It’s more simple than you actually think. The reason you cannot break the resolve of a classic player is because we are all united.
Vanilla came out and we loved it, TBC came out and we loved that as well because we had nothing to compare it to. It was our first expansion and it was amazing to everyone, then when wrath was released it’s when the boat started to get leaky. People and their tastes are subjective, you like carrots, i like onions and we started to compare expansions, which started to divide the playerbase.
New features were added, some people say WHY? some people welcomed the features.
Some things were changed, some people said WHY? some people welcomed the breath of fresh air.
You see it all over the internet, people compare expansions and even though we can come to a community majority consensus, there is no right answer. The expansion you liked personally is subjective to you, it’s not right or wrong.
From vanilla to wrath we were united and it showed in the bell curve of player subscription numbers, when we started getting expansions the players started to fragment and become divisive and over time this compounds into lose of players because each of us start to argue about what is better, some protest with their wallets and it becomes harder and harder to please everyone. Blizz knew this and they started to try simplify and streamline the game to try get us all on the same page, but unfortunately it was too late, people tasted the things they liked and grew bitter towards them because they didn’t do what they personally liked.
Now we have a rivalry between classic and retail, people are comparing the 2, the winner here will be classic because these players saw what multiple expansions did to fracture people in different directions. The people who like retail don’t know any better yet…but they will see soon enough.