The little things about Vanilla [Fun]

[Zao]

Disclaimer: This is not, and should not become, a "Vanilla was better/worse than current content"-thread. It's just a small thread to share some nostalgia and maybe get a few smiles out of people who played then.


With all of the "zomg vanilla suxd/vanilla is teh asom" threads I always notice one problem: They rarely focus on the small stuff. Stuff that made the game annoying or fun.
The only thing you ever hear about is how classes were so imbalanced then and raids were so great and had a feeling of achievement to them.

So here's a thread about small things that got fixed along the way but might still give those who played back then a smile, or get some headshaking from newer players.
I probably won't remember everything correctly because it's been more than 6 years now. So please correct me on that.


Negative Resistances: Early in the game it was possible for players and NPCs to have negative resistances. So you'd do extra damage to the affected target.

Out of combat rezzing: There were specifically designated people that did not engange in combat with a boss. This way the did not get put into combat and could rez people during the fights.

Paladins and Shamans being faction exclusive: This often gets shoved under the rug, in vanilla there were no shamans on alliance side and no paladins on horde side. It was the cause of alot of grief for both sides.

Unlimited flask/potion buffs: It was possible to stack any amount of flasks/potions you wanted. The distinction of battle/guardian elixir also didn't exist at the time.

Buffs not stacking: HoTs did not stack back then. You could only have one instance (per rank) of spells like Rejuvenation/Renew on a player.

Auto pot: There was an addon that automatically let you chuck a potion whenever you reached a certain amount of health.

Respecing was expensive: This hasn't technically changed, but 50g was a very high amount of money back then. The amount decreased with every month you didn't respec, but it was still too high for most people to regularly respec.

Limited debuff slots: At first there were only 16 (correct me if I'm wrong) and later 32 debuff slots. And that was in 40 player raids. Warriors in our guild were not allowed to spec into deep wounds because of that.

No shared trinket cooldowns: You were able to use both trinket slots at once. Arcane mages became infamous for the "ZHC+ToEMP+AM" nuke.

Weaponskills being unlearned upon respec: Aside from the fact that we even had weaponskills back then, ENH shamans ran into the problem that the always had to level up their 2h weaponskills if the respeced out of and back into enhancements.

Wind fury procs: It was technically possible to oneshot somebody with a WF proc that procced WF that procced WF and so on.

Percentage instead of ratings: Ratings came first with BC, before there were percentages. The Eye of the Beast was one of the best trinkets for casters back then. Because it gave 2% crit.

No multiple flightpaths: Without addons it was not possible to fly directly from Orgrimmar to Silithus. You had to take every single step to there manually.

No AoE buffs: I'm not just referring to stuff like totems or LotP being partywide only. Oh no. There was no spell called Arcane Brilliance or Gift of the Wild. Instead Druids, mages, priests and especially the poor paladins, had to buff every person in the raid individually. If you were a priest you had up to three different buffs to give.



And here's a category just for mages, because I played one back then and remember more about that class than the other ones:

Rolling ignites: Every stack of ignite from every mage was rolled into the first ignite placed on the target. And the damage of those didn't disappear individually, instead it reset the timer each time a new one came up.

Arcane Explosion had a casttime unless speced into it in the arcane tree (which almost everyone did)

We only were able to summon 4 of the highest level water. So mages had to appear early to summon water for the entire 40 man raid.

It was possible to have different ranks of the managem in your inventory (which also shared a CD with the Healthstone from WLs)

Dampen/Augment Magic: We had two spells that increased/decreased any heal/spelldamage done to a target. It was rarely used, but still entertaining.

[Silver-Fox]

Back in vanilla I loved that conjure water and conjure food were separate spells and each tier of levels had a different quality of food and water. So you could still give stuff to low level players even if you were at the current cap of sixty.

[AutomaticBadger]

Paladins had almost no moves: You spent most of your time looking meanly at things as you refreshed a few spells and melee'd something into oblivion.

Changing trinkets mod fight, oh those were awesome.

Poisons and Curses could kill people after a duel. Payback I say!

I'll say it. Things were new and you shat a brick when you saw most things. Hell I didn't know half of the things in WoW and I loved it anyway

[Samaramon]

None of those stuff are fun.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Sure am glad I never played in Vanilla. That sounds atrocious.

