I have way too much anxiety with SL story so I stayed away from it.
But here are some reasons why I am thinking about returning to retail well in like 3 week for some time to think of.
Classic community is way too toxic and elitist for me, might be worst on retail side.
Boosters, GDKP rule and world buff hoggers and dungeons are dead no one does them not even for a quest I do.
community isnt as social then retail and oh bots…
is retail worth attending right now? I have not bought shadowlands because of story. I cant tell the population difference between classic and retail I did quit retail in 8.2.0.
Story in Shadowlands is actually quite nice. But i guess thats highly subjective.
All the things you listed can be found in retail, too.
Toxic and elitists players, especially in higher content but I guess its not the game, you can find those in every game.
Boosters…well lets just say many people quit trade chat or use add ons to supress the advertisments since it got pretty opressing.
Dungeons however function as properly, cant recall a time i queued and had to wait more than 5 - 10ish minutes. M0 and M+ are accesible too but it highly depends on rio and such and on what the keyholder wants. Read a lot of complaints on high waiting times for m+ or struggles to get invited, though u can always run your own keys.
I cant tell you how social the game is compared to Classic, never played classic. You can always find a guild or community though. Had some bad exp with players for sure but I also made some long term friends through the game. So this also depends who you meet really and what you define as social.
If retail is worth it…well on that I guess its pretty much split. There are many people complaining about SL but there are also people who like the game. Maybe try to read through forums to get multiple point of views.
For my part I like SL, then again I dont do any PVP and am in no rush to gear up and imbiased since I hated some parts about BFA and quit - so there might be also some “back to WoW” euphoria going on with me.
Best advice I could give you is to try and see for yourself but i dont know how invested you are to level and all.
Well I could elaborate on the story for sure but I dont like spoilers, so I try to not spoil others . probably could use some other word than “nice” but i dindt use it intentionally to implicate anything.^^
And well rio exists and will probably always, but as I said no need to focus on that. Run your own keys, play with a guild/friends. There are ways .
Who are these ‘toxic and elitist’ players you mention? It’s not a bit like that on my small RP server.
I going to have to assume you rolled on one of those full, high population PvP servers, and are doing a lot of PUG raiding, and the toxic people, GDKP people, and world buff min/maxers you mention are other members the PUG raid groups.
None of that means anything to me. I play for fun, I do my own thing, I’m in a nice guild, I don’t do PUGs and I really don’t care about raiding.
But if you’re going over to retail and thinking of doing a lot of LFR then sadly you’re going to run into the same toxic people. Unfortunately that’s the kind of thing you get when you throw a bunch of stangers on the internet together and there’s no consequences for bad behaviour.
I HAVE MADE A DECISION Due to Future of Shadowlands story I am no longer going to start playing retail anymore. I am only here for classic now means I can kiss Normal WoW Good bye now. I am now disappointed and I am too anxious to play retail on any future.