How to know if someone played vanilla!

[Hypasonic]

when mages has to spec 5 points to get an instant arcane explosion
when hunters could FD and lay a trap due to them being out of combat
strat was a 15 man raid instance
when you had to walk/fly to diremaul as alliance

[Drithien]

When shadowpriests blackout was the gayest thing ever

Ohhhhh Take that back! Right now! Blackout was the most fun talent, ever! It was so random, and it could change a fight so drastically. It was close to being the definition of awesome! I still smile when thinking about all the rogues that tasted a bit of their poison.

On the point of the initial post, the four months-long adventure to level... 40. Levelling back then was the biggest part of the game for most. And even if someone wanted to rush to 60, chances are he would have a stroke in the meanwhile. But it was fun for me, because there were so many things to do! A unique racial campaign, Entire zones with neutral factions. Lots of things to explore. Running through dungeons for gear and XP. With some breaks for PVP to rack-up some honourable kills... and get ganked by twinks. In general that feeling of adventure where there were so many things to do. And where I was encouraged to do them to level up at a good pace, while having a variety of things to do.

Class-wise, when hunters did some genuine kiting, without the 'aid' of that Disengage cheating-ability (speaking as a hunter-player in PVP )

[ken7824]

You played in vanilla if you showed up to raid 45 minutes early so you could conjure enough water for the raid (4 water per cast!).

[Cthulhu 2020]

To clarify for those who didn't know this, t2 originally used generic armor models of their respective types. When BWL was released, they were patched and placed in BWL with new unique models.

T2 was also a semi rare drop off of MC bosses, and only a small handful of people finished the complete sets of T2 before BWL was released and it was no longer available in MC. The original bindings of the windseeker legendary was also a necklace, which one person in the world got before blizzard changed it to the modern bindings.

[Catalept]

One. Flight-point. At. A. Time.

Doing a quest at the bottom of Desolace to unlock the quests for Scarlet Monastery at the top of Tirisfal.

Tier 2 dungeon sets.

Artisan enchanting trainer only found inside Uldaman.

[Elhana]

You played vanilla if you can repeat almost word by word that epic Ragnaros spawning sequence even 5 years since you last seen him...
"Behold Ragnaros the Firelord - he who was ancient when the world was young. Bow before him, mortals! Bow before your ending! ..."

If you did quick scholomance runs to craft flasks before raid.

If you farmed Felstriker in UBRS, know what it does ... and probably never got one

If you know why using expose armor as a rogue made you tank shout at you on vent.

[Deleted]

Doing a quest at the bottom of Desolace to unlock the quests for Scarlet Monastery at the top of Tirisfal.

Actually that only changed in cataclysm.

[Thulvaso]

So you only played vanilla if you played endgame right?

You know a lot of people overlook the fact that a lot of people (myself included) spent most of vanilla getting to 60. I went into this game going on a journey, what got me hooked was the story and quests and that is the same today.

In terms of actual features I remember it's kind of hard, I can't believe they changed the Alliance inn music as that is new to me so when did that happen,

I remember the good ol Thottbot.
I remember when there was a sun/moon instead of the calendar icon
I remember questing taking forever.. and forever
I remember quests that took you to the most distant location for little reward
I remember when only the richest players had a fancy mount to ride
I remember me jumping up and down when I got my first gold
I remember STV questing the most and buying all the pages from the AH all the way back in Ironforge since we only had one AH

That's all I can thing of just now.

[Deleted]

You played vanilia if you know, Scholo was originally a 10man raid instance.

Only a 10m for the bads. Really guilds rocked that place in 5mans for 3hours or more. Thats when CC meant something and only a pala,priest,warr,lock,rogue would work!

[McNeil]

I remember Stratholme being a hellhole.... and it was great. And farmed so much SM for sloth to sell, so I could eventually buy my epic mount... great times :P

[Fhi]

Which inn?

Same tune, different instruments.

[Shroud]

Original Winterspring Saber rep run.....nuff said
never again. but so many damn whispers

[Nikijih]

If i close my eyes right now I can still see the exact path from Kargath to BRM. Literally. My best Vanilla memories is moving out as a raid to the attunement guy and the leader in vent asking us to "guard the entrance" to MC while we waited for stragglers.

Other then that? You know you played vanilla if you can remember farming Fire Resist gear heh. Or if you can remember using said gear to attune new guys by jumping in the lava lake under BRD and hopping from stone to stone as a shortcut haha

[Deleted]

When quests were orange and red.
When getting from Darn to IF at low lvl was a challenge.
When getting through Timbermaw Hold was a challenge.
When dancing in the fire at Venoxis was fun.
When druid healers had no proper res.

You played vanilia if you know that rank 11 gave you a 90g mount without the need to buy the 840g riding skill.

8g Stormpike ram ftw

[Hexotic]

You know what Taren mill pvp was
you know that ppl wearing plate actually took less dmg from mele
you knew not to sit and drink int he open as a clothie because a rogue would one shot u
you waited up till 2 am to see how much honor you were awarded for the day
you exploited when the changed mount and riding costs around and bought epic mount plus riding for 50g
you got into an av monday morning, and wednesday night, the alliance were still turtling on the bridge

[Viertel]

You played Vanilla ...

