well go play 5 different versions of it then if you despise retail so much.
Lol it baffles me the current wow community want it all on a plate . Teleport me there, show me some flashy graphics and give me purple gear. It’s requires to much effort make it easier. Dismiss the call for more challenging content with baiting and boring arguments.
You have challenging content it’s called m+ and it scales until even the best players in the world can’t even climb further.
The challenge is about social interaction being lost and regaining some of that community spirit, right now it’s just PVP in these forums.
If you want to socialize and don’t want to queue with strangers find a guild.
Please read the full thread before putting in your input. We’ve been around this block
No thank you. 200 post of you responding with “Ah yes, the classic…” and handwaving away valid arguments is not something I am interested in doing.
Find a social circle and stop complaining.
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As i read this the first thing that came to mind was they still do btw!
Calling this an issue of skill requirements is severely misstating the case.
The problem is that retail WoW fails to make its world socially interesting. It fails to use the world to sweep you into a community automatically as it used to do. You can work around this just fine by using external programs and that pretty much takes the same kind of skills and WoW is still designed to reward this skill, especially with mythic raiding.
But that skill has nothing to do with the difficulty of actually completing the content on an individual level. No amount of M+ difficulty levels or impossibly hard raid bosses addresses this issue, either from a requirement or from a player gain point of view.
I never said it’s an issue with skill. I hinted that it’s an issue with mindset. If you want social interactions and you do not go out of your way to find them then it’s on you. I mean outside of looking for a guild you can “queue up with strangers” and start adding them to your friends list if you like them. I mean me and you have had our disagreements on the forums but in the end we are still friends on bnet and I like talking and playing with you (we should do it more regularly once season starts btw).
It never was socially interesting. Even in classic the social aspect was spam /General till you fill your group, wait and maybe have a chat with the people already in your group and them move silently to the dungeon/raid entrance, start summoning (when the sum stones were enabled ofc) the rest of the party that decided to AFK, which was the majority in most cases. The same thing that happens now with M+, minus the spamming in /General. Sure there were more quests that required a group but mostly people just teamed up for the quest, said barely a word and then left.
Facts
Netease just re opened realms again after a long break
They did so with huge promo’s and gifts to entice players back
Yes more logs are being recorded at present then retail because no m+ or raid yet i thought that would be easy to see 
Also you might want to read up on other things as well
[WoW (and Blizzard) returns to China, and the details are kind of wild (blizzardwatch.com)](https://blizzardwatch.com/2024/06/27/wow-returns-to-china/)
also how there gear system works and resets yeah your view is a bit lop sided look at the bigger picture tbh.
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Well duh. I wasn’t comparing it to current retail numbers, I was comparing it to retail 2009 numbers.
This website doesn’t contradict my statements.
Also, I used reader mode and will not visit this site again as it is in breach of EU law and I actually care about my privacy.
i think you did
Put this on front page of FORUM please 
The thing is: You can play the game very socially if you want to. There’s plenty of ways to do that. So don’t pretend as if you’re forced to not interact with others.
The choice is yours.
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Then you’re wrong.
If you mean this, then it’s me saying that retail doesn’t have as many players as WoW did during WotLK and comparing the number of logs we had then to what they had now, therefore inferring that we have shrunk relative to then, but China is the same as then because they’re playing WotLK. We didn’t have a moment like China is having with WotLK during our own DF, and I guarantee you we won’t have one for TWW either.
I’d agree, except you’re missing the point.
People still do that.
So why dont you join a guild and run dungeons with them instead of crying on the forums or you know GASP play classic
Aahhh yeah the social interaction by having a chat with bots meanwhile u getting leveled in ZG/mara/SM/Stockades etc 
Where did I say the game “forces” you to not interact with other players? I simply described my experience. I also wrote that if you’re not willing to engage with certain outside tools like Discord you will be stuck with pugs and pugs will not really interact on a social level because you’re never going to see them again after a run is done.
In reality the problem is how players use the game functionalities which have been designed around QoL. Sometimes the whole QoL thing though creates some problems as players will get lazy and use only what requires the least amount of effort or resistance.
Talking to people takes effort. It’s easier to just press a couple of buttons and go with a couple random people I never have to deal with again afterwards. And you know what takes even more effort? Trying to find people you can and want to play together on a regular base. And who actually wants to do that in WoW?
Btw. back in the days of Vanilla WoW interactions with players happened naturally because you were actually forced to communicate if you wanted to do anything in a group. It also has its problems (if you’re on a dead server for example). All players were on the same server and you saw the same people constantly. This also forced people to (somewhat) behave because once your reputation was destroyed you basically were done on that server.
Was this better than what you have today? From a gameplay perspective it was worse because you had to spent more time on social aspects. In terms of social relationships though it would definitely be a long argument whether or not it was better or worse.