Reasons why vanilla World of Warcraft was so popular.

[Deleted]

Here's the one and ONLY reason vanilla was so popular:

It was 2005.

Good luck getting back to that.

[Ferocity]

Ulduar is overrated. It's nice, but half of the bosses are total crap tank & spank yawnfest. Were total crap when it came out too.

Just remember what people said about it when it was new comparing to now, it's nostalgia. Starting from the thousands of qq posts regarding vehicle fight in the beginning of instance to exploited flower power, and even cheated world first of Alone in the Dark. With overtuned Kologarn (almost all guilds skipped it on first two weeks) to fucked up piece of shit meta-achievement on Razorscale.

Leviathan was a bit sucky, agree. As all what involves vehicles (screw you, Malygos and Eregos), dances and whatever else arcade element interfering with RPG. Also can't recall Kolo being overtuned O.o We killed it in 2 weeks on release, can't recall we had problems there. Also meta-achievement on Razorscale wasn't even as his hardmode, and can't see anything fucked up about it. For impatient people it probably was.

Cata heavily accented on dancing model, where arcade skill>>RPG setup. If you saw only tank & spank yawnfest in Ulduar, well that sucks that you think that RPG should be heavily filled with arcade elements. My favorite example - Sartharion. Remember when red zones on floor was changed from red to blue as it was very hard to see them? Guess what - Firelands is all about avoiding red on red and doing it very fast with arcade reaction, add to this that red color causes biggest pressure on eyes out of all colors, you need yet to distinguish red from red. Most fights in Cata are that - arcade, testing arcade skills.

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/201...ating-and.html You can read other Goblin's posts on this, that's just first which I found now. Fact is dancing fights are very appealing to impatient people with rushing adrenaline. RPG has a bit different pacing and a bit different challenges.

---------- Post added 2012-05-06 at 12:15 PM ----------

This really shouldn't be needed to point out, but...

Start new alt in different realm with no heirlooms, no gold and no guild perks. Do not join a guild for perks either. Makes leveling 100x more enjoyable. You have only yourself to blame if you choose to make it easier. All those perks and heirlooms are there for one reason only: to make leveling alts for veteran players as fast as possible.

Did that. Gold isn't really needed during levelling, and outlevelling is gigantic problem. Zoned into Southern barrens, did few quests, and was already outlevellng it without visiting single dungeon. Hillsbrad Foothills - there I come, some quests and already outlevelling.

P.S.: Also not using heirlooms at all, well used for one alt (rogue) only, that's it. Also avoiding gathering resource nodes while levelling, exp. is very significant from those (only was gathering on rogue, never liked class, but needed for the Insane). i don't mind making optional bonuses for vets to make alts level faster. Sure, give heirlooms 20, 30, 50% additional exp, but don't touch experience curve at all and don't make everything, even resource nodes, rain exp on you.

[vesseblah]

Also can't recall Kolo being overtuned O.o We killed it in 2 weeks on release, can't recall we had problems there.

Meant Ignis, always mess up with the names of those two.

Also meta-achievement on Razorscale wasn't even as his hardmode, and can't see anything fucked up about it. For impatient people it probably was.

Fucked up because you basically had to wipe 2-3 times on it to get all the kills required. It's utterly stupid achievement, not hard.

Most fights in Cata are that - arcade, testing arcade skills.

That's always been what's hard in WoW raiding. Definitely more interesting than farming 20 levels lower instances for resistance gear which was the other model in vanilla.

[Ferocity]

Fucked up because you basically had to wipe 2-3 times on it to get all the kills required. It's utterly stupid achievement, not hard.

Pssst, you didn't have to kill all dwarves in one session^^ It is not like you had only 1 week to get this achiev^^ That's what I meant by impatience.

[lukyl]

just want to say that it seems like the OP didn't even play vanilla due to all his just blatently wrong statements eg. no addons..
my guesss is he just spent the last few hours watching some vanilla wow youtube videos he stumbled onto and then read some google archived info about vanilla WoW..

[Deleted]

the community was the only good thing, other than that the game has come on in leaps and bounds. Think of it like this, people remember the bad times, but they cherish the good times. We just had a better time in vanilla.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Vanilla was great for 3 main reasons:
The open-ended sense of adventure where just traversing the world was part of the experience.
The more helpful and familiar community which came from the lessened sense of anonymity and practically mandatory requirement that you had to interact with others on the server to thrive in this game.
The leveling experience, which, while long, arduous, and supremely time-consuming, actually felt like an achievement (before those were even things) and was both incredibly epic and nothing short of a magically euphoric experience most of the time; even when leveling alts, the process was still extremely time-consuming, but even more fun.

[ghostnet]

1. WoW was easier than Everquest.

2. WoW was liked by the media, Evercrack wasn't.

True story.

[vesseblah]

The more helpful and familiar community

About 1/5 of my realm during vanilla were beggars. People were constantly asking for gold to buy their level 40 mounts. It got so bad that I spent most of the time looking for better hiding spots inside the capital cities to get rid of those people. Community was shit in vanilla too, but for different reasons than today, and my ignore list was longest back then.

