Misconceptions about the "Vanilla Experience"...

[Zipzo]

I've leveled around 10 characters from 1-60, 6 of those during the actual Vanilla age, and 4 of those on private realms, and with that experience under my belt I often see a lot of false information being represented on account of the vanilla "experience".

- You do not have to grind at any point between 1-60.

If you know where all the questing hubs are, there are efficient paths that can take you from the moment you zone in to your new character, all the way to 60 without even so much as thinking about grinding. It's definitely not nearly as direct and guided as modern day WoW is, it takes some research on knowing which hubs are optimal for your level window, but it's not that difficult.

However, grinding is an option for those who don't like questing. Compared to now, mob grinding an entire level was actually feasible and doable if you could bare the repetition of grinding mobs for hours. It is a popular leveling strategy for mages, especially when they reach the plaguelands as they can just AOE undead mobs down for hours and make huge xp.

Now, to be fair, this depends on what patch the server will be at on release. If they do some kind of thing where they recreate how it actually was from patch to patch, this won't be true, as the base version of WoW did have some difficult XP gaps to grind through. The "final" version of vanilla, however, did not.

- The consumable grind for hardcore raiders is not that bad.

I see a lot of people who incessantly say that vanilla is just too grindy because of consumable farming for raids. This is simply not true for a number of a reasons.

Firstly, any guild worth their salt has a broad range of professions, both gatherers and crafters. Usually materials are compiled in to the guild bank to make consumables to be doled out. Often you may be responsible for providing your own flasks or DPS elixir, which are typically not very expensive, but it is very common for guilds to provide their raid with any extraneous consumables necessary like resistance and protection potions. The only consumables that you will likely feel pressured to farm for on your own time (other than gold for the others) is the Jujus, Winterfall Firewaters (melee), and oils (casters).

Resistance pots, Flasks, and elixirs are typically widespread and readily available either from your resident alchemist, or the AH.

This stereotype of farming being excessive for vanilla players stems from the hardcore guilds who absolutely needed to farm ridiculous amounts of consumables during their race through AQ40/Naxx40. They were playing excessive amounts of hours pushing this content, and the number of wipes are in the hundreds on many bosses. It took weeks to down 4 horsemen, for example, not even the final boss.

This will not affect a vast majority of people on the classic server who stick to a steady raid schedule, even in Naxx, because you have plenty of off-raid time to bank up a small bit of gold to buy your necessary consumables for raid night.

- Classes deemed "useless" actually are not not as bad as the stereotypes say.

Shadow priests. Ret Paladins. Sub or Assassin Rogues. Arms Wars. The list goes on. There are many specs that are deemed to be completely useless in the face of a more optimal choice for said class.

There are a heavy number of factors in to what decided the "uselessness" of certain classes in vanilla, and it strongly depends on how Blizzard decides do their server.

For example, many specs were outcasted due to the debuff limit. When the debuff limit is capped at 8 or less, it forced guilds to think about the debuffs they put on bosses. That means, when all the debuffs are thrown in to a pot, arms warriors come up short compared to the other options. Since arms warrior debuffs are essential to maximizing their damage, this in-turn made arms warriors less desireable to fury. The same can be said for hemo rogues (hemo, rupture), and shadow priests (plague and flay), and Ret Paladins (judgment of the crusader).

If they cap the debuffs low, you will again see this sort of favoring, of course. However, later in vanilla they increased the cap to the point where this sort of thing wasn't as important, but at that point in the game the stereotypes were locked in.

However, if you go to any vanilla players or even just look at a certain private server's public dps logs (basically, vanilla servers have their own "warcraft logs" sites that works very similarly to the one you might use in Legion, though obviously with less boastful features but the important stuff is there), you can find very empirical evidence of players playing a lot of these "lesser path traveled" classes to surprising competence. We've seen Ret Paladins crushing meters in MC all the way up through Naxx, we've seen Shadow priests doing the same, and we've seen all 3 specs of rogue put out competitive DPS with combat. I have personally experimented with hemo in vanilla to surprising success with proper gearing, as long as my debuff wasn't minded, competing in damage with other similarly geared combat rogues in BiS gear.

