Present Day

I don’t know whether or not most returning players have played retail recently. I would imagine most old schoolers are not actively playing retail, but in order to be eligible for the beta, I activated my subscription for the first time since 2011. I didn’t even plan on playing retail, but I’ve been playing casually with Johnnydrama and Dingus during the summer. While I do understand why hardcore players dislike the current game for the very same reasons I disliked Wrath of the Lich King back in 2009, it is a pretty good game for casual players. And I would assume most of us that were hardcore players back in Vanilla and The Burning Crusade consider themselves casual players today. Some may hate me for saying this, and myself in 2009 would have done so too, but there are some things I really like about retail. Most prominently, the talent system and the Mythic+ system. There are of course things I dislike about the game, even as a casual player. For example, that abilities have been spread out over so many classes that the uniqueness of most classes has been lost. Back in the day, only Shamans had Bloodlust, only Paladins had bubble, only Druids had battle resurrection, etc. This has annoyed me for ten years.

Running Mythic+ Dungeons with Johnnydrama (on his tank) and Dingus.

There is one thing that I believe most people think is better in retail, though. The dungeon bosses are way more complex than in Vanilla and The Burning Crusade. Most dungeon bosses are as complex as many of the raid bosses were back then. This, more than anything, shows that the player base of today is way more experienced than in 2006.

In regards to Darkspear, what is the realm like today? Our beloved Darkspear has merged (or connected, using Blizzard terminology) with two other realms and is nowadays called Darkspear-Saurfang-Terokkar. And I can say one thing for sure. It’s pretty dead on the Horde side. After about two months of casual playing, I have the highest Mythic+ rank among healing Priests on the Horde side. Of the top-20 healing priests on the realm, 19 are Alliance. Likewise, Johnnydrama is the 5^th highest Deathknight, and Dingus the 3^rd highest Rogue. After a few weeks of very casual playing. The Horde players make up 28.8 % of the population, and there seems to be very little raiding going on.

Darkspear Mythic+ Priest healer ranks. Alliance aren't exactly impressive either.