Good that we have Heroic and the first 3 or 4 bosses mythic 
Of course not. But I’ll get the same rewards no matter on what difficulty I play it - that’s the point.
Why do you dislike character development so much? Imo that is part of a RPG.
When you get more difficult content done you get more gear, more titles and more achievements.
Create your own journey and adventure and earn corresponding rewards
Why do you need max ilvl when you dont interact with raids or m+?
You guys only “want want want” without reason.
It varies from individual, one big factor is surely IRL. For example if I would go back to raid on mythic i would do it with one from my country (there are only 5 currently that got CE)
But i work on shifts and raid times are from 21 till midnight server time and having to sleep less than 5 hours when i have to start my shift at 6 am i already a big no for me.
I could consider going back to an English speaking one, but most goes for that inane schedule of Wend/Sund (seriously how is possible for all this people to raid on wow on a Sunday?)
And so I decided instead to ditch raiding and get back into martial arts at this point.
Another factor is that if you have no experience/records you need to have a litle of a “mercenary” mentality where you join first a guild that clears only HC, then you move to one that does a few mythic and then at last you move to one that gets CE.
Yes there are occasion where you join a fresh guild that manages to attive there, was my case in BFA i joined a fresh made guild, we got 5/8 in eternal palace and we got CE in ny’alotha.
And last is personal skill, i pick again as my example, as a raider i was the tipe of guy that never fails an encounter mechanics, but because in my so focused of executing those mechanics at perfection my dps in TRASH.
Like on the last bosses my best parse was a 22 on raden, on N’zoth i did 12 and on Vexiona a boss we had on farm i never di more than an 8, playing a destro warlock that was very easy (i rerolled from fire mage to destro because i did not wanted to farm mechagon on m+ for those bracers, plus the gameplay i felt it easier compared to fire mage)
To conclude i think that most casual dont want to dedicate at those level to play a CE especially when now there are more ways to aquire gear of the same level.
Lets agree to disagree. Its not a habit. Neither is your thing.
Every time I get on an elevator and press a button. I spam it 10 times. To make sure the command got through. Every time I want to cross the road, I press the button 10 times to make sure.
Nah. Its not wow. Its me. And if that ever becomes a problem for me. I should work on myself.
I cant speak for DDs, or your specific rotation.
But when it comes to healers… I hope they fix it soon. Its boring to simply be idle.
Aylish… Tah (to name 1 person) dosent do “endgame” stuff either. But atleast he PLAYS.
Retail offers so much more than just high M+ keys and Mythic Raids. You just failed to explore all that. What you did is leveled to 80 and never played again.
Saying you played a bit in SL and currently play Classic is like practically like saying that you play Starcraft2. Because the only thing SL and Classic share with TWW retail is the WOW name.
It does. In this case. Because that is what YOU play exclusively. So you might have an informed opinion on Classic, and its problems. But not Retail. Because you havent played it. And reading Ion’s article is not enough.
You can install all the addons you want. But untill you get into a Raid with a guild (or try to) you will not appreciate the real problem they pose.
But you can post all you want here. And give your opinion all you want. I invite you to it.
But then I will be fair and go to the Classic Forums and spam them about how trash Classic WOW is (according to me) and how Retail is the best of the best… ect…
Sound fair?
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AHAHA…
Ishayo my friend… the “best leveling”???
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hssA0Q16CWE
You are comparing apples to lemons. Questing sucks in Classic. The difference is that there is no such a thing as “leveling” in Retail.
But let me tell you that Cata missions are a huge, massive improvement over the snoozefest of the Classic 1-60 experience.
Yes, the best levelling. Without any hesitation whatsoever.
That video doesn’t even remotely represent what it plays like. Are there are couple of these dumb quests? Yes. But they’re very rare and frankly almost all in The Barrens lol.
There are many reasons for this:
- It’s relaxing - due to the music, the pace of combat - and yes, the fact that it gives you natural breaks from drinking, from flight paths. It’s the sort of game you just keep playing literally all day and 1/3rd of the time you’re spending doing IRL chores or chatting to guildies, and that’s absolutely fine - it was built that way on purpose
- You will inevitably encounter players you’ll want to party up with - the chatting begins, soon you’re in a dungeon
- You keep meeting the same people over and over again, which you both notice, and it forges bonds
- It’s moderately challenging - if you do only green quests it’s a snoozefest, if you do only yellow it’s decent, and if you do red you better watch out. I personally prefer orange quests. But the thing is you get to pick! YOU GET TO PICK!
