Reminders of what vanilla was like

[Gourmandise]

Yah I didn't really mean to be so negative, but now that I'm an adult I don't have the time to run in circles around Un'Goro anymore.

But you have the time to post walls of text everyone already knows all day online

[Azrile]

I think Int actually did increase skill gains. I remember having an int set for that.
Blasted lands void mobs was the place to do that until they fixed it though.

I think you needed 5.6% defense to not be crit. Crushing blows were pushed off the combat table by shield block.

Thottbot

Server transfers were only extremely rarely offered for very very high pop servers to one low pop server—you had two options, stay or go to the pre-determined server.

Yes, INT did increase skill gains for melee strikes... but rolling on a blue item for that purpose was pretty crappy. Hunters were notorious for the same thing.. everything was a ´hunter item´...

[Valerean]

I'm wondering if we'll see any of the old progress guilds return in some shape or form.

Most of them have probably moved on in life, but would be hilarious to see Death And Taxes / Nihilum / Curse etc trying to do it all again.

[Lollis]

Yes, INT did increase skill gains for melee strikes... but rolling on a blue item for that purpose was pretty crappy. Hunters were notorious for the same thing.. everything was a ´hunter item´...

At least for a hunter intellect was useful in ways other than just increasing weapon skill.

[Saucerian]

And I will happily relive all of it.

PS. Anyone seen Mankrik's wife?

[Slashnox]

I'm saving this what a great read. All these inconviniences I love, and it's making me so fucking hyped how hard it was

I was like 13 when I started playing vanilla and it took me 2 months just to get to level 60 and then I was too noob to do any hardcore stuff

[Azrile]

Well, there's zero probabilities they'd release a Classic server that was, in fact, a TBC server

Sorry, i think we talked past each other. When I said ´right before BC´ I meant right before the BC pre-patch.. not including the pre-patch, which as you say changed things significantly. What I mean is they will probably include all of the QoL things up to and even slightly past the Naxx 1.0 patch. They will probably stagger the raid releases, but I can´t imagine them going all the way back to launch day with QoL issues. It would be even more of a nightmare with griefers because now we know which things were fixed and if they ´unfix´ them it would be horrible. Ogrimmar had like 3 mailboxes total and now everyone would know how much they could grief by sitting on top of them while mounted.

[Deleted]

Got me thinking about some rogue stuff :

- Not only did you have all your weapon skills to level, you also had to level your Lockpicking and your Poisons. The footlockers scattered around the western parts of Wetlands are where I recall doing a lot of early leveling. And Poisons could be skilled up with a combination of vendor-bought reagents, plus herbs like Fadeleaf (for Vanishing Powder).
- Many of the skills weren't just learned at your trainer, you had to complete short quest chains. I'm fairly sure there was a lockpicking quest at the mill above Lakeridge, and possibly a poison one at the tower south-east of Sentinel Hill.
- Just "being a rogue" wasn't enough to use all of the abilities to their highest potential. Only characters who had taken the time to level up their craft, could do things like unlock the gate between Loch Modan and Searing Gorge, or the Shadowforge Lock in BRD, or the Service Entrance to Stratholme.
- You didn't have an inexhaustible supply of Throwing Weapons. I think you could equip a stack of 50 in your gear slot, but you'd have to re-stock at a vendor whenever you went through town. Reaching a high enough level to use the better grades of Thrown Weapon, was quite a milestone!

I had a rogue main from vanilla to when I quit in Cata, and this reminds me how great vanilla was. All these things that Blizzard removed as quality-of-life "improvements" actually contributed a huge deal to the uniqueness and enjoyment of the class. Somehow it just adds a great deal to the role playing to have to regularly get herbs to brew poisons to use on your weapons. It's not something you can explain or understand just by looking at the mechanic in isolation—which is probably why they ended up getting removed by developers that were micro-optimizing rather than looking at the experience as a whole.

[Azrile]

I had a rogue main from vanilla to when I quit in Cata, and this reminds me how great vanilla was. All these things that Blizzard removed as quality-of-life "improvements" actually contributed a huge deal to the uniqueness and enjoyment of the class. Somehow it just adds a great deal to the role playing to have to regularly get herbs to brew poisons to use on your weapons. It's not something you can explain or understand just by looking at the mechanic in isolation—which is probably why they ended up getting removed by developers that were micro-optimizing rather than looking at the experience as a whole.

I agree with this completely. Many classes had unique quest lines to get certain skills and being a hunter with pets was much more involved. I hate to include the removal of those things as QoL and confuse that term with stuff like the AH, Mailboxes. There is a blur of course, such as hunters needing to buy arrows. This, on the surface, seemed like a QoL issue that didn´t need to be made. But I was involved in multiple dungeon runs where Hunters ran out of ammo and it caused the group to fall apart. A lot of the early years were like that. They removed a lot of personal responsibility from players because players who weren´t responsible ended up screwing with the gameplay of 4 other people.

