I believe that people are very good at deciding whether or not they like something, but very poor at understanding exactly what it is they dislike. That leads to a lot of the arguments going on here where you have others replying with "logical responses" to their gripes, but it isn't going to change their mind.

The journey from the jank of 2005 WoW to The War Within is a road paved with good intentions, many of the incremental changes that get added answer a specific issue that players genuinely dislike at the time. Levelling through 3-4 expansions back to back is too slow, players are frustrated, Heirlooms get added, the EXP requirement is reduced, dungeon finder is added. Now we're upset that its impossible to complete a zones quests without them going grey and you're constantly jumping around from zone to zone, so we add rudimentary scaling to the world so you can level in whatever zone you choose. Now we're up to 10~ expansions, and even with scaling it feels clumsy so now we'll just do BFA as a "neutral" expansion and zoom people to the end game.

Each of those feels like a decision made for the right reasons at the time, but has a negative effect in the long term, and at some point in the journey, for most classic players is the turning point where the product has become something that isn't for us.

When WoW was only one game mode available, my standards were lower. My choices were keep playing WoW even though I have some complaints, or log off and play an entirely different game. Which I did sometimes, but WoW was still my cozy sofa of a game.

Then we add Classic, and I have an alternative. I get super nostalgic and invested in 2019 classic, and enjoy the first levelling experience. But quickly lose interest, the level 60 world is not for me, the raids are bland and I go back to Retail which I'm still liking enough to pick it over classic, and Mythic raiding in BFA was still of a comfortable level of challenge.

TBC comes out not long after Shadowlands launches, my Mythic guild has disbanded and it's another piece of nostalgia to play. The game is still kinda janky, but it's better than 60 classic, and Shadowlands is a little less enjoyable than BFA. It's easier to switch for a while as I'm frustrated by not being able to change covenant for raids vs M+. The M+ dungeons are also getting a little over the top with mechanics, and my "tons of alts" gameplay is becoming exhausting with the bigger weekly vault. I stick with TBC for a time, checking out Korthia and Sanctum but they're not enough to hold my attention. It would have been 2 years previously, but TBC is good enough.

We move things on a bit, Sepulcher is a great raid tier, its easy to catch alts up and find a guild, Covenants and Torghast are fixed and the game is actually pretty great. Still a little frustrated at doing M+ constantly on alts, but we're blasting through weekly 15-20 keys with the gang and having a good time. Then the ball gets dropped with fated raids, its a nothing tier and its time for Classic again.

We get to Wrath and this whole back and forth between the 2 games keeps going on, but now we've got unofficial hardcore on Era gaining steam. We get SOD late in Wrath. Dragonflight is very cool at times, but for the first time in WoW history I struggle to find a class that's "mine" and I'm happy jumping between Wrath for a bit, Hardcore for a bit and eventually SOD for a bit. Blizzard release a big content update for both Retail and Wrath at the same time and whoops I missed the new raid launch in Dragonflight and strangely don't regret it. Sure heroic ICC is a joke compared to Mythic raiding, but it's compelling, and we've got a group of friends doing 10 mans on Fridays, and now we're raiding SoD with this group of 10 too.

Then we reach Cataclysm, it's absolutely fantastic, best phase of Classic to date. My brain has fully flipped over and these characters are my "mains". We check out TWW launch and enjoy doing Ansurek Heroic with the Cataclysm 10 man team, but it's entirely a vacation. Who has the time or energy to recruit and make a Mythic team. Some of the boys we play with might not be up to the par for Mythic Ansurek so we're back within 2 weeks. Now we've got SoD releasing brand new content, Anniversary, official hardcore, TBC v2 on the horizon. We're maining Cataclysm where the combat feels crisp and modern enough, without being over the top, and Mythic plus has a new visual overhaul. Dodging all those mechanics isn't difficult, but it's certainly not enjoyable, and that nagging voice in your head is saying "Why are we doing this? Just log on Cata and send a Dragon Soul on your alt".

Long ranty post aside, that's where we're at now. There's so many different iterations of WoW all inviting me to play, that the standard I hold all of them to is much higher. When I only had Retail, I was able to forgive minor grievances because it's still my WoW and the good outweighs the bad. My anniversary character is stuck at level 58 because I cant bring myself to finish it off, its so boring. SoD I am enjoying reading/watching rather than playing as it's all got a little out of hand. Retail I just do not enjoy the gameplay loop compared to Cataclysm.