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Many new things have been 'discovered' in the golden age of vanilla private servers, and I would not be surprised to see a lot of old vanilla players who skipped the private scene be shocked that what they thought was an absolute in vanilla, really wasn't so absolute. It mostly comes down to gearing. A lot of the lesser liked classes for raiding performance tend to be more reliant on gear. This means that they require some base epic-level pieces to push over some thresholds before they are brought up to the same potential as more elementary dps classes that do not require such simply due to balance quirks. It's kind of like some of the secondary stat "soft caps" a lot of classes have in Legion, where before said cap it feels like the class plays like crud, and then once you hit the threshold, you feel godly.

In short? : If you want to play a spec considered "garbage" in raiding, it might be difficult due to the stereotype to find a guild that will fill a slot with you, but if you're passionate about giving it a go, most of the time there are guilds out there that aren't hyper-concerned with 1 slot going to a ret paladin or a shadow priest, but be ready to fight the stereotype, which means studying your class mechanics, and be hyper-attentive to your gearing and stats, because if you put in the work, you can be competitive, it just takes a bit more effort off the start.

And these are the 3, I think, most often mis-represented things about vanilla today. Feel free to discuss, disagree, or add anything you believe are strong misconceptions about daily vanilla life. Thank you.

[potis]

Lol, counting private server settings as anything real or as it was, what a pile of bullshit.

Most of the private servers work on stuff that was already fixed, aka the pre-patch of TBC, thats why those classes arent useless, because they are TBC classes, not Vanilla, most classes were absolutely useless till then, everyone knows what is what by now, we had DPS meters back then too btw, people werent stupid, there was an uproar when that gnome warrior hit 1.5k DPS on Patchwerk (I dont recall if it was with the TBC changes or not though, it was late into Naxxramas so either November, or Pre-patch at December).

Farming consumables was easy as a raider because there were standard spawn points, the Herbalists just circled them for a bit and voila, problem was if there was more than 1 as good guild on the server.

Your questing part isnt that wrong, but its all wrong on the part that there were certain areas where you could level faster by grinding there rather than running for 3-4 hours trying to reach the area for the quest.

[Akka]

Now, to be fair, this depends on what patch the server will be at on release. If they do some kind of thing where they recreate how it actually was from patch to patch, this won't be true, as the base version of WoW did have some difficult XP gaps to grind through. The "final" version of vanilla, however, did not.

Sorry, that's completely false. There. Was. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. A. Need. To. Grind.
E.V.E.R.
And yes I leveled at release.

Of course, you would sometimes need to move from one continent to another, and often from one region to another. It was, as you said, sometimes more EFFICIENT to grind.
But it was NEVER "required" because of "no quest of appropriate level". Never.

That being said, I agree with everything else you said. I've actually said the same several times in the past. These misconceptions are simply forum hoaxes, exageration from people who wanted to make a point, which were parroted and became "self-fulfilling truth" after a while.

[skatblast]

Many new things have been 'discovered' in the golden age of vanilla private servers, and I would not be surprised to see a lot of old vanilla players who skipped the private scene be shocked that what they thought was an absolute in vanilla, really wasn't so absolute. It mostly comes down to gearing. A lot of the lesser liked classes for raiding performance tend to be more reliant on gear. This means that they require some base epic-level pieces to push over some thresholds before they are brought up to the same potential as more elementary dps classes that do not require such simply due to balance quirks. It's kind of like some of the secondary stat "soft caps" a lot of classes have in Legion, where before said cap it feels like the class plays like crud, and then once you hit the threshold, you feel godly.

This is mostly true. From my recent experience with vanilla things will go a certain way. Everybody will be expected to hit pre raid BiS before molten core, there are tons of spreadsheets out now and how to achieve this. They will have to bring consumables such as spell power elixirs, greater fire protection pots etc. They will need to farm resistance gear They will be expected to have optimal spec for that class. It is expected that you get all the buffs you can before raid time. (Dire maul tribute buffs, ZG buff, Ony buff. felwood flower buff, darkmoon faire buff) The people that do not want to do these things will find themselves in some pretty terrible guilds. Thats basically what is expected now. There is time needed to raid prep. You cant just show up and expect to be invited to the raid.

[Deleted]

Completely agree with everything based on my own experiences from Nostalrius.
I actually managed to level to 60 without touching the Plaguelands nor grinding, I kinda had to scrap the barrel for quests but it is totally doable if you do most of the big chain quests that people usually skip.

Lol, counting private server settings as anything real or as it was, what a pile of bullshit.

