Features and QoL changes NOT in Classic

[A dot Ham]

Depends on how deep you want to dive in that "pure vanilla experience":
* no raid-wide Palading buffs
* no raid-wide Warlock stuff
* no contemporary addons
* no maps (good luck running BRD/BRS)
* no cross realm BG
* useless specs/classes/talents
* no linked AH
* garbage zones
* no battlemasters (to queue for BG)
* no meeting stones

1.7 added battlemasters
1.3 added meeting stones

Also there was a class revamp with almost every patch. Subsequent content patches included (sometimes as they continue to) class changes. Meaning you can't have BWL without class changes... you can't have AQ without class changes... you can't have Naxx without class changes.

It would be really nice if Blizzard just gave us an idea of how they mean to implement so we can put an end to speculation.

[Deleted]

@Maudib: the token bug was ingame for 6 ids and only in mc/BWL. Content that was made obsolete with the changes to the pvp system. So it was really minor.

Vers gear is actually Good for tanks. Raging about that is like raging about +def as arms in classic. The top mythic+ players have runspeed ans avoidance sets. Yes, it is a real grind just like my 102 brd runs to get the trinket. The grind in classic was real and legion is similiar. Classic reps are replaced by ap and the bis drops by tf/WF. Legion is the closest expansion to classic we ever had in terms of grinding.

And please tell me how the journal told you about singularity and gateways on kj. It simply lists all spells with useless tips like pick up adds or dont die to cast x. You needed one pull in classic to know about cleaves and spells. Journal doesnt help on raid comp, positioning,ability and cooldown timers, defcd usage. That is still trial and error.

Frostmages in classic had the same addon. Was called frostbolt.

Edit: i dont get how the legion grind should be that bad when it mimics classic. But on the other hand i dont get how people are looking forward to walk 10 minutes to change questzones beider Level 40

[Very Tired]

Anyone who rolled need on BoE gear had it automatically soulbound when it was added to their backpack.


Though it added to the game far after classic wow, it's one of those things I have to wonder if people would want in the game.

[Triptych]

The quest tracking was far more limited and crude - no 'area outline' on the minimap showing where the target creatures are located, no sparkly outline for quest goals. No sparkles on regular profession nodes either, come to that.

Reading the (scrolling!) quest text and carefully exploring your environment, and/or communicating with other players in chat, was the way you tracked down your goals.

[Simca]

It's not a lie. Sorry to burst your epeen bubble.

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addon...dvanced-macros
https://wowlazymacros.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPI49JAMxEI

If your issue with the game is how easy it is and you think that reverting to Classic will increase the amount of skill required because you have to decurse or cleanse poison or whatever, then you may end up being very wrong depending on how strictly Blizzard adheres to 'Classic'.

If the addons are in a pre-2.0 state where they are allowed to make smart decisions, addons will be made to automate playing almost any class entirely via 1 button, including cleansing, CC (on specified targets), defensive cooldowns, and all of the other actions you think require skill.

In any case, I would argue that Legion fights are more difficult than Vanilla fights purely because of encounter design, at least early on. Naxxramas had started to change this, but MC and BWL had an extremely low number of boss mechanics.

[Triptych]

Itemlevel has always existed. It just didn't mean as much because gear was usually statted so badly that an item having 10% more stats than another didn't matter when the higher itemlevel item could have it all going to intellect or spirit as a melee (for example).

Not to mention effects of all kinds were not standardized at all (the values were chosen almost at whim), so there were lots of imbalances there as well. Additionally, percent stat increases, like % Crit Chance, were not properly weighted against itemlevel either (they were heavily undervalued).

Still, if you think modern classic servers won't have people spewing garbage about ilvl requirements, you're in for a surprise. They'll be morons to do it (for the reasons outlined above), but there are always people to play the fool.

I may be mis-remembering this ... but i-lvl wasn't originally displayed in the tooltip, was it? It was something that Blizzard added later. The value was always there "behind the scenes", and add-ons could access that data and use it --- such as the infamous Gearscore add-on --- but the majority of players were blissfully ignorant of item level for the first couple of expansions.

