A thank you to everyone who took the time to reply to this post; it is appreciated 
I’m going to say something controversial here. You are objectively wrong.
I’m not suggesting that you don’t (or shouldn’t) enjoy Retail. If you do, then I’m happy for you. It’s no biggie. And it’s not what I mean when I say you’re objectively wrong.
But the idea that having more features in the game is the same thing as player freedom is not correct. Let’s take questing as an example. If you primarily enjoy questing, then in BfA your experience is simply to move from quest hub to quest hub in a completely linear and curated way. Whereas in Classic, there is no curation.
Class design is a similar experience in Classic. The class design isn’t objectively better than Retail. It really isn’t. Classes are messy, and balance is non-existent. (Poor old ret paladins.) But what it does correctly is provide radically different gameplay experiences for each class. It’s not just a matter of a couple of different abilities and a different resource.
So, players CAN enjoy Retail. Lots of players DO enjoy Retail. But that is a fluke. It is a fluke because you happen to enjoy the curated experience Blizz is giving you. But if you don’t enjoy that curated experience, then there’s almost no way to go off the track and enjoy BfA the way YOU want to. It just doesn’t end up working.
Classic, on the other hand, is designed with no such expectations. Whether you have the same experience as others is completely incidental, and something players aren’t aware of anyway. All most players are aware of is whether the game is telling them what to do, or whether they feel the freedom to just go out there and experience it they way they want to.
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I really suggest you try using this console command:
/console ffxglow 0
You can turn it back on with:
/console ffxglow 1
It removes the Fullscreen Bloom effect that WoW has. It has a larger effect on some zones than others but I think it does make the game look much better.
It’s more the feeling that I’m not rushed at all, and every time I hit a level I feel like I genuinely accomplished something and can take a short break.
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Agreed.
I always play on PvE servers, because reasons, but I also enjoy dabbling in the PvP and RP elements of the game.
Nothing takes me out of the immersion faster than a level 20 in a full set of heirloom gear mounting up on their Ultra Shiny Mega Dragon store mount. Logically, we shouldn’t be that powerful or awesome-seeming that early in the game. It makes it feel like there’s no real progression.
Further adding to the point that when you level in Classic, you’re always getting better. You will always be stronger than certain zones and certain levels of player. Not so in Retail with scaling.
For me, at the point scaling and gearing is in Retail, there is absolutely zero reason to even level a character. The only reward that you find at the end game is an endless hamster wheel of continually refreshing gear levels that make your previous gear obsolete.
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Lots of good comments here.
I love that I’m not THE “hero” in the story. I’m just a gnome warrior and I might not even be a particularly good one.
I love that the characters are thrown into the world and work their way up to being more viable. I love feeling like I’m really working to get a set of armor that is good and matches. That’s some real world problems right there.
Idk…time spent translates into effort/difficulty to me. If a workout isn’t “hard” but it took me an hour to complete it…then I’d say it wasn’t easy either.
Everything is relative. But generally, usually, normally…if somethings not hard, it’s because you’re not really trying hard to do it better, faster, etc…
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Vanilla was good. WoW Classic is an abomination.
2.5 tick servers, 400 ms batching, massive leeway, right-click report, Blizzard friend list, safe trades for casuals, CoD warning for casuals, people paying gold for ML raid items under the table, Legion/BFA mob pathing, items like Perd’s/Onslaught already in the game, hyper accelerated timeline.
Current game is an absolute disaster.
Oh total disaster.
Why do I personally like Classic and like it better than Retail?
- No MTX
- No Transmogs (I like the fact that the gear you receive and equip is represented and is original to itself.)
- More challenging to level, quest, raid, dungeon, etc.
- Nostalgia
- Leveling actually means something again. When you see a level 60…you know dang well whether it is the player’s 1st toon or 6th alt, that they dedicated the TIME to get there, and not just pay IRL cash to boost their character.
- Gold is actually worth something again.
