Didn’t mean to convey that retail sucks 
I genuinely enjoy playing DF as the game is so much more than combat while leveling and has a very of fantastic experiences to offer.
Classic is way higher because combat is way slower. Yes things like resist and/or miss played a bigger factor there but overall it feels more “difficult”* because everything moves like it’s in molasses. Also I am glad that we got rid of mana as a resource, the gameplay feels much better when I’m not locked out of my abilities and have to want stuff to death.
*Something taking longer or dodge/resisting doesn’t fit what I would describe as difficult or challenging. It does fit my description of annoying and/or boring though.
I personally think AI should have less abilities in retail and instead a few, but if you don’t counter those abilities properly, they can do a lot “ouch” to you. Also those abilities should be more readable via animations and telegraphing textures ingame. Also, I think there should be more AI foes that try to heal other AI foes so we have to actually prioritize targets more often.
This season in M+ I did enjoy Vortex pinnacles fights a lot, due to the Temple Adepts being present in the later half of the dungeon, which should be prioritized or otherwise your party suffers some problems when fighting the pack in general.
But it SHOULDN’T be on the annoying level of “Avalanche” from Neltharions Lair from the Breaker Mobs, where you have only like 1s to react after the cast is done by the AI to move out of the damage area.
Yes. This is part of why I’d rather level in classic than retail. It’s far more meaningfull, and a much better sense of progression.
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While my first instict is shouting:
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!”
on the second thought I feel like it while not come by just upping the difficulty.
I mean I could make myself right now the leveling hard by starting off from Exile Reach, then going back to original starting area until I am finally getting with arround Level 30 new green gear. That is hard but not fun.
The fun in the hard fights in Classic whas not difficulty per se but the feeling of progress.
On the way to Level 60 every progress counted and so you are happy for every blue item and purple stuff whas an unpayable treasure. Also you could change your difficulty by either getting a group or a carefully crafted and fully enchanted gear set for your level and so doing quests solo while they where still orange or waiting till they turned green.
Only problem which got solved with TBC and WotLK whas that the way from 50-60 turned into a slog cause you are lacking meaningfull upgrades on the last way till you start dungeon running.
Meanwhile in Retail where everything scales there is hardly a sense of progression. The enemies will always be on your level and so you have to catch up with gear which as the rewards also scale with your level will always be behind the enemy and not in front of.
So yeah just making the game harder would not be sensefull as then you would have to get rid of the scaling which they had to implement because they had to increase the speed so much as most people in this Endgame fixated gameplay had already everything seen.
So I think the better answer would be instead just allow people to pay to transfer their character from WotLK to retail as so they can have the challenging exciting leveling without disrupting the gameplay feeling because in WotLK Classic most of the things you could get from Classic only that are now considered rare are not even available by then anymore.
Onyxia Pre-Quest? Removed.
CoN/Hand of A’dal? Removed.
Atiesh/Corrupted Ashbringer? Removed.
Quel’serrar? Removed.
What this would allow you is getting the few remaining shirts that are not already part of the shirt vendor in CoT Hillsbrad and the FoS about the Shen’dralar, doing the Class Mount Quest as Paladin/Warlock and for getting First Aid and Weapon Skills on Max Level.
I opened a topic about that with a more abstract view and more suggestions a few weeks ago.
Yes it would be better and depth would increase.
It would also be better to shift high M+ to more strategic gameplay and keep the mass AoE nuking for HC or Mythic Dungeons. Meaning higher M+ is more about playing XCOM and WoW combined, sorting the low intelligent (which correlates with reaction time and decision making) players out of the pool.
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there are games out there where the out door npc’s scale op/down according to your lvl and gear in this way all fights in out door are in some way ingaging, maybe something to consider.
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Speaking of “Sense of progression”, that’s the only thing i miss from earlier levelling: Zone levels, levelling feels much more significant if you have the “Ah, now i can go to the next zone!” rather than “Oh great, i’m a bit weaker now”
It’s a tricky one, because zone scaling does allow for multiple levelling paths for alts, which keeps levelling through questing (Do other people still do that, or am i the only one?) at least a bit varied for alts, but sometimes i miss the “Ah, i gained a level, now i can move on to the next zone”-feeling.
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Its a two-headed stick. While, I can agree that world content NPCs becomes obsolete walking target-dummies very quickly. I also wouldn’t want a scenario where you “killed a mythic dragon and is geared to teeth with mythic gear”… only to get run over by an accidental random boar pull. 
Most people won’t understand what you mean.
Because all retail people hear are:
Ah you want to classic leveling back?
You want me to auto shoot?
I have to raid/mythic, killing any other npc in the game is such a niche, so years 2000…
I hate to level…
I like that I one shot everything!
Leveling is so slow, can’t wait for the 70% exp buff!
Leave wow if you think that the game can be played in any other way
And many other things, but what people are actually asking for is a game segment that is not world quest or events in the game, has its own progression and not tied to leveling, and it is in retail, and it has a segment of it’s own, optional like raid is, mythic is and pvp is.
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Why would you be curious? Its obvious that retail has FAR less deaths.
Are you suggesting that being killed is a good measure if the game is good or not?
Not at all. I think that statistics on amount of deaths in combat while levelling can be a way to compare difficulty of combat with NPCs between expansions. Higher amount of deaths in a particular setting would indicate that combat in such a setting is more difficult compared to a setting where amount of deaths is lower.
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I would agree. But thats kinda irrelevant. You enjoy the challenge of the wild, exploring using your wits to survive and gain an accomplishment from that.
I dont. I want to steam roll through the leveling smashing huge crowds of NPCs to dust so that i can get the engame faster. If i can do all of this without reading the quest text all the better.
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Another reason retail has fewer deaths than Classic is that in retail, a lot of classes got self-healing they didn’t have in classic, to which i say a big “Thank heavens for that!”, having to carry a pile of bandages and food to recover HP between fights when doing world content (Such as it was, anyway) was decidedly dreary.
Those self-healing skills also made combat less difficult, but IMO not every single mob we fight should be a life-or-death ordeal.
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…and it is awesome that there are other types of people, it’s just both communities need their own variation, not big, but existent, as there is nothing really alike in retail atm.
Also, this could make the population bigger on both sides, as people swing.
If people want to play a classic game, Classic is there.
It doesnt make the population bigger, each time another version of wow is released it divides the population.
See this is what I said retail people say :D.
Feels empty reasoning.
You mean fewer people come back to the game, also why afraid if there fewer players in raids/pvp/mythic?
You run out of resources on most classes in Classic and have to resort to auto attack or if you’re lucky, a wand!
Now some may find this exciting gameplay, but other’s wont. There is nothing wrong with liking it. I’m not a fan of it myself. Far prefer the combat of Retail.
Better than empty gameplay which is what i get when i play classic.
I love questing on alts, and I thoroughly enjoy the freedom scaling provides. Does it feel stupid to just get weaker, and to never experience the character’s growth? Yes, that part is a loss. It’s a trade off. Practically I’m happy the ‘expansion sequence’ has been removed and I can just go anywhere, any time. I accept the bad with the good. I perfectly get others who feel differently tho.