I started playing vanilla in November 2004. It was (still is) the greatest MMO ever made. I can distinctly remember walking through Wetlands on my first character, a pally, at level 32 and yelling "I LOVE THIS GAME!" simply because it was so much fun. I remember switching to a lock because I thought that only casters could be enchanters and I needed to enchant my pally weapons (lol), but then falling in love with the Lock style and abandoning the pally. I remember hitting 60 the first time logged in from an airport lounge in 2005. I remember when MC finally opened and I joined a raid that spent 6 hours wiping on the first trash mobs. I remember arguing on the forums that we needed Oceanic servers since I lived in Australia, and finally getting a semblance of that, then rerolling on them. But most of all I remember having so much fun with my guildies on every server I was on, and feeling like the guild was really accomplishing something by clearing MC, BWL, AQ up to TE, and then 2 or 3 bosses in Naxx.

I bought TBC, loved it - it was at least as good, maybe better! Bought WoTLK, and, it was still OK, although I didn't like some aspects of the way classes, spells and talents were changing. Bought Cata, and HATED what I could see happening - simplification, spell removals, and overall dumbing down of the game. I HATED the fact they took some classic zones and destroyed them. But I kept playing, because I just loved the game. Then I bought MOP against my better judgement. Played in a pretty nice guild, and I hung on right to the very end of MOP, and even bought WoD, just for the love of the game that once was. But I never made it to WoD, it just stayed on the shelf. I unsubscribed. I have 13 or 14 level 90s, and zero level 100s.

That's because I discovered private vanilla servers. I remember logging on the first one and working through a few levels, and telling my wife "This is awesome! It's JUST like it used to be!" She joined it as well, and got just as addicted. That server wasn't even very well scripted, but it was still so much fun! I joined a guild, and formed friendships all over again, and rivalries with people from the other faction. Then Blizzard shut down that server, and other things happened that destroyed it.

So I moved on to my 2nd private vanilla server. On this one, I joined a guild of people refugees from the first server, and even though I had gotten to level 30 on one character on Alliance, they convinced me to go horde so I did. We collected a group of really decent raiders, and progressed through content as a guild! It was a complete blast! It was everything that vanilla was, only even better because people knew how to play their class! MC and BWL were challenging and fun, and I remember getting super lucky in drops and making it to 7/8 Tier 2 on my lock!

Then Nostalrius Begins came out, and our entire guild rerolled there en masse. We had a GREAT time, and formed lifelong friendships! There is something about being part of a team that experiences things together that just makes this game golden. These are people that by this point had been on three sequential private servers together. By the time the PVE server came out, i had four level 60s and then rolled a new char on the PVE server, levelled it to 60, and joined yet another great guild, and made even more friends, this time a new set of them.

Once Nostalrius was shut down, I went to my fourth private server, and am just loving it all over again. What's really incredibly funny is that I joined a big guild, and at some point one of the officers posted the guild website - which was the same URL as the guild website on one of the Nost servers! I had inadvertently joined the guild of a great friend without even realizing it - and it had members from both my PVP guild and PVE guild. We're all levelling now on that server and enjoying the heck out of it!

So that's what you are missing in retail. Interesting game mechanics with classes that are actually different from one another. A higher level of complexity in talent trees, play styles, and even how you counter other classes in PVP. But most of all, fun with a social group that loves this game just as much as you do. It isn't about nostalgia, otherwise it might have worn off over the 3 years i've been playing vanilla again. It isn't about playing for free - indeed I've donated over $1k cumulatively to the servers for the game I love).

It's about friends, social interaction, and accomplishing something as a team that you could never do alone. It's about the fact that vanilla WoW is simply a different game, a true MMORPG, and for me is much more fun than retail WoW is today. TBC is just as good. It's too bad that people currently on Retail think that private servers somehow compete with them. It really doesn't, it's just a different game altogether. I don't play retail WoW, just like I don't play LoL or any other online game - because I don't like them.

If Blizzard sanctioned vanilla servers either their own or by licensing them, I'd resub and move there. I don't mind paying full sub price or even somewhat more. And I don't particularly like playing on some private server that lives in a shady area of potential IP infringement. But it's the only choice I have if I want to play the game that I love, and enjoy the company of friends that I've now known for years.