- It’s absolutely colossal - or at least it feels that way. 40 zones and over 25 dungeons was absolutely insane, and Blizzard have never replicated it again since. By all accounts retail should be bigger but it always railroads you so it doesn’t feel that way.
- The variety is outstanding, especially when there’s more quests, let’s put it like that. Depending on your race and faction and class you’ll start out in totally different environments, you’ll have totally different quests to undertake, and so on. In fact, given a character, you probably won’t see around half of the game.
- Professions are actually useful at lower levels, and if you’re playing hardcore I’d argue mandatory, though I don’t.
It was revolutionary and it sparked a franchise which we still play. Millions of people are playing it even to this day, which is insane, while retail’s levelling is dead a doorknob.
Fact.
You may not like it. Play something else then.
But fact.
EDIT: I still remember this review from GameSpot. He argues the case well.
Jesus Christ I couldn’t disagree more if I tried. It was the worst thing they ever did. Turned something beautiful, open and relaxing into a 20 hour linear rollercoaster ride. It’s a tragedy what they did. And they worked themselves to bone doing it as well.
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This is an option. You can do this in Retail as well. YOU, the player decide to sit and drink and chat with guildies.
Retail gives you options. Classic… does NOT. If you want to go fast, you cant.
EXAMPLE: TWW launch. I took 2 weeks to complete all the quests with my warrior (Zavia). Read all the stories. Drank. Sat to watch the panorama. Chatted with guildies… ect…
But then, with my “push toon” Uda I took 2h. Cause I do quests only ONCE. The 2nd time I want to jump streight into the “M+ treadmill”.
Cant do that in Classic. Retail >>> Classic.
You also encounter players in Retail. Many more, because there are more players condensed in a smaller are. If YOU dont talk to them, they wont talk to you.
Retail >>> Classic.
??? Never in 1M years did this happen in Classic. It happened, punctually. In very particular zones.
SPECIFICALLY in those zones, like the video parodies, where you have to go back and fourth to a specific location.
Retail == Classic.
You know WHY people did green quests all the time? Because to do yellow and above level quests you usually needed to party up. And people did not want that. It was annoying to have to sit on the /regional chat with /LF tank for XYZ quest.
Cause nobody answered.
Dont forget that they got rid of quest levels in Retail FOR A REASON.
Retail >>> Classic.
Newsflash, from pixel size, TWW is as big as Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms and has 100x more quests than both.
I have the maps. Here they are:
https://ibb.co/qMMY4g2J
This is the quest density by zone. I only have up to BfA. But I can guarantee you that DF and TWW as just as big, if not bigger.
https://ibb.co/603BMcFB
Here is the size in pixels of the zones. DF and TWW are not included. But Kalimndor + EK is ~ 55M pixels.
https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/78703-war-within-map-size-comparison-to-dragonflight-and-other-zones/
Here is the size comparison of DF and TWW.
https://ibb.co/DfYPRr29
And here is the size of 2 zones of DF.
The TLDR of all this is that I could not find a table, or graph that simply puts the size of the zones in pixels. So you can compare 1 to 1.
But what you can see is that ONE zone in DF has 10M pixels. Let me repeat that. ONE out of 6 zones in DF has 1/5 of the size of BOTH kalimdor and EK put toguether (~ 55M pixels).
So. In SIZE expansion zones are roughly equal in size to Vanilla WOW. AND have 100x more quests in them than Vanilla wow.
THEREFORE…
Retail >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Classic. By a huge margin.
False. Classic quests are: Kill X things. Gather Y stuff. Kill Z luitenant. Talk to H person. Thats IT. There is only 4 possibilities.
In Retail, you have for example vehiecles to interact with. You might not like it. But it adds to the variety.
As for the panoramas. REALLY… You are going to compare Hollowfall to any Vanilla wow zone? REALLY?
So Retail >>>>>> Classic.
I would never call useful equipping 1 item for 2 levels and then exchanging it for a random green item from a quest.
And crafting becomes exponentially harder. So that “using items you craft” is useful early on. But absolutely crazy or impossible when you need 60 Mithril bars, and 4 gems from Black Rock Depths to craft 1 pair of gloves.
Remember, you need to level up your profession, so you need to craft 50 of those Mythril things before you can craft what is useful to you at that moment. SO. By the time you finish gathering all the materials you have increased level and got a better item from some drop/quest.