...if you remember tier 2 priest helm being a turban.
...if you remember tier 1 & 2 dropping in MC until a patch hit.
...if you remember the big shitstorm of calling people exploiters for getting the fire-resistance buff from a MCed priest mob in UBRS.
...if you remember never wanting to see another fucking piece of wool cloth again after the AQ opening event.
...if you remember 35+ being a bitch to find quests of any type in any zone.
...if you remember deciding it was just faster to grind mobs from 55+ due to there being absolutely zero quests for a while.
...if you remember Silithus before the AQ event. And before there was a questing hub. And before the monsters actually even dropped anything.
...if you remember gearing out a caster meant "stack STA and INT" because spellpower didn't really exist outside of a few items.
...if you remember what Arms Warrior was like before weapon speed normalization.
...if you remember corpse skeletons crashing servers due to bugged coding.
...if you remember when you could count the number of quests in Winterspring on one hand, and still have fingers left over.
...if you remember an NPC in Winterspring that roundhouse kicked your ass and ported you all the way to Western Plaguelands.
...if you remember there being only one class capable of tanking (Patchwerk feral soaking doesn't count).
...if you remember 5 minute blessings.
...if you remember how joyful you were when Blizzard finally introduced AE Fortitude, until you remembered you needed to find the damned book.
...if you remember a time when there was no such thing as diminishing returns on stuns.
...if you remember completing quests at max level didn't give gold.
...if you remember the raid quests in Eastern Plaguelands that hardly anyone did.
...if you remember living in fear of the Scarlet Courier.
...if you remember a bugged level 35~ quest in Dustwallow Marsh granting Thunderfury as the reward.
...if you remember red quests.

[Dch48]

Vanilla was when as a Hunter, pets were all different in their run speeds, attack speeds and damage output. They also had to be fed regularly to gain their full loyalty after being tamed. They would actually run away if you didn't do it and you wouldn't have a pet any more. Even when they had gained full loyalty, they had to be fed to keep their damage output at the max. I actually miss the loyalty structure and wish they wouldn't have removed it. There is no reason to ever feed a pet nowadays. The only reason I initially took up fishing was to catch food for my pets. The whole pet structure was more realistic back then. Especially if you were the only true Hunter spec (imho) Beast Master.

I do NOT miss the pet leveling you had to do if you tamed something well beneath your own level.

[Yogg-Saron, God of Death]

How to know if others played in vanilla? Easy. Those players don't start their opening post or general post with "I played since vanilla..".

[Deleted]

you played vanilla if your mage got owned in 3 secs by a Sulfuron wielding shaman?-Windfury with legendary 2-hander in a no resilience enviroment!

1/5 of the realm was night elf hunters! - wrong

eviscerate did a fixed amount of damage scaling only with level! - wrong, scaled with skill level. there was a world drop +eviscerate skill book that costed roughly 900g at one point

frost mage was pve! - due to most bosses being immune to fire and arcane being useless, fire still was better dps.

warlocks had to farm soul shards in order to create one health stone per raid member in 40-man raids! - true

alliance/horde ratio was like 5/2 and 70% of the alliance had no idea what skills to use? - wrong

hunters were needing everything? - they still do

rogues were 2-shotting people? - any class could 2shot people if they had shit gear. Rogues were famous for keeping their enemies stunlocked forever.

maraudon was a high level instance added in a patch? - not exactly high level but w/e

there was a sea of 0 use talents like 1% dodge per rank for rogues or 5% fire,frost,nature reduction per rank for elemental shaman? - these talents were not useless, but w/e

Will of the Forsaken lasted 30 sec! - unsure, I recall it being just a second pvp trinket at one point atleast.

engineering was creating nets to root people in pvp and bombs to stun them(though it was like tossing them 1.5 g) - engineering created many fancy stuff.

Naxxramas was the final dungeon! - *raid

some tradeskills were divided into subcategories(swordsmith/armorsmith etc) - they still were in tbc

only the horde had bloodlust! - no, horde did not have bloodlust, bloodlust/heroism is/was a lvl 70 shaman skill.

buffs were working only in a single group! - technically wrong, you could buff other groups with motw, blessings etc etc, but things such as shout etc were group only

you had to level weapon skill and intelect increased the speed of it,you also had to visit at least 2 of the faction's capital in order to learn them all

only undead priests had devouring plague! - all priests had a race specific skill. Fearward for dwarfs, for example.

people were just having fun chasing each other in random locations...ah,nostalgia...

corrected some of your points.

[david0925]

-Decursives
-Annoying as hell target assignments for bosses with a billion adds like Majordomo and Garr
-Fxxking Fire, Nature, Frost resistance gears
-Lol Fire Mages until AQ
-QQ BLESSING OF SALVATION AND BLESSING OF KINGS
-QQ WINDFURY TOTEM AND STRENGTH OF AIR TOTEM
-Have a healing spell? you're healing (95% of the time)
-Gravemoss...........................
-C'thun was one of the best fight. I mean, still is.
-Aquatic form quest from Darkshore to Westfall, at lvl 16 without a mount or Travel Form.

I didn't pvp much, so I'll just mention one thing
-Green Whelp Armor