[Aquamonkey]

Limited debuff slots: At first there were only 16 (correct me if I'm wrong) and later 32 debuff slots. And that was in 40 player raids. Warriors in our guild were not allowed to spec into deep wounds because of that.

We only were able to summon 4 of the highest level water. So mages had to appear early to summon water for the entire 40 man raid.

It was possible to have different ranks of the managem in your inventory (which also shared a CD with the Healthstone from WLs)

Oh the QQ from warlocks when their Curse of Doom got knocked off.

Warlocks had to drain the soul from a mob for every healthstone they created for a 40man raid... every attempt.

Also, Evocation was a talent. Every mage had to spec at least that far into Arcane.

[Zao]

Oh right, and you only got the shard if Drain Soul was the killing blow (on a mob that gave XP)

[Venziir]

The "negative resistance" wasn't just in early in the game. Curse of Elements and stuff like that reduced resistances untill patch 1.9.0 aka the AQ patch. In fact it didnt' stop reducing resitances until 5.0.4 - http://www.wowpedia.org/Curse_of_the_Elements

[Schamie]

i remember the days of old conjuring the water for the raid... at one point i was the only mage and that sucked i also remembering having to go into dire maul to get the latest conjure water spell; that was fun

[UnknownShadows00]

Back then, raids were 40 man, and you often had people going on "smoke break" before each boss. Then, if people started leaving, it took an enormous amount of time to return to where you were at before.

Feral Druids were an absolute no-no in raids.

People spent hours upon hours and days within places like Alterac Valley... in ONE match. Also, they did so to keep their PvP ranks. If you were the one guy in the server with Grand Marshal, you couldn't rest a bit or else you lost it.

[Deleted]

People had to come really close to inspect someone. I remember very geared players standing on the bridge in Ironforge being crowded with people in awe, looking at their equipment.

If you had epic quality PvE Equipment, you could obliterate most people in battlegrounds.

Killing lowbies and npcs ways under your own level would get you "dishonorable" kills, which could never be reset and were basically a permanent stain on your white shirt.
I remember that my first rogue ever had two dishonorable kills and I really felt ashamed whenever I looked at my Honor Tab.

Having finally farmed enough gold to buy that epic ground mount was the best. day. ever. God that felt amazing. (Weee I'm so fast!)

[Ceece]

...when Strath and Scholo were 10-mans!

[Ryuk]

Oh, I can remember a 29 hours long Alterac Valley battle. And I was so happy when I had reached the level 40 and finally bought the mount. Great times!

[Aquamonkey]

The BRD lava run.

Polymorph being 50s duration on PvP targets with no DR.

[Eorayn]

Sure am glad I never played in Vanilla. That sounds atrocious.

Say what you want, it was actually kind of awesome

[Myth]

Soloing a 60 rogue in a duel with my Hunter's pet only using Beastial Wrath

Playing Russian Roulette on my enhance shaman sportin the Draconic Avenger in pvp with WF procs

Twinking a 30 druid for WSG because the brackets were different and having travel form made it easy mode

Sentry totem on my shaman would suspend you in mid air if cast while jumping/falling

[Evi1Toad]

Each soul shard took up one bag slot... And you needed one soul shard per warlock summon.

Riposite and ghostly strike for rogues

Amunition and mana for hunters.

Wasnt BRS also 10man?

[Deleted]

I actually think like the majority ... that was not fun at all.

If you think about it now of course.

Classic WoW was just another random crap game back in 2004, hell even ragnarok online was better.

[Totaltotemic]

Rogues were the most reagent-heavy class in the game:

Poisons had to be crafted using a Rogue-only profession that used vendor-bought materials.

Vanish required Vanishing Powder bought from vendors.

Blind required Blind Powder which was crafted using Poisons, but required actual Fadeleaf to be farmed for it. Don't want to farm or buy herbs? You don't get to use a core class ability.

And finally something unrelated, Rogues had absolutely no spell effects for any abilities except the self-cast buff Detect Traps, which did a little magic swirly over their heads. When Detect Traps was simply made passive instead of being a buff, Rogues everywhere cried out in terror as their only spell effect was taken away.

[Deleted]

"Blind required Blind Powder which was crafted using Poisons, but required actual Blindweed to be farmed for it. Don't want to farm or buy herbs? You don't get to use a core class ability."

Was actually Fadeleaf that was used for making blind powder