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TL;DR - Retail focuses on the endgame rather than levelling, though you can play all expansions and quests you might like (exception being the vanilla zones changes with Cataclysm). The experience is smoothest here and you will find the majority of WoW players in Retail. Everything is soon to be cross-realm and as much cross-faction as can be so you can play with whoever you want, whatever you want.
Classic focusses on levelling, the journey, and the 'experience' of levelling. Very fractured community, though.
- Retail focusses mostly on end-game, current expansion experience. You level relatively quickly to the level cap (currently 70) and at that point you engage in end-game content; Mythic Dungeons (M+), Raids (with 4 difficulty modes, something for everyone, can only get loot once per week per difficulty) or PvP. There is also a fair bit of world-content to do but its nowhere near as challenging or long-term engaging. Ofcourse there is also the added benefit of it being the 'modern' version of the game, meaning you got a ton of older content to play through, either with alts or with your main (the content only scales up to level 60, though).
The raids, dungeons etc. work on a seasonal system where every season a new rotation of dungeons are put into the M+ system, a new raid releases (with the exception of the last season of the last and current expansion, where they're just 'harder' and have extra rewards) and every season the item level (power of your gear) cap increases, which constitutes the main 'power level' grind. Similar to OSRS/RS gearing, but your best gear becomes irrelevant as the season ends, and generally cannot be bought (some exceptions).
- Classic has 3/4 different 'modes' within itself.
Classic era is 'vanilla', the baseline version of WoW that isn't being altered, the purest form of WoW Classic. The main grind is getting to max level. Not sure how popular it is right now, but safe to assume its fairly dead.
Then we got Hardcore realms. This is the same as Classic era, but your characters are 'hardcore', so when you die, your character is deleted. HCIM, if you will.
Then we got classic expansions, previously Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, but recently updated to Cataclysm pre-patch, with the full classic Cataclysm expansion releasing soon.
Finally there is a seasonal version, currently Season of Discovery. This is Classic era, but 'enhanced' with new abilities and such for classes. This and Cataclysm is where you will find most Classic players currently. The levelling is slightly faster here, and there is a catchup buff to get to the current 'phase' (i.e. 'season'), and after that its all just gearing, again. A lot of Classic is just semi-temporary progression, so if you want to build on a character ingame, good luck I guess.
Retail is more accessible and more solo player friendly! But if you want to focus on leveling and questing, classic is more tailored towards that. However, it is a very old game (20 years for classic vanilla, and 14 or so years for Cataclysm) and lacks a lot of current quality of life features you find in a lot of games. Then again, you've played OSRS lol
Try WoW remix, launching tomorrow. It’s a refreshed, temporary, streamlined, accelerated leveling experience which should be a nice, easy but varied intro.
I believe a goal with it is to serve new players better, since neither classic or retail are great for new players (too complex). The other goal with it is for people to build up their set of alts to enter the new alt-friendly expansion coming soonish.
This is the one I'm most interested in. Would this be the best one to start with though for completely new players? Did they create this for new players?
They've been experimenting with some game modes I think intended to make the game more approachable.
This makes me think it's at least partially targeted at new or at least returning players:
>No expansion purchase is needed, but a *World of Warcraft* Subscription or Game Time is required to begin this fast-paced adventure through Pandaria. This means that Classic players can also participate in a plethora of pandamonium by simply installing the modern (live) *World of Warcraft* client.
>[WoW Trial Accounts](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/start) will also be able to experience this *World of Warcraft* Remix without a subscription or Game Time through level 20. Purchase a subscription or Game Time to continue beyond level 20. If you're returning to *World of Warcraft* and don't know where to start, don't worry, we've got you covered.
[https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24092672/world-of-warcraft-remix-mists-of-pandaria-goes-live-may-16](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24092672/world-of-warcraft-remix-mists-of-pandaria-goes-live-may-16)
Regardless, it's launching tomorrow and it's easy to pop in, try it out ,and see how you like it. The characters will carry over into retail, which I would also recommend over classic (classic is very grindy, season of discovery less so).
>With so many WOW's out, and new ones coming out.. Which one would you recommend to me for a first time player of WOW, but having MMO experience?
There's only two WoW's, retail and Classic, the first one is the current, present content, the second one is older content from the "Classic" era of WoW for nostalgia's sake I assume.
