I guess levelling does teach you some of the important basics about your class. I’d hate to have played a tank or healer on a class I wasn’t familiar with who had literally just been parachuted straight into the role with my full spellbar filled with abilities, it’s best to learn the basics first.
But then again there’s a lot of stuff that levelling can never teach you and that you’ll only learn by playing in a group. Best to get a decent balance of both scenarios.
Isn’t it great that people now get to easily try tanking or healing in 5 man content via RDF? 
What we’ll probably see is DPS clicking ‘tank’ or ‘healer’ as their role so as to get faster queues. It happened a lot back in original Wrath.
But then again I don’t personally have a big problem with RDF. It was in the original game at around this time and I don’t mind Classic being a mirror of the original. It will simply solve some issues while creating others.
And probably better for newbie tanks to learn their stuff in five-mans rather than jumping straight into 25-mans.
While I never played Cata on release and I don’t really share some of OP points, I still must say that Cataclysm Classic is the way to go …going forward.
Cataclysm can’t be worst than Retail. I am 110% sure of that. Yes, its… not really “Classic” anymore, but …I just want Classic Legion and…I guess Panda too 
So, bring it on!
Rofl 
Cata isnt worse than retail Cata IS retail
the talent tree in cata was garbage.
Cata is as close to retail as WoTLKC is.
It doesn’t matter how many times you spout this utter garbage, you’re still wrong.
Cata talent trees Are mostly the same as wrath except talents that required 5 points Now require only 3.
I think I want some of …what you’re smoking.
Been played my share of BfA, Shadowlands and a bit of DF. DF is pathetic. Others are too, but from my pov, DF is the worst.
No other expansion can compete with that.
So if you say Cata is Retail, then … that sht is good ( the one u’re smoking )
is it revamp? or elemental “themed” generic af reskin? no thanks
A lot of the “hype” comes from people that either started in Cata or never played it before. Most others that played before it and when it was released do not like it from my understanding. (Most, not all)
If your focus is on levelling and questing as mine is then I think Cataclysm is going to feel quite a lot like retail, or at least the retail I last looked at back when Shadowlands was the main expansion.
Perhaps things are different now in Dragonflight? I have no clue, I don’t even own that xpac.
Regardless all I see in Cata is the same thing I saw in my brief examination of retail. A linear progression with minimal travelling, compact zones packed with fast-respawning mobs that you can blitz down, all RPG mechanics removed entirely in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘streamlining’, and super-fast, super-efficient, super-convenient progression with no grinding required.
Not my bag at all, so on that basis alone I don’t have a huge issue with comparing it to retail. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure class mechanics etc. are all completely different, I’m sure classes play differently and I’m sure end game progression is completely different.
I recall mostly 1v1ing mobs in Cata and it felt just like wotlk but in different zones.
They are. There’s now so many expacs it became weird to level through em. You only needed to do the first zone before you had to move on to the next expac.
Now you talk to an NPC to select your fav expansion, go there and can stay there until you are ready to quest 60-70 in the Dragon Isles.
Correct so for most players cata will offer a very different experience than retail does.
That’s just nuts and bolts to me. The fact that Shadow Word Pain does XX in Cata and does YY in retail isn’t sufficient to make me regard Cata as a fundamentally different game. But the fact that Darkshore is full of gaping chasms that endlessly spawn elementals and Classic’s version is not does make it feel like a fundamentally different game.
Obviously this is entirely subjective, but this is the way I feel.
I understand, and true. The open world landscape make a huge difference to me as well. Vanilla’s world felt big and sprawling, dangerous. partly because we were noobs the first time maybe. It was also way more empty. Some zones had 70% of unused space, mostly the later level zones. Compare Winterspring/Felwood with Elwynn or Westfall - not to mention Azshara.
Cata’s world is less dangerous and feels smaller because you can fly and because we don’t have those zone crossing quests anymore.
Doing one right now, Ledger from Tanaris, kill spiders in Searing Gorge, then go to Swamp of Sorrows for a specific murloc, then to Dustwallow Marsh to scour the area around a crashed Zepplin, then back to Searing Gorge to hand in - where I’ll likely be told to go to Tanaris for the reward.
I guess many people were glad to see the back of quest chains like this which are around 60% travelling and 30% combat. Cata did away with anything even remotely similar, but I find this kind of thing extremely chill. I actually enjoy being made to travel between different zones, probably because my MMO roots were in very grindy games like Everquest and old school Runescape, where you just accept inconvenience as part of the experience.
Me too. Felt epic. I also miss class quests.
Elite/group quests I kinda understand that they removed it, but I still miss them.
Questing became 100% solo content, while in Vanilla you defo needed a group for some parts, but in TBC they nerfed this. I understand why they did it.
Trying to solo elite quests is another key part of the experience for me. Pulling off something extremely tricky without help, just using your wits and your class abilities can be a rush.
Well leveling overall got huge rework in bfa so cata is very close to wrath while shadowlands is completely different game.
Well i dont, why should Blizzard cater to you, Someone who barely plays the game or others who are crying about quiting the game 24/7 and are never satisfied instead of me, who has been playing for a decade without breaks? (I mean obviously you could argue i would play no matter what while you would quit however if the game looked like vanilla-wrath i wouldnt play it cos its trash and i’ll be out even if theres no cata).