Closest game to Vanilla WoW

[Grable]

So, is there any MMORPG out there that has a similar experience as Vanilla WoW?

What I'm looking for is:
- Raids with a lot of people (40 man+)
- Gradual vanilla like PvE progression through raid tiers
- No gear reset with every patch/expansion
- Somewhat decent PvP, hopefully open world
- Decent population
- Is not outdated


Please don't suggest Rift, as it is just having an expansion that will render all the previous gear useless (tier/gear skip). Thanks.

[Hexotic]

Runescape lol

[Djuntas]

We'll, you didnt want Rift as a suggestion, but the sad fact is, that is the closest MMO on the market to what you want.

[Kitomi]

Please don't suggest Rift, as it is just having an expansion that will render all the previous gear useless. Thanks.

IT's rift or nothing.. I don't know any successful MMO that doesn't have expansions that do this..

EDIT: actually give EQ/EQ2 a shot those are close too.

[Crashdummy]

Luckily, none.

Vanilla design is outdated. Rift is closer to TBC one, but with things like LFD added.

[Azuri]

Meeting your criteria, no current MMORPG on the market.

[Pull My Finger]

So you want something that's frozen in time.

[Grable]

So you want something that's frozen in time.

Not really, there can be expansions, new patches, new gear tier. But when that happens in games like WoW, all the previous content is mostly nullified. For example, if this game first has 3 tiers of raid and then adds 2 more tiers, I still want the game to "force" you to first complete tier1, tier2 and tier3 raid to enter the tier4 raid. For example when they released AQ40 you still had to do Molten Core then Blackwing Lair to have a good chance in AQ40. Understand?

Also, what's the max raid size (# of players) in Rift?

[Deleted]

Most MMOs I played (started playing MMOs 2000) have the same kind of Gear-Rotation. Would be stupid if not. Why would you keep playing, when you cannot get better.
Why would you progress through Raids, when you won't get better Items.
Its false btw, that there was now Item-Replacement in Vanilla, it was just without patches. You started with your Dungeonset, T 0.5 that you had alot of farming, that T1, that replaced T0/T0.5, than T2, that replaced T1, than AQ/AQ40 als Well als ZG Raid, replacing T1 somehow. Than came Naxx, that replaced your previously farmed T2/ZG Gear. Where is the difference to TBC launch, besides that Questgear somehow started to replace T1 and T2. Greens were not better than T3.
Do you really prefere for your Alts to raid through 14 Tiers until you can see current content with them?

Edit: Btw: You still can stop at 60 and Raid old Instances besides Naxx 40!

[thewallofsleep]

Raid size in Rift is 20. They have smaller raids which are for 10 players, but they are completely separate, much like 10s were in TBC. Everything is the same difficulty too, though I believe they did nerf the older raids a bit a while back to make them puggable.

[RoninaThorstone]

Please don't suggest Rift, as it is just having an expansion that will render all the previous gear useless (tier/gear skip). Thanks.

Rift is the only thing that comes close. Sorry.

If you want, I think the goons at SA have a private server that is vanilla.

[Ferocity]

Adding to what posters above wrote.

T1 raid (MC) was soloable with what? T7 gear? At some point such raid progression as in Original post will not work for two reasons:
1. First tiers will be nothing but boosts of non-geared chars by latest tier people.
2. If difference between tiers in power will be very small, people won't be really excited to get mostly cosmetic upgrades.

Only problem which is in WoW currently, is rapid power degradation during leveling up in expansions (power reset). You rapidly go down in power each level due to ratings decay, as ratings (and mana regen) are absolute and not relative stats. I don't know why it is still not changed (ratings were supposed to be temporary system yet in TBC), but leveling in WoW is greatly unrewarding.

[thewallofsleep]

Edit: Btw: You still can stop at 60 and Raid old Instances besides Naxx 40!

Don't forget, we can't do ZG anymore either.

[RoninaThorstone]

T1 raid (MC) was soloable with what? T7 gear?

Psh, tank palis in t4 were soloing it.

I think rogues were the only ones who had to wait till like t7. Mainly for recoup.

[Tarien]

So, is there any MMORPG out there that has a similar experience as Vanilla WoW?

What I'm looking for is:
- Raids with a lot of people (40 man+)
- Gradual vanilla like PvE progression through raid tiers
- No gear reset with every patch/expansion
- Somewhat decent PvP, hopefully open world
- Decent population
- Is not outdated

Please don't suggest Rift, as it is just having an expansion that will render all the previous gear useless (tier/gear skip). Thanks.

No MMO fits all of those items. You should maybe rank them in order of what is most important to you and see if a current MMO fits the top 2-3 items?

With regards to the no gear reset, no developer is going to do this. The reason being that after just a few years new players are faced with 5, 6 maybe 7 tiers to progress through. By the time that a game reaches WoWs age it would literally have something like 14-15 tiers to get through, with players spread too thinly among the tiers. It's daunting and counter productive.

The rest I know is implemented in other MMOs. I play RIFT which has the best (imo) raiding experience in any MMO atm, and I bolded the criteria I think it fits.

[Coldpro]

EQ Mac if you have a mac, its EQ before the game got uber easy. Probably the closest thing to vanilla WoW now.

[Blipz]

What you could do, find vanilla wow private servers or for a similar game.

[Lohala]

Eq used to be that way, and to a point it might still be that way. I remember when i played back in the day we were farming Plane of Time for gear while Gates were out because the time lvl tier was still well above the random drops.

[RüneRS]

Sounds like Guild wars 2 to me
Altough the raid part takes place in open world and isn't hardcore like vanilla, it does have an epic feel to it

-edit-
Didn't see the gradual PVE progression, but GW2 still has:
- Raids with a lot of people (40 man+)
- No gear reset with every patch/expansion
- Somewhat decent PvP, hopefully open world
- Decent population
- Is not outdated

[abni]

I would say : Lineage II

Since it's free, there's some people playing, you can play for free to max level (premium account gives x2 exp), very nice open world PVP, raiding aren't as nice as in Warcraft, but the difficulty is balanced. Getting gear is difficult. You should try it.