Vanilla players 2005 vs 2017

[Escepticus]

AoE farmimg was super gear heavy in vanilla. I have no clue at what for a cheap private you have played, but on real vanilla it was absolutely impossible to pull 20 mobs on lowlevel. Even with lower ranks your cheap green gear would not have enough mana. But the biggest impact would have the miss and resist chance of your spells. Maybe you will remeber my words if the vanilla legacy comes real in several years

No, I was doing it (not exactly 20, ok, but 10, 12, etc.) at level 20ish. If you had the timing right, the "tempo", you could do it. This monster AEO was the reason I changed class to Mage back in the day (2005). This video was the Bible of Frost Mages in Vanilla:

[judgementofantonidas]

Hi I am wondering this thing for a loooong time: How would you play Vanilla if it reset/you could travel in time with current knowledge(only applies to WOW!)/play on some "legacy" legit Blizz server - something like Runescape hc super non casual servers which name i forgot? I sometimes read/watch things from prospective and i always wanted to know if it still would be: warriors: tanks only (dps later)/shamans: resto ftw/Balance druid? WAT? Or our current knowledge of things, micro management and other shit would change it and we would discover some pretty sweet specs or combinations of classes.

originally a clicker. so yeah just having keybinds, mouseovers, etc would be a massive advantage.

[Deleted]

As a solo player in vanilla, you were locked out of raids, a handful of dungeons and a few level 50+ elite areas... that is about all I can think of - which was probably only 10%-15% of the game at the time. The game was very solo friendly if you had any patience at all.

sorry boi. You were locked out of all raids, all dungeons and all elite quests. Seems like you have played at a very cheap adjusted private server.

Without group play during the leveling phase (to make elite quests / dungeon quests) you would barely hit level cap. But once you have reached level cap, there was absolute zero content for solo play. Dungeons, Endgame Quest Chains, Raids, PvP, Reputation grinds, Profession Formulas - everything was bound to group content. There was absolutely zero character development / lore / whatever without setting a foot in group content. Under normal circumstances (like normal gear for the specific content) there wasnt a single dungeon which you could clear on your own, not even the first elite npc in the dungeon. Even in Full T3 it was nearly impossible to solo clear level 50+ dungeons.

From todays perspective a big part of the pve content is more solo-play than group-play since the implementation of the "finder"-tool. You can completely anonymous join LFR/Normal/Heroic raids or normal/heroic/mythic dungeons without any interaction with other people. Just click a few buttons and maybe write a line. You can just drop your computer off during the run. no one cares. You will replaced and you wont get any consequences. You can successfully raid and run dungeons whenever you want without being a member of a guild. This is absolutely unimaginable in vanilla. No guild = no raid. No social competence/behavior = hard times for you on the server. Leaving dungeons/raids without any response/reason/apology a few times in a row = black listed. Ninjalooter = you can delete your character.

[Dangg]

Well that was because you didn't have an addon telling you to move. If you tried to runt through Nighthold mythic without DBM enabled I'm sure it wouldn't be a smooth run.

'There were no ADDONS in Classic' is the dumbest MMO champ lie around.

[judgementofantonidas]

You mean back to:

1) 5-minute single-target blessings
2) first mount at 40
3) old talent trees
4) old gear design (agi/int on plate armor)
5) old leveling speed
6) paladins/shamans being faction specific
7) several classes being pigeon-holed into specific specs because others were useless


With todays knowledge about the game and without current QoL improvements ?
.......

I would unsub so fast my keyboard would catch on fire.

Been playing since classic, through all expansions aswell. Been raiding most of the raids when they were current content (apart from Naxxramas in classic).
I would hate going back to those times without current improvements.

Now that you listed all the GOOD points to the original game it makes it sound much better.

Horde should not have paladins. period. They are good and serve the light. Horde does not. Shamans on the other hand should not be locked to one faction. There was never any logical reason to it.

[Dahij]

Just No.

Bwl was released 12.July 2005 - Nef was killed WF 26.sept 2005 by <Drama>,Shattered Hand-US

Im guessing nef took so long because of onyxia cloaks

[Pterodactylus]

I'd be stuck looting some corpse for 5 days.

