Page 1 of 11
1
2
3
... LastLast
  1. #1

    A dose of anti-nostalgia.

    Nostalgia is chic. Nostalgia is in. We like to glamorize the way things were the moment after they happen. It’s fun to exalt our experiences as existing in a unique moment in time, never to be repeated. The fact that we were having a lot of fun once upon a time means that whatever we were having fun with was the cause.

    There's one problem with that point of view: it's usually wrong. Selective memory has many a trick to play on us. Some anti-nostalgia is in order. Let's turn some sacred cows into hamburger.

    Here are some reasons, in no particular order, that vanilla WoW was terrible.
    1. External class balance--i.e. good rogues doing three times as much damage as good warlocks, fight after fight.
    2. Internal class balance--i.e. having a few great talents and many terrible, terrible talents. (My favorite: for Rogues, Throwing Weapon Specialization-increases the range of thrown weapons by 3/6 yards.)
    3. Flying, riding, and walking to some obscure location over about twenty minutes to do a dungeon-and only realizing after getting there that no one has the key to get inside.
    4. Tarren Mill-Southshore zerg constituting "end game PvP".
    5. Queuing for battlegrounds--exclusively at the battleground instance entrance.
    6. Trying to get 40 people to all do what they're supposed to in raid encounters where individual failures wipe you.
    7. Quest chains that take you to both continents and a couple of instances, require you to buy materials off of the AH, and reward you with a terribly-itemized green.
    8. The approaches to instances--mazes filled with elite mobs and quests the group will never ever agree to do. Basically extended the length of the instance anywhere from 10 to 20% with no rewards.
    9. The world’s only artisan enchanting trainer camping out in Uldaman.
    10. Killing a level 50 elite troll for the privilege of killing a level 52 elite troll for the privilege of killing a level 47 boss in an instance on another continent.
    11. Azshara, Blasted Lands, Deadwind Pass, Dustwallow Marsh, Swamp of Sorrows, at-release Silithus-- fewer than 30 quests combined.
    12. Going engineering purely to get a decent headpiece before level 35.
    13. Resistance gear.
    14. Zero gear support for non-healing druids, paladins, or shaman-- and DPS warriors taking leather.
    15. Trying to quest as a healer.
    16. "Hunter weapon!"
    17. All-or-nothing crafting material drops.
    18. 30-minute-plus login queues being "normal".
    19. Server instability on patch day.
    20. Server instability on day-after-patch day.
    21. Server instability on "day that ends in -y" day.
    22. Server instability causing cascading realm failures, in turn destroying the logon servers, exponentially lengthening login queues.
    23. Disenchanting Felheart and Cenarion… week after week after week... starting in week four.
    24. Two loot drops per raid boss. Forty man raids.
    25. Disenchanting Felheart and Cenarion week after week starting in week four despite raid bosses dropping two pieces of loot each in forty man raids.
    26. Tailoring and leatherworking having exactly one (non-resist gear) epic recipe available per player.
    27. The infamous "in-game voice chat" patch.
    28. A rogue population so high raiding guilds seriously wondered if it was faster to rez dead rogues or just recruit new ones.
    29. PvP trinkets that only dispel three types of CC each, depending upon your class-- but which still allow you to burn their cooldown on effects they can't cure.
    30. Giving up your job, friends, and family to grind pre-made BGs 21 hours a day while you get your buddy to play the three hours you plan to sleep… and *still* not hitting Rank 14.
    31. Waiting 45 minutes in a BG queue only to get rolled in three minutes by a pre-made, and having no alternative but to queue again.
    32. The Ironforge lag pit.
    33. The out-of-combat rezzer.
    34. 4/7 end-game dungeons and the first three raids sharing an identical black-and-red color scheme.
    35. "Wait for five Sunders!"
    36. Taking a month to identify and fix the bug that made C’Thun unkillable.
    37. "Okay, everyone, we have to wait before we pull Vael, too many guilds are trying to run Razorgore and the instance server can't handle it."
    38. The whining over FROST SHOCK!
    39. Creating level 1 alts for the sole purpose of griefing raids pulling Lord Kazzak.
    40. Orgrimmar.
    41. A 53 DPS Arcanite Reaper somehow being much, MUCH better than any 65 DPS weapon. (See also: Barman's Shanker.)
    42. Grinding rep, one 5-rep kill at a time since there aren't any quests, and calling it "endgame".
    43. The endless argument over whether you'd rather have shaman or paladins.
    44. Quests offering one reward almost guaranteed to be unusable.
    45. "Sorry, we can't recruit you because you chose the wrong race for your priest."
    46. Enchanters trying to sell enchants via trade chat spam.
    47. Tank (i.e. warrior) threat output scaling inversely with gear.
    48. The original "everything to everybody" design of Alterac Valley, featuring a PvE raid boss in midfield, lowbie questing/leveling areas, high-end mining and herbing nodes, and a total acreage almost double what it is today.
    49. Manually inviting people into the battleground raid-- or, even worse, not.
    50. An anti-threat trinket being every DPS player's best-in-slot.
    51. Ahn-Qiraj's Bizzaro-World itemization and set bonuses.
    52. Detect Magic being a vital component of some raid encounters.

