Dragonflight already has the largest playerbase after sod lost a lot of players during p2. and yet era is right behind the corner if you want to play it. if they really want to force players to play retail they would shut down the era servers.
that makes no sense. you donāt keep customers by spitting in their face. you do it by making good (or acceptableā¦) products and then use the brand as a way to condition them into buying other things on the businesses shelf
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SoD in and of itself is already fact that blizzard does care about classic, not to mention the continuation of classic every 2 years now with cata on the horizon.
Does that mean that they donāt want classic players trying DF/WW? Ofc, they want to. Retail players generally stick around longer and the two versions have overlapping events and promotions more often these days. Nothing wrong with that.
People just canāt look past their own dislike over a specific version of wow to stay objective and realize that all versions are very decent and have their place in WoW.
kind of agree but also disagree. this is kind of a philosophical discussion : is there any such thing as objectively bad art? my answer to that is yes and no but i wont go into that here. i think the disdain many people have for retail in general, even if they canāt express it, is that the current game is designed to capture the widest possible audience hence all the pandering going on over the past decade, which almost always comes at expense to the individual customer. itās hard to play an mmorpg , which requires the most amount of personal investment than any other genre on the market, that you know 1 month from now will look nothing like it does right now.
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those people who disdain retail sadly fail to realize that the other part of the community like retail infact itās the biggest wow version currently. so yes retail is not objectively bad at least currently. shadowlands and wod are objectively bad expansions on the other hand. Retail is just different from classic which doesnāt mean itās bad.
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I donāt know about that being a bad thing. I see it as a sign that blizz listened to feedback, especially after the dreadful SL expansion. Sure thereās something for everyone but why is that bad? The content that is offered is decent for the most part. Raids are as hard as you want them to be, same with m+, open world content is there for those who enjoy that in a lot of different ways.
People tend to forget just how much there is you can do in retail and just bash the stuff they dislike and base their entire opinion on that one thing. Iāve literally seen people in the same thread say retail is both too hard and too easy. I mean that alone speaks volumes in my opinion.
Just to give you an example from someone who plays both versions (wrath classic and DF, I donāt do era or SoD) what I recently did in retail:
- No raids. I do those in wrath classic where I farm ICC25 HC with my guild
- Completed a few m+ dungeons at +20 level to test the rework of the Holy Priest tree
- Completed my class hall campaign from Legion since I mained a different class when legion was live. Reason: mogs, class mount and the nice questline
- Grinded out my S3 elite transmog set with the help of someone since Iām not that good at pvp.
- Got some hidden artifact legion skins
- Completed the Mage Tower on my disc priest for the nice mog. Took me a few tries but went ok.
- Did some timewalking dungeons on a few chars since itās this weekās event
- finally got my carpet mount from Noblegarden
- Made a bit of progress on an alt Iām currently leveling. I like leveling in Outland.
My goal is 70 in time for TBC Timewalking for a chance of mounts in the box when you complete Black Temple TW and ofc to go for the Mage Tower mog.
This was all in one week and thereās still stuff I could do that I donāt like or donāt have time for. In classic I would be raidlogging if I was not doing dungeons or leveling an alt. Thatās it.
I left retail in 2012 and came back when they announced Vanilla
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Similar here except i play era and dragonflight. Currently i raid on era and wait for the next season only to play the living hell out of it for like 1-2months get decent gear and then go back to more casual things in dragonflight and continue raiding on era. right now on retail i farm older raids and prepare a demonhunter for the next season. Whenever classic players say retail raids are way to hard and only for the top1% players or some other even say āyOu DoNt HaVe To WoRk FoR yOuR gEaRā. both are only as true as you want it to be. if you only raid lfr and you are happy with it then sure you donāt do really anything to get your gear. if you aim to progress mythic then all the gear you get from lfr means nothing for you since you aim for top dog items but for them you need to git gud much more so than in classic. I also realize that retail players rarely complain about classic and just minding their own business. Like as if they are actually more mature or maybe they have just fun and donāt rant about the other gameversion they donāt play out of boredom. Like i can absolutely understand when they are playing since 2004 and donāt like how the game evolved because it used to be different. but as soon they start to sell their opinion as the only one truth that EVERY expansion and patch past wotlk is badā¦ well thatās the point where they are wrong they also often donāt understand what they are talking about since they didnāt play since cataā¦
Yep, very accurate. I donāt want to generalize but I made the same thread a few months ago on the general (retail) forums and most replies were a variation of āI already did it before and donāt want to do it againā. Only a few people said they think classic is boring, which is subjective but a valid opinion.
Whereas classic players tend to destroy retail if you ask what they think of it.
Both versions have their place and merit.
Size does not matter, fun does.
Question was: āWhy do YOU play Classic, and not Retail?ā
It not matter one bit to me what majority of WoW players do.
I agree that Retail totally differnt game and repeat:
Short answer: For me Classic is fun, Retail is not!
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and thatās fine if you donāt like retail. only the ones who have nothing better to do than ranting about the game without even playing it and selling it as the definite truth are annoying.
because pvp was better vanilla-mop
raid pugszene is more fun with ids than this tool crap
the crap borrowed power in the last few expansions
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- Retail feels bloated with legacy features and content
- Iām nostalgic for Vanilla - MoP and would like to revisit those expansions
- I missed out on later expansions, especially when they were new, and would like to do them in order, which will also help with that impression of retail feeling bloated
- Iām also playing WoW on Steam Deck, and Classic is easier on it in terms of performance / power consumption (though retail is still very playable on it)
- No extra purchase needed on Classic to be up to date with the current endgame
- SoD has some cool stuff, though not sure if Iāll go for another season of vanilla+ after jumping into Cata, unless the new season is like a proper expansion to vanilla
Everything feels like it has a purposeā¦every 1g you make, every drop you pick up, every skill point, every decision you make, every step you take, every move you make, Iāll be watching youā¦wait.
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That made me snort, thanks! 
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Classic was the best version of wow. All the expansions made it easier for everyone and less rewarding to achieve things.
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I play both. As my guild started to unravel in late T9 and early ICC we tried to rebuild and failed and so I quit Classic rather than raid GDKP/pugs or have to find a new guild. Some guildies went to SOD, I went back to retail, did some M+ and heroic raiding, recently got the Legendary axe (I got SM in WOTLK too).
I think Classic is best when you play with good people on a consistent reliable basis, retail is a lot better as a solo or pug player. WOTLK was amazing, TBC was amazing, Cataclysm isnāt Classic WoW or retail, itās something between and SOD is an abomination. Classic Vanilla was great, but itās dead and I am also done with it, maybe Iād play if it had pre TBC numbers, but PvP is just full of perfect geared twinks, gets boring.
Retail full of woke things, easy leveling, poor lore, and so on.
Classic = alternative.
If no classic, no more wow.
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For me, its to blurry and too much going on at the same time. spells, gtfo, plus you have to zoom out max to even play the game.
Have you noticed when watching a retail youtuber/streamer, you dont even know what faction or race they are playing?
But with classic you see it boom, Human Paladin, what gear you have etc.
But with reatail you have no idea.
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Lore was always poor in wow. warcraft literally carried it