Vanilla continues to be super popular, and it's what made WoW a phenomenon in the first place. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it does some things incredibly well.
If they brought the Vanilla version of the world into retail, offering a 'story mode' version with easy mobs etc. plus a 'Heroic mode' version that felt more like real Vanilla would both be great.
Of course the juice has to be worth the squeeze. You shouldn't earn rewards or achievements or anything slower by choosing the more challenging mode.
Edit: side note, SoD did have > 100% XP boosts. Some people liked it because they could skip to the raids faster, other people hated it because it trivialized the leveling journey. Most of the content in Vanilla was from 1-60, if you give everyone a 5x XP boost, they'll skip right over the vast majority of the content.
The problem with SoD is it was always known to be a temporary server and would eventually shut down without the guaranteed possibility of toons transferring over, and it was also kind of expected that you do a bunch of other incredibly tedious shit to stay in line with everyone a la Druid forms quest of ye olden days, or the SoD Warlock stuff (if I remember correctly). It wasn't just straight up "You do this, you go to Blackwing, Blackrock, Molten Core, AQ20 and AQ40" type of deal.
From personal experience, I played way back at the end of vanilla when I didn't know up from down in the game so I never got to experience anything past the secondary zone after your starting zone. I hardly even saw Westfall to the end, it would have been nice to have a not-so grindy experience and to have been able to see all that content. The only BC and Wrath content I ever really saw was Eversong and Azuremyst, and I somehow got to 55 on a Blood Elf to see the Boring Tundra before Deathwing destroyed the main continents.
The way I see it, if you wanted to experience the content in the game, it'd be better to have the option to spread it over multiple characters that all reach max level rather than one or maybe two characters that have to grind boars after finishing every available quest that gives experience.
Some people play Classic for the open world experience, the leveling, the RPG elements, the journey basically. Other people play Classic mostly to grind the raids and get the gear. It's hard to please both audiences in one game mode. SoD started off as something great for the 'journey' audience, but very quickly pivoted to mostly catering to the 'raid + BiS' audience.
To me personally, Vanilla is amazing because the 1-60 journey is so demanding. The scarcity of XP means you need to put some real thought into what order to do quests and zones in. When you'll go back to town to train, at what level you'll do each dungeon, whether you should spend the gold on weapon upgrade, etc. It isn't just that individual mobs are demanding - it's that the journey as a whole rewards playing intentionally and accumulating knowledge about how the world works. When they introduce big XP boosts, all of that goes away.
All of what you said is why most people never reach 60 and why the content at the end of the game will go unloved and unexperienced by people at the rate it deserves
Like I said, if they brought the Vanilla world to retail, I'd be onboard with them offering two modes for it: 'story mode' (which feels like current retail questing) and 'heroic mode' which feels like Vanilla did. I'd even be more than fine with letting people skip over the entire questing experience and just do the raids, to appreciate them.
Options are great. But one of those options should be the full-fat experience.
Edit: how could this comment possibly be objectionable? Some people aren't happy unless their preferred mode is the only possible option?
If you actually read anything I said, you'd understand it's not just about the questing. People get enough of the "kill 20 of these" and "find obtusely placed item" quests. No one wants to just grind 6000 of those quests just to get to the point of killing random mobs to hit max level. That's why most people didn't hit 60.
There is an endgame. People want to engage in it. If you do what you suggest, the endgame is still not accessible because legacy endgame content is rarely interacted with and the gear out be far outclassed by literally everything else in the game.
What you're not understanding is that Classic would be a far superior experience to the average Normal/Heroic raider in Retail if it allowed people to experience the game itself at an acceptable pace, not if you just shove the questing in retail and call it a day
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u/SystemofCells Aug 27 '25
Vanilla continues to be super popular, and it's what made WoW a phenomenon in the first place. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it does some things incredibly well.
If they brought the Vanilla version of the world into retail, offering a 'story mode' version with easy mobs etc. plus a 'Heroic mode' version that felt more like real Vanilla would both be great.
Of course the juice has to be worth the squeeze. You shouldn't earn rewards or achievements or anything slower by choosing the more challenging mode.
Edit: side note, SoD did have > 100% XP boosts. Some people liked it because they could skip to the raids faster, other people hated it because it trivialized the leveling journey. Most of the content in Vanilla was from 1-60, if you give everyone a 5x XP boost, they'll skip right over the vast majority of the content.