Well, modern wow has softened most of the RPG elements of WoW in favor of the larger MMO scope of things. Ultimately they are far less concerned with traditional RPG elemetns, as they don't typically provide gameplay that the audience at large wants. They decided the game was better suited by lowering the barrier to entry, so to speak. By this, classic checks many more of the very specific RPG elements that retail slowly moved away from. That isn't inherently a bad thing unless those were the kinds of reasons why you enjoyed the game before. I'm not saying retail or classic is a worse game, or that either are terrible at being an RPG/MMO. They just have different overall objectives, and thus one caters more to the RPG elements and one to MMO elements.