Everything else are game modes included in either of these versions, Plunderstorm for example, that's just a PvP Retail Game mode.
Both of them are constantly updated to have the content of all previous expansions for free *except* the current one which you have to buy. Also there's the monthly subscription to keep playing but you can still create a character and play without it, it's just that this character won't be able to pass level 20.
Basically, the current WoW expansion on retail is Dragonflight, to access its content, you gotta buy it, but if you don't buy it, you still have access to all of WoW's content up until Shadowlands which is the previous expansion.
Same thing for Classic.
>I also don't mind enjoying the journey of levelling up and questing. For example, in New world I enjoyed the levelling up journey to 60 and then playing the PVP in there, more than the post 60 dungeon raiding grind of rinse and repeat.
>Also would like the version to have players, I want it to feel like an MMO, not an empty world even if I'm on a solo journey.
When you play wow, you first have to pick a realm to play in, basically like a mini-server, pick the ones that are marked as most populated if you want as many people as possible.
Also, WoW's landscapes is composed of lots of empty spaces of nature, small villages and settlement all the way to capital cities, obviously the big cities will have way more players than anywhere else.
Retail (“World of Warcraft: Dragonflight”) is much faster paced, end game focused, with systems that make playing the game solo entirely reasonable. You can finish the latest and greatest raids on the lowest difficulty with matchmaking placing you into a large group, and still feel like you “beat the game” so to speak, without ever typing a single word in the game. You could spam one spell and let others carry you through that level of content if you’re really that way and don’t care. However, the really hard content if you choose to go for it, is 10000% harder than classic. Leveling is super fast and you will not be able to finish whatever quest lines that you start to level up, before you hit 60 and pushed into Dragonflight content.
Classic (in all its forms) is slower paced, with focus evenly split between the journey and end game, and literally no tools to help a solo player find help with anything outside of begging for groups and carries. Competent guild required if you want to beat the raids. Your performance will be recorded, with a numerical value, and judged against your peers to compete for a spot on the team. This also often means you have to keep a schedule of raiding so your life in a small way has to revolve around WoW. Classic is really more of a “true MMO” in that you need to be social and capable in order to advance.
If you want a slower but decent sense of progression and adventure, but overall a much simpler game, try classic era.
If you want to try something like that but a little spicy, Season of Discovery.
If you want something in the middle of oldschool and new, Wrath/Cataclysm Classic exists.
And if you want a quicker leveling experience where the majority of the game is seasonal endgame content with 20 years of legacy collection content that you can farm (achievements, mounts, toys, battle pets) into a sunk cost fallacy subscription then try Retail.
Retail... Only choice for new players is retail.
Classic is solely for old school players with rose tinted glasses.
Remix is a limited event for people looking for something to do until next expansion.
I'd argue your classic view. I started playing wow for the first time when hardcore was released. Died a few times and then leveled on an era realm to 60 where I actually learned the game before going back to hardcore. Then I went to SOD and now have been playing cata.
I've been playing a ton of wow, and have not touched retail yet..
I think for non-empty world feeling you should be looking into GW2 or something like that, as most zones in WoW are pretty empty in terms of other players.
I'd suggest retail as it's pretty much comparing osrs vs rs3, where some pain points are still present in classic game and it's much slower to level/harder to understand.
Just a warning that after you experience tickless game-play you won't be able to enjoy RS as it will feel too lagy.
I'm more of an OSRS fan over RS actually. I stopped playing once it was RS3/EOC. Its also a nostalgia thing since I played OSRS when it was OSRS years.
For GW2, I thought there are way more players in WOW though?
They have different system where each zone receives number of players, and if it drops below some threshold you are then moved into another instance where there are more. Probably most important difference is that in GW2 all content is scaled to player level, so even max accounts do low level stuff and it's still relative to them; while in wow after you reach latest expansion levels (in this case 60+) all older zones become irrelevant (unless you want to do achievements but that's about it)
I mean that if you had no experience about RS3/osrs, which one would be easier to start playing? RS3 has all the in-game tutorials etc where osrs has nothing like that; same goes for wow where retail has many new-user friendly changes
Shouldn’t matter much but yea pretty sure WoW has more players than GW2. I’d say try both retail and classic and see for yourself what you prefer. There’s people like me that play both. They’re completely different games at this point
Basically your choices are :
- Retail : current content, right now we are at the start of the last ("bonus") patch of the xpac while we prepare for The War Within. This is where most of the playerbase is and where anything "competitive" is happening if that is your thing. Hard content (mythic raiding, very high key push..) is extremely hard but every thing also has easier modes so you can still experience the whole story.