The leveling experience, which, while long, arduous, and supremely time-consuming, actually felt like an achievement (before those were even things) and was both incredibly epic and nothing short of a magically euphoric experience most of the time; even when leveling alts, the process was still extremely time-consuming, but even more fun.

Bullshit. WoW is two games, leveling and the "endgame", and leveling has always been secondary in importance for both players and Blizzard. Some people do enjoy the leveling part more and can have dozens of alts, but most aren't like that. Cataclysm was the first time in WoW's history when the leveling was fixed and tuned properly, and the 1-60 content is lot more fun to play now that there are actual stories in every area, not just disjointed kill 20 of this and 30 of that mobs.

[Serraphis]

People keep going on about how great Vanilla WoW was because of the "back to basics" type of feel. Then new MMOs come out and there's a friggin shit storm when it isn't released with one feature or another that folks have gotten so use to having. If a new MMO came out that didn't have say...quest objective tracking on map/mini map, id bet a testicle that the backlash would send the developers scrambling for cover.

It's been said a lot already but folks loved Vanila WoW because it was so new, hadn't been done 1000 times already. You had never seen the world before, you had never seen your spell effects or what they could do. Your gear was always new. It was a fresh experience. Even in new MMOs all these things are often just re-hashes of other games things.

[Idoru]

Oh man I just stumbled into a thread full of psychics and clairvoyants! Please give us your infinite wisdom oh great ones!

Yeah so anyway, vanilla wasnt just good because of the fact its "new" ive played a million new mmos and I didnt think they were amazing because of that, infact some of them I even hated. WoW had special qualities to it and im not gona bother going into detail because the OP more or less summed it up for me.

So please put away your crystal balls and mind reading skills so that I can read a post that isnt filled with total rubbish for once, if the phrase "rose tinted goggles" comes up once more ill just have to assume you started wow during cata because that stupid phrase is overused and rarely even used for the correct situation.

I could easily turn every argument the OP is using to show how great vanilla was into how bad is was. But I won't, because there's no point.
Vanilla WoW is gone, and it won't come back.

And no, I don't need a crystal ball, or to read minds. I played since day one, and raided every tier while it was current.

[Venziir]

Most of the people don't know how the intial success of World of Warcraft did happen. I would like to mention some points why the game did become so popular. Feel free to add more or discuss.

1) Warcraft 3 - most of the new players don't know what Warcraft 3 was or they knew, but they have never played it. Warcraft 3 was one of the greatest strategy games of all times and without doubt it was the best strategy game of its era. This game was revolutionary in every aspect, it had great graphics, gameplay, amazing music and sounds, great map editor and let's not forget the great story it had. I can say that the majority of vanilla WoW players(me included) played a lot of Warcraft 3. We all wanted to visit great places from game, explore them, do the quests and do it with your friends or even other random people. I can't even describe how if felt when I visited Ashenvale or Barrens - it was beyond amazing.

btw there was bonus campaing in Warcraft 3, where you played as Rexxar and did quests given to you by NPCs, while you were gaining levels and items. Does it sound familiar?

2) Leveling - people tend to hate on vanilla WoW leveling, but I have to disagree with them. Yes, leveling was tought, but we loved it. Mobs had high hp pools and were hiting for a lot, pulling more than two will most likely result into corpse run. You had to actually use your brain, develop a strategy and use all your class abilities effectivelly to level up quickly. Even AH was very important for quick leveling. Quests were very simple, but most of the time you felt like part of the world and you even felt like you are helping npcs - like in real RPG

3) Social aspect - As I mentioned, leveling was pretty hard and the best way to make it easier was to group up with other players. I like how friendly people during vanilla WoW were. You could just talk to random person and 95% of time he would respond in friendly way. I've mad countless friends in vanilla.

4) No addons - yep, there were almost no addons and it was great. You don't know where the quest mobs are? Ask friends, guild or even general chat. Try to do this in WotLK or Cata, you would get typical "google it, use wowhead" answer. Addons are taking the fun factor out of the game. Why are people using addon to help them with rotation or addons like DBM? That's just silly.

5) RPG aspect - Why am I mentioning this? Back in a day... No, seriously. Back in a day you had to carefully choose your class and stick with it. There were no alts, only some people who played a lot could afford this luxury. Your character was part of you, you were part of your character. It was great, because this game is RPG after all and not just some Dota or LoL game.

Why am I writing this? I just want to tell people that WoW wasn't always only about raiding, arena and daily quests. It was far more. Game had soul, it felts like RPG and leveling was important and possibly the best part of the game. The true mmorpg.

1) Most of the people I met, had never played Warcraft 3, had no idea about the lore and what not, each time I brought up some lore, people would just go "lol nerd"

2) Leveling wasn't tough, it just took ages, the graveyards were poorly placed, a lot of mobs bugged and certain areas didn't even have more than a handful of quests. You did NOT have to use your brain, I played enhancement shaman using a 1h + shield, spamming lightning bolt in agility gear. And I still got to 60 just as smooth as everyone else.

3) People were asshats back then too.

