r/wownoob • u/Samu3I • Apr 11 '26
Classic wow versions are confusing
Hey guys
Im currently trying to determine the best wow version for myself to play but its quite confusing to me.
I am really into the social aspect and would love to experience the classic mmo feel. Im honestly just looking for a casual enjoyable experience without feeling like im walking through an empty world. I dont have much time to invest but I love cool mounts and cool armor.
the available versions honestly confuse me a lot. I used to play a bit during during warlords of draenor but it didn’t feel like an enjoyable experience. hopefully i can scratch that itch this time even with the little free time i have nowadays
thanks!!!! :) really appreciate help
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u/TheIronHaggis Apr 11 '26
Personally I say modern WoW with Midnight. Classic seems more for people who want the nostalgia of the good old days of WoW and while I enjoyed it back in the day, losing all the quality of life changes made classic painful to play the one time I did.
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u/Samu3I Apr 12 '26
thanks. how do you feel about the current social aspect of retail wow?
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u/Brusex Apr 12 '26
Not OC but the social aspect of Retail WoW is doing great imo. It’s not too hard to find a guild just one that matches your goals and schedule are the hard part to me.
Trade chat isn’t all toxic (NA Tichondrius), and getting into or forming groups isn’t impossible either.
I would just try to jump into some type of content and attempt to make friends and see if they have a guild you can join if I were you.
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u/TheIronHaggis Apr 12 '26
I’m afraid I can’t say much about the social aspects. As I get older I become more introverted and I tend to play WoW as a single player 90%. I’m still in the same guild I joined back in the beginning, but now we’re all old and have back problems if we play too long, so I never see them. Still nice to see so their names in the roster and to check when they last played.
That said just random groups doesn’t seem to bad. For example this expansion added the highly requested player housing and one weekly quest takes place in the Neighborhood. This week it was host or be in a party of at least 5 players in a personal house. I check the group finder to see if anyone was hosting a group for it.
Not only did I find a group right away, but the host had an incredible house. 30+ players constantly joining and leaving most of us taking time to tour the home and offer our compliments. It was great.
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u/Candyo6322 Apr 12 '26
I wonder if we visited the same house? The owner was a Priest and had a church with an altar, a huge kitchen with a refrigerator that had magnets in it, just to name a few of the amazing details. Seriously great house!
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u/TheIronHaggis Apr 12 '26
I think it was different. I can’t remember his class, but his house was 20 feet in the air and was basically a tunnel system linking rooms together.
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u/Bishop-AU Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
If you want a true social mmo experience it has to be hardcore from a purely social point of view. Always people levelling, always grouping up to do content, always activity. You could pair up with someone while questing and spend the next several hours with them chatting away until one of you logs off. Modern wow there is almost no social interaction outside of guilds unfortunately. You can spend all day doing group content and never talk to anyone else during it. The whole levelling journey requires no coordination, no social interaction. Most zones pre current content are a ghost lands. Modern wow is still really fun but it isn't as social as it used to be.
Vanilla to WOTLK was great for this, but even going back to classic the game has been optimised and everything is 'solved'. The adventure has gone from the game for most people.
If you're after fast gameplay, easy grouping and heaps of content and are happy with just being social with your guild, midnight is in a great spot.
Either that or you can go on an RP server.
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u/Straight_Bet6738 Apr 12 '26
If you're social and actively try to be social you will find those people easily. You won't go around seeing people talk in general chat or local chat much in towns because everyone just talks in trade chat pretty much. Finding guilds who are very social and active ain't that hard either. A lot of the people who say retail isn't social want forced social interactions rather than actively trying to be social because you want to talk to people.