    Coming soon: reasons The Burning Crusade was terrible.

  2. #2
    And yet I still had fun. Continue your attempts at being clever though.
    “Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
    "Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."
    Ambrose Bierce
    The Bird of Hermes Is My Name, Eating My Wings To Make Me Tame.

  3. #3
    Lightforged Draenei
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Frankfurt Germany
    Posts
    2,726
    Thats a nice list these things are true indeed. But hey it was our (speaking for some people) first mmo game and it was all magical and fresh, full of joy and fun. Regardless of how much the game sucked mechanic wise it was awesome back than. I'd never go back if there was a choice to play on a vanilla server or something.

  4. #4
    MoP beats that list:

    1. LFR

    But all those things didn't bother me because I was having fun up untill they changed too much for my liking and I started to have less and less fun.
    Last edited by Gilian; 2013-06-21 at 06:17 PM.

  5. #5
    Lightforged Draenei
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Frankfurt Germany
    Posts
    2,726
    Quote Originally Posted by Gilian View Post
    MoP beats that list:

    1. LFR
    You mean cataclysm

  6. #6
    Elemental Lord Tekkommo's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Scotland
    Posts
    8,054
    For the time it was amazing and I had great fun, ofc the game has seen many improvements, but I will always look back on vanilla fondly.

    As a DPS Warrior, I still took leather items in WotLK.

    None of the reasons you listed made the game terrible and are highly exaggerated.

    You also have to realise what other MMOs were like at that time.
    Last edited by Tekkommo; 2013-06-21 at 06:19 PM.

  7. #7
    in my opinion at least half of your points are false or highly exaggerated...

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by shimerra View Post
    And yet I still had fun. Continue your attempts at being clever though.
    Of course you had. He doesn't say you didn't. He says that you had bad moments back then, too.
    Just like now.
    I guess besides the annoying moments you are still having fun with the game, else you wouldn't be playing it.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by shimerra View Post
    And yet I still had fun. Continue your attempts at being clever though.
    Don't think the OP ever said you didn't. I had loads of fun, it doesn't mean the game hasn't gotten better (it has, a lot) and in comparison the balance, scaling, abilities, mechanics and much more is SO much better. Vanilla was shit compared to now.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Gilian View Post
    MoP beats that list:

    1. LFR

    But all those things didn't bother me because I was having fun up untill they changed too much for my liking and I started to have less and less fun.
    Damn, it took 4 whole posts to finally throw a shot at LFR in here. MMO-C is slacking.

  11. #11
    I've been around since Beta and..this list was pretty funny lol, because it made me remember all those terrible things. Cant wait for the BC list, keep it coming!

  12. #12
    Scarab Lord DEATHETERNAL's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Location
    USA, more fascist every day
    Posts
    4,406
    I would have liked 80% of those things back in Cata when I quit.
    And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
    Revelation 6:8

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Nevor View Post
    in my opinion at least half of your points are false or highly exaggerated...
    I agree. Looking at that list, I think maybe 10 are justified, and even then of those most are just minor complaints of a spoiled child that's catered to by today's everything gets handed to you ways.