[zephid]

I want to put together a comprehensive list of all the Features and Quality of Life changes that WoW has seen over the last 13 years, that technically a pure Classic (Vanilla) server would not have.

Personally I am on the side of keeping Classic as authentic a possible, but there are a few things I was reminded of that I took for granted!

No Barborshop
No Name / Race / Faction Change
No Mini-map Tracking
No Deathknights / Monks / DemonHunters
No Draeni / Bloodelfs / Worgen / Goblins / Pandas
No LFD
No LFR
No raid-wide Paladin buffs
No raid-wide Warlock stuff
No contemporary addons
No Instance Maps (good luck running BRD/BRS)
No Realm linked AH (Faction based)
No Instance Summoning Stones
No AoE Looting
No Instance Re-spawn
No Guild Banks
No Regent Bank
No Flying Mounts
No Pet / Toy / Mount collections
No Transmogrification
No Void Storage
No Mage Tables
No Feasts
No Bloodlust / Heroisum
1 hour Hearthstones
Buff Regents
15 min Raid Buffs
Mana Per 5 Seconds Regen
Raid Instance Locks
Meeting Stone Queuing
Weapon Skill
Smaller Item Stacks (20)

I will continue to add to the list as people post more.

I played without all that stuff back in vanilla, I can do it again.

[ro9ue]

Ammo.

Ranged slots for lots of classes.

Poisons. Vanishing Powder.

Specific Profession trainers only taught you things up to a certain point, you had to go to higher level trainers.

Some abilities needed to be unlocked from a quest.

Hunter pets had to be fed and you had to carry food to maintain their happiness.

No "Dual Specialization". Couldn't just easy swap to a new spec, had to go back to town and unlearn your spec by paying exponentially more and more gold.

Can't get off a Flight Path early if you accidentally click the wrong one.

Couldn't talk to guards to find places.

No achievements at all.

No transmog. Whatever shti armor you had on, you had to rock.

[Danny]

3 seconds cast on mounts (taking slots in bags), and you were dismounted when swimming.

Until 3.1, Ulduar.

[Deleted]

Depends on how deep you want to dive in that "pure vanilla experience":
* no raid-wide Palading buffs
* no raid-wide Warlock stuff
* no contemporary addons
* no maps (good luck running BRD/BRS)
* no cross realm BG
* useless specs/classes/talents
* no linked AH
* garbage zones
* no battlemasters (to queue for BG)
* no meeting stones

dont forget:
* no que for all BG
* no Quests past 50
* no chat spam limit
* still holes in the map
* no connected flight paths ( yes u have to manualy fly to each note on the path one by one by one by one)

[Vynny]

Warlocks have to keep a stock of soul shards and hunters have to carry around arrows/ammo

[Deleted]

I played without all that stuff back in vanilla, I can do it again.

but why would you want to do it again?

[Mormolyce]

The old raid lockout system. Where if your pug killed one boss and then disbanded, it was basically fuck you for the week, you had to wait for the next instance reset.

- - - Updated - - -

1.7 added battlemasters
1.3 added meeting stones

Which patch turned meeting stones into summoning stones though? Didn't they originally just put you in a chat channel or something?

[zephid]

but why would you want to do it again?

Because I enjoyed Vanilla more than I've enjoyed any expansion after it. Not to mention that I thought that some of those changes listed in the OP actually made the game worse. I wasn't a fan of flying when it was introduced in TBC. I didn't like the fact that they introduced the LFD tool, because it ultimately killed off any kind of server community. etc. A lot of the changes that was made to WoW after Vanilla made the game worse, imo. Of course not every change was a bad one, far from it, I will miss raid wide buffs. I will miss mage tables (i still remember making water for the raid, 2 bottles at the time), and I will miss guildbanks, but that's pretty much it, at least of the features mentioned in the OP.

