Kinda. I think people want "classic WoW" because they aren't able to articulate what, exactly, would need to change with WoW to make them happy again. But they can pretty easily paint to the old version and say "I liked that, bring that back". I think it's plausible that you could (with time and effort) design something that isn't the same as classic WoW while keeping the players happy.
reply>I think it's plausible that you could (with time and effort) design something that isn't the same as classic WoW while keeping the players happy.
replyblizzard tried to do this with the retail version for literal years while people kept saying "please, i just want classic wow."
now, if you mean that it is plausible that those same people would play a different non-wow mmorpg that shared some aspects of classic wow, sure. but that is drifting pretty far from my original point.