My experience is not the same, at all.
I logged into one of my retail characters yesterday(cuz I have all classes at level 50+ even without playing the game more than 10 hours lel), friday evening at 20:00, Twisting Nether server, EU. There were 10 players in orgrimmar thanks to CRZ, 4 russian dudes, a few random english servers and 2 german players, all afk waiting in a queue for a dungeon or raid, with no interaction whatsoever.
I checked the group finder to see what’s going on. 9 groups out of the first 10 I saw were boost selling groups for irl cash. I flew around orgimmar, then went to ardenweald quest hub, was super empty even with CRZ.
Then on classic, it has been 1 year 8 months since release, we had the last patch of vanilla content start of december, basically the game is at the very end of its story, we still have hundreds of players in stormwind, there is so many people in the evening that it is lagging out for several minutes, in STV there are tens of people levelling and there are massive ganks going on, felwood is the definition of a grieffest with a hundred gankers and ten dispeller priests waiting as ghosts, there are legit groups of players everywhere. I can’t stress this enough, I have access to both classic and shadowlands, there were always more players in classic except the first 1-2 weeks of release hype of SL.
Because the design doesn’t revolve around finishing everything asap and zooming all the way to the endgame content. The game design forces every player to interact and live a journey.
Retail design is like fast food: Every kid wants fast food when you ask them what they want, but in the end it is bad for their health and if you give them what they want, they will become fat and have colesterol at 25 years old and diabetes at 30 and hate themselves for their entire life.
Classic design is like proper grandmother meal with quality material in it: vegetables, carrots, brocoli, meat, beans. The kid(uneducated, unconscious player) might want to prefer fast food if you ask him at first, but this food is better for his health and well-being, he will be more healthy and will be happier with his life in the end and eventually, one day, he will appreciate that his grandmother made him eat this food instead of junk food. (when he gets more of an mmorpg player and gets some experience with this genre)
It is simple as that.
Oldschool, classic MMO design manages to retain players better and even if they don’t get instant gratification and everything they want with ease, they will eventually be happier with the game IN THE LONG RUN and keep playing the game.
Newgen zoomer MMO design gives the player everything he wants easily, is fun and funky and flashy for a few weeks then everything becomes dull and meaningless and player gets bored af and quits the game 1 month after every expansion pack.