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer Blufossa's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Location
    Imaginationland.
    Posts
    3,430
    Quote Originally Posted by Treelife View Post
    Don't think the OP ever said you didn't. I had loads of fun, it doesn't mean the game hasn't gotten better (it has, a lot) and in comparison the balance, scaling, abilities, mechanics and much more is SO much better. Vanilla was shit compared to now.
    I still highly disagree with this. Sure some balancing was needed, but sometimes I REALLY miss Vanilla.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by ChahDresh View Post
    1. External class balance--i.e. good rogues doing three times as much damage as good warlocks, fight after fight.
    2. Internal class balance--i.e. having a few great talents and many terrible, terrible talents. (My favorite: for Rogues, Throwing Weapon Specialization-increases the range of thrown weapons by 3/6 yards.)
    I don't normally see people preferring Classic WoW citing class balance as being good. Won't argue there were a lot of unnecessary talents and imbalances.

    3. Flying, riding, and walking to some obscure location over about twenty minutes to do a dungeon-and only realizing after getting there that no one has the key to get inside.
    Yet I didn't and don't mind this. It was frustrating, sure, but it was part of what made the game a little bit more of a world and, yes, it encouraged you to communicate. I remember groups always asking "Everyone have a key?" before heading to the meeting location. Some prefer the no brainer, think about nothing play style and some don't.

    4. Tarren Mill-Southshore zerg constituting "end game PvP".
    Even after BGs it still happened. A LOT. And BGs were introduced during Classic.

    5. Queuing for battlegrounds--exclusively at the battleground instance entrance.
    Both factions should have been closer to one another to queue.

    6. Trying to get 40 people to all do what they're supposed to in raid encounters where individual failures wipe you.
    Individual failures weren't usually a guaranteed wipe. That's why the afk auto-shoot hunter and the sleeping raider jokes were so widespread. You DIDN'T have to do your job and the raid could carry you. That said, coordinating 40 people to be online for the timeframe was a logistics nightmare imo.

    7. Quest chains that take you to both continents and a couple of instances, require you to buy materials off of the AH, and reward you with a terribly-itemized green.
    Another aspect of world vs game. I miss the world trapsing, cross continent quests, bad reward or no.

    8. The approaches to instances--mazes filled with elite mobs and quests the group will never ever agree to do. Basically extended the length of the instance anywhere from 10 to 20% with no rewards.
    Not all of them.....only the ones that hated your soul.

    9. The world’s only artisan enchanting trainer camping out in Uldaman.
    Wise man on the mountain trope. Another example of "give me everything in a central location so I can play the game without playing the game. Convenience the gameplay out of this MMO, dammit!" Inconvenience? Yes. Bad? Not necessarily.

    11. Azshara, Blasted Lands, Deadwind Pass, Dustwallow Marsh, Swamp of Sorrows, at-release Silithus-- fewer than 30 quests combined.
    Not necessarily bad if they had been utilized in patches to add quests. As it was, yeah.....agreed.

    12. Going engineering purely to get a decent headpiece before level 35.
    Or don't use a headpiece. You didn't NEED them even then.
    Who the hell leveled up engineering just to get a helmet before 35?!

    13. Resistance gear.
    So evil....but also somewhat fitting. Do you naturally have no problem setting yourself on fire in a suit of metal?

    14. Zero gear support for non-healing druids, paladins, or shaman-- and DPS warriors taking leather.
    To be fair, the best paladin healer I knew in classic didn't wear much plate armor either. >_0

    15. Trying to quest as a healer.
    You knew what you were getting into, heal puppet!!!! (I'm kidding on this one)

    16. "Hunter weapon!"
    Er mah gerd, a melee weapon has stats that are the PRIMARY STATS for a hunter, how dare they think they should get it. :P

    23. Disenchanting Felheart and Cenarion… week after week after week... starting in week four.
    Mileage varied. If you had warlocks and druids, these pieces didn't drop week after week.

    24. Two loot drops per raid boss. Forty man raids.
    THAT'S how you slow down content consumption. MWAHAHHAHA

    26. Tailoring and leatherworking having exactly one (non-resist gear) epic recipe available per player.
    Epics were rare at launch, remember? Why would you expect otherwise from crafting? /shrug Makes sense for launch.

    27. The infamous "in-game voice chat" patch.
    I didn't think this was during Classic.

    30. Giving up your job, friends, and family to grind pre-made BGs 21 hours a day while you get your buddy to play the three hours you plan to sleep… and *still* not hitting Rank 14.
    In-sane. But that's a player decision. See the constant "don't nanny us" versus "it's there so Blizzard forced us."
    It wasn't meant to be easy to get up to high ranks. Maybe it was a little too insane, but that's not to say the concept was bad.