[Deleted]

Blackrock Depths, although my favorite dungeon, was the most complicated and maze-like dungeon the game ever had. And you also had to have a key that you somehow had to know that the starting quest for was to die and talk to a dead dwarf you could only see as a spirit.

that's only a problem if you never wipe in BRD, otherwise you'll see the dwarf when running back to the instance

[Vintersol]

Me and my wife had done the escort part of the onyxia quest line as a duo. She was a holy priest, i played my pally as retribution. It was challenging and we wiped several times but after we had it done, it was like killing a raidboss. We had no raidgear at that time.

[Deleted]

But I was involved in multiple dungeon runs where Hunters ran out of ammo and it caused the group to fall apart.

Happened to me too, which is why I started often carrying hunter ammo as a rogue.

They removed a lot of personal responsibility from players because players who weren´t responsible ended up screwing with the gameplay of 4 other people.

Which is something I can't wait to get back in WoW Classic. In a multiplayer game you need to have group members rely on each other—in good and in bad. And that means one person can screw up the whole group, but also that another person can save the group from a screwup (as a rogue I was always prepared to blind a mob that got loose and ran for the healer, for example).

[Shaderas]

Eh I played EverQuest to 60 at the beginning and then to 70 in Kunark expansion. WoW vanilla doesn't compare

[Izilar]

Current WoW isn't hard. Addons tell you exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. The game plays itself for you. Look at the thousands of guilds that complete the 'hardest' mythic content. Like 20 guilds did Naxx 40. Oh, but it was so much easier! You know who says that? Someone who never experienced it.

Hello, my guild got several top 10 world kills during vanilla and fully cleared naxx40 when it was current.

It was not hard, today's raids are way harder.

/thread

[Deleted]

I'm honestly expecting Blizzard to do some quality of life tweaks for Vanilla. Like, mounting in UC, no debuff caps and obviously a lot of bug fixes.

[Coffeh]

Hello, my guild got several top 10 world kills during vanilla and fully cleared naxx40 when it was current.

It was not hard, today's raids are way harder.

/thread

My guild cleared Naxx 40 too. But my new guild got a bunch of top 5 world kills in Legion...all while playing on naked characters, one-handed, while doing our taxes with the other hand. It's so much easier now by comparison.

/thread

[Fixxit the Gnome]

Ah, Thottbot. Those were the times.

[unbound]

Edit: To anyone that did not play vanilla, the most important things:
#1: Every class had one viable spec for raiding. (There were some exceptions.) For all hybrids, it was healing (and for priests holy specifically). For warriors it was tanking, and for DPS, it was whatever spec did no DoTs (there was a 16 debuff limit on all bosses). Items for other roles didn't exist.

#2: Everything took WAY longer. Now players can go from character creation -> Normal Tomb clear in about 100 hours (no heirlooms). In vanilla hitting max level was in the 250-300 hour range. I personally spent another 100 hours gearing for Molten Core, although with guild carries getting gear could have been much easier. Also because you could and were expected to drink a potion every two minutes while raiding, the farming requirements to be prepared for raid time were MUCH higher.

#3: The gold cost of switching specs was pretty prohibitive. Also, +healing and +damage items were separate so even really geared healers had to farm materials in holy spec doing very little damage.

#4: There were no server transfers, and even some fairly populated servers had no raiding guilds capable of doing AQ40 and especially Naxx. But if a raid guild with times that worked for you wasn't available, you either didn't raid or you sunk another 200-300 hours leveling a toon on another server. Meet someone in real-life you wanted to play with? Same thing. I would be very surprised if the retro servers don't allow server transfers, as many, many people probably quit the game because of issues like this.

#5: Class-specific changes, see the section I'm writing on that.

rofl...I know some people where rose-colored glasses for the past, but you might want to take off your brown-colored glasses.

#1 wasn't actually true most of the time. Yeah, I've been there and done that. When you were gathering 40 people for a raid, you weren't discounting people arbitrarily.

#2 is a reason to be happy about vanilla, not be upset by it. Today, it is a meaningless grind designed. Leveling used to be part of the adventure.

#3 is not a negative in my opinion.

#4 seems like you are arguing for the insane fees Blizz charges.

Sorry, but most of what you've written is so far twisted that it really doesn't match the reality of the game. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Was it as bad as you paint it? Absolutely not.

[Jaronicity]

I'd miss Cloak of Skill haha too much and the old iteration of Feint was garbage and unused. Leveling lockpicking was also something that was a thing back then, too.

[Shibito]

Right, so you were in one of the 23 guilds in the world who managed to clear Naxx? Because for most it was just a breeze?

Thats due to tbc coming out soon after naxx so people stopped raiding, if tbc had been later way more would have cleared it.