Thread: Vanilla WoW?

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  1. #1

    Vanilla WoW?

    I always see people talking about Vanilla WoW and how great it was or how they missed the Vanilla WoW days. I started playing WoW during WotLK so I was wondering why Vanilla Wow is so often spoken of this way? Thanks

  2. #2
    It's mostly a feeling of everything being new and amazing that people miss about Vanilla, rather than the gameplay itself, I think. WoW was new then, and the game was still being explored. That feeling of actually killing your first raid boss - not the first boss of a new tier, but the FIRST boss - is something you'll never get back, for example.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Herecius View Post
    It's mostly a feeling of everything being new and amazing that people miss about Vanilla, rather than the gameplay itself, I think. WoW was new then, and the game was still being explored. That feeling of actually killing your first raid boss - not the first boss of a new tier, but the FIRST boss - is something you'll never get back, for example.
    Pretty much what he said.
    Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Herecius View Post
    It's mostly a feeling of everything being new and amazing that people miss about Vanilla, rather than the gameplay itself, I think. WoW was new then, and the game was still being explored. That feeling of actually killing your first raid boss - not the first boss of a new tier, but the FIRST boss - is something you'll never get back, for example.
    Also worth noting the game was actually quite horrible.

    But good friends made up for it :3

  5. #5
    I started playing mid-vanilla, and I agree that mostly it's the Nostalgia that makes people say Vanilla was so good, because there were a LOT of issues. The Gameplay has improved immensely over the expansions, but I'll say one thing that was actually better in Vanilla, and that was the Depth of the game.

    In their bid to make the game more convenient, and more balanced, they have made the game kind of shallow imo. Portals, Dungeon Finder, X-realm BGs, and Class Homogenization are all things that, from a gameplay pov makes the game more convenient and more balanced, but I think it also took a lot of depths out of the experience.

    Don't get me wrong, I still find the game very enjoyable, but there are things I think were better in classic.

    PUGs are Blizzards version of reality TV, put five random people together in an enclosed environment, and watch as the drama unfolds

  6. #6
    100% nostalgia.

    Classic WoW was a terrible game compared to current WoW. Yes, I had a blast during it and, yes, I am glad that it's gone.
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  7. #7
    Nostalgia, yes. But the thing you guys haven't brought up yet is de epicness of 40(!) people trying to work together to kill something, instead of 10 / 25. Indeed, killing your FIRST BOSS and so on. The sheer epicness of making your whole server work together to get the gates of Ahn'Qiraj opened. There are lots of things that were unachievable for most people, which made the best raiders of the server being looked at like real heroes. I remember sitting in Orgrimmar after a raid making a campfire and have 20+ people listening to the story of the evening. Good times.

  8. #8
    Exactly, pure nostalgia and nothing more. It's like when you break up with a person you were with for a long time, and in the end they were real assholes to you...but a couple years later you end up reminiscing about the person with rosey glasses.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    It was the whole feel to it. Everything was new and exciting. Also remember that this content was build around you having to lvl from 1-60. That was immense - compared to the later expansions where you only had to lvl 10 lvls.
    Also the exploration of professions and what they did and what they could do. All that stuff.
    I really loved it in Vanilla although I was 16-17 back then and knew nothing about MMOs :P Still killed Ragnaros though! Woo!

  10. #10
    Nothing against this site, but early on in the Vanilla days, there wasn't really MMO-Champ, Alakazam had just kicked up but there was alot more mystery to the game, so much discovery and rumor, not Every thing had been fully mapped and mathed to death

  11. #11
    i like chocolate wow better TBH

  12. #12
    Deleted
    One of the things I miss the most, enhancement Shaman using 2h weapons.

    One of the things I'm really glad has been changed, Warlock summoning portals and the soul shard system. Back then you didn't even get soul shards from Soul Drain damage procs, but only from soul draining a something that gave XP or Honor to death. Summoning an entire raid was a pain... Oh, and meeting stones wasn't used for summoning, it was supposed to work a bit like todays dungeon finder (except server wide and the teleport and all that).

    God are we spoiled today, yet people whine more than ever about the most stupid things.

  13. #13
    Only Nostalgia not much more then that raids where not prob balanced for 40 ppls. 15-20 dudes could just slack in the raid and no one would notes and allot of bugs and broken bosses.
    Like C'Thun pre fix where impossible to kill you needed to do long pre Qs to get attuned for almost all raids.
    The onyxa quest chain was a pain to do and you needed to do crazy amounts of rep grinding that took for ever.
    Druids paladins and shamans where in raids only to heal / buff the only thing i miss from vanilla where the pvp.
    Sense it where only server based back then so you knew who you where fighting against instead of the random dude from the random server and no resi sense it killed pvp for me.