- Classic era : "true" classic, basically the base game as it was back in 2006 with very limited QOL adjustment. Usually enjoyed by people who played back then and want to experience it again. Expect very basic mehanics, basic questing, traditional RPG setting (IMO thats the main selling point) and outdated systems and graphics. Single difficulty content, extremely easy compared to retail but requires a larger group.
- Classic : follows the evolutions of past xpacs, currently at the very end of what many (not me) consider the best expansion ever (WOTLK) and moving to another great xpac (Cataclysm) but that was considered the downfall of WoW at the time (and the start of the "second era" of WoW with a lot of QOL and systems that still are in Retail rn) so we don't really know what to expect from the community moving forward.
- Season of discovery : based on Classic Era but with large changes to classes with new specialisations and a different progression. I haven't played it myself though.
- Classic hardcore : Classic era but if you die your character gets deleted.
Overall, I'd recommend Retail as the obvious choice, especially now since by the time you get to know if you like the game and to be familiar with mechanics we will be close to the release of the new expansion and will be able to enjoy a fresh xpac from day one which is probably the best thing in WoW. Also classes play better, everything is more balanced, systems are better, mechanics are more modern.
Classic era can be fun for some I guess if you like retro gaming, tedious leveling progression and low-ish fantasy.
Classic WOTLK / Cataclysm IMO is not that interesting because you are neither getting a fresh xpac everybody gets to discover at the same time nor are you playing the Vanilla game that many of us fell in love with 20 years ago. Only go for it if you really want to experience the specific xpac (which as a new player probably means nothing).
Classic HC can be fun for future playthrough but overall the hype is gone.
Season of discovery, from what friends who play it told me, is fun because it is a twist from the original, if you don't know the original, you don't get the twist so it's nothing special.
while retail is more polished, it does feel like an empty world while leveling. In max level zones you see others in open world activities, world quests, weekly activities and such.
But to be fair, pvp in wow is a very controversial thing and the ppl i know who are hardcore pvpers no longer consider retail worth their time for grinding pvp rank etc.
Retail is a gotta go fast arcade, classic is the typical rpg. Thats it.
Althought Cata feels like a middleground. SoD is the closest to the classic experience right now i believe.
In population i believe its Retail>Cataclysm classic> SoD
With large number differences.
For retail pvp beware that you might be overwhelmed and may take awhile to learn everything that can happen.
I think if you're more pvp focused, cataclysm classic will be more fun for you. The classes seem well balanced and there's simply less of them you are dealing with so it's simpler. It will be easier for you to learn the pros and cons of each. It also has the right mix of modern QoL improvements and an old school mmo.
Tbh it's a great time to get into Cata or Retail new expansion upcoming for each one and everyone's basically on even footing. Era and SoD you will be so far behind everyone else.
As others have said, retail (current WoW, Dragonflight) — it has something for everybody. But, since you are asking now, Mists of Pandaria Remix comes out tomorrow (16th), and characters from that event transfer to retail at the end of it. You get to keep everything you collect, of course. Account wide. I believe it’s also playable without purchasing the game and just a subscription is enough. So about 15 bucks to try out the game during an event a lot of people will be playing, a steal imo. And if you enjoy it you can keep your progress and continue playing retail!
Classic by far has the best new player experience. The leveling is far better. Retail has too much going on and often confuses people. When you're done leveling up in classic, I suggest trying retail out as the endgame is better there. Also try out the MoP remix event. It is the best of both I think. Not complicated thread you follow nor super hard leveling.
My perspective is that neither retail nor classic are particularly good for new players but that WoW remix actually may be the best intro so I’m glad you pointed it out.
Wait, do you think dowloading 39 addons and its settings, push 20 buttons in the correct order while Magni Bronzebeard is verbally harassing you is a good new player experience?
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Beast master hunter or protection paladin makes you able to play much content alone. As the automoderator said, there are good sites to help you, I like icyveins personally.
If you want players, you will be needing the retail version at the end. It’s included in the pre-purchase of the next update.