SORRY. Crafting is USELESS beyond level 20. That is why most of the leveling professions were incantation. To destroy the mountain of greens you got from quests to sell that in the AH. To other people that were power-leveling professions.
And when you FINALLY reach full level. Now you need recepies from raids and dungeons. So you go to these places. Once you get the recipy, you now find out you need materials from duneons/raids to actually make that item. So you go farm that.
By the time you finally get the mats to craft that item. A better epic/blue item dropped and it became useless.
FALSE.
Retail >>>> Classic
It WAS revolutionary. But its not 2004 anymore is it? So. IN 2025, Retail >>>>> Classic.
As for millions of people? BRO…
https://ironforge.pro/population/era/ More like thousands. 11k IN THE WHOLE WORLD to be more precise.
There are 1000x (yes, a thousand times) more keys done a WEEK than players in Classic (ALL its versions, including SoD).
You are welcome to dispute my 11k with some other data you can find out.
Its a review from 2004.
Its 2025… NOT 2004 Jesus Christ. VANILLA is not equal to Classic WOW. Vanilla is WOW in 2004. Its a relic. A thing of the past. Classic is a copy-paste version of that in 2025.
That is why… Retail >>>>> CLASSIC. Because to properly compare Retail in 2025, you need to compare it with CLASSIC in 2025. Not to Vanilla in 2004… unless you figure out a way to time travel.
Many have said here, US forums, Reddit and probably someplace else how currently heroic has been too easy for multiple expansions and mythic is too hard. So people end up getting their curve and quit because even for the couple bosses in mythic you have to tell your friends: oops, 20 is max, sorry you are out
Gallywix hc and mythic prove that theory wrong.
Gallywix heroic was brutal while on mythic its a complete joke.
Ion said that heroic should take a couple of weeks for the average player. Its not too difficult.
It’s a bit of a moot point, in classic you dont have flying mounts or dragonriding, and for the first 39 level you dont even have a ground mount, of course maps in the last expansions needs to be bigger. Comparing only the size without acknowledge this very important needs is silly.
For example Oblivion map is bigger than Skyrim, but the level design of the second makes it feel bigger than the first.
Another fun fact Daggerfal map is big as the UK 
Plus comparing m+ runs to active raiders is another weird comparsion, you can run an indefinite (if you the time) number of m+ dungeons on one character , raids have a weekly reset, have you done onyxia this reset you are done for the week unless you have an alt.
It is moot. You forgot conveniently forgot 1 detail:
100x more quests. In the same area. Even though you can fly in DF and TWW.
Which means: In Vanilla you spend most of your time walking around. From point A to point B with out actually doing anything.
In DF and TWW you run out of Vigor and you are forced to use ground mounts. Because there is a quest literally at every single cross-road.
Your point being?
THEREFORE: Retail >>>>>>>> Classic.
Heroic on 30man was very easy, I heard on small raids it is still posing difficulties though.
But the main point was the transitioning from heroic raiding to mythic raiding… Instead of telling 12-14 friends “thats it you cant join us anymore”, we would rather all play something else together.
Hopefully something is coming to fix that. Idk, flex mythic with less powerful loot even would be nice, people just want to have some great time after work with their friends.
Simple, I wrote it again few weeks ago, in classic the most profitable source of xp is not doing quest but grinding mobs, you are supposed by traveling from hub to hub to keep killing things, if you walk straight you are actively ruining your leveling speed.
On the other hand in retail and im noticing it leveling a new character, mobs give litle to noone xp compared to quest, at lv35-40 1 quest can give you aroud 5k xp a mob at that level is like 370 xp with rested xp, leveling from 40 to 41 is 39k xp of course there is need of quest.
That’s why there are zone in original ek and kalimdor with only mobs to grind.
Also please I’m all happy to have a healthy discussion on how things changed , but if you have to end every post with “Retail >>>>>>>> Classic” trying to force your opinion is simply rude so please stop thank you.
Where on earth did you get that from? I don’t play classic any more than retail. And my classic play is like playing Stardew Valley. It’s not comparable to retail. You aren’t describing any significant changes to what issues healers are facing either. This is all familiar to me, and I watched heroic raids and mythic+ from a resto druid PoV well into Dragonflight,but wasn’t able to play myself. The issues described by Ion in the article are also familiar to me. I don’t even get why it’s a problem to you that I support you against issues you are facing. And that I will face again when I have the capacity to pick up raiding again. This doesn’t only affect healers that are playing RIGHT now.