  14. #14
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    Back in Vanilla you actually could get out of mana, yes back then it was possible.
    And being able to get out of mana raids were harder since you had to think it through correctly.
    This is only one of the things which was so great about Vanilla.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Njay View Post
    Nostalgia, yes. But the thing you guys haven't brought up yet is de epicness of 40(!) people trying to work together to kill something, instead of 10 / 25.
    Because we fail to see it. Sheer numbers do not equal epic.
    But your duty to Azeroth is not yet complete. More is demanded of you... a price the living cannot pay.

  16. #16
    Community was much better during vanilla. Nothing compared to the cesspool that WoW is today.

  17. #17
    Some things were great, some were crap. However the game did feel more like you were just playing a game and not researching as much as playing etc. Same as BC had. I feel in someways vanilla was more balanced, as in min maxing didnt matter much for most raids, simply staying alive and doing your job was enough. Farming was also somewhat hard compared to now, having to ride everywhere and epic mounts being somewhat rarer due to prices and gold earned was lower in comparison (Ive made 20k since cata launched from leveling toons, it took me months to farm 600 for my paladins epic mount in vanilla).

    Also - while sometimes I hate it, farming dungeons for gear repeatedly for fire resistance etc actually made a guild feel more friendly, as you relied on the others to get you the gear for raiding, which in turn meant people wanted to help you get the gear to raid to help them. Raids were simple, but did not really reward individuals alot as no badges, and low drop values compared to player numbers, but gear was not a massive change compared to it is now (I went through AQ/ZG and MC with a level 49 shield, and still had it through most of BWL before the ZG blue one replaced it) whereas now everything is gear checks mostly (including 5mans).

    Healing in vanilla sucked, and tanking was almost entirely left to warriors, BC was much better for healers and tanks - the best expansion for them actually, wrath was the DPS'ers expansion tho it seems.
    There is alot that was crap also, but is generally forgotten, as you remember good things rather than bad ones.

  18. #18
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    Personally i don't think it's just nostalgia. For me it's just the feeling i got from playing the game then, and the different feeling later. Of course, the game was annoying, it was demanding timewise just to prepare for raids. But i liked that. I don't like today's everything served on a platter approach. I haven't played cataclysm, but when i came back to the game in later WoTLK, after leaving when we completed ulduar, i was just standing in dalaran, and queued for heroics. In and out in and out. Then get summoned to raid, in and out and so on. I miss the resistance gear farming, twilight encrypted texts farming and so on. I feel we should adapt to the game, not make the game adapt to us and what we find easier/simpler/more fun and so on. Now every class has to be able to do everything. Can you imagine if today you had an encounter that was immune to fire dmg for example. Or that you couln't complete without 8 tanks (it was 40 man but still). Or that you had to have 15 people with high NR gear that you needed to farm for weeks. Or that there were no repair bots, no summon portals, no meetingstones...
    Last edited by smrtolet; 2011-01-28 at 10:11 AM.

  19. #19
    In vanilla having good gear actually meant something. The game wasn't as quick as it is now, where you join a dungeon via a dungeon finder tool and rush through it time and again to get the gear you want. You had to work for it back then, which made everything so much more rewarding. You had to form the groups yourself and run to the instance. Wasn't uncommon for a BRD full clear to take several hours and it was an awesome feeling when you finally managed to beat it. Everything now is just grind grind grind as quickly as possible.

  20. #20
    the thing about vanilla was that everything was new, the, add ons weren't readily available. there was no dbm, there was no omen, there was nothign to tell you when to do things. it was great and it was crappy, the group composition was pretty much the same thing, you had a warrior(tank) a priest (heals) and a mage(cc + dps), and two other people. getting groups was pretty crappy, even being in a guild. the five mans seemed to be a lot more fun, but the corpse runs sucked a lot. you don't ever want to wipe in scholo as a horde because the closest graveyard was in the scarlet monastery.

    the original raids were interesting though BRD, Scholo, Strat, LBRS, and UBRS... they were all 40 man. if you don't believe me you can find all the original entrances to the 40 man raids in these instances.... BRD led to MC, UBRS to BWL, and Strat undead had a green raid instance at the slaughter house.

    the best part of vanilla was the pioneering, other than that it was crappy grindfest and raiding was the other job you didn't really need.

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