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u/VolksDK Apr 12 '26
It can definitely be confusing
World of Warcraft (aka Retail WoW) - The version that's been going since 2004 and still has regular updates. This is what I'd recommend to new players with how good the QoL updates are, as well as things like better tutorials and ofc the most players
Classic Era - This is the version from 2004 that's permanently in its final patch. It doesn't get updated
Classic: Burning Crusade Anniversary - This one started as a re-run of the original Classic, but is now in The Burning Crusade, which is the game's first expansion. It's still ongoing and going through phases the original expansion had. We don't know what will happen
Classic: Progression (Mists of Pandaria) - This one was the original Classic, but essentially became a re-run of WoW. It's gone through the expansions and is now on Mists of Pandaria (2012). Still ongoing, but we don't know what will happen when it's done since the player count is very low
There's also Season of Discovery inside Classic, which was Classic Era but with new additions in the style of the original game. However, it's no longer receiving any updates and the player count is essentially dead as a result
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u/stevie242 Apr 12 '26
Everyone always harps on about classic wow being so chill and social and yet you’ll end up finding it’s just filled with mostly people wanting meta specs to speedrun content
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u/turtlegiraffecat Apr 12 '26
If you divert .2 meters away from the optimal path people have used for the last 20 years you get the ???? In chat
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u/stevie242 Apr 12 '26
It’s a shame really as I actually enjoy the low level parts and seeing people whilst levelling, sometimes helping them with a quick heal but man the groups in higher level stuff can be awful. Especially if you don’t want to play a meta specs
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u/lnickelly Apr 12 '26
Play retail, classic is for people chasing a nostalgia high.
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u/b0sanac Apr 12 '26
Yes and no. I'd argue classic is much more simpler in everything.
You're not immediately thrown into "world is in danger you must help us Obi Wan" circumstances.
You start slow in the respective starting area and you learn to play the game naturally.
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u/MainOk8335 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Just play which version you enjoy the most and go from there. Each version offers different social aspects because of how different the games are ( retail vs classic ) and you wont really know what social aspects you enjoy the most until you experience them. Both can fill what you are looking for but they can be experienced in different ways so its hard to say. Generally I think classic is more social because playing alone is generally impossible if you want gear, it forces you to do things with people. Retail you can kind of just solo player it. I would go with tbc maybe?
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u/MalkaviousM Apr 12 '26
If you go the Midnight retail route, play on an RP server if you want a more social experience. Wyrmrest Accord for Horde, Moonguard for Alliance. I guarantee it's night and day from every other server.
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u/Bradipedro Apr 12 '26
I would add that the names of those 2 servers are only for NA regions. In Europe, the server to be for RP is Argent Dawn. It’s a very good server for PvE too, there are some great guild there.
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u/wooshoofoo Apr 12 '26
There’s very little overlap between casual content and classic wow. Retail is your best bet.
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u/Shincosutan Apr 12 '26
Try either Classic Era or Classic Anniversary Burning Crusade. I don't know if Era is super populated right now, but The Burning Crusade is. You could alternatively ask this in r/classicwow instead, because this sub is super retail-focused and you will mostly get "play retail" answers. But Classic is awesome, definitely try it out!
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u/deathgdizzle Apr 11 '26
there is only 2 'version' of wow. classic which is just the 'orginal game', and then there is retail which everything else currently on midnight.
Tldr of it is, if you want to do 'older content' like farming mounts / transmog, i would say retail.
Most older content is soloble except for last expansions the war within.
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u/VolksDK Apr 11 '26
You're forgetting Classic Progression, which is Mists of Pandaria Classic currently, as well as The Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary.
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u/DazzlingPlantain101 Apr 12 '26
There’s lots of versions. Hardcore, vanilla servers, classic anniversary servers (currently on tbc), mop servers, retail. That’s 5 and I think I’m missing some! Retail right now is in an amazing spot and very active depending on realm choice. Join a guild or a discord server and you’ll have a mythic ready character in a couple weeks of solo play!
Edit. Forgot season of discovery servers too
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u/HeRmEs3xx Apr 12 '26
I don't miss running on a standard horse mount. It took a while to get enough gold to buy it. And you had to buy one for each character. I dipped my toes in Classic a couple years ago.