My list can go on, but those are some of my main points why I like Classic and why I most likely will never go back to retail.
it depends on your guild, tbh
classic would be awful solo
I think most of us found the game when we were relatively young and it just made a huge impression on us. I remember the first time I played WoW 15 years ago. Teldrasil felt magical, the graphics were amazing for an MMORPG at that time. The ambient sounds and music in the NE starting zone were mesmerizing. There was a feeling right away that this was a game of extremely high quality that would take forever to explore. I remember when I stopped playing the game I could feel that warm feeling in the back of my throat and glazed eyes that you get when your brain has been releasing a ton of dopamine. Not many games have ever elicited that reaction out of me. The original developers found the magic formula to create crack in the form of a video game. Perhaps it’s objectively inferior to other MMORPG’s today, but this is the one that grabbed many of us first.
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because the world is relevant unlike retail wow where you can out ilvl the world easily.
the gap between the player and the world is less then retail.
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I think a lot of the reasons I enjoy Classic have been listed. I actually think the thing I like most about classic is the pacing feels better. I don’t feel rushed or exhausted like Retail makes me feel.
I also prefer the art direction. Retail’s toony look feels like a kids game and it makes it hard to take seriously especially when it seems to want to be taken seriously, but is little more than a yawn worthy soap opera.
Also I like that the story is about the world. I know a lot of people are fans of ‘hero storytelling’ and ‘the heros journey’, but im not. Id prefer to see a story of a hundred soldiers fighting against a hundred baddies rather than a story of a hero vs a villain. Also the powercreep in WoW story is real and it sucks.
Classic feels more immersive to me. I enjoy having more than one class of magic available to me as a mage.I like being able to be a resto druid and still turn into a bear who can maul,swipe ,growl if need be. I like being able to play a priest who can use a bubble without being a certain spec. I LOVE being a hunter who has a variety of traps to choose from. I enjoy being any spec rogue and still being able to use my poisons. I like having my talent boards and being able to spec into more than one talent board. If I want to newb it up and do 10-15 or more in every talent board and not reach the 31 point talent … hey it’s my character and my choice. Yet I am still the class I chose for that character. I love the “need” to be social out in the world.
Edited to add In classic I am just another part of the world and I enjoy that. Retail it’s “hero this, that or the other” . It is like they are pushing my character to try and be a center of the game. If I wanted that sort of experience I would simply play Fable or some other game of the like. I would not want to be on an MMO . I want to feel like a part of the world not like a central force within it.
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Is there an effective difference when it comes to human opinion about a video game?
Also, you can’t really boil down why people may enjoy this style of the game better to just the time factor, because entire gameplay systems and game philosophy have changed drastically over 15 years.
The question you’re asking is whether our belief in classic WoW trumps our perception of its gameplay. However, in a game where opinions are formed over hundreds of hours of gameplay I think we are at first driven by this belief in classic and its greatness because it has such a great history. That is just a fact.
Then our perception is that classic is awesome because it is one of the greatest RPG’s ever built and just so happens to be an MMO.
So those two things lined up perfectly for me…
Hope that answers your question(s).
No. If it was only a reward for time then it would be called “work.”
Classic is still a fun game, it just incorporates the work/reward dynamic of human psychology as well.
It was not fun to help my friend remove all the carpet from his house that the stupid previous owners installed over the gorgeous hardwood floors. But it was “rewarding.”
Get it?
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Takes too much time which is why I stopped
For me personally, the best way to explain it is this: Back when WoW first came out, I bought a subscription to a living world. With each successive expansion that I played, I found myself more and more playing a game that by rights should have been a $50-$60 one time buy that I enjoyed and moved on from.
I know people bag on MoP all the time, and by that point in WoW’s life most of my old MC raiding guild had moved on. But I thought the Panda starting zone was beautiful, with a well-written story and an interesting way to reach the xhoice for Horde or Alliance. But I only played through it once, because it was more a story I watched as the game guided me through it than a story I created.
With each passing expansion I felt that way more and more. I wasn’t a regular joe in this great big world, I was the protagonist in a story designed for me, with massive amounts of plot armor to get me there. Those Skinner Box dopamine hits described above? They depressed me, and I cut myself off. But now I’m back to living in a world, and it’s all the better for being near enough to the exact same world I remember. Warts and all.
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I think for me it comes down to just the social aspect. I enjoy seeing the same players again and again. In many other areas for me classic is inferior to retail. But in the social / community aspect it is very much superior.