Seems I didn’t get it right no… But the answer is because Blizzard when they upgraded WoW back in cataclysm and beyond. They left large parts of the old world behind…
Some of it looks upgraded and on par with todays standards. While allot of it is left behind in the old days.
I don’t actually think that’s the case. I think it is because, as the OP notes, Classic has a blurring effect in the form of glow. Basically, the client makes bright colours bleed into the surrounding areas - and light bleed obviously leads to a little blurriness.
He is correct in his assessment that for example Thunder Bluff looks better in Classic than in Retail, objectively. Not compared to anything else, but compared to one another. I think it’s the ffxGlow variable. I don’t know if it even works on retail.
Having said all that, I too would LOVE a graphics overhaul.
Hmm then I guess i dont see the same things as OP and you did… And I assumed this was a ‘‘Classic looks better than retail’’ thread… But I hear you.
Or why poor audio record sounds better on a cheap all in one or pc system than on those fancy shmancy stereos.
And it does.
Ahhh idk about that. They both play at the same resolution, it’s just a worse mix.
But CRT’s for example have some interesting properties. You can make colour bleed between them in very particular ways. You can use their pulse beam for clever rendering tricks. You can abuse interlacing. You should see CGA graphics on a CRT vs a modern display. You get iirc 16 colours on the CRT due to tricks. On a new monitor you get 4.
WoW also used these sorts of tricks. If you go back to very old versions of the engine you’ll find some intriguing options in the anti-aliasing and colour depth areas. Also, WoW can render in grayscale, fun fact.
I read it like three times and I’m like surely I’m missing the point here 
Longwinded way of saying we need old assets to be updated in Retail. It’s funny though any old game I go back to, I’m always like wow did it always look this bad, but ofc at the time it was great.
Thank you all though.
newer models use more dense pixel
older models might have coding errors or bugs that make it look well… bad
i dunno just guessing
or could be blizzard trying to get people to use Newer models, by making older models look uglier
I noticed as well when I was playing Classic, models seemed somewhat fuzzy and soft. I quite liked it, I was wondering at the time whether I remembered wrong and it had always been like that, or whether they had coated everything with a nice Hallmark layer lol.
They are 2 different games. One has been retouched to be played these days, the second didn’t.
Maybe the feeling seems more immersive because at the time of when you first began exploring the World of Warcraft, that was level of graphics quality at that time. Hence why you perhaps associate the “low-poly models” with immersion? In my opinion, no matter what way Blizzard changes the graphics, I’m not going to really get a sense of immersion back because I’ve kind of just lost that “explorer” side to me which I used to have when I was young and new to the game. That was the only point in time in WoW where I actually felt immersed into the game.
I find both okay . But that is my own view and liking
classic look literally looks very gamey and unnatural both in landscape and fauna, newest retail expacs have much more elaborated landscape that makes sense, many of classic locations are straight up planets from mass effect 1 with npcs and trees planted on it.
Also punyelf showed emerald dream, which supposed to look freaky
elwynn forest is located right under redridge, near those absolutely disconnected geologically places we can see a volcano wasteland
It’s absurd, also elwynn is basically a one large flat plain with no visible hills so it being connected to mountainous area doesn’t even make a single sense.
half of what you do in vanilla is walking, other half is combat, there are SO. MUCH. WALKING. Locations aren’t designed for gameplay either, they just sculpted them and only AFTER started doing things like quests and npcs. Also yes flightmasters which might as well be obsolete in retail rn because new flying system is this good, i didn’t used a single flightmaster since dragonflight started
There is some lore to why the Burning steppes are a volcanic waste land though… If my memory isn’t betraying me. The Burning steppes used to be apart of the Stormwind Kingdom too and was once a forest land as well.
yeah there are but still elwynn transfering into redridge is already baffling enough by itself.
Then look at broken shores and just feel how much more natural surroundings feel, landscape must feel much more complex, not vanilla flat plains
Geographically and visually speaking I agree with you.
But I guess the classic fans feels like there are just so many mobs and elites inbetween you and the exploration you wanna do it becomes frustrating… Idk. They mention frustration and hinders… So thats the only thing I can come up with.
Azure span is a classic players wet dream in retail though. So much exploration to do. And you wont be hindered and blocked by mobs and adds everywhere.
Ohnaran plains as well. Is like Dragonflights version of Nagrand… Minus the floating islands and space stuff.
I am propably just missing the argument and point again by miles so just feel free to ignore me
DF could have been only Azure Span and I would have been quite happy 
It’s so goooood!
Agreed. The waking shores should get an mention too. So many caves and hidden stuff too discover. But allot more mobs and stuff in between perhaps. Ruins and treasures everywhere.
No it’s difficult because that’s not how formation of landscape works, we all know that azeroth wasn’t artificially formed, it was pretty much your standard tectonic movement (with elementals sprinkled as analogy for explosive processes)
all dragon isles are largely affected by titans and aspect magic, anyway it’s much more believable because waking shores have active volcanoes and denizens practice fire elemental magic, ohn’ahran plains literally have wind god and azure span is home to blue flight, taldrazsus doesn’t look warm at all, on the contrary it’s quite windy, and notice that all of the dragon isles are mountains and hills, even plains are so flat, one zone is warmer than another but you can still see that landscape makes sense.
shadowlands is artificially created realm of death
I don’t like color variations of modern wow post BFA
It feels weird to me shadowlands for example COLORs in that expansion were disruptive
DF also feels like fake land…
it doesn’t have that world of warcraft tone
if i compare colors in DF with colors in tol barad peninsula tol barad looks more realistic even tho everything looks like cartoon
but if you go into DF eveyrthing feels like kids show with rainbows and you will not find anything realistic there 
I don’t know how to explain this
classic feels more realistic