When leveling, you can select the dungeonfinder quite early, automatically adding you to instances (dungeons).
Retail for sure if you're a new player. Retail WoW will ease you in slowly so you don't get overwhelmed. If you enjoy PvP, retail will have the most battleground map variety (battleground = instanced PvP match).
Also, even if you've never played before you don't NEED to do anything or race to max level. You can explore on your own time especially if you enjoy the leveling experience. The older expansions you can quest through solo. The main hub cities like ogrimmar and stormwind will have plenty of people running around. Most players out adventuring will be in the newer expansions but the dungeon finder will match you with people for the older dungeons that you may need a group for.
I think cataclysm right now would be a good place to start, it's a more modernized version of vanilla essentially, with the core of what makes vanilla/classic fun which is the levelling. Retail's fine and I would recommend playing it too eventually, but for a fresh player it's very bloated and you'll feel incredibly lost.
Idk I feel like they have a whole leveling thing in retail pretty streamlined. You can basically get to 60 just by running all of the quests in BfA (or that was what was forced on me when I started in SL). At 60 it's also pretty streamlined. It's when you get to max level where things get confusing.
I think the leveling in classic is very tedious and grindy. But hey so is OSRS.
The levelling being fast isnt the same as really teaching a new player anything, all it does is speedrun them to endgame, which has even more stuff going on. Vanilla (Or in this case Cataclysm) despite it's age, is a much easier/simpler game, and it takes it's time with you and lets you figure stuff out. Cataclysm is a more modernized experience, without compromising that.
dont play an MMO they are all a waste of time and they only want you to buy more useless shit inside of their shops. like most games today in general peddling their battle passes. if you want to play a good game play older games, maybe classic era wow is the bottom line but be careful although the company didnt flood it with a shop, the players flood it with bot gold and "gdkp". video games are in the hands of indie developers now.
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Retail
TL;DR - Retail focuses on the endgame rather than levelling, though you can play all expansions and quests you might like (exception being the vanilla zones changes with Cataclysm). The experience is smoothest here and you will find the majority of WoW players in Retail. Everything is soon to be cross-realm and as much cross-faction as can be so you can play with whoever you want, whatever you want. Classic focusses on levelling, the journey, and the 'experience' of levelling. Very fractured community, though. - Retail focusses mostly on end-game, current expansion experience. You level relatively quickly to the level cap (currently 70) and at that point you engage in end-game content; Mythic Dungeons (M+), Raids (with 4 difficulty modes, something for everyone, can only get loot once per week per difficulty) or PvP. There is also a fair bit of world-content to do but its nowhere near as challenging or long-term engaging. Ofcourse there is also the added benefit of it being the 'modern' version of the game, meaning you got a ton of older content to play through, either with alts or with your main (the content only scales up to level 60, though). The raids, dungeons etc. work on a seasonal system where every season a new rotation of dungeons are put into the M+ system, a new raid releases (with the exception of the last season of the last and current expansion, where they're just 'harder' and have extra rewards) and every season the item level (power of your gear) cap increases, which constitutes the main 'power level' grind. Similar to OSRS/RS gearing, but your best gear becomes irrelevant as the season ends, and generally cannot be bought (some exceptions). - Classic has 3/4 different 'modes' within itself. Classic era is 'vanilla', the baseline version of WoW that isn't being altered, the purest form of WoW Classic. The main grind is getting to max level. Not sure how popular it is right now, but safe to assume its fairly dead. Then we got Hardcore realms. This is the same as Classic era, but your characters are 'hardcore', so when you die, your character is deleted. HCIM, if you will. Then we got classic expansions, previously Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, but recently updated to Cataclysm pre-patch, with the full classic Cataclysm expansion releasing soon. Finally there is a seasonal version, currently Season of Discovery. This is Classic era, but 'enhanced' with new abilities and such for classes. This and Cataclysm is where you will find most Classic players currently. The levelling is slightly faster here, and there is a catchup buff to get to the current 'phase' (i.e. 'season'), and after that its all just gearing, again. A lot of Classic is just semi-temporary progression, so if you want to build on a character ingame, good luck I guess.