4) No addons? Really? There were both custom ui's and the coords addon, to name a few And people didn't say "Use wowhead", they said "Use thottbot n00b".

5) No one gave a rats ass about RP on a regular server then, just like they don't do now.

All-in-all, rose-tinted goggles and rubbish.

[Serraphis]

Oh man I just stumbled into a thread full of psychics and clairvoyants! Please give us your infinite wisdom oh great ones!

Yeah so anyway, vanilla wasnt just good because of the fact its "new" ive played a million new mmos and I didnt think they were amazing because of that, infact some of them I even hated. WoW had special qualities to it and im not gona bother going into detail because the OP more or less summed it up for me.

So please put away your crystal balls and mind reading skills so that I can read a post that isnt filled with total rubbish for once, if the phrase "rose tinted goggles" comes up once more ill just have to assume you started wow during cata because that stupid phrase is overused and rarely even used for the correct situation.

Its not that the GAME was new its more that the genre was new back then (relatively speaking).

[Armourboy]

Its not that the GAME was new its more that the genre was new back then (relatively speaking).

Thats it in a nut shell.

EQ was different from Ultima Online, SWG was different than both of those, FF Online was different than either of those, so on and so forth. The genre was so new and so unknown that companies and players had a chance to spread their wings and create, once WoW exploded that pretty much ended. Now I think you are starting to see it get back to that some because players are tired of WoW clones, and I think companies are discovering that WoW truely was an enigma.

Anyways to understand why Vanilla WoW was so popular, you definately do need to know where the genre came from. WoW for the most part took things from all of the MMO's out there, specifically EQ and streamlined it, oddly enough it did a better job of it than EQ2. They did for MMO's what Windows did for PC's, made it user friendly for the masses. If Vanilla WoW was released today it would get panned so hard, it was a different game from a different era.

I can't imagine what we all would of thought if Cata WoW had been released back then, our heads would of probably exploded. TBH most of the things people complain about in MMO's today are so minor compared to things in 2004. Back then you were just happy servers were stable, and that went for all games. No one worried about balance because it was horrible in all games. People didn't mind huge grinds because every MMO had them, and while we might have bitched about it some, people didn't get crazy because they had to wait for groups. Things in the entire industry have gotten better for the gamer, the only people that can't see that are people that can't move on.

Vanilla WoW should be remembered as the next great step in the genre, the evolution from infancy to adolescence. However, going back to being a baby again would seriously suck.

[Zelk]

I started the game in cataclysm, and honestly for the first 3-4 months whilst I leveled to 85 each of these points were valid. When your a noob, the game is hard, when you have no addons the game is harder, when you play something you haven't done before, ever, i.e quests they feel awesome. Trust me, WoW still has that RPG feeling, you just need to be new to the game.

[Deleted]

5) RPG aspect - Why am I mentioning this? Back in a day... No, seriously. Back in a day you had to carefully choose your class and stick with it. There were no alts, only some people who played a lot could afford this luxury. Your character was part of you, you were part of your character. It was great, because this game is RPG after all and not just some Dota or LoL game.

I really like that you point out this! Often forgotten but you are completely right. Like in your first point, the blame is much about the super nerfing of levelling. People's used to say they "were" a mage or a shaman and really care about the class. When you eventually got tired, there was 7 more to choose for an alt project, which was not something that wouldn't take a few days of faceroll levelling, but would be a long term side project.. Today no one cares and refer to "my mage" and "my shaman" because everyone have a max level toon of several, and often all classes.

That makes it bland.

Levelling used to be a large part of the game for a large part of the population. Now it is just a minor nuicance before you can reach max level and spend your time idling in Stormwind/Org waiting for the queue to pop.

May I ask, how many here think of Skyrim as all about end-game? Not many I would think. It is the leveling that is the pleasure. WoW used to be like that, before Blizzard lost their nerve and got the bizarre notion that all people wanted was to go on faceroll tours to watch end-game bosses die without effort.

[Armourboy]

I started the game in cataclysm, and honestly for the first 3-4 months whilst I leveled to 85 each of these points were valid. When your a noob, the game is hard, when you have no addons the game is harder, when you play something you haven't done before, ever, i.e quests they feel awesome. Trust me, WoW still has that RPG feeling, you just need to be new to the game.

Often wondered what WoW would be like if you just now started. The sheer size and things to do would be awesome. TBH I honestly think thats why WoW is so loved and hated at the same time. You have people that have been playing a better part of a decade mixed in with people who only just started. I would imagine this game would feel pretty dang spectacular to someone that is literally brand new to it.

[Deleted]

because it was new, everything else is just nostalgic gibberish

[Deleted]

Just move on with something else...
WoW is over for me, i just wait silently until the next revolution comes out.

Same. I just don't know how much longer I can wait.. might have to have a cheeky comeback for MoP.

[Primernova]

Same. I just don't know how much longer I can wait.. might have to have a cheeky comeback for MoP.

Try Aion again, it's 100% free and has that weird "new" alure alot of us look for. The best chance for a new MMO that's decent is GW2 so getting a good facefull of an NCsoft game, might be the ticket.