[Deleted]

No, I was doing it (not exactly 20, ok, but 10, 12, etc.) at level 20ish. If you had the timing right, the "tempo", you could do it. This monster AEO was the reason I changed class to Mage back in the day (2005). This video was the Bible of Frost Mages in Vanilla:

First of all this video is made in 2007 (burning crusade). Its not comparable with the earlier state of vanilla (to many class changes even during vanilla). I know exactly how to AoE farm with a frost mage. I have solo-farmed thousands of the silithid-parts for the aq opening (I have farmed the silithids around the pillar, south of cenarion hold). I will never forget my personal AoE record of 34 of those silithid-flys (nearly the whole spawn at the pillar) without getting a hit once. I know exaclty how hard the miss/resist chance is without high hit chances. I tried the same farm style to push an additional mage - without good success. It was barely doable, mortality rate way to high and very hard downtime.

[Wingspan]

sorry boi. You were locked out of all raids, all dungeons and all elite quests. Seems like you have played at a very cheap adjusted private server.

You quoted it but I don't think you understood it.

I said "raids"... not "some raids", so yes, you were locked out of all raids.

You were absolutely NOT locked out of all dungeons however, because you would eventually out-level most of them, so you could easily solo anything level 35 or less and with well chosen gear, enchants, and class you could push that to the lower/mid 40's for dungeons. You could not (obviously) do them at the intended level, but as a solo player that was not exactly a big deal (and sometimes even a pretty good challenge).


Likewise, Elite quests were variable, but in general a 60 could do any of them in any zone up until they started requiring about level 50+. Then it was kind of hit and miss based on mob level and spawn density.


I played Vanilla primarily as a quester doing these very things and I have never even logged on to a private server (because I can afford $15 a month).

Without group play during the leveling phase (to make elite quests / dungeon quests) you would barely hit level cap.

When BC first launched, I had seven characters at 60 and one at 54. At that point, I had done a sum-total of 1 raid (which was a carry) and 2 dungeons at the intended level... and I randomly grouped maybe 3 or 4 times across the 8 characters to do some Elite quests.

Sure, doing so little group content really slowed things down, but I was not opposed to a bit of grinding, so it did not matter much. I definitely killed a lot for the Timbermaw and Undead in WPL (although I cant remember if those were before or after level 60).

But once you have reached level cap, there was absolute zero content for solo play. Dungeons, Endgame Quest Chains, Raids, PvP, Reputation grinds, Profession Formulas - everything was bound to group content. There was absolutely zero character development / lore / whatever without setting a foot in group content. Under normal circumstances (like normal gear for the specific content) there wasnt a single dungeon which you could clear on your own, not even the first elite npc in the dungeon. Even in Full T3 it was nearly impossible to solo clear level 50+ dungeons.

As I said above, only about 1/3 of the dungeons were 50+ so you did not miss a huge amount of material there.

As a solo player at 60 it became about grinds and alts. Just getting an Epic mount was a huge grind to itself, so that kept you busy for a while. If you wanted Reputation patterns, there were a bunch locked behind mob grinding in several zones. Later, when Silithus opened up, so did more grinding. If I started to get bored of a grind, I would switch over to a new class/race combo and see some quests that were not available to me before and enjoy a whole new style of play (usually).

Most of the best profession patterns were locked behind group play, but a lot of them were available in the auction house, so you did not miss out on much. And you definitely did not need to use group play to max out your professions (unless you had a weak class chosen as your Enchanter, because you had to back-door a reasonably high level dungeon).


In the grand scope of all of the available content, you were really not missing out on all that much as a solo player in Vanilla. And if you were the type that could not or would not ever raid (due to whatever reasons) then you missed out on extremely little.

From todays perspective a big part of the pve content is more solo-play than group-play since the implementation of the "finder"-tool. You can completely anonymous join LFR/Normal/Heroic raids or normal/heroic/mythic dungeons without any interaction with other people. Just click a few buttons and maybe write a line. You can just drop your computer off during the run.

This is still group play. It might not be what you want out of group play, but it is still group play.

no one cares. You will replaced and you wont get any consequences. You can successfully raid and run dungeons whenever you want without being a member of a guild. This is absolutely unimaginable in vanilla. No guild = no raid.

I don't play computer games in the hopes that someone will care about me... and I don't see a single thing wrong with not being required to be in a clique to see content. Having those cliques in place were a big part of the reason we even have things like LFR now.

No social competence/behavior = hard times for you on the server. Leaving dungeons/raids without any response/reason/apology a few times in a row = black listed. Ninjalooter = you can delete your character.

There were handfuls of people that paid any kind of attention to server rep. And unfortunately, some socially-stunted-but-skilled players could have effectively been a social disease as long as they gave their guild better odds at beating a boss. It was very (socially) unhealthy to have one of these asshats in a guild, but they got away with it far too often. Making guilds less dependent on these types of people was an extremely good side-effect of the changes to difficulty.

