WoW begginers guide : Retail vs Classic

I've seen a post recently in one of the World of Warcraft groups on social media about which edition of the game is best for beginners. And I thought to myself, are there really people starting to play this game now?

Well, luckily for all of us who have been playing this for over two decades, there are and we need to make sure they have an easy time catching up with us. As a veteran, I think I can talk objectively and tell you the best thing to do as a new player.

First of all, turn away and run from this game. It will steal your life! Joking aside, it is really a game that you can put thousands of hours into and still feel like you have so much to do. It's almost impossible to finish everything you ever wanted. The main difference between classic servers and retail is that retail WoW will reward you all the way from the beginning, while in Classic, it takes a lot of time to stop feeling like a "noob" and even more time to stop looking like one.

So why are there so many options to choose from? For a long time, many people liked "Vanilla" WoW (WoW before any expansions) and played on private servers while Blizzard refused to give players what they wanted. Eventually, Blizzard realized that these people would simply play Vanilla somewhere else. They weren't going to play retail, so those players were gone from the modern game either way. They want to play WoW without expansions, or perhaps specific expansions that were most popular, like Wrath of the Lich King.

I understand that as a new player, you might think the best way to start a new game is from the beginning and that going with Classic is the best way to get into it. But while that sounds logical, it is not what I or many others would suggest. See, plenty of us who played Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK played a lot. We were teenagers and we played hundreds of hours per month. It was a time commitment that a grown person often couldn't afford to put into a video game. For a grown adult who has a job, a family, and an active social life, fitting WoW Classic into everyday life is going to be really hard.

It is also a 20-plus-year-old game. Can you play a game that old? Because it feels old. It runs slow. It has many little RPG elements that I consider amazing, but most people nowadays would find annoying. I think Classic WoW is great and should exist—perhaps starting over with new servers every year to give people the opportunity for a fresh start—but as a new player, I think you should go for retail, and here is why:

Retail WoW is known for its simplicity. While the endgame will naturally be challenging and harder than Classic at higher tiers, the overall experience such as obtaining mounts, leveling, doing dungeons, and getting into the endgame grind is way easier. It's not even comparable.

The problem with retail is that it has so many zones and so much content that leveling through all the old zones simply isn't going to work. If you want to see all the zones and quests, you will have to revisit them at max level. Sadly, there will be no challenge then, and you will "one-shot" everything. I wish WoW had optional quest scaling or "Timewalking" questing that we could switch on demand to scale quests to our levels, but sadly that doesn't exist. Doing old content at max level isn't really cool; when there is no challenge at all, it gets boring quickly.

At the same time, the game will offer to jump you into the story that is relevant to where we are now. You will quest toward the zones and lore of the current expansion. This helps you know what is going on once you reach the level cap, but a lot of history remains locked away and unknown. Since WoW is such a lore-rich game, it is a bit sad that people skip these characters and storylines. It would be much cooler if, in retail, you could properly experience every zone and quest as if it were built for your level.

Once you are ready for the endgame in retail, you can take a break and try Classic. What you will find in Classic is that leveling is one of the most fun experiences you can have in an MMORPG. It is slow, it feels like an adventure, and it feels like storytelling. That’s something nobody can take away from Classic; it is the absolute king of making players feel like they are on a journey.

Classic and expansions like The Burning Crusade will always be loved and popular simply because that is where nostalgia hits hardest for many. Some people simply enjoy the more complex RPG elements and prefer how the world felt back then. Every Classic player will have good arguments for why they like it, but that doesn't mean you should believe everything you read on the internet. Some will tell you that retail is no good and you should only play Classic, but that simply isn't true.

If you want to start playing WoW but have never been into Warcraft at all, I’d suggest trying Warcraft 3: Reforged. It’s not the best remaster ever—not even close—but it is still one of the best stories you will ever see, and it gives you a peek into the world. A lot has changed since the events of Warcraft 3, but it is a great place to start getting into the universe.

My tip for new players: go to retail and get used to the gameplay and the world. Everything will go very fast and easy, but if you find good gear and a decent group of friends, you will be in Mythic keys and raids in no time. After that, you can enjoy Classic as a side game. If you end up liking it more than retail, that’s great! But for most people, it will just feel outdated, and starting there might push them away from the game instead of pulling them in.

I hope this makes it easier to pick which edition of WoW to start with. And don't forget: most fun in this game comes from interacting with your guild and friends. Focus on looking for those while exploring Azeroth and the other worlds of World of Warcraft.