Reasons why vanilla World of Warcraft was so popular.

[Kryos]

Reason #1: internet flatrates became common - before 2004 most had volume- and/or time-based internetrates. With flatrate the whole MMORPG concept worked for the masses.

[Armourboy]

Reason #1: internet flatrates became common - before 2004 most had volume- and/or time-based internetrates. With flatrate the whole MMORPG concept worked for the masses.

Well and broadband became widely accessible as well

[Skulli]

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.

Even with these listed limitations leveling is still a joke. I did it and i outleveled the zones very very fast. Half zone done and quests are turning grey. Mobs die in 2-3 spells and usually dont even reach you (caster).

[Ferocity]

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.
...
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.

You brought nice points in your posts, but same time missed few things.
Drastic changes to the very gamestyle don't have healthy effects on one game. E.g., I want unforgiving merciless PvP - I will go play UO, i want something grindy and munchkinicious - here we go Ragnarok, etc. - is a nice and healthy situation and choice.

But when gamestyle changes within game itself, that's where we start seeing all kind of abominations. Same UO had rapid decline after Age of Shadows (if I am not wrong) as it greatly changed the way game played. Same SWG had to shut down after heavy changes to game mechanics.

Same here. WoW was greatly changed, not expanded, changed into completely different gamestyle from what it was in Vanilla/TBC. It is not about "it was NEW, now it is 7 years old" - it's nonsence. Game was absolutely different in it's core, it is that people were playing one game, and then it was changed to almost entirely different genre. Those people who would be plague of Vanilla/TBC community and would be blacklisted on all servers/not accepted into decent guilds are now majority of players. Sure there some new players who like the way how game plays now and don't know how it was before or players who just don't bother and play just to kill time, but they are minority. What currently saves WoW is developers' name and popularity in media.

Result you can see in current WoW community, remove poison from WoW community and there will be almost no players left. WoW just started more enduring and strong than SWG/UO to somehow survive what was done to it.

We can only hope that Blizzard won't repeat these mistakes in their future games, though they still keep making them in WoW: those new talents and class changes in MoP is another overhaul of game mechanics instead of expanding, what killed SWG/UO slowly kills WoW.

[Bobthegoat]

There was actually better games than Warcraft 3 in its era. They were just underground / never advertised and hardly anyone knew / cared about them.

[Rukrow]

I just took a zeplin and fell to my dead.

[Deleted]

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.
.

This and only this in my opinion. The social aspect. Yes it was harder to find groups, but when you had been 60 for a while you had a pretty large friendslist of people you had done dungeons with and it wasnt that hard to get groups then. You allways played with people from your server, so bitching and ninjaing was less frequent. I miss this most from Vanilla and TBC. Ofcourse you can still do it, bu tpeople are so used with the LFG and people have starting to be socially lazy.

[Finnio]

vanilla was good and TBC and up until ulduar and including in wotlk this game was at its best , after that just got worse and worse until i finally quit 3 months ago .

[Deleted]

To be fair, vanilla wow wasn't THAT popular. Fractions of the playerbase enjoyed it.

[Armourboy]

You brought nice points in your posts, but same time missed few things.
Drastic changes to the very gamestyle don't have healthy effects on one game. E.g., I want unforgiving merciless PvP - I will go play UO, i want something grindy and munchkinicious - here we go Ragnarok, etc. - is a nice and healthy situation and choice.

But when gamestyle changes within game itself, that's where we start seeing all kind of abominations. Same UO had rapid decline after Age of Shadows (if I am not wrong) as it greatly changed the way game played. Same SWG had to shut down after heavy changes to game mechanics.

Same here. WoW was greatly changed, not expanded, changed into completely different gamestyle from what it was in Vanilla/TBC. It is not game suddenly becoming old for millions of people, it is that people were playing one game, and then it was changed to almost entirely different genre. Those people who would be plague of Vanilla/TBC community and would be blacklisted on all servers/not accepted into decent guilds are now majority of players. Sure there some new players who like the way how game plays now and don't know how it was before or players who just don't bother and play just to kill time, but they are minority. What currently saves WoW is developers' name and popularity in media.

It is not about "it was NEW, now it is 7 years old" - it's nonsence. Game was absolutely different in it's core. But after TBC it started faster and faster turn into some other game. Result you can see in current WoW community, remove poison from WoW community and there will be almost no players left. WoW just started more enduring and strong than SWG/UO to somehow survive what was done to it.

We can only hope that developers won't repeat these mistakes in their future games, though they still keep making them in WoW: those new talents and class changes in MoP is another overhaul of game mechanics instead of expanding, what killed SWG/UO slowly kills WoW.

Keep in mind though, where Blizzard has been smart is that they made their changes relatively slow. The game has definately evolved over time, some of it good, some of it not so good. Games like SWG and UO dropped so quickly because they made their changes literally over night, most people will not deal with that shock well.

The thing is though, WoW still has a lot of its original player base still going, and I think you would probably be surprised at how many of these changes were made for us, not just the new players. Lets face it, us old school guys are getting older, hell I'm 35. I don't have the time that I did in my 20's, heck even my early 30's, anymore. Long grinds now are like mountains, Raiding is something I generally can't do because of my work schedule, and sitting around for 45 minutes getting a group together is just a complete waste of my time now.