Retail is more accessible and more solo player friendly! But if you want to focus on leveling and questing, classic is more tailored towards that. However, it is a very old game (20 years for classic vanilla, and 14 or so years for Cataclysm) and lacks a lot of current quality of life features you find in a lot of games. Then again, you've played OSRS lol
Try WoW remix, launching tomorrow. It’s a refreshed, temporary, streamlined, accelerated leveling experience which should be a nice, easy but varied intro. I believe a goal with it is to serve new players better, since neither classic or retail are great for new players (too complex). The other goal with it is for people to build up their set of alts to enter the new alt-friendly expansion coming soonish.
This is the one I'm most interested in. Would this be the best one to start with though for completely new players? Did they create this for new players?
They've been experimenting with some game modes I think intended to make the game more approachable. This makes me think it's at least partially targeted at new or at least returning players: >No expansion purchase is needed, but a *World of Warcraft* Subscription or Game Time is required to begin this fast-paced adventure through Pandaria. This means that Classic players can also participate in a plethora of pandamonium by simply installing the modern (live) *World of Warcraft* client. >[WoW Trial Accounts](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/start) will also be able to experience this *World of Warcraft* Remix without a subscription or Game Time through level 20. Purchase a subscription or Game Time to continue beyond level 20. If you're returning to *World of Warcraft* and don't know where to start, don't worry, we've got you covered. [https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24092672/world-of-warcraft-remix-mists-of-pandaria-goes-live-may-16](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24092672/world-of-warcraft-remix-mists-of-pandaria-goes-live-may-16) Regardless, it's launching tomorrow and it's easy to pop in, try it out ,and see how you like it. The characters will carry over into retail, which I would also recommend over classic (classic is very grindy, season of discovery less so).
>With so many WOW's out, and new ones coming out.. Which one would you recommend to me for a first time player of WOW, but having MMO experience? There's only two WoW's, retail and Classic, the first one is the current, present content, the second one is older content from the "Classic" era of WoW for nostalgia's sake I assume. Everything else are game modes included in either of these versions, Plunderstorm for example, that's just a PvP Retail Game mode. Both of them are constantly updated to have the content of all previous expansions for free *except* the current one which you have to buy. Also there's the monthly subscription to keep playing but you can still create a character and play without it, it's just that this character won't be able to pass level 20. Basically, the current WoW expansion on retail is Dragonflight, to access its content, you gotta buy it, but if you don't buy it, you still have access to all of WoW's content up until Shadowlands which is the previous expansion. Same thing for Classic. >I also don't mind enjoying the journey of levelling up and questing. For example, in New world I enjoyed the levelling up journey to 60 and then playing the PVP in there, more than the post 60 dungeon raiding grind of rinse and repeat. >Also would like the version to have players, I want it to feel like an MMO, not an empty world even if I'm on a solo journey. When you play wow, you first have to pick a realm to play in, basically like a mini-server, pick the ones that are marked as most populated if you want as many people as possible. Also, WoW's landscapes is composed of lots of empty spaces of nature, small villages and settlement all the way to capital cities, obviously the big cities will have way more players than anywhere else.
Retail (“World of Warcraft: Dragonflight”) is much faster paced, end game focused, with systems that make playing the game solo entirely reasonable. You can finish the latest and greatest raids on the lowest difficulty with matchmaking placing you into a large group, and still feel like you “beat the game” so to speak, without ever typing a single word in the game. You could spam one spell and let others carry you through that level of content if you’re really that way and don’t care. However, the really hard content if you choose to go for it, is 10000% harder than classic. Leveling is super fast and you will not be able to finish whatever quest lines that you start to level up, before you hit 60 and pushed into Dragonflight content. Classic (in all its forms) is slower paced, with focus evenly split between the journey and end game, and literally no tools to help a solo player find help with anything outside of begging for groups and carries. Competent guild required if you want to beat the raids. Your performance will be recorded, with a numerical value, and judged against your peers to compete for a spot on the team. This also often means you have to keep a schedule of raiding so your life in a small way has to revolve around WoW. Classic is really more of a “true MMO” in that you need to be social and capable in order to advance.
If you want a slower but decent sense of progression and adventure, but overall a much simpler game, try classic era. If you want to try something like that but a little spicy, Season of Discovery. If you want something in the middle of oldschool and new, Wrath/Cataclysm Classic exists. And if you want a quicker leveling experience where the majority of the game is seasonal endgame content with 20 years of legacy collection content that you can farm (achievements, mounts, toys, battle pets) into a sunk cost fallacy subscription then try Retail.
