Blizzard has segregated WoW’s playerbase into Classic and Retail.
Retail is the game for people with little time, who have an hour or two to log in the game and in that small timespan need to feel like they’ve done something meaningful, hence the bitesize content. The timegating, apart from its design to inflate their management metrics, is to make sure everyone stays around the same power level week after week.
Otherwise, the few hardcore would run around decked in max level purples in a week, while the person only able to play an hour a day would still be running around in greens, and likely give up because of it.
Classic is the game for the more hardcore player. The one with time and patience to grind, endure and…live an adventure. There is no timegating here apart from the opening of the raids, but before you get there you’ve already played on average around 250 hours to reach level 60.
I totally understand. I sometimes also miss the deeper systems from Vanilla in Retail. I totally hate the fetch&kill quests and would prefer they’d implement some actual adventure, but that’s unfortunately no longer the design of Retail.
So, Classic, and I can recommend SoD, is still the way to go if you want to tackle a great chunky game.
This needs a disclaimer that it applies explicitly for players who focus on one single aspect of the game of either Raid, M+, Delve or PvP.
As a completionist/collector, the situation is the exact diametrical opposite. Retail is a hyperhardcore game, with time requirements exceeding those of what even NEETs can devote, and still not guarantee progress. Meanwhile Classic has static goals, RNG only affects the speed at which you’ll complete your goals (good RNG makes you reach it faster, bad RNG makes you reach it slower) and once something is done, it’s done forever, you don’t need to retry it for a 1% drop.
Also you can’t relax properly when everyone is speed-running and hyper farming, in vanilla you can click 2-3 spells between basic attacks and kill 1 by 1 mob for farming, this is not the same and retail / vanilla is not same at all when it comes to professions.
You can do world quests and relax, but it’s not the same as preparing for that week’s raid, you feel much better after farming 2h in vanilla than doing WQs for 2h, that’s all I can say.
Open world in retail is not good, because you end up being bored after 2nd week of patch, because everything is repetitive and rewards are not important for many players, unless you like to collect things or tmog/mounts/pets/toys… Retail vs vanilla - same repetitive content, but in vanilla main difference is that you are out there in open world preparing, as I already said, it feels different and is part of the game, and how you do it is exactly opposite of retail’s preparing scheme, which is hyper farming on 1 spot AOE mobs with 4 other players that are always rushing. Also you can get 15-20k for 1h in retail, which will last for few days of m+ some 3h a day, or 3 raids even if you don’t wipe often, in vanilla however 1h of farming will only cover for 2h flask, nothing else. This is not supposed to be boring, this is supposed to be part of the game and one more pillar of content (open world), which in retail is built differently, as you must agree, it shifted towards collectables with repetitive systems, yet in vanilla it’s also repetitive, but you have more options to choose from where you will farm, and you do it for different reason and feels like a part of regular player’s gameplay cycle. - video for farming in open world (only the best of the best farm spots) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn0mT0t2Z1I
Keep in mind that I linked only the best farm spots, and many of these are random drop of smaller % drop chance, but there are literally 20-30 other farming spots which will provide you smaller income of gold per hour, but it’s 100% drop chance or very high chance to earn profit during 1h. Many of these smaller farms can be done on multiple locations, sometimes even some 7-8 different areas and zones. Also he didn’t mention chimeraok tenderloin farm in feralas island, where you could easily get 100-120g per hour, or even more if you had max cooking and finished questline for chimeraok meat cooking, which is long questline that finishes with 40 raid boss in feralas.
These things I want in retail, these small things that not many people know in vanilla, thats why its so good game, because after many years people still are realizing new things that add up to better gameplay. Also did you know that you could not craft high end flasks without alchemist table in scholomance? Its located in last boss room and people needed to speedrun it before raids (which also was good idea to stockpile on dark runes that gave mana for healing classes or dps classes that needed mana during long boss fights), these runes are also farmable and sellable on AH, and other recipes can drop there like recipe for mana potion (high end recipe)… etc… so yes, there are in fact some 30+ farms in vanilla not combining different spots that you can farm same farm in multiple locations.
