Has made me realize just how damned screwed up retail is.
The only thing you need to get in classic, is gear. No stupid heart of azeroth. No stupid artifact weapons. The game really went downhill with the grinding when those things were introduced.
I really hope they’re not going to add anything stupid like artifact weapons or heart of azeroth to next expansion, forcing you to do boring content in which you fall asleep to even keep up in power level with others.
It really takes courage to bash Retail! I don’t think anyone until now has made such a bold move. Congrats, dude!
Btw, what next expansion are you talking about? Retail or Classic? Because if you’re talking about Classic you don’t have to worry, it won’t have a single expansion.
I liked the artifact weapons. They gave interesting class quests.
Vanilla required grinding too if you wanted to raid. I had to farm gold for repair costs and herbs for consumables.
There are plenty of people who complain about "nothing to do, but when there are MMO-esque grinds or essences, there are complaints about “too much to do”. I get that the real request is to want to do only things that are fun, but then again, you get AP for pretty much everything in the game. You could chain M+ and get both gear and AP without doing something boring, or do arena and get AP. If IE are too boring, do PvP Islands. Turn on War Mode (and roll Alliance) and do your world quests as a non-stealth class. Plenty of ways to make the AP grind less boring.
I’m not a fan of time-gated stuff, but vanilla also had that (far more restrictive raid lockouts, for example).
Dont feed the troll. Flag and move on…
You get next to no AP for a mythic plus. If you want AP, you do island expeditions or you can just forget getting AP at anywhere close to decent rate. You can do like 7-8 island expeditions for every mythic plus you do and island expeditions are boring as hell. If mythic plus gave like 1000 at +2 and 3000 at +10 or more you might have had a point but they don’t.
Did you have an aneurysm or something when typing this? If someone thinks island expeditions are boring WHY WOULD THEY THINK ISLAND EXPEDITIONS ARE FUN? JUST WHAT?
You never lose a PvE Island Expedition, which is what makes it a little boring for me. PvP Island Expeditions provide more excitement.
What Time Gated stuff did Vanilla have, bar AQ40 opening?
And yes, you had to grind SOME in vanilla, but sometimes you could literally go out and pick 15 herbs and then you were set for the next raid.
I think you forgot how vanilla was in comparison to retail.
If you wanted to raid the LATEST raid, yeah, maybe you needed some better gear than greens and blues. But if you were dedicated enough (ie do one or two raid instance per week. big whoop) you could be accepted into literally any guild because you were geared.
Now you have gear requirement on top of grinding essences and AP.
Can you actually answer the question instead of dodging?
Raid lockouts, bosses of 40-man raid dropping very little loot. Progress was almost non-existent once you started to raid.
That’s not time gating, lmao.
If that’s your argument, then retail just compounded the time gating.
There I was realising due to classic what a blessing many systems in retail are. (Don’t get me wrong I still dislike alot about BfA XD)
Different people different opinions… craaaazyyy 
I am still waiting for the moment when people reach classic endgame and realize it’s a grind over there aswell. Just less masked and only for loot. (Many will even prefer that I guess).
Anyways Classic and retail both are WoW and MMOs thus both will end up keeping the player busy by repeating the same things over and over again -> Grind, just different activities which end up in the field of personal preference.
I played vanilla, it is nothing like in bfa. You actually did content you enjoyed in vanilla, unlike bfa where you are forced to do island expeditions and so forth. The grind in vanilla also wasn’t time gated, if you wanted to spend 100 hours in a week to grind, you could do that. Can’t do that in bfa and progress. You have to wait for daily, island expedition resets and so forth.
It’s not really as much of a grind when you can literally get BiS geared. In retail you are EXTREMELY if not IMPOSSIBLY unlikely to get BiS geared.
I played Vanilla aswell and no it was a grind. Endless hours of repeating first 5 man dungeons, then mc, then bwl, then aq xD
Meanwhile endless repeats of Zul’Gurub and AQ20 in between.
I remember endless runs through diremaul for that cursed trinket x.x
If you liked that more that’s great, I did enjoy it very much aswell. BUT it was a grind…
Now to the me defending BfA… I need to wash my mouth right after doing that:
There is no force to do islands and spending 100 hours a week to grind. This is simply false.
I do 3 islands a week (if I feel like it), which takes about 25 minutes for the rest I don’t bother with the boredom islands are.
I am at 66 with my neck, on a char that I rerolled mid Battle for Dazar’Alor content without ever grinding AP. You get easily a level up per week by simply running AP missions on your table and doing emissarys with a little focus on Azerite rewarding missions.
I totally dislike BfAs artifact BUT it’s designed in a way that at least on your main char this is no where as tedious as you claim it is.
Vanilla has reps that can be grinded in one rush -> Better than BfA I agree
Raids that are farmable once a week per char -> same as BfA
farmable 5 man content -> same as BfA
Vanilla is done WAY faster than BfA because there is no tf -> Matter of opinion, but ya I guess it’s not a bad thing at all to get an item and be happy because it is bis instead of thinking “great now get the same thing with 5 ilvls more and a socket”
The timegated features mostly didn’t even exist back then AND the curse that timegating is was brought upon us because the community cried alot about content being done to fast. Pretty double edged topic.
(Personally I would prefer to rush through content in a few days rather than the time gating aswell, just saying)
1st. If you like Classic better then…uhm…go play classic? If retail is not for you…then its not for you?
2nd. You can always choose not to do the grinding? I barely pay any attention to the AP grind. And instead do what I like. M+ on rogue and raiding on mage. Problem solved. Yet both are close to lvl neck 65 anyway. Could have been lvl 65 if I actively farmed for it sure. But like I said. I don’t like that grind so I get my AP passively doing other stuff. Problem solved.
3rd. Another retail bashing post. How entertaining…
Then I won’t get any AP.
Most of your high-end stuff like trinkets, at least for tank, come from regular quests. so dont have to grind for those at least
You get it passively by doing other stuff. M+ ending chests gives you, raid bosses gives you AP. THe weekly m+ chest gives you AP. Even the daily 4/4 emmi quests can give you AP if you decide to go do them. Not everything has to be grinded like a madman->Like spamming islands until your eyes bleed…