Don't get me wrong, I look back at the way things were and remember those times fondly. However, I no longer need MMO's to get my social fix, nor do I need them to fill huge amounts of time. Talking to my old SWG buddies, and my old WoW ones too, this seems to be what a lot of them are going through. Today we play MMO's to fill time, for me its really late at night because I work the night shift and there is nothing else really to do at those hours, for others its that couple of hours after the kids go to bed.

I think someone does need to make a new game that fills the same needs of what we did back then for the crowd that still like it that way, but the more I think about it most of the systems in WoW that are now considered " easy mode" or whatever are simply built for people to get the most done in the shortest amount of time. Blizzard has done a really good job moving with its fan base, and tbh I just don't think the majority of it anymore has the time to play it like we did back in Vanilla. Sure I will go on these long spurts of playing some times, but that is generally short lived, life pulls me back to quickly in anymore.

[SamR]

4) No addons - yep, there were almost no addons and it was great.

There were tons of addons in vanilla. They were just buggier. In fact, I use fewer addons now than I did in vanilla. Blizzard has incorporated a lot of them into the default UI so I don't need to use addons for a lot of the features I like now.

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.

You never spent time in the Barrens in vanilla, did you?

"Where is Mankrik's Wife?" was the sentence that spawned the celebrated art of WoW chat trolling.

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.

Lol. You obviously don't remember BigWigs. Have you ever seen the directional arrow addons that people raided Thaddius with in Naxx40? It was pretty funny.



To be honest, it sounds like you played vanilla as a bit of a oblivious new player. Doesn't sound like you raided and weren't around people who raided. That's why it was fun for you back then. Because you were a newbie exploring a new game.

[tylenol]

it was popular because it was new

It's "dying" because that is what games typical do when they've been around for nearly a decade

[Deleted]

Well I think that Vanilla offered much more than only farming for months same content and doing boring daily quests.. It was something more.. they were even some interesting events sometimes caused by bugs but people really enjoyed them. I've found some good old movie fromy my server on which I've been playing since early 2005 , I mean here Burning Legion EU. I remmember when I came from school and than entered wow and what I saw after logging was huge Lord Kazak killing everyone in SW. It was really funny when u saw some nearby evil gnomes dying from his shadow bolts ...
youtube.com/watch?v=C9vewx9HnAw
The second thing were raids on horde or alliance city.. People were preparing invasion on defensless alliance city, without guards with insance ammount of hp and damage what was in my opinion really great.. I mean here very good comunication and teamplay .. This video reminds me this period of Vanilla:
youtube.com/watch?v=jXuJGLWyqHI

[rakhakash]

Above all, it was a new experience, for most.

[Skulli]

Classic and partially TBC managed that i was playing 10+ hrs a day for some period of time. I had a good time with that game but i am "cured" of it now.
The paradigm change with WotLK was too big for me.

[Duskmourne]

Ultima Online was my first MMO and it was pure magic for me back then.

Nostalgia is mighty, and so are first experiences.

[Deleted]

To be fair, vanilla wow wasn't THAT popular. Fractions of the playerbase enjoyed it.

I certainly didn't enjoy it. I found it completely inferior to the other MMO I was playing at the time.

And if you look at subscription numbers, it was in fact the least popular of ALL of WoW's phases.

[kweeble]

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.

When I needed to know something during Vanilla, I used Thottbot, I didn't even bother asking people because most people really wouldn't answer it. Generally people weren't that nice. You must've been blind to reality back then.

Edit: Don't even get me started on the random Gnome Rogues with Fiery weapon enchants running around that didn't say a word to anyone, they'd simply duel you, destroy you, and run away all without saying a word. The whole world felt quiet to me. Sure general chat was used a bit more, but it's still used on popular realms in a few areas, but not every zone in Vanilla had general chat conversations.

[Armourboy]

When I needed to know something during Vanilla, I used Thottbot, I didn't even bother asking people because most people really wouldn't answer it. Generally people weren't that nice. You must've been blind to reality back then.

Edit: Don't even get me started on the random Gnome Rogues with Fiery weapon enchants running around that didn't say a word to anyone, they'd simply duel you, destroy you, and run away all without saying a word. The whole world felt quiet to me. Sure general chat was used a bit more, but it's still used on popular realms in a few areas, but not every zone in Vanilla had general chat conversations.

Chat part of it really depended on your server, ours was fairly active on Shattered Hand. Some of it was good, some of it bad but all in all not horrible. Towards the end of TBC is where I saw a lot of that change.

Yeah we had addons back them, but not nearly in the numbers or usefulness as today. It also really depends on what part of Vanilla you are referring to as well, by the end it was already getting pretty fleshed.

When I first started it was mainly CT Raid, Decursive ( which I personally never used because I felt it was cheating lol) and Cosmos for UI, by the time TBC hit you had things like Healbot, Bigwigs, Titanpanel, Fubar, Bagnon, and most of the more popular ones used over the years.

Thottbot was definately king then though, everyone I knew used it.

[vesseblah]

Yeah we had addons back them, but not nearly in the numbers or usefulness as today.

Decursive and Healbot basically played the game for you for dispelling and healing in raids. Back in vanilla addons were real play aids, now those are purely for information because of the limitations Blizzard has put in over the years.