I know. Almost ALL require some ingredient from high end zones. Or max level raids/dungeons. And world buffs… please… Its the antithesis of “relaxed”.
I find that funny. Because Vanilla is orders of magnitude more repetitive than Retail.
Just from world quests alone. Those did not exist in Vanilla. Only repeatable quests. Which as the name implies, is the same quest repeated over and over. You dont get a cycle of 100 different WQ cycled shuffled and varied. Plus Delves. Plus events.
PLUS all the stuff vanilla had. Because there are repeatable quests in Retail too. And the same “node and plant” farming vanilla had.
You got all this in Retail as well.
You can farm for gold killing things if you so wish. There are some transmogs that fetch quite a lot of gold in the AH.
Or you can also farm gold the old fashioned way. What do you think the bots are doing all day?
The only difference is that instead of killing things like a robot you have alternative means of aquiring gold in Retail. Like WQ. Like other activities. Instead of killing things like a monkey. Which as I already said, STILL EXIST.
Basically. You have seen a 4 minute video of the gold farm spots in Vanilla. Why dont you check out the gold farming spots for Retail? Its like 4 HOURS long. Because there is simply so many things to do.
You just chose to ignore them.
Start by properly researching Retail first. You got a LOT of stuff to research there. A LOT of things to farm. Quests to do. Mounts to acquire…
You have no idea how huge Retail is compared to Classic.
Just to give you an idea:
https://ibb.co/WW8q73Q1
That is the area of the maps. As you can see, 1 expansion is roughly 1/3 the size of a continent. And this map shows a funny thing:
https://ibb.co/d4zxp6Jd
This map shows the quest density by zone. I only found the one up to BFA. Each zone is ~ equal in size. And as you can see, in recent times the amount of quests per zone explodes. Especially after Legion.
And when DF rolled in, it really exploded. I could not find area maps in pixels2. But I did find this:
https://ibb.co/j9Zs6sV8
ONE zone in DF is is ~ 11M pixels2. We had a total of 5 zones, so DF was ~ 50M pixels2.
Vanilla Kalimdor is 33M pixels2. So each expansion we get a bit less than DOUBLE the size of a whole vanilla continent. With ~ 100x more quests within them.
So I disagree. From the amount of quests. To activities. To EVERY possible measurement you can muster. Retail has BY FAR. By a MASSIVE margin more things to do. More things to farm. Bigger maps. And more stuff in them than Classic wow ever had.
And this is OBJECTIVE data. Maps. Measurments. And wowhead quest count. And you cannot argue against that.
But if you insist on arguing, I will inform you that I have Loremaster for Vanilla, Cata, and every expansion since. So I have done every single side quest there is to do. I have seen every single corner of the map there is to see.
All I havent done is farm gold. That I dont do anymore.
And let me tell you. I cannot, under any circumstances, farm the same way I used to. The maps are just too huge. Too massive. And there is too much stuff to farm.
In Vanilla I could literally say: I have done EVERYTHING there is to do in a particular zone. I could always farm every mount. Every quest. Every node. And every mob in 90% of all Vanilla zones. I cant do that anymore. There is no way to do that in Retail with out dedicating your life to this game.
I would not agree that vanilla is for hardcore players, you literally can play 10h a week and you will be fine raiding. However if you want to mixmax, then you need all 30+ consumables to collect before raid, which includes world buffs. Then, you need only before raid some 3h to collect it all, then raid for next 2-3h. But for PVP and rank 14, I agree you used to need to be hardcore gamer to successfully farm rank 14. Otherwise you could only be satisfied with rank 11-12 and still you would do fine. So by all means, its not for hardcore gamers, as you can literally enjoy vanilla with slower pace gameplay and less time, on average you will need some 15-20h a week to have a good time and finish all raids.
Its the antithesis of “relaxed”.