Most of the private servers work on stuff that was already fixed, aka the pre-patch of TBC, thats why those classes arent useless, because they are TBC classes, not Vanilla, most classes were absolutely useless till then, everyone knows what is what by now, we had DPS meters back then too btw, people werent stupid, there was an uproar when that gnome warrior hit 1.5k DPS on Patchwerk (I dont recall if it was with the TBC changes or not though, it was late into Naxxramas so either November, or Pre-patch at December).

This is false actually, all private servers that emulated Vanilla were running the 1.12 version (aka last Vanilla patch, not the pre-BC one).

[Azadina]

And these are the 3, I think, most often mis-represented things about vanilla today. Feel free to discuss, disagree, or add anything you believe are strong misconceptions about daily vanilla life. Thank you.

Much of what you said is indeed true. I would add however, that many of the private server scene might be in for a shock, when they learn that the actual game had no conveniences that most privates seem to have.

Stuff like increased proc chance of weapon skills, or profession skills. No increased loot chances for gold, profession mats, or rare drops. No toggleable multiplied xp. No voting/donating points shop where you can get anything from massive gold amounts to BiS gear, without having to enter one raid.

[Deleted]

Nostalrius and it's successor Elysium had 1x times rate on everything you mentioned above, and both had a very stable playerbase.

[Solitare-sp]

This is mostly true. From my recent experience with vanilla things will go a certain way. Everybody will be expected to hit pre raid BiS before molten core, there are tons of spreadsheets out now and how to achieve this. They will have to bring consumables such as spell power elixirs, greater fire protection pots etc. They will need to farm resistance gear They will be expected to have optimal spec for that class. It is expected that you get all the buffs you can before raid time. (Dire maul tribute buffs, ZG buff, Ony buff. felwood flower buff, darkmoon faire buff) The people that do not want to do these things will find themselves in some pretty terrible guilds. Thats basically what is expected now. There is time needed to raid prep. You cant just show up and expect to be invited to the raid.

If you're at the 'cutting edge' progression wise, yes that would be the case. But there's many type of guild at different levels, just as there was in Vanilla. If you want to be first in the server to kill Rag sure, but there's room for plenty of different levels.

[Jyggalag]

There. Was. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. A. Need. To. Grind.
E.V.E.R.

If you're having fun while grinding, was it really a grind?

[potis]

Completely agree with everything based on my own experiences from Nostalrius.
I actually managed to level to 60 without touching the Plaguelands nor grinding, I kinda had to scrap the barrel for quests but it is totally doable if you do most of the big chain quests that people usually skip.



This is false actually, all private servers that emulated Vanilla were running the 1.12 version (aka last Vanilla patch, not the pre-BC one).

Which already have a gazillion fixes to classes, Weapon attack speed scaling fix and a ton other things.

[Azadina]

Nostalrius and it's successor Elysium had 1x times rate on everything you mentioned above, and both had a very stable playerbase.

I've tried my share of "totally 1x blizz rates" servers. Never quite seemed to be legitimate rates. Then again I can't say I've tried each one out there, but any I've tried had some scumbaggery.

[skatblast]

If you're at the 'cutting edge' progression wise, yes that would be the case. But there's many type of guild at different levels, just as there was in Vanilla. If you want to be first in the server to kill Rag sure, but there's room for plenty of different levels.

Not really, the only people that will make it to 60 and raid in vanilla will be the ones that are serious about their characters. You dont just hit 110, buy some gold and then buy boe epics, show up at a LFG and clear it first try.

[Vofka]

Which already have a gazillion fixes to classes, Weapon attack speed scaling fix and a ton other things.

Hurr Durr "oh 1.12 wasn't vanilla only 1.X is true vanila" Hurr Durr

[Low Hanging Fruit]

In today's old stories told by whining people that lost but still want to let the world see them cry.... The OP presents.. Shit already said and no one gives a fuck about beside people to dumb and take the bait or are in it to fuel trolling of the situation...

Lets see who todays players will be..

[potis]

Hurr Durr "oh 1.12 wasn't vanilla only 1.X is true vanila" Hurr Durr

What even?

[Millyraynge]

- You do not have to grind at any point between 1-60.

This is actually true. It's just a question of effectiveness. Some quests (with long travel routes or some elite quests) were less efficient than farming some mobs.

