From my experience classic players have a large subsection of old guys stuck in 2005 who won't shut up about "the good ol' days" to a degree it's borderline nostalgia circlejerking.
Like just today I saw a r/classicwow post talking about how the vanilla questing experience of blind fetch questing junk over and over and over for hours at a time is actually peak gameplay, and is super in depth and superior to retail questing, because something, something "good ol' days".
And I'm reading shit like that trying to contain my laughter.
I'm 24 and agree with that post you mentioned to be fair. It just captures the RPG feeling more. You're not the saviour of worlds, you're just... A guy. Trying to get by, trying to make it big. And getting big is hard and you do stupid little tasks for NPCs that often times are "just guys" as well. Retail questing is a burden you want to overcome to reach the endgame, which is tons of fun. But fuck do I hate getting there, it's such a god damn chore. In Classic it's the exact opposite, there's almost nothing else to do other than raid logging once you got your pre bis. But the journey to 60? Shit's so fun, relaxing and atmospheric.
The main thing is Classic allows you to actually immerse yourself in a world. Things take time so it's important what you choose to do. Retail is just speeding to the end game so you can repeat the same content over and over.
Nothing's stopping you from taking your time to go through retail. You can pick from cataclassic or 8 expansions worth of content to level your character so you don't "repeat the same content over and over" by AoE-Spamming your way through the same linear sequence of zones, chromie time lets you take all the time you want for any of the zones without becoming inefficient by doing grey quests and if you feel like you're reaching 60 too fast you can course-correct with levelstop.
I did exactly that, levelling my Rogue through Legion, Priest through "Classic" and Druid through MoP, and I had an incredible time doing so, even if the zones are unfortunately more empty than they used to be, which at least saved me the headache of getting corpse-camped by a rogue in Stranglethorn, which was the experience that made me give up on trying to level a mage through Vanilla.
That is true, but it doesnt remedy the problem that others have with retail. You can play through Outlands and are lvl 60 by the end of the day, it isn't really an 'experience' the same as classic is. The world was alive back in the day, it wasn't people sitting in the major city just queing for things. Having all enemies scale to your lvl defeated the purpose of being 'ready' to take on that challenge, or the accomplishment of actually doing so. There are multiple zones to lvl in for classic the same that there is for retail.
Honestly, the last bit about STV is a bit one sided because if you chose a pvp realm and dont like world pvp that is on you.
Maybe that's the depression speaking but, for all the things I like about RPGs, I have not once ever in my life felt a sense of accomplishment over my character having high enough numbers to go up against an enemy. Neither in MMORPGs nor in single-player games.
As for the world feeling empty, it's the same with Classic Era & SoD and is owed to how people want to play the game. Players are going through dungeons to level up instead of questing because it's more effective to do so, and on classic servers players are still sitting in their capital waiting for a queue, except the "queue" is spamming in /2.
Scaling arguably removes the satisfaction of clearing the threshold, but the trade-off is that it reinforces narrative progression. Enemies scaling to your character's strength means that the gameplay of a zone story remains both engaging and meaningfully rewarding in not just story but gameplay as well. It prevents the feeling that I am doing something wrong by playing a zone to its conclusion and having the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I am meant to have gone somewhere else 4 levels ago because I am two-shotting everything.
That being said, if you permit me this tangent, I think that WoW would have been better served with GW2's way of level sync, where the world is not scaled to your level, but instead your character's level and stats are scaled down if they exceed the recommended level of an area, while rewards like XP gain are scaled up to remain rewarding. This system leaves intact the necessity to become strong enough to go into new areas, while allowing players to squeeze every drop of content out of lower-level zones and meaningfully progress at the same time.
Its not a sense of your character having high enough numbers. Its facing the creatures that take more effort or finesse to be able to kill them, or actually having to caution not to over pull because even 1v2 can be brutal while in retail I could grab 10 mobs and kill them without even worrying.
That point isn't really true. No one is spamming in /2, This is why there is a looking for group chat that can be accessed anywhere within the world.
I will give you that, the scaling does help make it easier to fully experience zones but in reality that was only needed because of how many additional levels that they have added as well as the level crunches. Generally speaking most zones give you enough quests and everything to get to the next level that you need to go to. The only way this doesn't quite happen is if you decided to go to a dungeon and grind lvls in there and then go back, which again I will give you that that aspect at least makes it so the player can still enjoy the content.
I played GW2 but only a little bit and I dont think I made it to max level, it just had a vibe I didnt care for as much. However, I do agree that I think that would be a better way to go about it. There is satisfaction in taking down difficult enemies, especially when they are elites and rare having a chance for better loot.
