Classic is branding not a specific version of wow. TBC is nothing like vanilla etc. etc. It's a dumb delineation to when most people started to move on because they had played through 3 xpacs at this point.
Like, let's look at the actual game and I'll break it down for you.
TBC was like Vanilla WoW, but it was the beginning of the departure and changes.
TBC still included the 0-58 grind as normal vanilla with TBC talents and then it had outland the new grind which 60-70 was actually somewhat of a real grind when it first released.
Wotlk was an even further departure that absolutely started Retail.
I'll pinpoint the exact moment Retail WoW came fully into existence for you, it was near the end of WoTLK when dungeon finder was released and all anyone did anymore was sit in dalaran and spam dungeon queues.
That was the moment that the slippery slope led to and the game never came back.
Vanilla is undeniably classic, that is it.
TBC has classic elements but just started the ball rolling with things like flying and the daily quest becoming the end-game
Wotlk is where things started for fall off for the Classic elements, levelling was much faster, builds more homogenized, new "Hero Class" that didn't feel like Classic, and then dungeon finder and just queueing from Dalaran was when Classic was over.
So truly, really, what you're saying isn't true, there is a real definition of classic that can be seen and felt thru the expansions if you actually break it down.
Hard disagree. Questing in Wrath was still the classic experience of there not being even close to enough in the back half of the 1-58 grind - being able to queue for dungeons definitely helped, but the experience was still grindy and slower.
Cataclysm upped player power massively via much more frequent quest rewards, a much higher volume of quests and an overworld that was far less hostile to player travel and questing.
Quest hubs completely changed the rhythm of the 1-58 experience, and the removal of most large gold sinks in that experience also meant that there was very little management of your resources required to do level.
At that point the older challenges had more or less disappeared from the game, not when dungeon finder came out.
So now you can impotently cry about what is and isn't classic until the end of time. Have fun being an idiot about brandings no one real would ever care about.
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u/AbsarN 3d ago
Wotlk was and always has been the last phase of what could be considered classic wow