Bigger time sink, BC or Retail?

[muto]

BC is a bigger time-sink and it’s not even close. Retail is much more casual friendly. On the same token though BC will feel more rewarding though, because of the time invested into your character. You can gear up a character to 220 ilvl in a week in retail. Literally doesn’t feel rewarding just feels like a grind.

[Nalam the Venom]

grind what? anima for cosmetics? lmfao

M+ for vault slots/Valor, Maw for sockets/conduits, Torghast for soul ash.

Are some grinds that come to mind

[Kralljin]

Doesnt really matter if there is somethin better now, but when it takes so long to just have a single one drop that any feeling joy is basically getting diminished to nothingness by tons of trys to get it.

I frankly disagree and as said, you don't have to go out of your way to farm BWL when it's still the only raid content besides MC / Ony, so the "additional" time investment is 0.
Putting aside that the rarity is a portion why those items are so special, it's not like you *need* those items for anything in Classic, you want them to have them, if they're extremely common, those items simply no longer have the same perceived value.

[Cracked]

This is actually pretty subjective, but let's give it a shot.
AOTC, when? I'm a casual mythic raider that got AOTC in mid January, many of my friends in AOTC only guilds didn't get theirs til first week of May, a 4 month gap.
My guild and theirs both raid 6hrs/week.

At what pace do you intend to play BC? BC has the attunements, once done you can raid log peacefully.
In SL, you had the initial grind of M0s, renown, cov story etc. I personally started raid logging exclusively in February, once all the previous steps were won and done.

The other factor is, in BC you'll be encouraged to run Kara, Grull's and Mags. Once the next raids, SSC and Eye come out you won't suddenly stop Kara, Grull's and Mags.
If all you want to do is raid the latest and greatest raid, BC probably takes less to keep up, just 1 raid night would do it.

Long story short, Retail only has the current raid on whatever difficulty you play. BC will have multiple raids with crazy items, so you may find yourself raiding a lot more because while you don't need DST from Grull's, someone else does :3

I'm a casual without guild and only do LFG pugs. I got aotc 31st of December with about 2-3 hours played per day until that point. If I want to actually get stuff done in BC, finding a guild will most likely be unavoidable.

So I'd say BC requires way more time invested.

[Athulua]

Retail, no question about it due to it's seasonal nature.

TBC may have a more intimidating "To do" list to be raid ready, but once you've achieved that it's done forever. Your gear never goes bad, it will always be current and able to run the raids, and it's a more relaxing atmosphere.

In retail, due to it's D3 inspired seasonal nature of things... every patch is a soft reset essentially, rendering your gear and progress kinda moot as you now have to climb the ladder all over again, rinse repeat ad nauseum. It may be easier to catch up and get raid ready immediately, but the list of chores needed to stay cutting edge is almost never ending.

So basically, TLDR...... Retail is easier to get caught up, but it never ends and your progress resets so the grind begins anew every patch. TBC has a more daunting up front list, but progress is permanent and one and done and once achieved it's smooth sailing.

it follows the principle of tiered level of gamer investment. There are 3 tiers essentially:

1) A new player. Doesn't know anything, is exploring the game for the first time
2) A player that is invested into the game, plays it and wants to improve at it
3) A player that is maxed out. Has the best gear, completed the highest difficulty, has most of the achievements.

Companies want players to remain in tier 2, as they are the biggest spenders. Once you cap all your reputations and finish the raid on whatever difficulty you want to, you're essentially tier 3. In WOW case blizzard wants to sell you gold through tokens. If you're tier 2 and you want to be tier 3, you'll look out for helping hands and wow token is one of them. T3 players aren't spenders, they're done with content, they don't need any help or motivation.

Through this seasonal nature Blizzard routinely moves all tier 3 players back into tier 2 with each patch. This is where they want the players to be. Any company wants players to be there. They're invested into the game, but not maxed out and wanting to progress into T3. This produces spenders.

