Why would people rather have a Vanilla server than a WotlK server?

[Chrno]

we have to start somewhere don't we?
personally i'd never play a wotlk server

[Vaelorian]

WOTLK was great. But WOTLK suffers indeed from the current problems we have.
- flight (don't start)
- LFG-tool
- easy mode dungeons and too few still but still far better then later expansions
- stupid entry raid (rehashed and simplified Naxx)

The good sides of WOTLK were:
- great initial leveling
- great music (but Vanilla has great music too, some of which are no longer in the game)
- classes were more exciting to play and better suited for raiding (nevermind class balance for pvp)
- huge open world battleground with warmachines
- the lore was a continuation of WC III TFT (Vanilla and TBC were not)
- ToC dailies were fun imo and had nice rewards
- 10 man became available and while I myself didn't like it for the sake of my 25 man guild in terms of recruitment, I liked to do 10 mans on my offdays from raiding - easier to (per)form

But ultimately I rather have engaging - social - more meaningful content. Vanilla and TBC gave that. Especially Vanilla. And sure it wasn't THAT bad yet in WOTLK. But it was not as good as in Vanilla.

[Rafoel]

Many reasons:

1) WotLK was 8 years ago, Vanilla was 12 years ago. WotLK content is 2 times fresher than vanilla content.
2) WotLK introduced many features criticised by vanilla fans. Group Finder. Removal of weapon skills. 10-man raids. etc. etc.
3) First raid tier was Naxxramas, same instance as last tier of vanilla. Obviously people prefer the original. Ulduar was run over and over again by people farming the countless achievments (Ulduar has the highest amount of achievments of all instances) and people aren't interested in doing it again. ToC requires no comment. And ICC was farmed over and over again by most due to long break before Cata. Long story short, WotLK raids dont seem as interesting as vanilla raids.
4) Dungeons in WotLK were a faceroll. Nobody gest excited about faceroll.
5) Not to mention some vanilla dungeons and raids were removed or re-made. Looking at you, Zul'Gurub and Scholomance. WotLK content is still available.

[tankbug]

Because most nostalgiaholics in here want to relive their happiest memories, which are from vanilla.

[Jeniwyn]

While there certainly are many, many players who thinks that TBC and WotLK was the best, I've always gotten the impression that the vanilla fans are quite a bit more fanatic about it. Just how it has always seemed to me, it might not be true.

Regardless, vanilla seems like the obvious place to start for something like this.

[QuiksLE]

But we gotta start somewhere. The idea is that we'd get vanilla, progress through patches in a blizzlike manner then launch a TBC server, etc etc.

What is the point of that?

The moment they would transition from Vanilla to TBC, people would start cryinig for "muh Vanilla feels"

[kaintk]

vanilla = no transmog, no lfd, long combat, long farming, no cash, no respec, etc etc.. people will really love that ?:P

[Daffan]

Because most nostalgiaholics in here want to relive their happiest memories, which are from vanilla.

I liked TBC pre-sunwell best

[Cæli]

Obviously because at the present time vanilla content is the only content not playable (zones and too many raids/dungeons)

Would not happen if they did a proper job of moving the old world somewhere else like in cavern of time or other ways like they did with the cataclysm blasted lands.

[ThunderTaco]

From the dialogue and the background story, the music, the atmosphere, villain and artwork. Everything fits perfectly. The gameplay was good and the community really was different in Wrath.

Yes and then they realized they fucked up because they weren't setting up anything for the long-term, they just used all the characters from WC3 (Illidan, KT, Vashj, LK). So they had to go back to previous Warcraft Lore to introduce new villains / threats and the vast majority of players at the time (myself included) didn't understand why we had to fight that big Deathwing dragon (we killed nefarian, now its father ? Was he there the whole time ? What happened to him ?) and suddenly people became less interested the game.

Naxx, ICC, Ulduar, TOC, the chopper, the mammoths, beautiful zones with amazing musical ambience and great quest lines. Wintergrasp was fun, VoA was a neat way to gear up, especially for alts.

Naxx was rehashed (granted, most people didn't see it in classic but it saved Blizzard a lot of time) and TOC was just 2 rooms without trashs and 5 bosses, just try to imagine what would happen if Blizzard pulled something like that again.

VoA was LFR, you grouped with random people, few good players carrying mostly afk people and everyone wanting to be done with that for the weak.

The accessibility ICC had was amazing, you could pug it and still down things because Ventrilo etc.

You can still enter raids now easily and down things.

I can honestly say I haven't even had half the amount of fun in the game as I did in wrath. Chain running dungeons back then was a blast. the 10 man raid was fun and manageable with a group of friends. It was a total blast. Pugs were amazing.

Class mechanics were a lot more fun, warriors in particular, stance dancing made them incredibly fun.

Subjectivity, opinions, tastes, etc etc

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The title of this thread should be "Do you want a blue unicorn or a green unicorn?" because there's no tangible possibility of either version of these Legacy realms happening.

Going to have to agree. At least not until we hear WoW is pretty much over. As in this is the last expansion officially announced sort of thing. Then after that.. sure.. milk some legacy sales / subs out of people. But it's going to be very unlikely the create content such as legacy servers to compete with current content. Ego, time, and desire just do seem to be in line to let it happen now.

[Vaelorian]

Many reasons:

1) WotLK was 8 years ago, Vanilla was 12 years ago. WotLK content is 2 times fresher than vanilla content.

