Why do people say Vanila is better? And is it really ? (Not a troll or QQ post)

[Witchsong]

I like vanilla better. Why? Because I had alot more fun back then.
The community was alot better. Today chats are getting spammed by kiddos, crying about a ninja, anal or whatever.
In vanilla there was in my experience 99% less ninjas, because the community was so good the ninjas got frozen out.
Didnt have name/faction/server changes back then.

Vanilla was better because it felt like an mmorpg. Now all we got is elitist, selfsentered whiners, and there is no way to ignore them all

Just a correction: Server transfers were introduced in vanilla.

Also there were plenty of ninjas and scammers in vanilla. I remember we had a scammer who kept taking people's gold with various dirty tricks, we had to deal with him until he finally transferred away from the realm.

[Narveid]

40 man raids, that took FOREVER to get together. And when you finally got them together, you had a minimum of 10 idiots in it who had NO idea what they were doing.
100% unbalanced PvP, where rogues and mages could one shot others (pyroblast and ambush <.<), and it was a hell of a grind with less you had a great premade (I didn't have a life for 2 months and only got to rank 10 ... <.<)
Loads of talent trees that were totally useless, retribution, protection (paladin), boomkin, subtetly etc etc.

These are just some things who were horrible with Vanilla. You might claim Vanilla was a great game, and it was ... BACK THEN.

[Dreamless]

To answer the original question of the thread;

Nostalgia is rarely logical nor factual. Peoples' memories of things which happened in the past rarely line up properly to how they actually were.

[Sharaki]

Thread #5153532 about same subject.

I don't PvP in such hardcore way (highend arenas) that I could comment that side.
Hardmode ideology mostly killed the feeling of firstkills in PvE, normal modes are too easy for that (not talking just endboss, but every boss in any instance). Yet this was inevitable since game needs to evolve.

Why do I rate vanilla not better but best? The World. World was full of life. There were people chatting on general chat in every zone. People playing in every zone, with world pvp being something different that it's nowadays (fighting for a zone instead of current "I tell mom you stole my orenode"). It took hours to travel other side of the world, which impressed me alot, making illusion of big place. Since there was no flying mounts, places actually ment something and "warning high level zone" was something to think about, instead of just flying over. Exploration was something interesting, I used to spend hours looking for new places and wallwalking. I still do that, there are places I havent been yet... in vanilla content. There were elites everywhere, around instances, on quests. Elites which needed group effort to down them thus making people to form parties while leveling. On contrary there has been only few elites - in dragonblight - I couldn't have soloed in wotlk (priest, paladin, dk, shaman, rogue).

Overall, while endgame aspects have been improved since then, that world full of life is gone forever. Zones are empty, PvP is instanced, most people wont touch dungeons before maxlevel (hopefully 3.3 fixes this). It feels like singleplayer in the current content before endgame. Social aspect of the game has evolved from questing and doing goofy things into achievements and raiding.

[Innor]

I have to give my vote to "the game was worse, but the community was better".

Vanilla was more about learning, exploring, meeting others and have fun.

WotLK is more about getting achievements, gear score and being the best at pvp/raiding.

I could go on about what the community was like, but to stick to the fire, I'll jump to the memory from vanilla that really sums up what I believe made vanilla the best game I've ever set foot in:

A really friendly guy from my server (not in my guild) whom I had been trough some instances with, who I had shared some profession stuff with (free of charge every time, of course) were missing from the game for a small week. Then a real life friend of his went onto WoW, to tell us that he had committed suicide, jumping of the roof of a building - it turned out he had some big depression problems. WoW had literally shown him a world full of friends, and although it had seemed to help on his mood at first, in the end his depression still got him. A memorial was announced on the realm forum, and never before or after have I seen so many people in black clothes in one place in WoW, who had taken a couple of hours to remember a friend they had never seen in real life, and now never would.

