>WoW basically evolved by Blizzard adding features in response to player feedback

blizzard is notorious for not responding to player feedback, as my original comment serves as just one example of, so i am not sure where you are getting this idea from. there is probably a super compilation somewhere of ion telling the player base that they are wrong about wanting X.

(to be fair to blizzard, they have been better at listening to feedback in the last ~2 years, but that is a very recent change.)

>and then the demand for Classic actually became overwhelming

this is the point in time where my comment starts. demand for classic became overwhelming, and yet they ignored it for years, while telling everyone "no, you are wrong, you do not want classic".

this is the key part: blizzard eventually released classic, and publicly admitted "we should have listened to you guys. you really did want classic.". turns out the player base did actually know what they want.

>And even so, I'm not sure Classic consistently has more players than Retail.

i am not sure what the relevance of this is.