[Daedius]

Retail for sure. Hell of a lot more to do than BC.

[justandulas]

Doesnt really matter if there is somethin better now, but when it takes so long to just have a single one drop that any feeling joy is basically getting diminished to nothingness by tons of trys to get it.

Hard disagree. It gives it value.

Vs retail gear that you get the same item in lfr. Normal. Heroic. Mythic. Or even worse, grind the same m+ season after season to replace the item you already got 2 seasons ago but now newer. It devalues the items into nothing

Compare the hours needed to get raid ready in tbc and then compare with the amount of hours in retail spent across m+, torghast etc season after season.. and retail by the end of SL will dwarf the time needed in tbc to stay raid relevant.

Retail is many times the grind tbc is. Once you get attuned or reputation, you’re done and can raid log forever and ever. I raided sunwell as a raid logger and will again, but when I raid log in a mythic raid guild it’s an issue cuz the main tank not doing m+ for the guild upsets their selfish selves.

Retail is not only grindier and seasonal, but it’s all for nothing. It’ll all reset come next patch, and the raiding you did meant nothing for next tier. Vs classic where your gear is valuable until the end. When is the last time you got something of permanence in retail that wasn’t an achievement, a Mount, or a cosmetic?

[DechCJC]

Once leveling is over, I believe that retail has a much higher potential for realistic time investment (on one character) versus TBC, which is pretty stagnant with how much you can do. Retail has an astronomical amount of things to do if you're willing to push through it all.

[Bloodyleech]

Initial time for quests after a new patch-release
30 minutes Mythic+ per week
2x 30 minutes Torghast per week
2-6h raiding heroic/mythic per week
Here you are with your time investment in retail. Obviously it's not about people who push for world firsts.
"So much grindiiiiiiiing!!!" Yep.


And BC? Even people who do not play for world first have to put a higher amount of time into the game.

[Surfacin9]

Retail, no question about it due to it's seasonal nature.

TBC may have a more intimidating "To do" list to be raid ready, but once you've achieved that it's done forever. Your gear never goes bad, it will always be current and able to run the raids, and it's a more relaxing atmosphere.

In retail, due to it's D3 inspired seasonal nature of things... every patch is a soft reset essentially, rendering your gear and progress kinda moot as you now have to climb the ladder all over again, rinse repeat ad nauseum. It may be easier to catch up and get raid ready immediately, but the list of chores needed to stay cutting edge is almost never ending.

So basically, TLDR...... Retail is easier to get caught up, but it never ends and your progress resets so the grind begins anew every patch. TBC has a more daunting up front list, but progress is permanent and one and done and once achieved it's smooth sailing.

Sorry what? How different is gear relevance between retail and TBC? The gear you got from Kara will be the gear from Kara that is only suitable for SSC/TK. You can't go progress BT/MH with that gear. Same with retail - previous tier gear is good enough to start progressing next tier.

Once you're done with the raid - you're done with the raid. Both in retail and TBC. You don't have to repeat them. TBC raiding is exactly the reason why all the catch-up gear was released and is being kept since the Sunwell patch to this day.

Again with the gear 'going bad'. A T4 gear is only good for T4 and T5 content. Gear from CN will be good for the similar difficulty SoD. Dungeon gear in TBC will only be valid for T4. In retail dungeon gear from Season 1 is valid for Season 2 raid, but in Season 2 you can run the same dungeons and get better gear.