No, all the DF zones as of patch 10.0 was 10m pixels. I remember this quite vividly.
You seriously mean to tell me that this expansion is bigger than Draenor or Northrend? Come now. Since you can fly over both now, you can time it and see for yourself.
This is also why the new expansion is announced to be northern Kalimndor. Lordaeron+Quel’Thalas is about the same size as TWW.
Okay but who cares? There are so many I can’t possibly do them all, I can’t complete them in any order I want, and when I finally get it all opened up at max level they’re so easy I don’t want to do them.
And despite the large amount, none of them manage to relate to my character in any way whatsoever. I just… exist. They can’t even address my bloody gender and that’s just a toggle in quest text. There are no class quests, no race quests, no faction quests, nothing. Who I am when I play TWW is irrelevant.
Nope, retail doesn’t play like that. If you play like that in retail you’ll be punished, and in general it won’t work. You won’t find other players that are levelling at the same pace as you by CRZ, you have to press far more spells, there’s no good white damage here, and most of the quests are really easy to actually do but getting to them is hell without flying mounts, and the zones are designed that way.
It’s the town effect. People in a town of 5000 people somehow all know each other and talk on every street corner. In a city of 33 million people you don’t know anyone you meet, so you never talk to anybody and instead rely on clubs (e.g. M+, guilds, etc) entirely.
It’s the fact that there are more people makes the situation worse. This is one of the great ironies and it is the very thing the WoW devs understood which was forgotten very quickly by the new generation of WoW devs. And by new, I mean WotLK or so.
Happens to me literally every time I play it. It’s why I’m here now, too. I had a guild of 50 people I had made by level 37 in vanilla, and I was shy.
If you can’t do a yellow quest without backup you diabolically suck. Your class is tuned to do a yellow quest with default binds (1-0 + ’ and swapping action bar pages with ctrl+1-6), including keyboard turning.
Most groups would occur because multiple people were questing in the same area.
No, the real reason people did green quests is that it gave too much XP relative to effort. That’s it.
This is objectively true. It says so in the WoW diaries.
But that’s not where the variety comes from. The variety comes from the locations, the monsters themselves and what they do and what they are, how to get there, and all of that.
You know… every game of StarCraft 2 has the same objective, and yet the variety of strategies keeps it fresh still.
I swear to God you typing this 26 times over makes me not want to continue. I get that’s your opinion; are you through?
You forget SoD and Anniversary and aaaaaall the things we “don’t talk about here”. Which is a lot.
Also, that’s characters raiding. Most people playing older versions of WoW don’t raid… In fact, when tBC came out, there were only 1 million max level characters out of 7 million subscribers…
Classic is not a copy paste of the 2025 version of the game. It is worse in several ways. It’s post hundreds of nerfs to bosses and buffs to every class, it’s missing several pieces of content, Blizzard keeps mucking it up by not running it correctly due to monetization schemes, and of course everybody knows everything. In order to produce the same thing WoW did in 2004, you need a new game like WoW which isn’t WoW.
Which is why I play retail more than Classic. It’s new stuff. But I would absolutely rather play a game like that with new content than play this, and I’d rather play Era than retail with no content patches ever. Any day of the week.
Amazing.
So… mindlessly killing mob after mob… is somehow… better than Retail questing?
Especially if you do it with auto-attacks…
There is nothing to discuss. I farmed mobs for reputation. Like the insane achievement, or some orc faction from WoD. I know exactly how that feels like.
And I can tell you. THAT is nowhere near superior to a series of structured quest-lines that are varied, AND have cut-scenes (to name something). You might not like the story of TWW (fair). You might not like structure of the storylines (fair). You might be sick of watching caves all day (fair)…
But claiming that its somehow comparable to killing 3000 Durotar Boars to get to level 60? Nah…
Like I said before. WoW in 2004 was a revolution. But its not 2004. Its 2025. And grinding boars at-infinitum is objectively a inferior way. There is nothing to discuss, and I dont have an opinion either. Its an objective fact.
And if I would be somehow wrong. Which can be. Then the sub numbers for Classic WoW would say otherwise. But they dont…
Where one time i wrote that is superior? I simply brought why is differentand how the design has changed over the years thanks to more tools aviable.