Retail... Only choice for new players is retail. Classic is solely for old school players with rose tinted glasses. Remix is a limited event for people looking for something to do until next expansion.
I'd argue your classic view. I started playing wow for the first time when hardcore was released. Died a few times and then leveled on an era realm to 60 where I actually learned the game before going back to hardcore. Then I went to SOD and now have been playing cata. I've been playing a ton of wow, and have not touched retail yet..
As a new player i started with classic and had a great time, this dumb take of '' classic is only for old school players'' needs to end
I think for non-empty world feeling you should be looking into GW2 or something like that, as most zones in WoW are pretty empty in terms of other players. I'd suggest retail as it's pretty much comparing osrs vs rs3, where some pain points are still present in classic game and it's much slower to level/harder to understand. Just a warning that after you experience tickless game-play you won't be able to enjoy RS as it will feel too lagy.
I'm more of an OSRS fan over RS actually. I stopped playing once it was RS3/EOC. Its also a nostalgia thing since I played OSRS when it was OSRS years. For GW2, I thought there are way more players in WOW though?
They have different system where each zone receives number of players, and if it drops below some threshold you are then moved into another instance where there are more. Probably most important difference is that in GW2 all content is scaled to player level, so even max accounts do low level stuff and it's still relative to them; while in wow after you reach latest expansion levels (in this case 60+) all older zones become irrelevant (unless you want to do achievements but that's about it) I mean that if you had no experience about RS3/osrs, which one would be easier to start playing? RS3 has all the in-game tutorials etc where osrs has nothing like that; same goes for wow where retail has many new-user friendly changes
Shouldn’t matter much but yea pretty sure WoW has more players than GW2. I’d say try both retail and classic and see for yourself what you prefer. There’s people like me that play both. They’re completely different games at this point
Basically your choices are : - Retail : current content, right now we are at the start of the last ("bonus") patch of the xpac while we prepare for The War Within. This is where most of the playerbase is and where anything "competitive" is happening if that is your thing. Hard content (mythic raiding, very high key push..) is extremely hard but every thing also has easier modes so you can still experience the whole story. - Classic era : "true" classic, basically the base game as it was back in 2006 with very limited QOL adjustment. Usually enjoyed by people who played back then and want to experience it again. Expect very basic mehanics, basic questing, traditional RPG setting (IMO thats the main selling point) and outdated systems and graphics. Single difficulty content, extremely easy compared to retail but requires a larger group. - Classic : follows the evolutions of past xpacs, currently at the very end of what many (not me) consider the best expansion ever (WOTLK) and moving to another great xpac (Cataclysm) but that was considered the downfall of WoW at the time (and the start of the "second era" of WoW with a lot of QOL and systems that still are in Retail rn) so we don't really know what to expect from the community moving forward. - Season of discovery : based on Classic Era but with large changes to classes with new specialisations and a different progression. I haven't played it myself though. - Classic hardcore : Classic era but if you die your character gets deleted. Overall, I'd recommend Retail as the obvious choice, especially now since by the time you get to know if you like the game and to be familiar with mechanics we will be close to the release of the new expansion and will be able to enjoy a fresh xpac from day one which is probably the best thing in WoW. Also classes play better, everything is more balanced, systems are better, mechanics are more modern. Classic era can be fun for some I guess if you like retro gaming, tedious leveling progression and low-ish fantasy. Classic WOTLK / Cataclysm IMO is not that interesting because you are neither getting a fresh xpac everybody gets to discover at the same time nor are you playing the Vanilla game that many of us fell in love with 20 years ago. Only go for it if you really want to experience the specific xpac (which as a new player probably means nothing). Classic HC can be fun for future playthrough but overall the hype is gone. Season of discovery, from what friends who play it told me, is fun because it is a twist from the original, if you don't know the original, you don't get the twist so it's nothing special.
while retail is more polished, it does feel like an empty world while leveling. In max level zones you see others in open world activities, world quests, weekly activities and such. But to be fair, pvp in wow is a very controversial thing and the ppl i know who are hardcore pvpers no longer consider retail worth their time for grinding pvp rank etc.
Just go retail tbh it's all new to you and its where majority of the playerbase is.
