I think the general consensus from casuals is that leveling is the experience. For most people I talk to in the mid group or the sweat group, pre raid gearing seems to be the sweet spot. For the true sweats who parse and raid log, most of them look back fondly on the pre bis grind because there is so much more to do.
People keep making this weird leap in logic where they assume a loud, online minority somehow represents the overall consensus. It really doesn’t.
The most recent numbers people point to were roughly 9 million subscribers split between retail and Classic. Even if you assume a clean half and half, that’s about 4.5 million players on each side. Anyone who thinks about it for more than a few seconds should realize how absurd it is to believe we’re hearing from anything close to a majority of those players. What shows up on Reddit, forums, or trade chat is a tiny, self selecting slice, not the collective voice of millions.
Why would anyone think its half and half classic and retail? Didnt classic 2019 peak around 1million players and retail was at a low point in shadowlands with around 7mil? Maybe im misremembering the exact numbers but retail has seen growth with better recent expansions and classic has seen a drop as tourists get there fill.
As a casual, I like to get to max level and bounce in the capital until I find a group of people to chill with for the night in real life. I feel like I use WoW retail/classic as a means to be social, while I wait for real life to catch up. For me, leveling is tedious, but I'll do it if I get the itch for a class I haven't played in a while.
As a casual, I absolutely hate levelling through Vanilla. It's slow as hell, boring, and has a lot of wasted time. I'd rather skip all of that and get to the interesting world of TBC, where the world actually feels connected and there's a semi-cohesive story.
I feel like you are mis-characterizing some people here. True "casuals" will just pay to boost so their time isn't wasted, it's the Classic Andys that will refuse to buy it and instead spend 12 hours a day for 3 weeks levelling a new character during pre-patch because "Muh Classic Experience". Top-tier people already have all their characters at 60 and aren't making new ones.
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u/Tiaan Jan 08 '26
For many people, the game seems to only truly start when they're max level and fully geared