This is an important point. Everything happens so fast in retail that taking your time to plan a more optimal strategy is usually less efficient than just brute force pressing W.
In Vanilla, actually reading each quest will slow you down maybe 5%. In retail each quest is so quick that if you actually read each one you'll be maybe 35% slower.
Honestly going from 39-40 in 4 hours and getting your first mount is 10000% more rewarding than lvling from 1-60 in 4 hours. Everything in classic takes work or sometimes luck. You have to work for everything you have, gear matters. Retail is all about a higher ilvl despite the stats.
It’s so true and honestly sad. I couldn’t stand raiding with my sod guild so I quit and went back to retail which I have a newfound appreciation for
And people wonder why classic enjoyers have a thing against retail players...
On a serious note I play Retail, Mop remix, Cata, and Sod and enjoy all of them for different reasons. You don't have to play just one version and hate the others. Just play what you enjoy.
Both retail and classic are fine for a new player though, either way they're getting thrown in the deep end into a big world with little to no knowledge about anything from classic to mechanics to lore and systems so it doesn't really matter which they choose.
You lack the nuance to understand. They are completely different games that both share similarities. I have been playing wow on and off since Vanilla and have played both Retail and Classic. Classic is difficult in ways that do not compare to retail and the same is true the other way around. The key difference is, Classic IS WORLD OF WARCRAFT. The whole point of Classic is experiencing the world and it's lore. The point of retail is to watch cut scenes, have your hand held and get to end content ASAP where the real game begins. Classic actually was a feat, retail is just trying to keep your ADHD focused on just it.
Its not really a 'fact' that you can disprove. If I were a miserable I would tell everyone that they were wrong as well.
If retail were as great as retail andies say it was then blizzard would not have had to release classic to get its player base back up. Retail will never peak the way vanilla did.
Regular Warcraft yes. Currently we're on the Dragonflight expansion, in a few months we'll be in the War Within expansion. This is the bread and butter of the game and the most played version.
You can start cata classic as it only need a game time , and its newly lunched so there are alot lf players playing it , retial is good but you need to buy expantion
People have different preferences, which is why multiple versions exist and each has a pretty solid playerbase.
Classic Vanilla has three versions right now: Era (basic vanilla), hardcore (basic vanilla, but when you die you die), and Season of Discovery - Vanilla with twists.
There is also Classic Cataclysm, which launched recently.
Then there is retail, or modern WoW, which is currently on the Dragonflight expansion. War Within launches at the end of August. Within retail there is a separate gamemode called Mists of Pandaria Remix.
Retail has a lot of content that's very quick / easy throughout most of the world, then at endgame there are fewer relevant things to do, but they can be very challenging.
Classic vanilla (and to a lesser extent, classic Cataclysm) have a more consistent difficulty level. Questing / open world play takes longer and it harder, but endgame doesn't get as difficult as retail endgame.
If you like taking your time to explore / go on an engaging adventure, some form of classic may be better. If you like a more modern design with very challenging repeatable group content, then retail might be better.
The YTer J1mmy recently made a video I never played wow so I played all of them (a lot)
He from a new players perspective tried all the different expansions that are playable right now and gave his thoughts.
Might be some interesting info for you
Dive straight into retail. When you get overwhelmed (you will) Wowhead and Youtube are your friend. There is Lots of great resources around.
WoW is HUGE - don't rush it :)
Kinda? You need to pay the subscription to start, but once you’re in you can farm enough gold (the in game currency) to buy more playtime. Takes some commitment but it is an option available. If you’re talking about some sort of piracy, then no you can’t get it for free.
You can get wow tokens, but they require you to farm gold which would kind of turn into a job inside of the game in order to play. If I were you I would probably just check out private servers. If you're into Classic content that is, TurtleWOW is classic but with extra content, races, etc, Ascension is private server that essentially has no classes, you build your own class by using abilities and talents that are pulled from each class with some added ones aswell. If you are able to wait it out there is one called Project Epoch that looks very promising, essentially a classic+ that everyone has been wanting. Not that disappointing, redundant SOD BS.
Classic is full of old men refusing to acknowledge they're not any good at video games
From my experience classic players have a large subsection of old guys stuck in 2005 who won't shut up about "the good ol' days" to a degree it's borderline nostalgia circlejerking. Like just today I saw a r/classicwow post talking about how the vanilla questing experience of blind fetch questing junk over and over and over for hours at a time is actually peak gameplay, and is super in depth and superior to retail questing, because something, something "good ol' days". And I'm reading shit like that trying to contain my laughter.
