I’ve tried wow but never gone above 20 and i’m skeptical about buying game time on retail. I’ve seen many many wow veterans LOVING classic and say it’s x100 times better than retail, but I take nostalgia affecting them into consideration. I truly need help and advice here, I’m mostly into PvE but I’ll do some PvP for gear. I love challenging questlines, dungeons and raids for loot and satisfying gameplay, joining guilds and doing hard dungeons with them, splitting the loot based on rolls and such, (I watch a lot of wow content), so this leaves me wondering and in need of help, should I start in retail? Thanks for reading and helping/
Hey there.
Of course I don’t know about your circumstances, but I’d probably buy one month to try the game out. I believe the game has something for everyone. Whether you’re casual or hardcore, PvP or PvE, solo and group content.
One thing I should say, loot rolls are no longer a thing in retail. It now has personal loot.
Also if you do decide to start, it’s advised you go to one of the high/full population realms. Silvermoon/Ravencrest/Outland/Sylvanas are for Alliance (Argent Dawn if you want to roleplay) and the rest are Horde.
Hi
Like Chronormi said, give it a month and try. That’s the way to find out what you like. It’s also a good advice to go for a full population realm.
The storylines can be a bit (or very) confusing right now, where you progress fast and get to start new areas before you feel done in one. So keep in mind that the lvling system will be redone in the next expantion.
I am sure tho if you start now, you will still have fun. 
Look for a nice guild, and when you find the right people it will make the game even more fun.
And as a note to classic - i am personaly not that big of a fan, for me it was mainly the nostalgia and without the people i played with back then it’s not the same.
Hope you give wow a try, and if you do: “See you in Azeroth!”
Nostalgia is not really a thing. I’m not convinced it ever was, since there have always been private/pirate servers offering Vanilla. I used to chuckle when people would accuse “nostalgia” at people who were actually playing Vanilla that minute on their other screen! 
Classic and Retail are simply different games.
Classic is much more open-world and sandbox.
Retail has been systematised to within an inch of its life, and it seems it will be much more so in Shadowlands.
Classic is a lot slower. You build up your character gradually, and with everything you do.
Retail is focused into managed and timed events. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xYXhy6nKaE for an example of the dominant form of gameplay in BfA.
Levelling is different. It is harder, longer, and much, much more satisfying in Classic. In Classic, you will build yourself up with quests and professions and fishing and cooking; you have a full life. In Retail, you do nothing but quest to gain XP, and has no point except to teach you the basics and get you to max level, where the real game begins, with all these raids and timed dungeons.
OTOH, Classic’s end game, when you reach max level, is a lot more sparse, unless you go into PvP, and hunt down enemy players all the time.
At the moment, BfA is pretty much over. All the content is out, and we have maybe 5 months before Shadowlands. With that in mind, I’d suggest you might well try both. There is no rush to max level now in BfA, since the expansion is effectively over, and there is never a rush to max level in Classic 
If you do like retail, it will be good to level a character to max, ready to start Shadowlands when it comes. Levelling in retail takes 25-50 hours of play at the moment, and it will introduce you to the world and your class, and you can maybe flail around some early endgame systems.
Realm choice IS very important, in both games. Pick a highly-populated realm where your faction is in the majority. In Retail, Silvermoon for an Alliance character, and Draenor for Horde are safe choices. In Classic, I’m less familiar, but this site purports to give an indication https://ironforge.pro/servers/?locale=EU I Classic, you also need to decide whether to choose a PvP realm, where you are fighting enemy players in the world, or a PvE realm, where you are fighting only the monsters.
With gametime, you have 50 characters allowed in each of the games, so it makes sense to try things out!
I would say try classic first, the thing is you need to pick the right realm, in classic PvP or PvE is a much more important choice, if you don’t mind being ganked (killed by the other faction over and over again, it’s not against the rules) then choose PvP.
If it’s PvE then it’s best to choose a realm where the majority of players are on the same faction as you.
Except for your level 50 to 59 in 2016. It’s in your achievements.
You can buy a month of gametime and it will give you access to both classic and retail.
I dont personally play classic because of these reasons:
-Very long and tedious leveling where the last couple levels you have to just kill random mobs as i heard cause you run out of quests.
-classes are very simple, for example a mage in end game only has to spam one button, frostbolt
-classes are very imbalanced and some are just a lot worse and not viable.
-the above can often be ignored because classic’s end game is super easy, bosses have barely any mechanics. Some people killed a raid boss completely naked! Plus you can kill bosses with not even max level players in your group.
-Traveling between different areas of the world can take a VERY long time. For example if you want to do a dungeon and you travel to the entrance it will take ages to do.
Not saying retail doesnt have its own problems. Leveling is easy and boring. There is no challenge in it, you just do quests and leveling dungeons until you are 120.
End game content however is a lot more involved as well as class gameplay. The class balance is a lot better. You dont get laughed at for playing a hybrid like a druid.
Obviously this is my experience and everything ive seen and heard in the case of classic. I would say if you are interested just try both, 1 month of gametime for access to classic and retail up to lvl110 is very much worth it.
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