You make a good point, but it’s about society as a whole, not just wow classic players.
In retail wow, because they made everything solo-able without the help of other players or even their buffs, as you refer to, people will take the selfish option and do everything on their own, not helping others. They ignore the fact that their experience will be improved by the acting of helping others (and being helped) because, let’s face it, helping others when you’re not getting anything out of it yourself is not exactly a fun thing to do in the moment - this is a game, remember.
The same is true of wider society, people will often take whichever option is more attractive for short-term gratification, for example spending their money on new clothes rather than considering the long term gratification of putting that money towards, say, sponsoring a kid through school.
This is what makes classic wow so much better than retail wow. You have to help each other in classic wow, you have to play in a world were people help each other even when there’s nothing in it for themselves. I don’t think you can deny us the enjoyment of that camaraderie just because in a game, where we don’t have to help each other (retail wow) we choose not to help each other.
Then you’ve got the nostalgia, another reason a lot of us love wow classic. Also for me is the time and effort that has to go into each character. In retail, your decisions on class, race, name, appearance and server are irrelevant. They can all be changed, if you fancy a warlock instead of a mage you can just boost one up to 10 levels below the cap and crack on. You don’t even have to decide on a spec anymore you can just chop and change as much as necessary. The fact that I’m stuck with my orc female rogue, stuck with her name and appearance makes me take weight in those decisions and be happy with the outcome without thinking about if I’d be better off changing it all the time. The fact that my spec has a large impact on my play style and isn’t easily changed.
Retail wow is so balanced now. It’s ironic, I know, with people complaining no ends about class balance but now every class and spec has the same spells just with different skins, minor differences but overall every class is good at everything now. People like the variation in classic wow, there’s true perks to rolling every class and of course the true cons that come with that.
It’s also a chance for the game to take a new path from the very beginning, learning from past mistakes. It’s exciting to hit refresh on the whole thing and not be overwhelmed by layers upon layers of different expansions. Imo they made levelling trivial and although less of a grind, more of a grind in that it’s boring and not challenging at all. Then end game for me was too high maintenance, too much stuff I had to know about and keep up with otherwise I was behind everyone else. Retail wow is not an easy game to dip in and out of. If you pick up BFA 6-months after everyone else, like I did, you feel so completely behind that it’s not worth it. On classic I can just jump on listen to my podcast and chill through the grind, enjoying making proper use of my professions again too and all that other stuff. The trade-offs.
Meanwhile, Classic will do. :))