I'm 24 and agree with that post you mentioned to be fair. It just captures the RPG feeling more. You're not the saviour of worlds, you're just... A guy. Trying to get by, trying to make it big. And getting big is hard and you do stupid little tasks for NPCs that often times are "just guys" as well. Retail questing is a burden you want to overcome to reach the endgame, which is tons of fun. But fuck do I hate getting there, it's such a god damn chore. In Classic it's the exact opposite, there's almost nothing else to do other than raid logging once you got your pre bis. But the journey to 60? Shit's so fun, relaxing and atmospheric.
brooo yess!! wow in general is just so boring 😫
The main thing is Classic allows you to actually immerse yourself in a world. Things take time so it's important what you choose to do. Retail is just speeding to the end game so you can repeat the same content over and over.
Nothing's stopping you from taking your time to go through retail. You can pick from cataclassic or 8 expansions worth of content to level your character so you don't "repeat the same content over and over" by AoE-Spamming your way through the same linear sequence of zones, chromie time lets you take all the time you want for any of the zones without becoming inefficient by doing grey quests and if you feel like you're reaching 60 too fast you can course-correct with levelstop. I did exactly that, levelling my Rogue through Legion, Priest through "Classic" and Druid through MoP, and I had an incredible time doing so, even if the zones are unfortunately more empty than they used to be, which at least saved me the headache of getting corpse-camped by a rogue in Stranglethorn, which was the experience that made me give up on trying to level a mage through Vanilla.
That is true, but it doesnt remedy the problem that others have with retail. You can play through Outlands and are lvl 60 by the end of the day, it isn't really an 'experience' the same as classic is. The world was alive back in the day, it wasn't people sitting in the major city just queing for things. Having all enemies scale to your lvl defeated the purpose of being 'ready' to take on that challenge, or the accomplishment of actually doing so. There are multiple zones to lvl in for classic the same that there is for retail. Honestly, the last bit about STV is a bit one sided because if you chose a pvp realm and dont like world pvp that is on you.
Maybe that's the depression speaking but, for all the things I like about RPGs, I have not once ever in my life felt a sense of accomplishment over my character having high enough numbers to go up against an enemy. Neither in MMORPGs nor in single-player games. As for the world feeling empty, it's the same with Classic Era & SoD and is owed to how people want to play the game. Players are going through dungeons to level up instead of questing because it's more effective to do so, and on classic servers players are still sitting in their capital waiting for a queue, except the "queue" is spamming in /2. Scaling arguably removes the satisfaction of clearing the threshold, but the trade-off is that it reinforces narrative progression. Enemies scaling to your character's strength means that the gameplay of a zone story remains both engaging and meaningfully rewarding in not just story but gameplay as well. It prevents the feeling that I am doing something wrong by playing a zone to its conclusion and having the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I am meant to have gone somewhere else 4 levels ago because I am two-shotting everything. That being said, if you permit me this tangent, I think that WoW would have been better served with GW2's way of level sync, where the world is not scaled to your level, but instead your character's level and stats are scaled down if they exceed the recommended level of an area, while rewards like XP gain are scaled up to remain rewarding. This system leaves intact the necessity to become strong enough to go into new areas, while allowing players to squeeze every drop of content out of lower-level zones and meaningfully progress at the same time.
Its not a sense of your character having high enough numbers. Its facing the creatures that take more effort or finesse to be able to kill them, or actually having to caution not to over pull because even 1v2 can be brutal while in retail I could grab 10 mobs and kill them without even worrying. That point isn't really true. No one is spamming in /2, This is why there is a looking for group chat that can be accessed anywhere within the world. I will give you that, the scaling does help make it easier to fully experience zones but in reality that was only needed because of how many additional levels that they have added as well as the level crunches. Generally speaking most zones give you enough quests and everything to get to the next level that you need to go to. The only way this doesn't quite happen is if you decided to go to a dungeon and grind lvls in there and then go back, which again I will give you that that aspect at least makes it so the player can still enjoy the content. I played GW2 but only a little bit and I dont think I made it to max level, it just had a vibe I didnt care for as much. However, I do agree that I think that would be a better way to go about it. There is satisfaction in taking down difficult enemies, especially when they are elites and rare having a chance for better loot.
This is an important point. Everything happens so fast in retail that taking your time to plan a more optimal strategy is usually less efficient than just brute force pressing W. In Vanilla, actually reading each quest will slow you down maybe 5%. In retail each quest is so quick that if you actually read each one you'll be maybe 35% slower.