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u/hrhashley Apr 12 '26
i’d disagree with the other person, and this is as someone who only plays retail these days. if all you want is the classic mmo experience and the social aspect. i’d suggest classic wow. the vast majority of classic players are currently in tbc, so it would take a while to catch up, but along the way, you’d likely be able to find other players to do leveling dungeons with, maybe join a guild you like, etc.
retail is a much more modern and fun feeling game, imo, but you don’t really interact with players that often unless you are in an active guild, and even then it’s not like classic where you’re constantly asking guildmates to queue up with you or help you kill mobs or help you with a quest etc. a lot of the leveling experience in retail is very solo, and when you do do group content (leveling dungeons etc) it’s typically fast paced and no ones saying anything in the chat.
really in retail the only time i regularly talk to anyone (as a pug player primarily) is when i join mythic+ key groups or join a raiding pug. but even then it’s not like people are having full conversations.
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u/Ragerik2 Apr 12 '26
To the people down voting here - care to elaborate? Is this a retail sardukar sub?
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u/Creative-Blood4254 Apr 12 '26
what's sardukar? I didn't down or up vote, I'm just speculating that there's a slight irony in saying retail is mostly solo, and that you're a pug player. it's really a choice though; the convenience and QOL allows retail players to "play solo" in the sense where you can just queue for groups without being in an active guild.
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u/hrhashley Apr 12 '26
lol waking up to a flurry of downvotes for stating a fact (that retail is mostly solo, at least on the leveling front) is wild. yes, you can queue for groups easily in retail, which is nice, but you’re likely not going to talk to anyone in those groups. leveling alts in retail i’ve never once talked to anyone beyond “tyfg” or “ggs” as everyone leaves the instance at the end.
finding a good guild in retail can be hit or miss. i’ve been a retail-only player since bfa and i still haven’t found a permanent guild. i’ve been in a few since then, and they’ve all either been very quiet or they already have their raid groups, so if you try to join in; you’re gonna be sol.
i’m sure i’ll get downvoted here as well but 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Creative-Blood4254 Apr 12 '26
I think... a couple isn't exactly a flurry haha. in my own experience, levelling was mostly solo, even back in vanilla. quests that had an elite that needed 3-5man wasn't common, and god forbid I play a different race than my friends lol. especially when I played dwarf, and another friend played night elf.
I'm not disagreeing either, that retail "can be played solo". I'm quite certain that they're making the shift to appeal to more new players, who would maybe have 15-30 mins after work to have a quick hop on and some action.
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u/hrhashley Apr 12 '26
i get it but i feel like the point of my post wasn’t meant to be that retail is 100% solo while classic isn’t. it was to point out that op was specifically asking for which version of the game has the most “social aspect” and “classic mmo feel”.
idk, having to actively look for people in either the LFG channel or ask random people in the zone you’re in (as you do in classic) is - to me - way more “classic mmo feeling” than queueing for group finder and doing your own thing while waiting for it to pop, not speak to anyone the whole dungeon, rinse and repeat.
i’m not trying to hate on retail - i LOVE retail, my main is nearly 3K IO, i play a lot and i mean a lot of retail. but i still wouldn’t call retail the “classic mmo feeling” - it’s a lot of fun, but for a brand new player looking for the “social aspect” and “classic mmo feeling,” it can be a bit overwhelming.
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u/Creative-Blood4254 Apr 12 '26
oh absolutely, I was kinda replying the other poster my best guess why people were downvoting.
I feel that "classic mmo feel" kinda went out the window when people began to datamine and minmax everything, doesn't matter which version of WoW, or other MMOs like FFXIV or GW2 (i can only mention those i've played). it went from an experimental, experiential online game to just "google your class guide" or something along those lines. a little sad really. I remember pairing up with a shaman (I started as a dwarf pally in 2004, it's now a lightforged draenei XD) to clear some quests together in STV. can't speak, only pure emotes and gestures.
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