Actually Vanilla is "fresher" in terms of "finding it new". WOTLK is still too close to find it fresh. But it depends on your meaning of fresh.

2) WotLK introduced many features criticised by vanilla fans. Group Finder. Removal of weapon skills. 10-man raids. etc. etc.

Indeed, though I doubt that people find the removal of weapon skillpoints bad. I remember it being cheered for that it was removed. Only people that cried about it were people that find removing anything = bad. They started about dumbing down etc, as if weaponskills had any relationship to dumbing things down.

3) First raid tier was Naxxramas, same instance as last tier of vanilla. Obviously people prefer the original. Ulduar was run over and over again by people farming the countless achievments (Ulduar has the highest amount of achievments of all instances) and people aren't interested in doing it again. ToC requires no comment. And ICC was farmed over and over again by most due to long break before Cata. Long story short, WotLK raids dont seem as interesting as vanilla raids.

Indeed

4) Dungeons in WotLK were a faceroll. Nobody gest excited about faceroll.

Indeed
But you do have people who like fastpaced dungeons, so they can end their suffering. They just don't like dungeons so they say, but I doubt they have any experience with brilliant teamwork in a harder dungeon with total strangers. Do you play for valor points? Or do you play for fun?

5) Not to mention some vanilla dungeons and raids were removed or re-made. Looking at you, Zul'Gurub and Scholomance. WotLK content is still available.

Deadmines. I do like the current one more. But I really miss those stacked packs and longer corridors.
Sunken Temple, some area's are closed off so you don't get lost.
Maraudon, same as sunken temple. (it is short as hell)
etc

[FuxieDK]

WotLK was the sweet spot. From pvp to pve, from hardcore to casual. Patch 3.3.5 was icing on the cake.

Shifting away from WotLK formula was a huge mistake, WotLK literally pleased everybody and that's why it had over 12 million subscribers, I don't remember disliking anything, it simply was the best.

From the dialogue and the background story, the music, the atmosphere, villain and artwork. Everything fits perfectly. The gameplay was good and the community really was different in Wrath. There was no LFR. No cross-realm zones.

Naxx, ICC, Ulduar, TOC, the chopper, the mammoths, beautiful zones with amazing musical ambience and great quest lines. Wintergrasp was fun, VoA was a neat way to gear up, especially for alts.

The accessibility ICC had was amazing, you could pug it and still down things because Ventrilo etc.

I can honestly say I haven't even had half the amount of fun in the game as I did in wrath. Chain running dungeons back then was a blast. the 10 man raid was fun and manageable with a group of friends. It was a total blast. Pugs were amazing.

Class mechanics were a lot more fun, warriors in particular, stance dancing made them incredibly fun.

There was a lot of class uniqueness, not everyone had interrupts, not everyone had dispel protection, unfortunately Blizzard ruined everything with their "Bring the Player Not the Class" philosophy.

WotLK was the worst expansion to date, worse than WoD.. It was the beginning of the end, as it broke the increase in subs..

[Sencha]

That's your opinion. I liked Vanilla and TBC better than WotLK.

Same here.

Wrath was the beginning of dev laziness (naxx recycling, ToC, crystalsong forest content scrapped, ...)

[HappyCola]

I'd like to play casually, which to me means dungeons/professions/world content, and vanilla was the best for that. Vanilla had tons of awesome dungeons with lots of variety, depth and epicness, and which could easily fill my time. WotLK dungeons were ok, but more of a side-game, and LFG made everything into a mindless mass pulling zerg fest. Vanilla had a huge world, while WotLK was a smaller island (although I like the environments).

[thilicen]

Why not have all, or a Vanilla server that progresses to WotLK over 5-6 years. With patch / progression as it would have happened 2004-2010.

When Cataclysm comes out, it would be customary to unsubscribe, as a sign of respect.

People would be bitching about a Vanilla server the second we hit 2.0.

[Deleted User Guy]

I'd rather see different realms setup for each expansion, rather than progressive servers. Maybe they'd work, I don't know.

[Rotted]

Its personal preference tbh.

I loved tbc, but never got to experience vanilla, except recently on nos. Wrath I was most active,

But wrath isn't what your making it out to be. Sure, it had the sub numbers, and it was glorious in some aspects. But during and just after wrath people considered it a massive failure. ToC was considered an abomination of a patch, ICC was welcomed with love but a year into it, people we're depressed to shit and wanted it to end.
Following wrath we had cataclysm which went back to TBC difficulty, and some groups were horrendous, thus the term wrath baby was born, hell at the time I even think the name wrath baby was banned from this site because of the abuse some people were getting

[HappyCola]

Why not have all, or a Vanilla server that progresses to WotLK over 5-6 years. With patch / progression as it would have happened 2004-2010.

I would prefer separate realms for Vanilla and TBC (maybe WotLK), with the ability to transfer to the next xpac after you reach some goal (max level, finishing the content, whatever).

[Kokolums]

Thats funny, because subs didn't actually drop off until a month or two into Cataclysm...

There was lag time involved in how LFG destroyed communities.

Without LFG, players are forced to interact and communities are built and friends lists get really long. Then LFG comes in and people don't need to make new friendships but the current ones still exist. Gradually, those friends built up in Vanilla and BC move on and are not replaced. The community slowly falls apart but it takes over a year or so. Subs hover at a plateau for a while but eventually begin a large decline in Cata.