kind of just took in stride until finally we each reached our separate breaking points.
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Their goal is to slowly make the game playable on mobile
You would of had to play in vanilla and tbc for you to understand why classic and tbc are way better.
I think that’s close to impossible, and don’t think it’ll ever happen. The closest we’ll see to a mobile WoW would be a standalone game, similar to what they’re doing with Diablo.