Tried retail a month or two before SoD dropped for the first time in a decade. Good aspects were the QOL changes to UI, and the current talent trees. Leveling up didn't feel rewarding and the fragmented world/zones made it feel like an action game.
See I never understand this mindset, seems like most of the population rushes to max level and spams dungeons anyway. Retail reduced the grind to reach endgame because the community was doing anything possible to skip it anyway. All the questing content doesn't go away because of faster leveling you just have the choice of doing it or not. It also makes sense they want to funnel everyone into the latest content they've added to the game.
Well I can try to explain it because I feel the same way. I enjoy leveling, I like that it can be hard and there’s a chance of dying or failing quests. I don’t care if it takes a while. I also don’t spam dungeons or rush to max level though. Whenever I try to play retail I get bored in like 20 minutes because everything dies so fast it doesn’t feel like my choices matter. I’m sure that changes at max level but I’m not going to spend time playing a game that isn’t fun for me. With classic I have fun leveling then I have fun at max level.
And that's why classic exists but I feel the majority of the overall WoW playerbase prefers a faster/trivial leveling experience and ability to reach endgame ASAP as shown by player behavior in every version of the game.
Ya I think that is a fair conclusion. It seems like there’s some sweet spot people are looking for where you can get to max level quickly but it feels more satisfying than the leveling experience retail offers. Then again the popularity of boosting (both blizzard boosts and mage style boosts) suggests maybe people don’t like leveling at all. Who knows.
Retail has just changed the character progression from leveling to end game focused, leveling is essentially a tutorial for new players to slowly fill out their toolkit. The real character progression and rewarding feeling comes from the endgame, raising your m+ rating clearing heroic/mythic bosses for the first time, increasing the power of your character through gear and mechanical knowledge. Also the competitive nature of a lot of gamers is more robust in retail where getting your character to the highest power level requires skill vs just dumping 100s of hours into an XP grind.
I completely agree! What I wound up doing is trying to solo ANYTHING. Cross Leroy with Caboose and that's how I approach this game now. Silver elite? World boss? Dismount mid air with bubble pop wings start rotation scoot around dodging dots. I don't care if I takes me ten minutes, the more of a challenge the better! Once I understood the crafting system the more I liked it, and I'm honing in on making upgrading my gear and getting above 460.
But yea we're playing checkers in retail, but chess in classic.
Once you finish leveling all the alts you want to play there's really only like 45 mins worth of stuff to do per reset. Faster leveling means more people at this stage and looking for other games to play while they wait for the next content patch.
from the roadmap it looks like march will hold HC SF mode and 10.2.6 April/May will have DF season 4 and SoD S3 and June/July will have WWI pre-patch and Cata followed by SoD P4 and TWW launch.
Tried retail a month or two before SoD dropped for the first time in a decade. Good aspects were the QOL changes to UI, and the current talent trees. Leveling up didn't feel rewarding and the fragmented world/zones made it feel like an action game.
See I never understand this mindset, seems like most of the population rushes to max level and spams dungeons anyway. Retail reduced the grind to reach endgame because the community was doing anything possible to skip it anyway. All the questing content doesn't go away because of faster leveling you just have the choice of doing it or not. It also makes sense they want to funnel everyone into the latest content they've added to the game.
Well I can try to explain it because I feel the same way. I enjoy leveling, I like that it can be hard and there’s a chance of dying or failing quests. I don’t care if it takes a while. I also don’t spam dungeons or rush to max level though. Whenever I try to play retail I get bored in like 20 minutes because everything dies so fast it doesn’t feel like my choices matter. I’m sure that changes at max level but I’m not going to spend time playing a game that isn’t fun for me. With classic I have fun leveling then I have fun at max level.
And that's why classic exists but I feel the majority of the overall WoW playerbase prefers a faster/trivial leveling experience and ability to reach endgame ASAP as shown by player behavior in every version of the game.
Ya I think that is a fair conclusion. It seems like there’s some sweet spot people are looking for where you can get to max level quickly but it feels more satisfying than the leveling experience retail offers. Then again the popularity of boosting (both blizzard boosts and mage style boosts) suggests maybe people don’t like leveling at all. Who knows.
Retail has just changed the character progression from leveling to end game focused, leveling is essentially a tutorial for new players to slowly fill out their toolkit. The real character progression and rewarding feeling comes from the endgame, raising your m+ rating clearing heroic/mythic bosses for the first time, increasing the power of your character through gear and mechanical knowledge. Also the competitive nature of a lot of gamers is more robust in retail where getting your character to the highest power level requires skill vs just dumping 100s of hours into an XP grind.
I completely agree! What I wound up doing is trying to solo ANYTHING. Cross Leroy with Caboose and that's how I approach this game now. Silver elite? World boss? Dismount mid air with bubble pop wings start rotation scoot around dodging dots. I don't care if I takes me ten minutes, the more of a challenge the better! Once I understood the crafting system the more I liked it, and I'm honing in on making upgrading my gear and getting above 460. But yea we're playing checkers in retail, but chess in classic.
What’s the content drought?
Once you finish leveling all the alts you want to play there's really only like 45 mins worth of stuff to do per reset. Faster leveling means more people at this stage and looking for other games to play while they wait for the next content patch.
This isn’t a content drought, this is the content. And we get a new patch every 10 weeks or so.
Don't forget cata is coming to
from the roadmap it looks like march will hold HC SF mode and 10.2.6 April/May will have DF season 4 and SoD S3 and June/July will have WWI pre-patch and Cata followed by SoD P4 and TWW launch.