    32. The Ironforge lag pit.
    I don't recall it being that bad, but maybe I was lucky.

    35. "Wait for five Sunders!"
    OH NOES! DPS HAVE TO NOT BE RETARDS!


    8. The whining over FROST SHOCK!
    FROS' SHAAAAAW'!

    39. Creating level 1 alts for the sole purpose of griefing raids pulling Lord Kazzak.
    Players are jerks.

    42. Grinding rep, one 5-rep kill at a time since there aren't any quests, and calling it "endgame".
    And they whine about daily quests and rep now.....

    44. Quests offering one reward almost guaranteed to be unusable.
    Because you should get something for every time you look at someone. You still got money for selling it (hint: always choose plate!)

    45. "Sorry, we can't recruit you because you chose the wrong race for your priest."
    Players are jerks. I like the racial uniqueness that's been COMPLETELY removed from WoW.

    48. The original "everything to everybody" design of Alterac Valley, featuring a PvE raid boss in midfield, lowbie questing/leveling areas, high-end mining and herbing nodes, and a total acreage almost double what it is today.
    You mean when AV didn't suck?

    You listed a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with Classic as a game, but rather complained about Blizzard's support tech and players. Some of the points I agree with, but a lot I obviously don't.
    18. 30-minute-plus login queues being "normal".
    19. Server instability on patch day.
    20. Server instability on day-after-patch day.
    21. Server instability on "day that ends in -y" day.
    22. Server instability causing cascading realm failures, in turn destroying the logon servers, exponentially lengthening login queues.
    31. Waiting 45 minutes in a BG queue only to get rolled in three minutes by a pre-made, and having no alternative but to queue again.
    43. The endless argument over whether you'd rather have shaman or paladins.
    36. Taking a month to identify and fix the bug that made C’Thun unkillable.
    37. "Okay, everyone, we have to wait before we pull Vael, too many guilds are trying to run Razorgore and the instance server can't handle it."
    10. Killing a level 50 elite troll for the privilege of killing a level 52 elite troll for the privilege of killing a level 47 boss in an instance on another continent.
    Which one is this? I don't recall.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Sanochan View Post
    I still highly disagree with this. Sure some balancing was needed, but sometimes I REALLY miss Vanilla.
    I miss Vanilla too, but it's come and gone, the game has improved and I wouldn't want it back. Would you really want the crap content we had back then? Think of it now, end game raiding? You're stuck with a 40man raid, of which half are probably AFK, DCing, lagging so bad they can't do anything anyway or just terrible. Loot distribution was just laughable - Yay Shaman loot! Oh wait we're Alliance, we don't have Shamans. If you were a Lock you were farming shards the whole time you were in-game. If you were a pally, enjoy standing outside ready to buff. If you were a hybrid, enjoy healing. If you weren't a Warrior you weren't a tank. Exceptions aside, that's just how it was and it was silly.

    PvP? Lol. Naked X killing other fully geared classes, infinite CC chains, no balance effort at all. World PvP was fun I agree with that.

    Opinions are opinions of course, but nobody can deny the game has improved in pretty much every way besides how the community is run.
    Quote Originally Posted by Faroth View Post
    Which one is this? I don't recall.
    I think it was the Mallet of Zul'Farrak quest?
    Last edited by Soisoisoi; 2013-06-21 at 06:45 PM.

  17. #17
    This list is as insignificant as the list people make of why vanilla was so awesome...../shrug. There is so much more to the game.

  18. #18
    MoP

    1. Blizzard nickel-and-diming you.

    Fastest way to level? Pay for it. Best battle pets? Pay for it. Complete mount collection? Pay for it.

    ... and you were saying?

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Phasma View Post
    MoP

    1. Blizzard nickel-and-diming you.

    Fastest way to level? Pay for it. Best battle pets? Pay for it. Complete mount collection? Pay for it.

    ... and you were saying?
    You can pay Blizz to level you a toon?

  20. #20
    Most of the things you listed brought back fond memories.
    "I realized it is the struggle itself that is the most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards." -Data

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •