Retail vs. Classic WoW—what’s the real difference? In this video, we compare the fast-paced, convenience-focused gameplay of Retail with the challenging, community-driven experience of Classic. Whether you’re seeking nostalgia or a streamlined adventure, we’ll break down what each version offers and what might be missing
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Retail is an absolute monstrosity of a game. It's not original World of Warcraft anymore, it shouldn't be called WoW anymore. The game lost its soul, as well as most core game design pillars and philosophies on which it was built on. /vomit
A food for thought: the difference in the audiovisual apect.
In Classic, take for example, Paladin's Exorcism, Druid's Moonfire and DK's Howling Blast, those had very distinct visual and sound cues for abilities. Now look at Retail, the audio quality was severely diminished and abilities now very generic, muffled sounds.
Another iconic example: Warlock. DoTs and Shadow Bolt that had very unique and recognizable sound, now they all sound somewhat the same. DoTs had a distinct visual (Agony for example), now they all are just a purple blur. It's such quality/identity loss and I don't see many people talking about it.
Looks like they tried to make WoW adaptable to a mobile game. This change came out in 7.0 (Legion) with the "modern" game client.
20 seconds in,yes not biased what so ever. disliked im good
WOW died when they killed my twink by allowing you to level in BG's…. My level 19 druid with that fishing hat and all the stam gear made him a badass flag carrier.
I hate the implication that retail killed wow essence like it's something that happened the past couple of expansions. Most of that essence died the day TBC was released and definitely all of it was gone with WotLK. Retail and Vanilla are just too far apart to even compare, treat them like two different games that has their pros and cons. Both have very enjoyable traits and very awful ones but I agree that vanilla is special and the best version of the game overall.
dude in 2005 a point for me for buying wow was the fast leveling in comparation with other mmorpg of the era like Ragnarok or linage or Conquer, that you need hours grinding for 0.5% of exp but if you die you lost 5% of exp WoW was fast just maybe 2 weeks for max level when in the other games you just need to hit max level taht is atleast a month of hard grinding, pay gold do some extra quest and revive (ragnarok online) and leveling again to 99 it take MONTHS,
Classic have no endgame or nearly no endgame , also another main point and was make unique wow in that era is how you level FOR QUEST exatly like a story and not for grinding infinites foes, the real mein differrence is the comunity itself change
about the video NICE XMOG, for be honest wow should change the leveling system, for newbies it is hard to grap the story, they need to do somthing like in tera when the leveling its like a biiig tutorial about the mechanics also the main lore implication, and when you hit max level you atleast know the basics mechanics and lore,
One of the biggest issues with wow are the 20 years or story and new palyers feel lost XD, they need to change that make like a unique campaing that take for the main story for example first 10 level you have the island, it can change for first 20 level the story of classic and burning and woltk with some kind of harbringer cinematic at the end of each campaing, then for cata, panda another, etce etc, then when you hit level 70 you will know atelast the basic of the stroy, mechanics of the game and be prepare for leveling in the new expantion, right now the endgame is great but early and mid game just do not exist anymore is leveling as fast you can because all you gonna do is irrelevant for the progrest to the main expantion and well thats not good, atleast one mount on a pice of heroic gear if you do all the campaing to lvl 1 to 80, it need have some kind of reward if not early and mid game just become irrelevant for example:
a game call DCUO it have a feat system each feat have a point everry 100 point you learn 1 skill point you can use for stats, then old content become releveant for the feats, you caN do somthing similar with a store or change some of the achivment points for mounts, trasmog, even maybe a piece of gear or some kind of bonus for drop extra gear will be great,
Aw man, I love Retail and really enjoy playing it focusing on what makes it fun for me , but I do miss the sense of wonder WoW leveling used to have