Comment by sReinwald

You clearly haven't played WoW in a decade, judging from this comment.

> Even if you buy the expansion just to get the "feel" on how it was, it's impossible.

You don't buy previous expansions after a new one launches - they roll into the base subscription. After Shadowlands released, buying BfA separately wasn't even an option.

> MMOs like GW2 and even SWTOR do it way better

“Keep every expansion fully relevant forever” sounds nice until you think through what that actually means for an MMO like WoW. You would either fragment the player base across twenty years of content or turn gearing and balance into a complete circus.

Imagine your best-in-slot trinkets from the current raid and Siege of Orgrimmar, your tier set from Dragon Soul, the weapon from Hellfire Citadel. Try organizing a group when other classes need gear from Icecrown Citadel, The Everbloom, Argus and Ahn'Qiraj.

The point of "current expansion content is relevant" is that it funnels the player base into a fairly narrow area of the theme park. That is important, because if you spread out the population over 20 years worth of content, you risk making the world feel incredibly empty, which is a death sentence for a theme park MMORPG.

Blizzard’s actual approach is much more sane: older content comes back in controlled ways. Timewalking reopens older expansion content with scaling and relevant rewards, and Mythic+ seasons already rotate older dungeons into the current endgame pool. Midnight's Season One, for example, features dungeons from Wrath of the Lich King, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and Dragonflight.