How is the retail "experience"?

[Amaterasu2302]

Well, I hope talking about retail isn't bannable.

To the fellow players that enjoy this game both here and retail, how would you say retail differs from Warmane or other private servers? Is it worth buying retail? Do you think Legion will be a good expansion or a one worth pre-purchasing? What are the major differemces between the leveling and gearing experiences in retail and here?

I hope some Lordaeron peeps can answer my questions since it's the most similar realm to retail right now.

[Baniel]

The "community" over there is really bad, WoD was a disaster so i would not get my hopes up about legion. The main reason why i will never play retail again is because i dont like the new world. If they would release legacy (from vanilla to wotlk) then i would wait and see how it turns out. You have to remember, this "blizzard" is just carrying the name, they've gone "full activision" so dont expect much from them anymore.


And even if they would release legacy servers, and even if they do it right, i would still be cautious and would keep an account alive here just in case.

[kidarkness]

Well, I hope talking about retail isn't bannable.

To the fellow players that enjoy this game both here and retail, how would you say retail differs from Warmane or other private servers? Is it worth buying retail? Do you think Legion will be a good expansion or a one worth pre-purchasing? What are the major differemces between the leveling and gearing experiences in retail and here?

I hope some Lordaeron peeps can answer my questions since it's the most similar realm to retail right now.

You can literally get from level 1 to level 100 in 5 hours. 'nuff said.

[Texiro]

Retail community has higher quality. At least thats how I feel on one of the most populated realms (Ravencrest, previously Kazzak, EU of course). My first experience with retail was amazing, the "quality jump" from bugged Cata realm (4.0) was huge. That feeling when you know everything works, you can run any dungeon/raid you want, you can do legit achievement hunt and your accomplishment in game actually does matter, because its Live realms, not some private server parody, right. Also player culture there, is alot higher comparing to here.

What are the major differemces between the leveling and gearing experiences in retail and here?

Leveling on retail is pretty easy, heirlooms, account-bound 300% exp potion, garrison 300% exp potion, RaF (I think +200% exp or +300%, not sure, never used it). If you have a 100 level friend with any gear he can run you through dungeons multiple times and its basically easy skins easy life. If you level alone, do quests till 15 level, then go to the main city for "rested experience", grab some friend on similar level with Tank/Healer role and que Dungeon Finder all day.

Gearing is of course different, on most private servers you have pay2win model, also Blizzard is expanding their game by adding new expansions etc, private servers run one expansion and that expansion will stay forever so after time you will eventually get bored, even on Lordaeon.
Gear is harder to get on retail obviously, because you cannot donate for it, you have to earn it. To raid successfully you've got to find a guild at start, do Normal Difficulty raids, then after time step into Heroics. Then the biggest difficulty jump for you will be going from Heroic into Mythic, you'll probably have to do some "guild jumps" too. If you want to step even higher then try getting good logs and search for higher world rank guilds, on end of the line you'll find hardcore guilds, I guess we can split them into two categories: 1. Daytime raiding like Paragon, Serenity, Nihilium (they raid 7 days in a week for 1 to even 18 hours) 2. Without daytime raiding, they might raid from 5 to 7 days per week, but for 3-5 hours per day.

Do you think Legion will be a good expansion or a one worth pre-purchasing?

Im not sure, I don't like few ideas of Legion, pre-patch should be comming at 19.07 (only rumors), even tho I got Beta, I didn't test much. I think its worth buying, WoD was just a tragedy and whole playerbase is glad that its gone (soon!).


I don't know what else can I say, I will edit post if something else comes on my mind. If you have questions, ask.

[Nathaniel912]

I've been always arguing with anyone who said even something remotely close to "WoD was a good expansion".

Then a friend of mine put it this way:


If you are like me and would like to experience World of Warcraft single-player, WoD was (is) pretty-damn-good. And I have to admit, from this perspective, it's AMAZING. The solo content, quests and lore and all that is just really Great. Legion will follow this with the storytelling and lore quests and so on.


However, if you're like most players (and me) and you want an actual MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE RPG, (big emphasis put on the first 3 words) you better stay the hell away from Legion and WoD and Retail and blizzard whatsoever, and simply get Black Desert, Archeage or something similar.



About the differences, well, you know, this is WOTLK, retail has Legion beta already. It's literally a different game, and with a different game comes a different community.

[Thydus]

If you haven't touched retail in a long time you will be happy with it, starting now you will get to enjoy a lot of wod and then have an entire new expansion to play.
Pre-purchase is really only needed if you cant wait anylonger to play a Demon Hunter which will be available like 2 weeks before launch that's the Legion Launch not the pre patch event.
The levelling is obv not as fast as above comments since ull be fresh no gold for heirlooms, get a friend to start with you and use recruit a friend xp bonus
Personally I highly enjoyed the Wod levelling, most of the hate on Wod is the fact there was a content drought in terms of endgame content.

[saghha]

Well, I hope talking about retail isn't bannable.

To the fellow players that enjoy this game both here and retail, how would you say retail differs from Warmane or other private servers? Is it worth buying retail? Do you think Legion will be a good expansion or a one worth pre-purchasing? What are the major differemces between the leveling and gearing experiences in retail and here?

I hope some Lordaeron peeps can answer my questions since it's the most similar realm to retail right now.

Retail player here checking. I don't have Legion Beta but been playing the PTR a bit lately and as far as I can tell the game design of Legion looks pretty cool and interest, content hopefully will be where it needs to be. The hardest part of Legion to swallow is going to the Class design. Class design in Legion is really really different and from my opinion it's not really WoW like ( i mean of course it is to an extent, but it's still pretty different then that of previous expansions).

Is it worth it? Well that's up to you to decide, i'm going to buy it and give it a chance. If I get a good months play out of it I think i will have gotten my moneys worth out of it and that's all I can expect. I'm not saying i'm only going to play a month, i'll probably give it a good few months before i decide to bail or not and come back here. Warnane is kind of a home away from home for me, so I don't mind stepping away and coming back at another time, it's my playstyle and i rather love it that way as i never get to burned out.