- The consumable grind for hardcore raiders is not that bad.

Yes and No. This depended strongly on the server population and the time you decided to gather some stuff. At high pop servers black lotus was super rare and usually safed on the guild bank for titan flasks (for bad times), so to see non-tank classes with flask was pretty uncommon on those servers. On prime times usually all places were completely overfarmed, so you had indeed hard times to get your stuff together.

For some classes gold was also a very big issue, especially warrior tanks. Firstly, you need to spent a lot of gold (up to 50g; absolute ridiculous) just to unlearn your talents (from tank/heal to dps and from dps to tank/heal = up to 100g). Because blizzard loved plate wearers in vanilla, they forced them to spent more money to repair their gear than all the other armour classes, which could end in the 50+g range as well. It's quite unbelieveble what worth 50g had back in the days.

- Classes deemed "useless" actually are not not as bad as the stereotypes say.

before 1.7 we had 8 debuffs slots and between 1.7 and burning crusade we had 16 debuff slots. Even 16 slots weren't enough for 40 man raids to spent them arbitrarily.

The game design capped a lot of classes from raiding. Pala and Druid tank (with some very rare and exotic exceptions) were usually completely banned from raiding. Tanks for example: Pala didn't had taunt, which knocked him already from the list and druid tank was just not immune to crits and crushing strikes, so that even the best geared drood always had a relatively high chance to just get oneshotted on any boss (even in MC or ZG).

A lot of specs were under original vanilla circumstances not worth to play in raid environment.

I have personally experimented with hemo in vanilla to surprising success with proper gearing, as long as my debuff wasn't minded, competing in damage with other similarly geared combat rogues in BiS gear.

Some classes were indeed very strong with perfect gear in theory, but unfortunately the term BiS was very much uncommon back in vanilla. The time frame between the releases of BWL, AQ40 and Naxxramas was less than a year. BiS or nearly BiS was only possible if your loot-system made it possible that a specific person got everything he needed automatically at first, but even than it was very rng dependend and of course only for a small part in the raid group achievable. We never saw DFT or CTS in BWL and we cleared BWL for more than a half of a year as an example for the original loot system. Each raid had a list of powerful items which they never saw.

[Echocho]

They will have to bring consumables such as spell power elixirs, greater fire protection pots etc. They will need to farm resistance gear They will be expected to have optimal spec for that class. It is expected that you get all the buffs you can before raid time. (Dire maul tribute buffs, ZG buff, Ony buff. felwood flower buff, darkmoon faire buff).

Well this is certainly not true for MC. While I agree that you need to gear and spec correctly consumables and world buffs are mostly overkill. It won't make things easier, just faster. I am aware that a lot of guilds do this on private servers to compete with each other but if your guild just want to do the content at your own pace and not worry what everyone else is doing there's really no point in forcing people to chug 200g worth of consumables every raid. Use them when you need them.

[Deleted]

Lol, counting private server settings as anything real or as it was, what a pile of bullshit.

No it's not, it's the perfect example (1 to 1) of how a legacy server would be played out with the information we have today and with the playerbase we have today.

It's very relevant.

More than "how people played back then" because nowadays the playerbase is different and is much better informed.

[jakeic]

Some classes were indeed very strong with perfect gear in theory, but unfortunately the term BiS was very much uncommon back in vanilla. The time frame between the releases of BWL, AQ40 and Naxxramas was less than a year. BiS or nearly BiS was only possible if your loot-system made it possible that a specific person got everything he needed automatically at first, but even than it was very rng dependend and of course only for a small part in the raid group achievable. We never saw DFT or CTS in BWL and we cleared BWL for more than a half of a year as an example for the original loot system. Each raid had a list of powerful items which they never saw.

Our raid group looted zero Ashkandi's, zero Untamed Blades, zero DFT, zero components to the Hand of Rag, and zero Bindings. I couldn't tell you the time frame this occurred in, but we started raiding during 1.7 and only stopped raiding a week or two before TBC release.

[cudomix]

There is a gap in quests where grinding either dungeons or mobs are more efficient, after finishing tanaris at 45 you're too high for searing gorge, and too low for burning stepppes, un'goro or WPL. Without Silithus (reworked in AQ patch) EPL quests are also done by 58, requiring dungeons for 60. I'm pretty sure that EPL was also tweaked during vanilla, but my memory is kinda fuzzy about that.