I'm probably not going to play. However, given I played vanilla in college, then some on and off BC/lich for my masters, then the latest one over the last year

I'm probably not going to play. However, given I played vanilla in college, then some on and off BC/lich for my masters, then the latest one over the last year as a software dev with a full time job, vanilla seems like it would fit best if that's where I wanted to sink my time. Even though there were tons of complaints from casual players during the vanilla period, I had mostly only heard about these complaints when they where directed towards top tier guilds. Grinding with small groups was often fun and wasn't so heavily tied to every goal and data point that tied you back into the 'realm/global' competition. Players seemed more likely to invent their own metrics of ranking other players and Guild members, which to me added a level of variability that in retrospect, should have reduced anxiety for game play. I'm interested to see how it plays out. There's definitely an 'ideal' balance for an mmo that makes it a success, and I think classic WoW had that nailed down. I don't think it's related to GPU cores or cultural trends, some games are timeless beyond the nostalgia factor, and that's because they achieve that perfect balance of interactivity and reward. Having guild members that did linear algebra to calculate optimal raid arrangements is one of the examples of opening that creative space, rather than closing it with an excess of status bars and shiny hats. Every MMO suffers from what metrics flag gamer status, but I'm simply interested to see what direction classic WoW goes in, and how that affects the general trend of MMOs out there today.