[Deleted]

No, I was doing it (not exactly 20, ok, but 10, 12, etc.) at level 20ish. If you had the timing right, the "tempo", you could do it. This monster AEO was the reason I changed class to Mage back in the day (2005). This video was the Bible of Frost Mages in Vanilla:

Most of the time it didn't work out like that. You would get stragglers,respawns or runners screwing things up assuming you had good enough gear to it properly but then it was almost not worth it to AOE like that in the first place.

Of course there wasn't an AOE cap like they had later in WoW but it was offset by the fact vanilla mages sucked and you would be sitting around making water or drinking it as much time as you were playing.

[Vrothgar]

Last one i think: old Naxx in 2017 would be completed by more % of players (Kel'thuzad kill) or maybe completed earlier? Current knowledge, playerbase,addons,trihard raiderz etc.

[Deleted]

Game was terrible in the first year, but the community was a lot of fun.

I think it all comes down to what you value more: gameplay or the people.

This. Community was much better but gameplay was objectively worse. Like someone already mentioned there was pretty much no way into end-game if you started late either.

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'There were no ADDONS in Classic' is the dumbest MMO champ lie around.

Yup. DBM and healbots as well as decursive all came out when Onyxia/MC was the only raid content available.

[Deleted]

Classic WoW was a mess, and I would not play it. Only reason WoW felt so great back then was the sense of exploration, and the sense of something new and fresh.

you obviously didnt raid, or were not there.
vanilla was superb if you raided or did instances.
i loved healing BWL, MC, AQ 20, AQ 40, ZG, onixia, UBRS, DM, scarlet monastry, strath (both sides), scholo.
wow today isnt a patch on what it used to be & no, im not looking at things through rose coloured glasses.
its just the way it was if you were in a great guild, with likeminded raiders, dungeoneers.

[Deleted]

If my memory of the game is also erased and we go back to 2000s in terms of games available yeah then maybe. Otherwise fuck no

[Deleted]

This kinda remembers me of the original barrens. It was easily one of the worst designed zones in the game, yet it was mandatory for horde to go there at some point. Still, many people say that they have their best memories from this zone, though mainly because of the community.

Barrens was a well designed zone imo. Had a nice progression, quite a bit of running but it was ok. Desolace was an awful zone though.

[Eleccybubb]

Barrens was a well designed zone imo. Had a nice progression, quite a bit of running but it was ok. Desolace was an awful zone though.

No an awful zone was Azshara. It literally launched unfinished.

[Deleted]

Barrens was a well designed zone imo. Had a nice progression, quite a bit of running but it was ok. Desolace was an awful zone though.

Desolace had a TON of feels though.
Those shattered ruins, overran by centaurs and demons. Plus that epic centaur quest, and one of the most beautiful dungeon ever created at least from an aesthetic point of view.
It wasn't that bad. I have good memories of it.

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No an awful zone was Azshara. It literally launched unfinished.

I disagree with that too ahah. I always considered azshara a wild, untamed zone exactly because let's face it... there was fuck all to do. And that huge Furbolg gate? Ah come on... fascinating.

[Eleccybubb]

Desolace had a TON of feels though.
Those shattered ruins, overran by centaurs and demons. Plus that epic centaur quest, and one of the most beautiful dungeon ever created at least from an aesthetic point of view.
It wasn't that bad. I have good memories of it.

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I disagree with that too ahah. I always considered azshara a wild, untamed zone exactly because let's face it... there was fuck all to do. And that huge Furbolg gate? Ah come on... fascinating.

But the zone really was launched unfinished. It was supposed to be a high level questing zone and there was barely anything there until they added the dragons in. Silithus had more worth than it in terms of questing. I'm not speaking from an aesthetic point of view either.

A lot of content in Vanilla specifically everything upto 1.5 was intended to be in at launch. So Dire Maul, Maraudon and Battlegrounds being the big pieces.

[Deleted]

But the zone really was launched unfinished. It was supposed to be a high level questing zone and there was barely anything there until they added the dragons in. Silithus had more worth than it in terms of questing. I'm not speaking from an aesthetic point of view either.

Oh yeah no totally agree with you on that. I still loved that wild... kind of untamed feeling of.... not having any serious horde presence in it

[Eleccybubb]

Oh yeah no totally agree with you on that. I still loved that wild... kind of untamed feeling of.... not having any serious horde presence in it

Well forgive me but I like my zones both pretty and finished.