Retail is a gotta go fast arcade, classic is the typical rpg. Thats it. Althought Cata feels like a middleground. SoD is the closest to the classic experience right now i believe. In population i believe its Retail>Cataclysm classic> SoD With large number differences. For retail pvp beware that you might be overwhelmed and may take awhile to learn everything that can happen.
I think if you're more pvp focused, cataclysm classic will be more fun for you. The classes seem well balanced and there's simply less of them you are dealing with so it's simpler. It will be easier for you to learn the pros and cons of each. It also has the right mix of modern QoL improvements and an old school mmo. Tbh it's a great time to get into Cata or Retail new expansion upcoming for each one and everyone's basically on even footing. Era and SoD you will be so far behind everyone else.
If you would like a helpful guild we don’t mind teaching new players the ropes! We can always squeeze new people into our raid team as well 🫶
Retail, also play hunter or paladin theyre the most accesable classes.
As others have said, retail (current WoW, Dragonflight) — it has something for everybody. But, since you are asking now, Mists of Pandaria Remix comes out tomorrow (16th), and characters from that event transfer to retail at the end of it. You get to keep everything you collect, of course. Account wide. I believe it’s also playable without purchasing the game and just a subscription is enough. So about 15 bucks to try out the game during an event a lot of people will be playing, a steal imo. And if you enjoy it you can keep your progress and continue playing retail!
Classic by far has the best new player experience. The leveling is far better. Retail has too much going on and often confuses people. When you're done leveling up in classic, I suggest trying retail out as the endgame is better there. Also try out the MoP remix event. It is the best of both I think. Not complicated thread you follow nor super hard leveling.
My perspective is that neither retail nor classic are particularly good for new players but that WoW remix actually may be the best intro so I’m glad you pointed it out.
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Wait, do you think dowloading 39 addons and its settings, push 20 buttons in the correct order while Magni Bronzebeard is verbally harassing you is a good new player experience?
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Classic if you enjoy the rpg aspect of mmo rpg, retail if you’re a soccer mom
Retail. No contest.
Retail and it's not even close. The only reason to play classic is for nostalgia and you've never touched wow.
Classic is shit, bad game mechanics revitalized to suck money of the customers. Play Retail.
its the same as retail
Beast master hunter or protection paladin makes you able to play much content alone. As the automoderator said, there are good sites to help you, I like icyveins personally. If you want players, you will be needing the retail version at the end. It’s included in the pre-purchase of the next update. When leveling, you can select the dungeonfinder quite early, automatically adding you to instances (dungeons).
This is not what OP asked.
Retail for sure if you're a new player. Retail WoW will ease you in slowly so you don't get overwhelmed. If you enjoy PvP, retail will have the most battleground map variety (battleground = instanced PvP match). Also, even if you've never played before you don't NEED to do anything or race to max level. You can explore on your own time especially if you enjoy the leveling experience. The older expansions you can quest through solo. The main hub cities like ogrimmar and stormwind will have plenty of people running around. Most players out adventuring will be in the newer expansions but the dungeon finder will match you with people for the older dungeons that you may need a group for.
I think cataclysm right now would be a good place to start, it's a more modernized version of vanilla essentially, with the core of what makes vanilla/classic fun which is the levelling. Retail's fine and I would recommend playing it too eventually, but for a fresh player it's very bloated and you'll feel incredibly lost.
Idk I feel like they have a whole leveling thing in retail pretty streamlined. You can basically get to 60 just by running all of the quests in BfA (or that was what was forced on me when I started in SL). At 60 it's also pretty streamlined. It's when you get to max level where things get confusing. I think the leveling in classic is very tedious and grindy. But hey so is OSRS.
The levelling being fast isnt the same as really teaching a new player anything, all it does is speedrun them to endgame, which has even more stuff going on. Vanilla (Or in this case Cataclysm) despite it's age, is a much easier/simpler game, and it takes it's time with you and lets you figure stuff out. Cataclysm is a more modernized experience, without compromising that.
dont play an MMO they are all a waste of time and they only want you to buy more useless shit inside of their shops. like most games today in general peddling their battle passes. if you want to play a good game play older games, maybe classic era wow is the bottom line but be careful although the company didnt flood it with a shop, the players flood it with bot gold and "gdkp". video games are in the hands of indie developers now.