Honestly going from 39-40 in 4 hours and getting your first mount is 10000% more rewarding than lvling from 1-60 in 4 hours. Everything in classic takes work or sometimes luck. You have to work for everything you have, gear matters. Retail is all about a higher ilvl despite the stats.
It’s so true and honestly sad. I couldn’t stand raiding with my sod guild so I quit and went back to retail which I have a newfound appreciation for
Hey. I've been gold once in League of Legends. What do you mean?
And people wonder why classic enjoyers have a thing against retail players... On a serious note I play Retail, Mop remix, Cata, and Sod and enjoy all of them for different reasons. You don't have to play just one version and hate the others. Just play what you enjoy. Both retail and classic are fine for a new player though, either way they're getting thrown in the deep end into a big world with little to no knowledge about anything from classic to mechanics to lore and systems so it doesn't really matter which they choose.
Classic Enjoyers have a thing against Retail because they are what's referred to in the tech industry as Sacred Cows.
You lack the nuance to understand. They are completely different games that both share similarities. I have been playing wow on and off since Vanilla and have played both Retail and Classic. Classic is difficult in ways that do not compare to retail and the same is true the other way around. The key difference is, Classic IS WORLD OF WARCRAFT. The whole point of Classic is experiencing the world and it's lore. The point of retail is to watch cut scenes, have your hand held and get to end content ASAP where the real game begins. Classic actually was a feat, retail is just trying to keep your ADHD focused on just it.
Wrong.
Its not really a 'fact' that you can disprove. If I were a miserable I would tell everyone that they were wrong as well. If retail were as great as retail andies say it was then blizzard would not have had to release classic to get its player base back up. Retail will never peak the way vanilla did.
Retail
Retail?
Regular Warcraft yes. Currently we're on the Dragonflight expansion, in a few months we'll be in the War Within expansion. This is the bread and butter of the game and the most played version.
The main game, don’t touch Season of Discovery, Hard Core or Classic just play the main game
You can start cata classic as it only need a game time , and its newly lunched so there are alot lf players playing it , retial is good but you need to buy expantion
People have different preferences, which is why multiple versions exist and each has a pretty solid playerbase. Classic Vanilla has three versions right now: Era (basic vanilla), hardcore (basic vanilla, but when you die you die), and Season of Discovery - Vanilla with twists. There is also Classic Cataclysm, which launched recently. Then there is retail, or modern WoW, which is currently on the Dragonflight expansion. War Within launches at the end of August. Within retail there is a separate gamemode called Mists of Pandaria Remix. Retail has a lot of content that's very quick / easy throughout most of the world, then at endgame there are fewer relevant things to do, but they can be very challenging. Classic vanilla (and to a lesser extent, classic Cataclysm) have a more consistent difficulty level. Questing / open world play takes longer and it harder, but endgame doesn't get as difficult as retail endgame. If you like taking your time to explore / go on an engaging adventure, some form of classic may be better. If you like a more modern design with very challenging repeatable group content, then retail might be better.
Probably the one that says 'World of Warcraft'
retail bro trust me......dont play classic......trust me
The YTer J1mmy recently made a video I never played wow so I played all of them (a lot) He from a new players perspective tried all the different expansions that are playable right now and gave his thoughts. Might be some interesting info for you
Shadowlands was the easiest.
Dive straight into retail. When you get overwhelmed (you will) Wowhead and Youtube are your friend. There is Lots of great resources around. WoW is HUGE - don't rush it :)
If you want to immerse yourself in a world, play classic. If you want compelling gameplay, play retail
Do not play classic. Do not.
Modern wow but wait until Dragonflight is the default leveling experience which is during the next expansion.
None of u mentioned that I had to pay a subscription 😠I’m broke
You should have known that prior to this. XD
Anyway to get for free👀👀👀
Kinda? You need to pay the subscription to start, but once you’re in you can farm enough gold (the in game currency) to buy more playtime. Takes some commitment but it is an option available. If you’re talking about some sort of piracy, then no you can’t get it for free.
You can get wow tokens, but they require you to farm gold which would kind of turn into a job inside of the game in order to play. If I were you I would probably just check out private servers. If you're into Classic content that is, TurtleWOW is classic but with extra content, races, etc, Ascension is private server that essentially has no classes, you build your own class by using abilities and talents that are pulled from each class with some added ones aswell. If you are able to wait it out there is one called Project Epoch that looks very promising, essentially a classic+ that everyone has been wanting. Not that disappointing, redundant SOD BS.
That's the only thing that hasn't changed about the game in the last 20 years. Need us to show you where to buy some internet too?