[bash the fash]

Idk how much of a 'quality of life' issue not being broke is, but if you'd consider it one, I'd put it on there.

While mounts were available at 40, it was veeeery unlikely you'd actually get one at 40 unless you got lucky with BOE drops, had a high-level friend, or a high-level alt. Training cost money; flight paths cost money (as in multiple silver per path, which was a lot, considering you'd be scrounging every silver you could). Food and water cost money (and you needed them), vendored mats for crafts cost money.

A high-level friend paid for almost half the cost of my first character's mount; when I hit 60 on my first character I had a whopping 90g to my name, which was more than a lot of other fresh, first-time 60s I knew.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, as a quick note - the idea of comparing the duration of 'world first' kills and competitive PvE now to vanilla is silly. In vanilla there were hardcore raiders, but raiding was not practically an esport the way it is now, and the playerbase was much smaller. As the playerbase grows, you get more and more skilled people until the best of the best in the world are clearing stuff in ridiculous amounts of time.

It's sorta like the difference between baseball in the 1910s and baseball today - back then leagues were small, player pools were small, people didn't grow up and train specifically to be good at baseball, as opposed to today where so many people love baseball and grow up wanting to play it and it's such a financially lucrative venture that you have the absolute peak best-of-the-best players in the world, who skill-wise blows an old-timey baseball player out of the water.

The same thing happened to WoW raiding.

[Maudib]

but why would you want to do it again?

Because the game was better for it. More isn't always better, easier isn't always the better route. So much has been taken from the game there is hardly anything but a 12 hour leveling spree to max... then grinding dungeons and raids. Everything else is gone form the game making BEING in the world worthwhile.

Blizz knew this and thought maybe they could get away with a lobby (called Garrisons) for you to wait in until a queue popped..

[bash the fash]

Few other notes.

The idea that 'rotations' were more complex in vanilla is absolutely laughable. I play sub rogue on retail which is many, many times more complex than anything any class dealt with in vanilla. The most complex you'd get in vanilla was clunky timing mechanics for things like hunters not wanting to clip auto-shots with abilities. Which is more irritating than it is fun.

People didn't really even talk about 'rotations' or anything like that in vanilla (they probably did in the hardcore high-end groups, but it wasn't like.. a big topic of discussion among average raid groups). You had your abilities, and you kinda used the ones your talents made better, in a sequence that kinda made sense. The explosion of minmaxing wasn't something every average common idiot WoW player did until mid-late BC.

And yes, DBM and addons like it existed in vanilla. Threat meters, UIs for raids/healing, and boss timers were a big thing in vanilla. And yes, most average raid groups required that you had them installed. This idea that nobody used raid boss mods in vanilla is hilarious and is like.. #1 indicator that somebody never actually played seriously in vanilla.

[Deleted]

Because the game was better for it. More isn't always better, easier isn't always the better route. So much has been taken from the game there is hardly anything but a 12 hour leveling spree to max... then grinding dungeons and raids. Everything else is gone form the game making BEING in the world worthwhile.

Blizz knew this and thought maybe they could get away with a lobby (called Garrisons) for you to wait in until a queue popped..

your opinion, in my opinion all of the bloat crap we had to do for no reason was a great big waste of my life.

[Maudib]

Which is why you can go play current WoW and stop posting in a Classic WoW forum? Just sayin'

[Dhrizzle]

wasn't gadgetzan AH server wide?

Gadgetzan, Booty Bay and Winterspring all had cross-factin AHs, which is why warlocks questing in STV, Tanaris and Winterspring would often get whispers for summons, usually from low level characters that I assume are trying to use the AH to transfer gold across.

Speaking of Warlocks,

The warlock had to summon each individual with help from two people, each time cost a shard.
Healthstones had to be made and traded one by one, each one cost a shard.
Shards were actual items that took up bag-space, to get a shard you had to kill a mob that granted XP whilst channeling Drain Soul.
Doomguard needed 4 other players to summon, killed one of those people and was a hostile mob until you enslaved it.