Something like this... I don't think I'm going to see it in WotLK or any other WoW expansion. The friendliness, the time to help each other... the smaller but more closely knit community. WoW has gotten bigger on both good and bad.

Instead of comparing the games with movies I'd rather like to compare it with a big city and a small town. You can do so much more in a big city, but in a small town you know most of the people you meet on the street, and you are more likely to help them, should they need it.

[Kudos]

I stopped playing around 8 months ago, and had played since release Nov'04.

I still regard Vanilla as better, but not for any of the reasons mentioned so far. Perhaps my biggest gripe comes from how advanced the theorycrafting has become.

Back then
Most of your information was from discussions on the official wow forums. There was alot of scope to experiment with specs, gear, rotations. Everything was experimental, working what worked for you. Raiding in a 40 man raid was a case of 'wait for the sunders' and then hope to hell you didn't pull aggro. There was no Omen and KTM. Boss kills was a case of working things out on your own, or asking a more advanced guild on your server for advice. We tried some strange strategies for bosses, but it was a result of discussion and trial and error. Looking back, we cleared Molten Core without ANYONE using a voice chat client. Yup.. no TS or Vent. Clearing BWL really felt like an achievement.

Now
You have your spec taken from talentchic, your rotation from Elitist Jerks and your BIS gear all mapped for you already. You have mods that tell you when to move (DBM) and where to move (Easymother), mods that warn you are about to pull aggro and everything is scrutinised via wowwebstats. You check out bosskillers for strategies for bosses. Everything is just gear based. It's hard to even get into a 5 man without someone asking for your gearscore.

I just feel that the mystery and fun of doing everything yourself has been taken away. While Wrath might have more interesting quests and raid encounters, It just doesn't have the same sense of fun that used to accompany working things out for yourself.

[Gaimen]

I'm going to have to go with the epicness of setting up a first kill. Buff stacking was key and the point of it was you had to go to every fucking place in the entire world of warcraft that would give you a buff in order to down the hardest boss. Ony was only once a week, you needed her head and every person in org or SW got the buff.

Now imagine you just went to everywhere to get all possible world buffs and you are on a pvp server and the horde side decides to attack alliance as they are going to get a world first kill in 40 Naxx, MT dies. FUCKKKKK!!!!!! See you next week. (Tribute to the days of DnT and Relentless) It took perfection to get the world first kills and took perfection to get guild firsts. If someone was fucking up you threw them out of raid and got someone else and that's it. No one was running multiple spec because there was only one good spec to be, if you weren't it, go fuck yourself and play in a friendly guild with 3 tabs, and a tabard.

People showed the fuck up for raids, everyone was pretty hard core. If you were in a progession guild there was no excuse not to be on unless you were shot, stabbed or in the middle of having sex and completey forgot to log on. Now a days if you tell people that they need to respond or this or except the consequences they respond with, "it's just a game." Fuck you and the carpet you road in on.

There was no "lets go back to dungeons and farm better gear." I take that back, there was gear farming in instances half of your level in order to get resist GREENS in order to beat a boss, no making it all. There was no lets go back to dungeons and farm epics. Or hey the new dungeon came out, lets get gear so we can do 25 ICC in a couple weeks cause 232 gear drops. There was no carrying people through raids that didn't know shit, you had to know everything about a fight.

Everything was harder to get. High level pvp gear took lots of help and chaining with people to get the top titles. If you didn't have the title you couldn't equip it. There was no catching up to end game guilds in a week or two of farming, it'd take months of doing old raids with already perfected strats to catch up.

It took more to accomplish less. These are all reasons why vanilla was better but only for raiding.

WotLK is better only on a pure economic standpoint...easier game = more players. Giving people the option to do hard modes is a great way to divide the great and the ok wow players. Now everyone can take part of all aspected of the game except for the hardest possible fights. Well, until the next patch when they can again chain heroics to out gear old hard modes and down them without trouble.

Large player base =/= many smart players. This is a problem of populatiry more then game mechanics.