Reminders of what vanilla was like

[Coffeh]

Thats due to tbc coming out soon after naxx so people stopped raiding, if tbc had been later way more would have cleared it.

You're right. Naxx40 came out in June of 2006 and TBC was right around the corner seven months later. Seven months gives people no time to get a raid done. Especially an easy raid since Vanilla was so much easier.

[BloodyAngel12]

You're right. Naxx40 came out in June of 2006 and TBC was right around the corner seven months later. Seven months gives people no time to get a raid done. Especially an easy raid since Vanilla was so much easier.

Many guilds were still clearing AQ40 when it came out, which annoyed everyone. We were still doing for the gear and T3 was announced which made AQ stuff out dated. A lot of my guild just got raid fatigue from all progression and farming.

[gkai]

There's really no point sugar coating it. WoW was a grind, everything about the game was pretty slow paced which is going to be a drastic change for most people that are used what WoW is today.

Is vanilla going to feel the same as it did before? I doubt it. Most people treat WoW as a race these days. Who can clear content the quickest, who can farm the most amount of gold the quickest etc.. I feel like once patch content is released we're going to see people blow through it pretty damn quickly as most people know how to raid at a very high end level, and the boss mechanics for most, if not all fights were really easy in comparison.

If blizzard wants to do anything with changing the game, they should revamp how boss mechanics work and make them much more challenging. A lot of raids back then were general tank and spank fights with little boss mechanics. I don't think very many people would be upset with boss changes if they want to actually have fun with the game.

[garicasha]

@unbound many of your things I'm willing to discuss but I think they're more factual than you see.

1. There were pretty serious gaps in itemization for other specs. So I decided to actually google "Blackwing Lair Balance Druid Vanilla" and came up with this gem (actually a pre-raid BiS list): https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=36334 The very first item listed is for a cloth hat with spirit on it. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=18727#wh-comments

BiS list for balance druid pre-raiding:
Cloth hat: 8 Int, 8 Spirit, 8 Stam, 30 spellpower, req level 54
Neck: 7 Int, 6 Spirit, 1% crit, req level 53
Cloth Shoulders: 16 Int, 20 spellpower, req level 56
Cloth Cloak: 10 Int, 1% crit, req level 55
Cloth Chest: 13 Int, 2% crit, 27 spellpower, req level 60
Cloth Bracers: 10 Int, 6 spirit, 6 stam, 12 spellpower, req level 55
Cloth Gloves: 15 Int, 9 stam, 1% crit (no spellpower), req level 55
Cloth Belt: 25 Int, 10 stam, 1% crit (no spellpower), req level 60. (Crafted item that required 10 mooncloth, and mooncloth was originally on a 4-day cooldown. So literally it would take a single tailor 40 days to create enough mats for one of these.)
Cloth Legs: 6 Int, 37 spellpower, 1% spell hit, req level 60
Cloth Boots: 16 Int, 19 spellpower, 1% spell hit, req level 60
Rings: 10 Int, 6 mp5, req level 54 (non-unique, use x2)
Trinkets: 2% crit on one, 29 spellpower on the other, req level 55
Weapon: 14 Int, 11 Stam, 7 Spirit, 1% crit, 23 spellpower, req level 58


2. I don't really think it's a negative, just a fact. If you have suggestions for grammatical edits post 'em.

3. Again, just stating a fact.

4. This was pretty negative, the lack of server transfers caused some pretty serious issues.

Also I'm still looking for photos of DPS meters from vanilla, particularly Patchwerk.

[Foj]

Because the stats were so different back then many specs had gear specifically for them. Tank gear was completely different from DPS gear. Healing gear was completely different from DPS gear. Prot warrior basically had its own gear, all healing specs basically had their own gear, rogues had their gear but hunters could also use it. Enhancement and Elemental had their own gear. There were at least 29 different kinds of weapons

Hah, you forgot, weapon speed!

Also, items stacking in stacks of 10, or 5, or 1, and bags half the size they are now.

[Seefer]

Yep and i can't wait, this game has gotten so easy and boring, not to mention the 4 difficulties of raids which is stupid.

