Classic Classic is way more casual-friendly than Retail.

I'll preface this by saying I'm absolutely a Classic fan, and prefer most aspects of its game design over retail. That said, I had an unusual bit of free time a few weeks ago and decided to pick up some WoW tokens and try 8.2 before Classic hit ... and what really struck me is just how intrusive and demanding the retail game has become, despite the community perception (on both sides of the Classic fence) being that retail has become too casual.Retail just feels like it nags at me, constantly, especially as a new-to-BFA player. Miss a day of world quests for one of the harder faction reps? Screwed out of flying for possibly weeks. Miss a reset on M+ or PvP? Screwed out of the only chance at meaningful gear for a week. Miss some random long garrison garrison but pretty and with lore literally just a table on a boat mission, possibly miss out on the chance to progress the main story for another day or two. And, of course, the AP grind.Meanwhile, on my days off when I wanted to sit down and sink more than half an hour into the game, I just ... couldn't. There flat out isn't anything meaningful or fun to do past things on daily and weekly timers now. I struggled to find more than an hour or two worth of content available to me that didn't involve a "sorry, come back tomorrow." It really is like a bad mobile game, just without the benefit of being on my phone and fitting easily into my lunch break.On the other hand, in Classic, I'm actually free to play according to my own schedule. I can set goals and work towards them, and then not have to do them again once I finish. I can take a week off when I'm busy at work and come back where I left off instead of being irrelevent until the next content patch puts in a catch-up mechanic that levels the playing field again. Whether its 15 minutes working on tailoring or 3 hours for some dungeon runs on the weekend, everything feels like it has a material and persistent impact on my game experience. I get to play the game on my schedule, not Blizzard's.Now, like I said, I'll admit I'm a Classic fan to the bone. I really don't enjoy even some of the most noncontroversial parts of retail like travel being easier and having more buttons to press -- but I really can't fathom, as someone with a job and responsibilites, wanting to spend my precious me time to maybe get a reskin out of a loot box next Tuesday over doing something that will last, well, until the servers go down presumably. At least in the latter case, I know I could eventually be one of those people decked out in all the fanciest stuff, and Blizzard isn't going to stop me because I worked late one Monday. via /r/wow https://ift.tt/2ZBQEgM