Pre-raid requirements for first tier of raiding in retail vs TBC:
Retail - torghast, covenant campaign, dungeons for gear, weekly renown (2 quests)
TBC - atunements, dungeons for gear, rep farm, farming raid mats/crafting materials (dunno about now, but during the original TBC raid consumables and crafted gear were pretty expensive and if you didn't have lots of gold, you had to farm for those)

Raider's to-do list:
Retail - weekly renown to unlock soulbind rows, raid, torghast (optional, once you have your best legendary @Rank 4, you don't need torghast), m+ (also completely optional, just another way to obtain gear)
TBC - raid, heroic dungeons for badges (optional), farm raid mats (if you don't have gold)

So they are pretty much the same imho, the artificial need for grind is all in people's heads, but its not required in any way, especially if you want to be at AOTC level. Retail will have more things to do besides raiding (which is what the playerbase wanted) that can also give you power rewards. In TBC once you're done with raid prep, have gold to buy raid mats, don't need badge gear - you can pretty much only raidlog or play alts.

[Kokolums]

M+ for vault slots/Valor, Maw for sockets/conduits, Torghast for soul ash.

Are some grinds that come to mind

none of those things are needed for a heroic raider.

[ek0zu]

BC >>> Retail

However, personally i like more how both Vanilla and TBC did things with attunements, difficulties, raids being relevant, bgs being fun.

[Beuargh]

I don't know what you guys are on.....

tell me which is a bigger time sink between playing basketball for an hour and playing football for an hour.

[Sinaa]

In classic you grind for things that get outdated (gear). In retail you grind for things that are forever (cosmetics).

I'd rather spend time grinding for things that will last, rather than meaningless tools to clear a dungeon and a raid.

Forever is an interesting word :-)

Anyhow I would bet you anything that eventually there is going to be a classic > retail character transfer service to make those Quiraji battle tanks and Benedictions "forever". It won't be cheap & A/Blizzard will deny such plans up until we are nearing the last patch of classic Wrath, but it will happen eventually!

[Asrialol]

No. Retail is the grind. I don't mind grinding, I even enjoy it sometimed. I've grinded everything WoW has to offer. The insane, every rep, mounts, honor kills, you name it.

I gave up in bfa, came back for SL, gave up again. Everything is a pointless grind to increase a 3-digit number so you can do the same content again with higher number requirement and rewards that increase your 3-digit number even more.

Classic is extremely chill in comparison. You have to grind minimally to raid at top level.

But if the gear you get from the first raid tier in classic is the best, why bother raiding the later tiers?

[Cosmic Janitor]

While I get what the OP wants to ask, I think the question is kinda odd. In the current iteration both require pretty much just raidlogging, even though the live servers are currently in a post pogression draught while BC hasn't even started yet. You will waste way more time in BC to get into actual progression, while almost everyone that cared about it is done with their live progression until july.

[justandulas]

Truth is... No one that played vanilla or tbc seriously is super excited to repeat all over again. With worse community and useless minmaxing theorys, that wont make much diference because raids are super easy.

So stop talking about grind because repeating full expansions its nothing else than a huge grind.

Strange how I played vanilla and tbc... and had a blast in classic and tbc (so far) and that it’s retail that is a painful chore to log into.

It’s all about what you like

If you prefer old school mmorpgs, you’d like classic more. If you prefer Diablo 3 seasonal mmo arpg with cosmetics galore, you’d enjoy retail.

Retail kinda feels like a version of WoW (mixed with Diablo 3) for people who didn’t like gold era wow (vanilla-Wotlk) which is also why the gold era fans can’t stand the modern redesign that turns it from an rpg to an arpg

[Wuusah]

usually the opposite. tbc had its fair share of quick gear, and catch up mechanics.

the difference is it doesn't have the seasonal nature of retail so the progression ladder remains relevant and permanent. You don't reset every patch and need to repeat the entire process essentially.

one and done content will always be easier by nature than never ending seasonal grinds

What are classic phases if not seasons…

It’s such a bad take to say you only need to grind gear once and then you are done.

[Lolites]

In retail you have to do your weekly and daily chores.

for AOTC? not at all...

[justandulas]

I don't know what you guys are on.....

tell me which is a bigger time sink between playing basketball for an hour and playing football for an hour.

Easily basketball. Football you only play offense or defense so get rest and only play half the game. Basketball required you to play both sides of the game (offense/defense) more than any other sport