[MrPaladinGuy]

Let's not forget that we're using ridiculously powerful hardware and connections in comparison to back then.

[Foj]

Can also confirm. My guild did tribute runs ALL the time. I was a leatherworker so I made the ogre suit. Also a hunter, so I was in charge of helping the party avoid a ton of fights.

Knot's Cache was pretty valuable.

[Flame6]

Ugh the slow gold grinds. I remember buying wow gold from chinese gold farmers because the 100% mount was going to take weeks to farm.

[tss]

I'd miss Cloak of Skill haha too much and the old iteration of Feint was garbage and unused. Leveling lockpicking was also something that was a thing back then, too.

It was a money maker though.

- - - Updated - - -

Ugh the slow gold grinds. I remember buying wow gold from chinese gold farmers because the 100% mount was going to take weeks to farm.

protip: farm lashers in DM east if you can aoe worth a shit

[Pterodactylus]

Meh, folks will pop in for their 20 mins of nostalgia and then log back into live.

[Doomchicken]

In reality, Classic was superior in almost every way to current WoW (if you prefer depth, nuance, way more RPG elements, actual choice, superior character customization, etc.)

Cool story bro

[callipygoustp]

To the op: thank you for getting me that much more excited for Vanilla servers. I CANNOT WAIT!

[Seezer]

You're so negative.

I can't WAIT to spend hours and hours running up and down Darkshore trying to find near invisible quest items.
I miss the days spamming chat for literally hours, trying to find groups for Sunken Temple, and then when you all get there somebody pulls out so you have to fly back to the cities again to start the whole process again.

Jokes aside... why would you want to play a game that's built around progression if your progress will always be capped?

People enjoy different things. It's a game.

[taliey]

The WoW classic announcement is basically a power play with all upsides and no downsides for Blizzard. Think of it as killing 2, no 3 birds with 1 stone.

The legacy crowd will be forced to pay for current wow (assuming they are not playing current WoW), it'll basically crowd out the private server (at least for Vanilla) market since (assuming people played private servers for the nostalgia and not pirating; and probably depress the classic market leading to less cease and desists), and they'll be able to add more sub numbers (that they don't disclose any more).

I'll also add, it'll force the classic crowd to put their money where their mouth is, and see if it just a very loud minority or if an actual demand exists.

All in all, I'd like to see it happen (coming from an anti-nostalgia crowd) and I'm happy for the nostalgia crowd getting what they wanted.

[Doomchicken]

You guys forgot the most important thing about vanilla. THE most important thing. Sylvanus had a night elf model.

[Alayea]

Some more fun to add (and apologies if I missed them being mentioned):

• Skill levels for gatherers are relevant again.

• Have to tap a mining node more than once to get all the ore and stone.

• Can actually fail to gather an herb if it's orange/yellow to you.

• Fishing requires having a patience level of 11 on a 10-point scale.

• Beware of even puddles if you don't want to get dismounted.

[Triptych]

I had a rogue main from vanilla to when I quit in Cata, and this reminds me how great vanilla was. All these things that Blizzard removed as quality-of-life "improvements" actually contributed a huge deal to the uniqueness and enjoyment of the class. Somehow it just adds a great deal to the role playing to have to regularly get herbs to brew poisons to use on your weapons. It's not something you can explain or understand just by looking at the mechanic in isolation—which is probably why they ended up getting removed by developers that were micro-optimizing rather than looking at the experience as a whole.

Yup. Those experiences stuck in my mind after all this time, not because I hated them, but because I loved them.

I understand why the developers ended up scrapping them, and I don't even think that it was the 'wrong' decision. When you consider their overall goals/roadmap for the WoW product, and the audience they were catering to, it was absolutely the right approach.

But at a purely personal level, I miss that stuff a lot, and I'm thrilled to get the chance to re-live it.

[Percyst]

I don't see why raid bosses shouldn't be buffed and tuned around how good current players are. Especially with all fo the consumables and buffs.

[Jaronicity]

It was a money maker though.

Aye it was, even just standing around in Org I'd get asked constantly. Now I'm lucky if anyone wants to use my skills once a month .